The goose that laid the golden egg
- Avianus
and Caxton tell different stories of a goose that lays a golden egg, where
other versions have a hen, as in Townsend: "A cottager and his wife
had a Hen that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the Hen
must contain a great lump of gold in its inside, and in order to get the
gold they killed it. Having done so, they found to their surprise that the
Hen differed in no respect from their other hens. The foolish pair, thus
hoping to become rich all at once, deprived themselves of the gain of
which they were assured day by day."
- In early telling,
there is sometimes a commentary warning against greed rather than a pithy
moral. This is so in Jean de La Fontaine's fable which begins with
the sentiment that 'Greed loses all by striving all to gain' and comments
at the end that the story can be applied to those who become poor by
trying to outreach themselves.
The English
idiom, sometimes shortened to "Killing the golden goose", derives
from this fable. It is generally used to point to a short-sighted action that
destroys the profitability of an asset. From a very young age I was taught that
in fact you must protect the Goose that lays the golden eggs. In real life and real business, you must
first analyze and come to realize to what you owe your success and
profitability; that then becomes that special object of profits production
(golden eggs).
I like to brag
that when I first learned to make my first twenty dollars, the second twenty
came even easier, and so it follows up the line; the first ten thousand, the
first one hundred thousand etc., I am now working on the second million (I gave
up on the first). Now, for the reason for writing this post.
The first thing
that got me going in the work world, was when I learned that no one was doing
me any favors. I needed something they (employers)
had (money), and I had something they wanted (labor, and a strong back). This lesson came early while I was still
living on the farm and attending Junior High School. Later on, I also learned that you could do
more things with a trained (educated) mind than you could with a strong back
(for a lot longer anyway).
It also follows
that you only have so much daylight in a day, and you can only trade so much of
your personal hours of labor for money.
So the lesson here is to organize a team that is willing to work for
you, on a project or assignment that you have access (contract) to. You then must charge an adequate amount of
money, so you can pay your help and overhead costs including all necessary
expenses (taxes and permits included), and make a reasonable profit in order to
maintain the drive to keep your interest in the business.
Now for the lesson
of the day; you need to stay aware of source of success and keep it happy. Your work force must be maintained happy, and
properly compensated. So you achieve
that in one of two ways:
- You increase the cost of providing
the service for your contract or,
- You lower your profit margin and
increase the labor rate.
If your profit
goes too low you will lose the incentive to stay in business, and if your labor
costs cause unrest in the labor force and they walk, you won’t have any
business profits anyway. Therein lies
the secret to business success. In this
case the goose that lays the golden egg is the labor force. Every situation is different and that is why
you must analyze and determine what is at the center of your success. The best is yet to come…
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