A long time ago I worked for a small family business. They built their business from the ground up, the old man started it in his garage based off of his industry connections from the 70s before being crushed by more effective outfits in the area. When he got too old he retired and handed the new outfit it to his two sons.
I recall being in an all hands bi-weekly meeting on one Saturday, one of the sons stood up and addressed the entire small company:
"I called around and you know what, we pay about average for the industry. Maybe a little bit on the upper side of average. You know, I could raise my prices and maybe pay you all more, but then I would have less customers. and If I have less customers then I can't afford to pay as many of you."
He looked around with an expression that I felt like was almost contempt, but really wasn't The industry is pretty low margin and they got theirs to be very good with volume sales and very good efficiency in processes. He felt the pressure to execute their plans to expand into another, second facility while remaining profitable enough at the original to fund their plans for world domination.
Every day they had customers waiting in line for literally hours for their turn in a crappy, kind of gross facility that had been cobbled together by these DIYers over a number of years. Every day they turned away customers in droves.
I thought to myself: Old man, if you don't raise your prices, you are a priceless fool. If you can't hire enough people to handle your amazing, envy inducing volume, _and_ you have the gall to exclaim proudly that you pay a little bit better than average, then you are surely and rightfully doomed to this mediocrity until you hopefully die.
What he said next only confirmed my young ideations: "We only want the people who _want_ to work here, to work here. If you don't like working here, well you should go somewhere else."
Nowadays they are still in business. They had indeed increased their pay by over 40% in the next couple of years. They opened their second facility years later after more years of project extensions and overruns, just in time for a global pandemic to shutter their entire operation for months. I'm happy they saw the light and realized what you have to do to attract and keep quality skilled employees, but I am for more pleased to be their competitor.