Last week, I visited my car auto technician for routine car maintenance. Pablo has a hole-in-the-wall auto repair shop focusing on Japanese cars. He doesn’t overcharge, and is no-nonsense and direct. Three years and counting, I’ve visited Pablo about twice a year. Each right time, I look for improvements or expansions to his business. The immigrant in me wishes this immigrant to achieve success.
This time, he had expanded to an additional bay and acquired a spanking new bank of tool drawers along one wall. I think to myself. Maintenance is done, we head upstairs to his office for the paperwork. Pablo’s new business cards attract my eye, a bright pop of color in the otherwise drab and useful office. Paperwork done, as I get right up to leave, Pablo says his new business cards have helped drive clients his way, and it’s thanks to me. Some tips about what happened. The prior time I visited Pablo, I told him his business cards were unpleasant, dreary, and unwelcoming. I suggested he try a brighter and more welcoming look.
- Pass it to someone else to review. They may spot something you have forgotten
- 24 The business completed work for Alex’s Engineering Co. and delivered it a bill for $3,950
- Social Security and Medicare (FICA) Taxes for Non-resident Exempt Individual
- Help streamlining deployment process and CI
I think I communicated my message well enough that Pablo told his wife who took a closer look at those business cards, agreed with me, and set about designing the newer, brighter ones. Pablo says he used to hand out his old business credit cards wherever he proceeded to go. Nothing much arrived of that. Not so with the new credit cards. People remember them and comment about them, he says. Apparently, even business started to improve after he turned to the new business cards.
In fact, Pablo was effusive in saying so favorably. I didn’t design Pablo’s new business cards. His wife did. I informed him his old ones were awful simply. A customer offers constructive criticism, the business owner considers it seriously and acts on it, business improves. No big deal, right? Not, and here’s why. This formula could in a different way to have worked out quite.
Pablo, the business owner, could have overlooked the criticism or he could have taken it to the center. Took it to heart the wrong way! Think about the other end of the equation? Pablo says nothing of his some other client’s ever commented about his old business credit cards even though he asks for Frank opinions about his business. Why didn’t his some other clients comment about Pablo’s old business credit cards? Of course, there isn’t any such thing as universal appearance but surely, given the results, I wasn’t the only one to get the old credit cards uninspiring?
Apathy, undue burden, indifference, shyness? We won’t know for certain, shall we? Yet, what a loss of a chance to build a long-lasting reference to another by engendering value! Here, both ends of the equation worked well in sync, offering both satisfaction. Thankfully, when I respected my intuition about Pablo and gave him my input, it paid off.
Yet did I not take the risk in providing my input in the first place? In our relatively brief trip with this globe, we’re able to choose to exist on the reflexive and small or we’re able to choose to take some risks, risks that focus on engendering value. Sometimes our seed products might fall on the wrong soil or gets planted at the incorrect time.