I think there is a foregone conclusion, for many, that the terms “business” and “ethics” are pretty much in direct opposition. I think, based on the many, many people out there who are lacking in ethics that’s a fair conclusion.
I know, however, that it’s not a universal truth.
One of the nicest comments I received recently was from a vendor I deal with who asked me a question, in relation to why I was considering discontinuing the service for one of my other sites, after 8 years. The conversation went something like this:
Vendor: If you don’t use our services, what are you going to do?
Me: Nothing. If I can’t afford to use you, I can’t afford to go elsewhere either. For now I’ll just keep things at a stop and proceed when I can do so.
[slight pause]
Vendor: Char, thank you. Thank you for being an honest business woman. I didn’t expect that from you and am impressed by your integrity. Now, how can we work this out to keep you as a client?
He expected me to use his competition against him to try and leverage him into a better deal. First of all, I love the work they do for me and if I wasn’t in a position to have to make this decision I wouldn’t have even considered doing so. Second of all, it never occurred to me to .. exercise my right to hyperbole .. to negotiate. It’s not how I do business or live my life.
I’m honest to a fault and it has, in the past, cost me dearly. Being honest isn’t always perceived as a valuable commodity or character trait and honesty will, almost 98% of the time cost you a job, a client, or an opportunity because if you honestly admit that you’ve never done X, then you won’t get a chance to do X. It won’t matter that you could have creatively crafted yourself into X and learned on the fly, but chose to be up front and honest, either. So business has created it’s own justification for hyperbole or outright lying, and now I in my honesty stand out from a banal crowd.
I like being the standout. I just wish, in this case, it was the norm instead of the exception.
I am, also, still using this vendor for my sister site (.net – in development). He, as much as myself, is a business person who I am inordinately proud to be able to do business with. If you need an honest web hosting provider, contact Hosting4Less and ask for Dan .. tell him Char, from Illuminated Designs sent you .. you won’t be disappointed if you want good service backed by personal integrity.
