How do we get our customers and suppliers to buy into our WHY? To buy into our - How to - how do I get somebody that I went on a date with to fall in love with me? It's like.
You you're asking the wrong question. You have to be clear and open about what you stand for. And just like when you hire somebody, you want to make sure that when you hire them, that they share your values, that they believe in your vision.
You know, they don't just think it's corny, you know, or marketing, but rather that they buy into it. And sometimes we'll make mistakes. And sometimes people will come and they fall in love with it after the fact.
But it's, you know, we try on balance to bring people that we believe will get along with the people who work here because of our values and our cause. And so too, is it with with suppliers. I think that or clients are it's the same thing, which is we stand for what we stand for and our goal is to attract people who believe what we believe.
The more vocal we are about what we believe those people literally will come to us or turn down a competitor, who may even be cheaper, because they would rather do business with us. And so it's OK to do business with a supplier that doesn't believe what we believe, but we have to go in with eyes open knowing full well that this is just a transaction. You offer a decent product.
You give me a decent price. This is not going to be a lifelong relationship. This is a transactional relationship.
And when it's done, I'm just going to hold you to very different standards, right? Because when it's transactional, we're a little less patient when things go wrong and sometimes we you just can't do that too often. It's like if you're living a healthy lifestyle, you can have chocolate cake and just not too often.
So, yeah, I think the more vocal you are, the more you attract and then you have to make decisions like you're hiring people because they're going to become a member of your family as well. This is the difference between the short-term, finite minded and the long-term infinite minded, the finite-minded. Is it the cheapest today?
Is it the best relationship today? And pay no attention to the secondary or tertiary effects and definitely pay no attention to what will happen in five years. Whereas that long-term minded, infinite-minded player looks at its looks at something and looks at someone and says, "Well, you know you're not the cheapest, but I think we're going to get along just fine.
" And over the course of time, the quality of work will far outweigh whatever you paid. A friend of mine who's a consultant loves to joke about her clients that they never have the time or money to do it right the first time, but they always have the time and money to do it again. And I think when you're infinite-minded, you consider those factors from the from the beginning.
