Our handshake, our word

We just got our first client, we were super excited, and we were also new to business and very young. We did not have any contracts or other legal obligator documents. We had a hand shake and our word. Not to go into the specifics of the deal, one part of the agreement was that we could not work with other companies that were in direct competition with this client. This aspect did not bother us, because we believe in abundance, and feel that there is plenty of work outside of this particular market.

Just as luck would have it, a few weeks after we got started with this client, their direct competition approached us. We did not even market to them. They said they have been following us for some time and liked our work. They want us to work for them. They offered 10X more than what our current client was paying us.

We had two options, one we could jump on this and take the money. Since we did not have a contract with our client we were not legally obligated to stand behind our hand shake deal. The second option is to stand behind our principles and honor our commitment.

Some may think we deliberated for hours if not days over this. It would be easy to jump at the opportunity to increase our income 10 fold. But we had something more important, our principles and values.

Even though we are in business to make money we will not exchange that for our values. We did not have a contract, we had something stronger, to us, our word. Yes a contract will make us legally obligated, but our word made us morally obligated.

We want to be in business for the long haul, for that we must have a culture that is solid. A culture that has high standards, and culture of high moral character.

Refusing to work with our client’s competitor cost us income, but it would have cost us more in the long run if we would have accepted it.

I think if you look around at other great companies, they all had a defining moment, just like us. We are glad we turned down the job, it not only lets our current customers know what type of character we have. But it also lets us sleep well at night, and something you cannot put a price on good sleep.