There was a situation I want to tell you about and tell me what you think and how to handle it.
There was a supplier that provided a service to us but we realized that months had gone by, and that supplier never invoiced us. It was about R20 000 which is about $1000 that we were supposed to pay them, but they never asked us to, they just forgot.
So the question is, they forgot, let it slide... if they remember, why don't they just come and remind us? We'll pay them when they remember... or should we write to them and say, "Hey, we realized you never invoiced us and we'd love to pay you".
The people I was working with at the time were divided on that question. Some said, "They'll come to us when they're ready". My opinion and one other guy was saying, "let's write to them and tell them, 'we owe you money, and you just forgot to invoice us'".
So what did we do? How did we solve that? We thought, okay, if it was flipped, what would we like to have done to us? How would we like to be treated? We thought, if it was us and we forgot, we would totally appreciate it, it would mean a lot.
In fact, it could solve a lot of problems, because maybe we weren't sure what happened and why we weren't able to pay someone else. And now this person would come to me and say, it's because we owe you money, and then all of a sudden it would add up and make sense.
So when we put ourselves in their shoes, it immediately became clear that the ethical thing to do is to write to them and to say, "Look, we owe you money, and we would like to pay you". We did that. They super appreciated it and of course, we paid them.
The big lesson here is that you need to treat people the way you'd want to be treated in business and of course in life. In business, don't try to find a way to cut the corner with people. When you treat them the way you want to be treated, it will come back around to you.
That's the way to have long-term business, long-term success and happiness in your business. So treat people the way you would want to be treated. That's of course, the golden rule. Buddha talks about it, the Bible talks about it. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Gal Ezra,
Managing Director,
Empower Funding