Service Industry Saturday January 6, 2007

A few months ago, a guy called me about a misbehaving Flash file he had inherited from one of his clients. His client decided to change web firms and gave him the source files from the previous site. Not uncommon in these transfer situations, the FLA was not compiling correctly and the new developer was at a loss. I was called in see if I could fix the problem. He was expecting to pay for my time.

After about 20 minutes chatting with this guy on the phone and getting an FTP account set up to transfer the files, it took me an hour to update the class files and get his file paths all in sync. I sent the files back to him soon after I completed the work, and he asked how much I owed him. I had already thought it through, and the answer was: “nothing”.

To this distressed developer it was worth some serious cash to get the existing file back to rights; to me it was about an hour and a half of casual effort. I knew that an hour and a half’s worth of money could not compare to leaving a great impression on my new friend. He was very grateful, and offered to keep visicswire in mind for future jobs.

To me, leaving a great impression with another worker bee in the web community was worth much more than an hour and a half’s pay.

Bringing us up to date, visicswire just finished up a few days of creating a killer proposal for an exciting new project. If we are able to land this project, we will be happily devoting the next couple months to developing it, and then will be maintaining it indefinitely down the road. What’s the connection here? My friend from a few months back told his buddies to check us out- he told them we were good people. It’s just a hunch, but that referral would probably not have been given if our friend had not been impressed by my small measure of generosity months before.

I understand there are people out there who are looking to exploit other’s generosity. We have been burned in the past, and will most likely be burned again in the future. The last time we were burned, we felt our generosity was disregarded. We felt under-appreciated and even attacked. We learned some things from that, but continue to look for opportunities to help other companies and developers out. In business, there are few things more frustrating then bending over backwards to help someone who is not interested in thanking or acknowledging you. Even worse, someone interested in hurting you. However, in the long run—especially in a service industry—the nice guys finish first.

Showing others that their goals are important to you gets you attention. Proving that you are willing to help them gets you respect. Respect gets you projects. Projects get you money and, hopefully, bring a sense of satisfaction and pride to your work and life.

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