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The favors I did cost me nothing, but a few phone calls and 30 minutes of my time. We have to help in order to be helped when we ask for it and I will.
Over the last year I have called in favors from many of my contacts and it has to be a two way street. You cannot expect all the time if you aren't prepared to reciprocate no matter what is asked of you. You just cannot be seen as a take and need to step up if asked. I would help anyway as that is who I am and don't expect in return, but these are strange times when we all need help so why not ask for it.
Yesterday an old friend who has been a mentor to me over the last 5 years asked me to help a client of his. I am not sure how and where they fit in but it seems they could be creditors looking to break up a business and piece meal it out selling whatever they can. I believe my friend is most likely owed money and is trying to get what he can back.
In that sense phoning me makes sense as the trust is there and he knows I will do good by whoever I help. The stock they were trying to move is something we would manufacture and sell so it was fairly straight forward knowing the real value. The lady I spoke to gave me a value of $52 000 from the invoice paid and after calculating the cost of raw material it came to just above $12000 so someone had been robbed along the way. Our selling price would have been around $22000 so they have over paid by $30 000 which is criminal.
Unfortunately this happens fairly regularly and most likely someone on the inside was receiving a back hand. What is sad is this business is no longer and in some ways had no chance with theft happening from the inside as that is what this is. Owners need to know what is happening otherwise people will take advantage of them. This is people not understanding their business and trusting too easily and it is unfortunately in a majority of businesses that I visit.
I managed to explain to this lady that $52 000 is not happening and she should be happy receiving in the region of $16 000 as no one knows the quality or where it originated from. She wasn't overly happy and explained I am not making a buck out of the deal as I will just put her into contact with someone who may be interested. We as manufacturers could not touch it as our name would be attached to whatever we sold and there were too many unknowns.
One of my customers was only too happy to purchase it as he could move it on and appreciated the lead I gave him. This small favor helped two people that are important to me and now in an around about way they owe me as that is how these things work. At some point I will collect as my mentor will have contacts I can use to grow my business and will expect me to come have coffee with him soon. We know each other so well and think similarly as everything has opportunities if you just look.