I messed up…
Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.
This is one of the major themes of my credit course. If you want lower interest rates, if you want your banks and credit card companies to wipe away penalties or forgive some debt, sometimes…
All you have to do is ask.
But even though I teach this in my course and in my book, I messed up.
See, I help a lot of non-profit and for-profit companies with their marketing strategies. And I neglected to ask…
I didn’t ask one of them enough deep questions to make sure that our interests were aligned.
So after several months of being frustrated, I finally realized something. I wanted them to make as much money as possible. If they made money, I made money.
But that’s not what they wanted—not in their heart of hearts. They wanted to grow slowly. When it came down to it, they weren’t comfortable with the same explosive growth that I was trying to help them achieve.
There isn’t anything wrong with either of our goals – they just weren’t aligned. If they didn’t make money—and fast—I wasn’t going to make money.
And if I pushed them too hard to grow, the corporate culture they wanted and loved would be non-existent.
So the relationship that we initially established was doomed from the start. We had (and still have) great rapport, and we are trying to find a solution so that we can continue to work together, but it sure would have saved us a lot of time if we had made sure our interests were aligned from the get-go.
So what’s my point?
From now on, I’m going to make sure my interests are aligned every time I enter a professional relationship, create a friendship, or sign a contract.
In fact, if I’m working on a solution with someone, the first thing I’m going to do is make sure our interests are aligned. If they aren’t, we will only be frustrated when working together.
Having aligned interests is a big part of making any area of life work.
It works with professional decisions, personal relationships, and it works with financial decisions as well.
And it also works on a big scale…
Imagine if the banks had disclosed their interests to the people who bought houses pre-2008! If people had known what was in the banks’ “heart of hearts,” would they have entered into an agreement with them?
And on a small scale…
Would you sign up for a retail store credit card if the cashier disclosed the store’s true interests? Imagine that a cashier said, “Would you like to sign up for a retail store card and save 10 percent on today’s purchase? Our goal is to lure you into signing up for the card so that buy more from us over the long-haul and pay a ton of money in interest rates.”
Heck no! You wouldn’t sign up!
So ask away… before you enter a relationship, make sure you know the true interest of the person (or business) you are going to work with.
As always, let me know your thoughts below. Have you recently realized that a relationship isn’t working because your interests weren’t aligned?
– Philip Tirone
