020 - NEVER BURN A RELATIONSHIP

Never burn a relationship. They. So in the last episode I talked about avoiding bad faith actors, but the flip side of that is maintaining great relationships with the people that you build them with. And why do I say that? Well, back in the day when I landed in New Guinea, we had a competitor with whom we had a really poor relationship.

And my predecessors never really built a good one with him. There was a lack of trust. He was an ex-employee of ours. And no one really wanted to, no 20.  never burn a relationship. They matter. So in the last episode I talked about avoiding bad faith actors, but the reality is the flip side of that is that you need to maintain great relationships with the people that you build them with.

Why do I say that? Well, back in the day when I was in New Guinea, I had a competitor with whom we had a really fractious relationship. It was founded by an ex-employee of ours, and my predecessors had never really built a strong. Trustworthy, trusting relationship with them. I decided to rebuild that trust from the ground up.

I made a point of meeting the senior team and really getting to know them well enough that I could say that I had a decent relationship with them. And when it came to the crunch, when it really mattered, that paid off. Why? Because a couple of years later, one of my factories burnt to the ground. I had no materials and I had no product to supply my customers.

So I went to my competitor and I asked them whether they could see us through this spell where we were gonna need support from our suppliers and from the market in general to make sure we could get through this. And they obliged. Why? Because we built that relationship. They trusted us and I trusted them.

So never burn a relationship because you never know when you're gonna need it.