Who Do You Trust?

Image by Ronaldo Cabuhat

Let me start with a story this time: John, a young ambitious entrepreneur needed a partner to create a new store for portable computers. He knew that his friend Alan was good with technology and had sufficient laptop knowledge, so he thought he made the right choice to make him his colleague.

They decided that one of them would work three days per week, than the other one would take over the salesdesk for another three.

As time went by, John noticed that Alan wasn’t very serious about their business. Al would close the store two hours early and didn’t really seem to care when a customer entered the store. I’ll tell you what happened next in just a minute.

In my world, there are three kinds of people. Those who seem trustworthy but will selfishly deceive you sooner or later. Those who don’t care for anything and everyone else sees that. And the third, must-know type, who have found the right combination between helping others and their own personal interests.

Always be on the search for the third kind and be cautious with the first.

Anyway, let’s check out what happened to John and Alan’s fairly new computer store.

People started noticing that one of the salespeople from John & Al Portable simply refused to help them, no matter how much money they were ready to pay for a new device or tech support. So they just started to go to a store 10 minutes away with a much friendlier staff. Needless to say, the store failed and John made a mistake he’ll never forget. He hadn’t thought that Alan was a good friend, but not a good business partner.

Don’t make John’s mistake.