Written By: Lauren Howard
There is a way you’re supposed to do business.
So they say.
You’re supposed to do what is best for the financials of your operation, regardless of what it does to the people involved.
Yeah, eff that.
That sounds like my nightmare.
I would never sleep at night. If you know me, there is nothing in this world that I like more than sleep except MAYBE my kids and even that’s questionable when they wake me early looking for breakfast.
You can do well by doing good.
Do what’s right by the humans who are in front of you, and the rest always comes out in the wash. Always.
We had an experience a few months ago where a potential new client tried to exploit a loophole in our contract to pay less for the services we had discussed. It would have amounted to lots of inexpensive work to build out their operation.
I could have gone back and explained the difference between the agreements and why this wasn’t covered, but I didn’t. We could have probably saved the client.
I just canceled it and moved on.
We talked as a team and decided that the opportunity wasn’t worth the potential cost.
We have a (maybe unreasonable) expectation that our partners will look out for us like we look out for them. If they would try to undercut us on the first contract, it will continue throughout the life of the agreement. If they expect us to work for free now, they will continue to look for those opportunities.
Our partnerships require us to build programs that could include resistance from insurers, patients, regulators, CMS and entities that I’m not even thinking of. We have to work as a team with the organizations that we contract with, and that means being on the same page all the time.
None of that works if we’re not sure that we’re working together.
So we walked away without a second thought.
We contract with companies but we work with humans. It may not be the conventional way to run a business, but I sleep fine.
Founder & CEO at elletwo
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