Team Weston's Lesson in Life: Pay It Forward

My mother always taught me: do nice things for others and it will all come back to you in the long run. Her lesson wasn’t necessarily that I would get something in return, it had more to do with the good feeling that I would be left with. Over time, I have developed it as my personal and business mantra at Team Weston. I had the opportunity to apply this philosophy last week with a couple of tenants in a couple of different ways, and I wanted to let you know the results.

If you are from Cleveland you know that we experienced a heavy snow fall recently. Nothing out of the ordinary, just business as usual. As luck would have it, my snow plow guy failed to accomplish what we pay him to do. Again, nothing out of the ordinary, just business as usual. As the snow was especially heavy that morning, I sustained several calls from tenants, obviously unhappy with the service that I as their landlord was providing them. And understandably so. They were having trouble accessing their dock doors, as well as the door to their office. A little while later the snow plow guy corrected his errors, parking lots were plowed, driveways were cleared, and tenants resumed their day. Normally that would have been it; I would have stayed at the office and continued on with my day, the antics of the early morning all but forgotten. But for some reason, that morning the words of my mom resonated in my head. I got in my car, tracked down some chocolates with snowflakes on them (hoping the recipients had a sense of humor), drove to my formerly upset tenants, and made a personal delivery to them. Needless to say, they were warmed by the small token of my appreciation of them and their patience, and even got a chuckle over the snowflakes. They walked away feeling pretty important, and I drove away feeling good about myself.

The other instance that I had last week was a little different. I was trying to court a prospect. Not in the traditional sense of the word, though, he was a tenant that had expressed an interest in expanding his space, but when I began calling him to get more information about his requirements, my messages were left unreturned. I decided I had to get creative in order to get the call back. After some consideration, I opted to send breakfast for him and his staff, with a little note that stated, “A bagel for your thoughts. Call me after breakfast.” Well, he loved it, as did his entire staff. And he reported back by calling me (mission accomplished) and letting me know that he is interested in some additional space.

So if I learned anything that week, it was that mom is always right. Pay it forward. It works every time. What are some of your experiences with this philosophy?