Give first and then you shall receive

I received a nice little surprise this morning when a local business association mentioned (without any solicitation on our part) my wife's new business in their weekly e-zine. I sent the author a quick email to thank her for the support and she responded with a "my pleasure, I really like the concept and appreciate that you didn't ask me to do it." She continued by saying that she usually won't promote member businesses, especially those that "bug her week after week" to do so. Her "bug me" comment reminded me of the large number of letters we've received from a local real estate agent, who is a member of another business association that we recently joined. This "professional" got our name and address from said association's new member mailing list and proceeded to overwhelm us with marketing letter after marketing letter, week after week, for about two straight months. It became a running joke in our house whereby my wife would call me excitedly to share details of the "new" letter we had received that day from Mr. RE. Every letter (each of which said basically the same thing) we received only caused us to be more annoyed and frustrated, which I'm pretty sure was the exact opposite reaction that Mr. RE was trying to generate.

In different ways, these two examples are wonderful reminders of the power of the golden rule - treat others the way you would like to be treated! To me, this includes asking for favors, business referrals and/or gifts. At it's most basic level, the ethic of reciprocity requires an investment of time and energy on your part to first get to know someone, their likes/dislikes, their job/business, their hopes/desires, etc. before asking them for help. By failing to really get to know someone before you ask for a referral, you just come across as desperate and greedy. To reinforce the importance of this rule, just remember that slightly uncomfortable feeling you get the next time someone you barely know asks you to recommend his/her business to your friends and neighbors. Ugh.