CHARACTER MATTERS - ALL MONEY AIN'T GOOD MONEY!

At the end of the day, I knew I had to make a choice.

Essentially, the choice boiled down to this: more money with less integrity or more integrity with less money.

Several years ago, someone approached with a business proposition. The person came with glowing recommendations, and the money made sense. We started doing some business together, and predictably money started flowing into the joint venture.

Then red flags started showing up.

The first is when an employee said he didn’t get paid.

“Excuse me, what!?!”

Look, I have five core values to my business. They are customer engagement, client care, personal touch, being purpose driven and character and integrity.

How can my brand be synonymous with integrity if employees weren’t getting paid?

I took over the bank account made sure employees got their checks.

In retrospect, I should have shut the whole business down right then and there.

But I didn’t.

And the situation only grew worse.

I also learned that the employees were being overworked in some unethical conditions.

This time, I knew I had to sever ties.

I can almost guarantee you’ll find yourself in this position one day, and here’s where you can learn from my mistake. I did my research to make sure this individual and I could run a profitable business venture together. What I didn’t do is to make sure that we aligned when it came to issue of character and integrity.

We were making good money together.

But if the price of business is integrity, the cost is too high.

Way too high.

Here’s something else you take away from my experience.

When I finally realized we needed to sever ties, I moved quickly.

It turns out that taking swift action probably saved me a lot of money and personal heartache.

It turns out my associate had done something else in the name of the business that could have been a major disaster down the road.

Integrity has to be more than a brand.

Don’t do it just for the business benefits.

Do the right thing, so you can like who you see when you look in the mirror each morning.

You’ll never go wrong choosing personal integrity every time.

Kendall (Coach K)

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