Do you have a favorite parable that guides your professional decision-making?
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a parable is a brief story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson. My favorite is The Go-Giver. I’ve read it three times in the past 24 months. Every time I open this book I stumble upon a new nugget of useful perspective that I can apply immediately in the way I operate Cressey Sports Performance.
This weekend I took it for another spin, and found myself sliding a highlighter across the following suggestion:
“Make your win about the other person. Go after what he wants. Forget win-win.”
Our landlord at CSP understands how and when to apply this mentality in order to win. Back in the summer of 2010 we approached him about the idea of taking over about 1,000 square feet of vacant office space just next door to our unit. Creating a doorway that would allow access to both spaces was quick and painless. The problem, however, was twofold.
First, we were only about half way through an existing lease, and would need to tear up our existing agreement and renegotiate the terms moving forward. No problem, he said.
The second issue was more of a potential sticking point. Our old office space would need to be demolished, and we weren’t excited about the prospect of paying for all of the demo and cleanup since we felt that we would eventually vacate a space that was improved by our suggested modifications.
We cautiously approached the negotiation table, not looking forward to battling over who owes what.
I’ll take care of it, he said. My treat. How quickly do you want it done?
We hadn’t even had the opportunity to haggle, and he had already relented. You’d think that he just buried the cost in the terms of our renegotiated deal, but we actually ended up paying the exact same monthly figure moving forward under the terms of our renegotiated agreement. We’d added square footage, had some structural modifications made free of charge, and simply extended our existing agreement by an additional two years.
Why did we get so lucky?
A few years later, over a cup of coffee, he mentioned why he was so flexible at that moment in time. He explained that when he finds a tenant who pays rent on time and creates minimal headaches, he always applies a long-term vision to the relationship. He knew that he was going to attempt to slide us into the 15,000+ square foot space down the hall long before we hit the end of our recently renegotiated deal. Winning an argument over a project that would cost him a couple thousand dollars at that moment in 2010 wasn’t going to help him in any way when it came time to propose that we take the risk of expanding.
Our landlord made the strategic decision to put our needs ahead of his own on that day. Our business was allowed to grow thanks to manageable overhead figures because he chose to forget about the win-win. He’s since collected well over a half-million dollars worth of rent from us, and we’re still around to talk about it.
I wonder if he ever read The Go-Giver?