Being kind is kind of a big deal.
I think kindness is always a winning strategy, regardless where in life you apply it. Being kind will benefit you in ways that you probably can’t imagine. I want to tell two stories about this. Neither of them are mine, but very much worth telling.
Gary ran a wine business, a pretty large one. He put in the hours for the business to bloom, and had some luck with the internet boom. The wine business was pretty hectic to say the least closing in on Christmas, and the store was going on overdrive each day as well as they shipped tons of wine every day.
A couple of days before the big evening, a customer calls him with a complaint saying they haven’t received their wines. He looks their order up and sees that there’s been a mistake and that their order hasn’t shipped. He simultaneously realises that the wines won’t be with their customers in time for Christmas if he manages to ship them the same day.
What he does? He get’s in to his car with the box of wine and drive to the customer himself. He took the time he didn’t have from hist store, just because he knew it was the right thing to do. He knew he’d been super pissed if he would’ve been on the other side of things. When he arrived, the customer briskly said thank you, took the wine and shut the door in his face. And he drove back home.
I think that his business gained from the action, as the story got told a couple of times afterwards, which of course made him business. But the point is he couldn’t ever have known about that when he decided to step in to his car.
I have a friend who’s running a social business called “My kind Box”. They sell subscriptions for monthly boxes with sanitary protection. The boxes are all vegan, and for each box sold about 10% is donated to a kind organisation.
Their mission statement is “Being kind is kind of a big deal”, which I agree with to 100%.
The point I want to make is that there are different ways to be kind, and all of them are valuable. Regardless if it’s a random act of kindness or if it’s systematically integrated in to your business, it’s the right thing to do and that needs to be recognised.
Just be kind.
