Northern Business Associates

Recently Northern Business Associates were pleased to support the Redding Swim Team as a Gold Medal Sponsor.  We received a nice letter from Head Coach Mark Wagner.  Click here to read it.  If you would like to follow our example, just go to: www.reddingswimteam.com and check out their fantastic opportunities to make a difference in our fine community!  Last one into the pool is a rotten egg!

This story was told to me by my (now deceased) friend Elmer Davis:

A man was deer hunting in the Manton area in the  ‘40s when Elmer was the Sheriff’s deputy there.  He brought his car, a Rolls-Royce touring model.  This guy got the front of the car in some kind of a rut, and broke the front axle – snapped it in two.  The closest Rolls-Royce shop was in San Francisco, so the car was trailered & driven to the dealership to be repaired.  They knew it was coming, and were ready with parts.  The car was checked in, the gentleman was told to go and tour around the city for the day – come back at closing time to pick up his car.  He did just that, and the car was ready, with new axle installed. He asked for the bill, so he could settle up. They said “No Charge!”, he asked why – explaining that the axle was broken and that they had repaired it.  He was told that Rolls-Royce axles do not break, he must be mistaken.  They apologized for him having to bring his car in for service, and was told to go back and finish his hunting trip, and Thank You for coming by.

As far as I know, this is a true story, told to me by our long-time family friend back in 1973, during an interview I did for a history class when I was a senior in High School in Red Bluff.   I wish service was still that way.  But, the margins are so slim these days, considering the nature of commodity buying that nobody can afford to do that.

We all get up in the morning (or whenever during the day) to go to work for one reason – to earn money to support our households, and to provide for our retirement or for our kid’s education, or to pay our tithing, and of course to pay the IRS to waste our money.  There are many reasons to go to work, and most of us are driven to do so.  The point is that we go to work to earn.

We all expect to be paid fairly for our time.  The mechanics in the story were paid by the dealership, who was paid by Rolls-Royce to do the repair, and to keep the client happy. You can bet that this person spent a lot of money on that touring car when he purchased it, and his loyalty took a HUGE jump up when they fixed his car for free.   To him, I bet that car was suddenly worth multiple times what he paid for it.

We all try to do the best we can for our clients, although we cannot always rise to the standard of the shop in the story.  All we can do is try to “Choose The Right” at every turn, and I encourage all to CTR at every opportunity.