Have you ever talked to a service provider and thought they were wrong for you? Then you talked to your colleague and they raved about them. So you went down the path of hiring them and found them to be the “service provider from hell”. This is not an unfamiliar scenario.

Business styles vary from company to company and within the company, from person to person. We tend to check out our friends before we let them into our circle. However, we rarely spend time on checking out our service providers to that degree. This is especially true of entrepreneurs. They rely heavily on referrals. In fact, referrals from trusted colleagues are often taken as gospel truth. Most entrepreneurs learn their lessons the hard way.

So how do we check out our service providers so there are no problems down the road? Let’s analyse this with a case study. Recently, Vintage Company (not its real name) was considered to do a website for an entrepreneur. Initial calls to the company were met with no calls back. Therefore, the company was eliminated as a possibility for business. This was a great move. However, as time passed, a respected source referred the company in glowing terms. Considering the opinion of the source to be highly reliable, the company was hired to design the website

Initial discussions went well and the company was hired with a deposit. From then on the attitude of the designer went sour and there were second thoughts with firing the designer in mind. However, this must have been sensed because the designer changed her tone in phone conversations to be more amiable and eager to work to satisfy. As time passed, however, the designer was unfortunately consistently argumentative and defensive. How does a customer communicate difficulties if all they are met with are “I know more than you on this and that’s the way it goes”? The job was finished up and account settled if only to get rid of this hellish nightmare from the world of the entrepreneur struggling with other issues at the time. The website was completed in Flash so no search engine could find it. When queried about this, the designer did not respond.

How do we not repeat such an episode? Intuition must be listened to at all times. It supersedes referrals. Don’t allow the cerebral part of you to get in the way. It is true that business decisions have to be based on data. If your intuition tells you something, then feel it out and go with it. It is making you aware of data that you are forgetting.

Get to know your service provider at different times of the day and be relentless. Talk to at least 5 people they have recently served. Do not stop at one customer. Make time to contact many more.

Don’t try to get even with unfortunate circumstances. This is bad for you. The yoga of business dictates detachment and takes the event as a learning experience. We are here to learn, even through our business decisions. We must take the lessons learnt and move on to spending our energy on more positive activities. If your personality is different from your service provider and you need to work closely with them, you are in for a bad surprise. Try to talk about business philosophies when you are interviewing them. Different business styles are what usually ruin the experience. Perhaps this is true for both parties, however, it is the one that is paying that hurts more because of the monetary loss.

Yoga is not just for the body. It is a body-mind-spirit experience. Learn to make decisions with your whole being. Try to understand that, even in a business world, it is ultimately the personalities that get together. For more information on yoga and its relevance to everyday life, look at: www.getshanti.com

Listed in Who’s Who in the World, a yoga instructor and expert in East Indian Philosophy, Siva has spent the past 20 years evolving as a yoga instructor and personal trainer with a keen interest in training the complete being, rather than just the physical body. She is a Can-Fit-Pro certified personal trainer and holds advanced degrees in engineering. Siva is an accomplished athlete who has run the Toronto Marathon as she balanced a busy life in the corporate engineering world.

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