By David Chew, SBA Credit Analyst, Core Bank.
For those of you that don’t know me, my last two months have been a little hectic with major life events:
- I got married June 1
- A week before the wedding, my future wife started to have major car issues.
- Two weeks after the wedding, our condo sold, and we bought a new house.
I’m still in recovery mode from all of that!
Through all this craziness, we were fortunate to have a huge amount of support. This got me thinking about how we were able to handle these major life events with no hiccups, and it was all about building relationships.
The Car
While we were in panic mode of finalizing the plans for the wedding, my wife’s car started having issues. What does this mean? Time to trade it in! We must have driven a dozen different cars and went to six different dealerships.
We ended up purchasing a new vehicle from a small family owned dealership. Why? First of all, we loved the car. The individual who sold the car to us was the owner, and he took the time to walk us through everything about the car. He explained the warranties and maintenance, and never pushed us to make the purchase. I’ve never had a car buying experience like this.
The Wedding
During the planning of our wedding we had one goal… to make the day as easy as possible for everyone. How were we able to accomplish this? We took time to get to know every vendor we met with, and understand the way they operate during a wedding.
It turned out that every vendor we used was a small business, where we met with the owner. Every person we spoke with took the time to sit down with us and understand how we wanted our day to unfold… and the level of care and service we wanted. Needless to say, our wedding day was perfect. Every single vendor and company went above and beyond for us.
Now that we made it through the wedding, it was time for the honeymoon. Time to relax and enjoy married life… WRONG.
The Condo
My wife and I listed our condo for sale back in January, and we were lucky that it sold two weeks after getting back from our honeymoon. We had just finished unpacking all the gifts and had a 25-day close. We were able to react quickly as our Realtor® (also my mother) took the time to show us close to 50 homes across Kansas and Missouri. We were typical Millennials who wanted something that doesn’t exist… but too stubborn to believe it. Until we finally found “the one”.
People want to work with people they trust
Reflecting back on my last two months, I’m realizing we would not have made it if the people we worked with weren’t so capable and great to do business with. It doesn’t matter what major life event is happening, people want to work with people they trust. I’m thankful for the honor to work with small business owners every day and witness the amount of labor and passion they put into their business. That’s why my advice to anyone that wants to go BIG, should go SMALL.