My Golden Rule for Relationships

Consulting
Written By Rick Watson

Relationships are so important to every aspect of your business. I was thinking about one cardinal rule of relationship building that I truly believe in.

BUILD THEM BEFORE YOU NEED THEM.

I used to not think why I did that but spent some time this morning thinking about why I believe this.

What I came up with is if you don’t build in advance, the relationship will be a lot more transactional and much less like a real relationship.

Probably that’s OK for some areas for life. But for me, that’s unacceptable in so many ways.

It doesn’t describe how I want to work with people.

I find this is true on all walks of life including bigger companies where people are supposed to be incentivized to “work together”. If you’ve been in any company with politics longer than 5 minutes you realize that often people aren’t naturally incentivized to work together.

And this is why I like following this advice.

Rick Watson

Rick Watson founded RMW Commerce Consulting after spending 20+ years as a technology entrepreneur and operator exclusively in the eCommerce industry with companies like ChannelAdvisor, BarnesandNoble.com, Merchantry, and Pitney Bowes.

Watson’s work today is centered on supporting investors and management teams incubating and growing direct-to-consumer businesses. Most recently, in partnership with WHP Global, Rick was a critical resource in architecting the WHP+ platform, a new turnkey direct to consumer digital e-commerce platform that powers AnneKlein.com and JosephAbboud.com.

Watson also hosts a weekly podcast, Watson Weekly, where he shares an unbiased, unfiltered expert take on the retail sector’s biggest players.

In the past year alone, Rick has spoken at many in-person and virtual events as well as podcasts on topics ranging from retail/ecom to supply chain/logistics and even digital grocery including CommerceNext IRL, ASCM Connect, and Retail Innovation Conference.

https://www.rmwcommerce.com/
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