You need both ethics and profit to stay in business.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learner's featured post. The major reason we go into business is to make profits, but the truth is that what keeps that business running and the profits coming is the ethics you uphold and abide by as you run your business. Starting a business is one thing, and staying in the business is another thing entirely. To a point, I can even say that starting a business is way easier than actually keeping the business running after you have started it.

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So many people rushed into business for profits, and when the profits started coming in, they gave greed a room in their hearts, and that jeopardized everything that took them years to build. We all must know our reason for starting a business (to make profits), but while pursuing that, we must have ethics, which includes not cheating customers or exploiting those who come to patronize us. You can get different people to come to patronize you, but what brings them back to patronize you again is the ethics you abide by and how you treated them after their first patronage.

I am a shy person in a way, so I prefer buying things online and having them delivered to me. It saves me the stress of going about to look for what I need, as well as the stress of having to bargain or discuss price while looking at the seller's face. But all along, I never knew the prices of things online were outrageous and the prices of things offline were cheaper until a few months ago. My vendor posted sneakers on her WhatsApp status, and I rushed to ask her for the price, and trust me, the price she told me left me in awe: 42,000 naira ($27.43).

Since I liked the sneakers, the high price did not cause me to back down. I asked her if she could give it to me for 35,000 naira ($22.27), but she stood her ground and said because it is me and I have been patronizing her for a long time, she will give it to me for 40,000 naira ($26.26). I agreed and paid for it, but a friend of mine saw the sneakers and said he had seen something like that in a shop not too far from our house, and the price was way cheaper, and I argued with him because I trusted my vendor, and he said to follow him. We got there, and the sneakers were there on the counter just like he said, but the price difference shocked me; my vendor is making over 12,000-15,000 naira gain from one pair of sneakers.

The shop owner said the shoe is 30,000 ($19.56) naira, but as first-timers, and he would like to make us his customers, we can pay 28,000 ($18.22) naira, and it was at that point I realized the financial mistake I had made all in the name of not wanting to go out to shops and get what I needed. I kept pointing hands at the stuff I had gotten from her, and the price he told me for all of it differed. She was really using us to make extra profits. I did not go back to confront her or start a quarrel with her; I just told myself the sneakers were the last thing I would ever buy from her.

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While we pursue profit, we should uphold ethics, like in this case. If all her customers online get to see an eye-opening boutique shop offline where they can get exactly the same thing for a cheaper price, they are all definitely going to leave, just like I have left, which will kick her out of business, and in no time she will have to start struggling to rebuild from scratch again. The need for making profits is why you start a business, but a combination of both ethics and pursuit of profit is what will keep you in business.