Fares to Friends (PDF)

This book offers a wealth of good, solid business advice. “Fares to Friends” is the business professional's equivalent to best-seller “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. Like Albom, Ed Wallace invites the reader to share in a series of literally and figuratively transporting conversations with his mentor, a cab driver named Max. Over the course of many trips to the airport, Max, a former business executive who gave up high-level commerce to become a service entrepreneur, points out what the author considers to be crucial guideposts on the road to business success: how to build relational capital. "Relational capital" is "the value created by people in a business relationship." "How people know and regard you is the most important element in any business relationship's path to success and to your own personal success," stresses Wallace. Credibility, integrity and authenticity, the three essential qualities of outstanding business relationships, converge to form relational capital. These qualities are expressed through sensitivity and attention to detail. Those who neglect the care-and-feeding of the human element in business do so at their peril. Building relational capital pays off in relational capital gains such as a dynamic increase in reserves of trust and good will, as well as long-term sustainable business relationships and friendships, Wallace says. In this book you’ll learn how quality relationships are satisfying, enriching and how and why they allow you to sleep at night. It's undeniable that such relationships — such friendships — inevitably lead to rewards of the more ordinary sort — the kind that help to pay the mortgage and send the kids to college.