{"id":292790,"date":"2011-10-06T14:37:10","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/youll-have-the-cement-on-monday-stories-of-entrepreneurs\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:44:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:44:09","slug":"youll-have-the-cement-on-monday-stories-of-entrepreneurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/youll-have-the-cement-on-monday-stories-of-entrepreneurs\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;You\u2019ll have the cement on Monday.&#8221; Stories of entrepreneurs."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div id=\"attachment_46834\" style=\"width: 174px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-46834\" class=\"size-full wp-image-46834\" style=\"margin-left: 10px;border: 0pt none\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/20111006-03.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"164\" height=\"160\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-46834\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Germ\u00e1n M. Jorge<\/p><\/div>  <strong>&#8216;The phone rang. It was our main competitor in the area, in charge of a cement factory.<\/strong> He asked if we could sell them a certain amount of cement because the other vendors would no longer allow him to purchase on credit.  They were going through a very difficult moment from a financial standpoint because of the dissolution of the family business, and all that this entails.  I knew that the situation was serious and I felt inside that the moment I had always been waiting for had arrived: <strong>I had<\/strong><strong> been handed the opportunity to change history.<\/strong> This competitor was really playing against me in the market and had told colleagues that his only mistake had been to allow me to raise my head a bit.  Following his request, the conversation went something like this:  &#8220;Don\u2019t you worry, you\u2019ll have the cement on Monday.&#8221;  &#8220;But I don\u2019t know if the check will be ready on Monday. I haven\u2019t been paid in two months now.&#8221;  &#8220;No problem, call me when they\u2019re ready.&#8221;  &#8220;How much money will I have to pay you?&#8221;  &#8220;You\u2019ll pay what I pay. You\u2019ll pay me that.&#8221;  &#8220;But you won\u2019t make a profit like that.&#8221;  &#8220;But it doesn\u2019t make sense that I make any money on this deal. You\u2019ll never be my clients and now you need a hand.&#8221;  <img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-46701\" style=\"margin-right: 10px;border: 0pt\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/20111006-01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"222\" height=\"228\" \/><strong>He thanked me and the conversation ended there. <\/strong>But I can assure you: The satisfaction and happiness that I experienced in that moment were worth far more than the cement.  This little incident caused <strong>surprise among my employees<\/strong> who at first didn\u2019t understand, and I had to explain to them that the most important thing wasn\u2019t the incident in itself, but what can come from it, both for inside and outside our business.  <strong>That month we had record sales<\/strong>, and right in the middle of the economic crisis we are managing to sell around 30% more compared to the same period last year.  This way of dealing with people, placing ourselves at the service of others has strengthened our reputation and brought <strong>new business opportunities every day<\/strong> almost without having to go out in search of them anymore. I believe that if businesses were to discover the value, also the economic value that is generated by the principles of the Economy of Communion when they are applied in a radical way, they would not hesitate to put them into practice.&#8217;  By Germ\u00e1n M. Jorge Source: &#8220;<em>Economy of Communion &#8211; A New Culture<\/em>&#8221; n.30<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the following story &#8220;focolare.org&#8221; begins a new section dedicated to Economy of Communion businesses, where even the owner practices poverty. So says the Argentinean Germ\u00e1n M. Jorge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}