I got a bill from my lawyer the other day, for a meeting we had a couple weeks back. When I looked at the final amount, it seemed like too much – like the value of what I got out of the time didn’t match the charge. I was prepared to pay the full amount, and really I would have, but I just didn’t feel that good about it. So, I sent him an email, explaining why I felt the way I did. He responded with a few explanations of why the charge was what it was, and after a little more discussion, he offered to decrease the payment. Great! I sent the check off to him within hours.
The cool thing is that (presumably), both sides walked away thinking they got a good deal. It’s business, built on mutual respect and common sense – two people, agreeing on what seems fair. And while I’m sure it can happen anywhere you get two willing people together, it seems to have a distinct Vermont feel to it. Here, where the small, rural farming communities still reign, we have plenty of shops still run out of people’s homes (just knock sometime after chores are done), and plenty of help-out-a-neighbor type hospitality. It just seems natural, between reasonable people, that you’d find the right price for things. No one wants a bargain at the expense of a hard-working friend, after all.
As I’ve written before, I grew up here, and in many ways, the Multisport Maps culture is grounded here. It only seems to follow then, that the payment system – how I make money off the site - would reflect these same principles…. that they’d be an extension of my own personality, and really, that of the state. So, at this point, I’m developing such a system and of course, I’ll write (much) more on that sometime soon. But for now at least, it’s mostly just a story about my lawyer and more than anything, about Vermont.
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