One of our copmany's core values was respect, which I defined as: We will not tolerate the disrespect of people or property. It was clear this mistreatment of Claire violated one of our core values even though it was coming from one of our customers.

Any company that has core values will be faced with the dilemma of what to do when those values are attacked.

I was faced with a choice: Should I let the situation continue to keep the business? Or should I stick to the company's core values—my core values—and risk losing one of our biggest customers?

Put your money where your mouth is

Actions speak louder than words. I knew immediately what my decision would be. Reassuring Claire that she wouldn't have to deal with Henry's mistreatment anymore, I told her to have his call sent straight to my phone the next time he called. 

When the call came in, it went something like this: 

"This is Piyush."

"Oh, um, Mr. Patel?" Henry stammered.

"Yes?"

"Yeah, is Claire available?"

"No, Claire is not available, sir."

"Oh, okay then, I'll just try back."

"No, you won't," I said.

Silence.

"What?"

"Yeah, here's how it works," I said. "We don't really need your business."

More silence, then Henry came back in full force. "Excuse me? Do you realize who I am? I'm with—"

I cut him off. "Sir, we are Digital-Tutors. And guess what? There's a lot of you guys needing my training, and there's only one DT. I'm not going to let you abuse my people. As of today, we're going to refund your money and cutting all of your people off from our training."

Click.

That was a first for me. At the time, I didn't have any sort of plan in place to recoup the costs of losing one of our largest customers. Even though Henry didn't work for me didn't mean I couldn't fire him for breaking one of our core values.

It's about more than money

In 2015, IBM published a report that found the top goal for millennials in the workplace is to make a positive impact on their company. While free food and foosball tables might be enough to get millennials interested in working for your company, that's not enough to keep them around for long.

It's easy to focus on the perks. You get to use it as a recruitment tool and show off how cool your company is for tours of the office. The moment you sell out your values for the bottom line, all that gets thrown out the window. 

When I told Claire I'd done, she teared up—overwhelmed to feel that she was more important to our company than money. The next day, Henry's boss called asking why they didn't have access to our training anymore. I explained the situation, what Henry had done and why I'd fired his company as our customer. He wanted to know what he could do to make it right, and I told him the only way I'd let his company be our customer again was to ensure Henry was never to interact with our company again. He happily agreed and we never had an issue with them again.

Once I learned to identify my company's core values and made the commitment to my people that we'd stick to the core values no matter what, that's when we found real cultural success. Sure, we were extremely profitable, but it was about more than money. Creating a culture that motivates your employees to stick around for the long-term means you need to show them you'll always stick to your values and put them ahead of monetary gains.