I recently had a contractor renovate a part of my house.

At first, everything was great. He was personable, friendly, helpful and paid a lot of attention to what me and my wife wanted.

After he secured the job – he came to the house and I greeted him at the door. Rather than acknowledging my presence, he immediately started chatting with one of his apprentices. It was as though I was not even there.

I was ignored for a good 10 minutes. A small thing? Not really, because I decided to never hire this contractor again. Prior to the incident, we we’re thinking of giving him a lot more work. His decision to ignore me cost him a lot of money, and he doesn’t even know it.

Little things matter.

Like you, I receive many bills in the mail. Increasingly, companies are not providing a return envelope with their invoice, in order to save money. But, there is one company that always sends me a return envelope and also sends a thank you email when they get my check. This has played on my subconscious to the point where I keep giving them business. I like these guys.

Yes, little things matter.

When an old friend of mine who owned a moving company decided to leave behind a bouquet of flowers after every job – customers would rave about it. In fact, they were more appreciative of the flowers than they were of the good job he did moving their furniture.

He got the idea from his mechanic who always washed his car before returning it to him.

Little surprises produce big profits.

Little, tiny, itty bitty things.

The big things in life matter of course – but the truth is, many of those big things are built on a foundation of many small things.

A certain look in a person’s eye, leading to love; a small gesture that leads to a long business relationship; or a word of encouragement that turns a person with low self-esteem into a CEO.

Similarly – failure to say “thank you”, return an email, or do as we’ve promised, can have disastrous consequences.

Small equals big in this world of ours.

Something to keep in mind as we arm ourselves to do battle in the week ahead.