Do do you trust your network?

Trust is always a big issue for everybody, not only in business but in general. Let me tell you a story.

Two years ago a client called me from a conference in Washington D.C. and he told me that he had met a CEO from a web development company. They asked him who is responsible for your website and all your IT work. He mentioned my name and my business and they told him they were looking form partners to outsource some work.

Couple of days later I got in contact with them and we talked about how can we help each other. We share some information and I showed some of my past projects. We agree in work together in couple of projects in the near future.

Two weeks later my client called me and asked me how things were going with that company, I explained everything and he ended up laughing about it. He told me  that the CEO of the company called him to make him an offer to switch all the services to their company.

I admit I was really upset, I knew that my client would not leave my services, but  I lose couple of hours in presentations and phones calls with them. It makes me think, How this kind of people sleep at night? I don’t even know if there’s one word to describe that kind of behavior.

Here’s couple of questions. Do you trust your network? is there any way to only have good people on your network and eliminate the wrong connections, before sometime like this happens? I believe there’s always  people with bad intentions and we cannot do anything about it. What do you think?

By the way, that CEO sent me some photos of her family couple weeks later.