Conscious businesses come in all shapes and sizes and I found this little business today in the unlikeliest of places – Port Elizabeth, South Africa. I was on the hunt for baking goods for my daughter’s 6th birthday cake and came upon Bakers Bin in a small, off-the-beaten-track shopping centre.

But small did not not mean small-minded. Stefaan, the business owner, and Peter, his trusty sidekick who, he said, had been working with him for many years, made our little shopping experience out of the ordinary. First of all, Stefaan and Peter went out of their way to find us the various cake mixes and icing colours we were looking for. So far, so normal customer service. But then, Stefaan told me I could have the pony-shaped baking tin I was hiring for four days at the cost of one day’s hire “because it was the New Year holiday and that wasn’t my fault.” He was effectively willing for his business to absorb a loss of 75% for that little baking tin in the name of good customer service. My feel-good-factor was now rising and I told him as much. (I remember last year, at another small shop in exactly the same situation, where I was charged the cost of hire for all days over the New Year’s holiday. Not such a feel-good-factor).

Then, a few of the small icing sugar decorations we wanted to use were slightly broken inside of their packaging. Stefaan asked Peter to fetch another packet so that he could swap the broken ones for unbroken ones and give me a full set. But then, while sorting these out, he suddenly stopped and said: “You know what, take them both.” I tried to stop him, saying he shouldn’t be giving all his profits away like that, but Stefan said, “Hey, it’s the holidays,” and promptly put both sets of decorations into my shopping bag. My feel-good-factor went through the roof.

What is that makes a small business owner like Stefan go to these lengths to create a happy customer? He had a sort of free-wheeling, easy-going business approach that should fly in the face of any profit-driven common business sense. I may be wrong, but my assumption was that in a little shop like that he could ill afford to give away his profits.

However, Stefaan benefits from what many businesses are realising or returning to, which is that in a world of hyper-connectivity, happy customers become your greatest marketing tool. They tell their massive networks of friends on all their social media platforms, and happy customers come back to buy more goods, freely and more generously, leading to greater returns for Stefaan and his Bakers Bin. Not that this is why Stefaan was doing it: he simply said “Our approach is to always make the customer happy.”

So now I get to tell you via The Global Centre for Conscious Leadership network, the Conscious Capitalism UK network, Twitter and all our Facebook accounts, with all of those respective networks, about this great little baking shop in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. If you’re ever in the area and find yourself in need of some baking goods, you really should go…