What kind of chapter was this? My goodness. It’s definitely not any kind of advice I have ever heard of before. The chapter title is “You are not in the business to pay your vendors.†It revolved around trying to keep your cash as long as you can and in this case that means paying your bills and vendors late whenever possible using stall tactics.
Basically, Cloutier is saying that you should forget about things like your credit rating and whether or not your vendor likes you. Paying your bills late is like an interest free financing with way he puts it. Of course, there are various examples he uses of applying this business tactic that has worked wonders for him and many others.
As well, he clarifies too that this doesn’t mean you should be intentionally trying to avoid vendors and your landlord, but what you are doing are giving excuses like how you need a few more days to get the money in order to pay the bills. You should also make a list of vendors based on rankings such as ones that really wouldn’t want to get rid of you and therefore you can stall longer.
As much as I hate this advice, I have no doubt it probably works a lot of times too. Now you know why as a provider you should have a clause where if people don’t pay up they will be subject to an interest fee penalty. I don’t see why you would want to wreck your reputation though and depending on which industry you work in it is just so much easier nowadays to cut something off that a business desperately needs if they don’t pay the bill. Example, if it’s an online business I doubt the web host will let you run for long without paying. What a crazy chapter.