Mixing Business With Friendship? Not Impossible, But Tread Carefully
For well over a decade I've played a hand in helping friends get closer to their true areas of professional passion, get paid (be they DJs, designers, photographers, writers or accountants), get full-time jobs (too many to name) or get their careers off the ground post-college.
Given how many people have played a hand in helping me get to where I am today, I've done this both as a way to pay it forward to others and to pay it back to those who've helped me. My mentor Heather Brunner says, "Just like money, there is a time value of work. Hard work done early in your career will pay massive dividends over time." I fully agree with that statement and also believe that just like hard work, there is value to building a network in which your friends are invested in your career and ambitions and you too are invested in theirs.
A lot of people think it's not advisable to mix friendships with business, but my career arc is testament to the fact that the opposite can be true if approached and done properly.
When I look at the 49 angel investors in Localeur, what I see is a roster of over three dozen friends whom have gotten to know me since I was in high school. I have high school friends, college friends, people I met when I was running Sneak Attack (a Downtown Austin sneaker boutique), people I met when I was running Style X (the first-ever fashion component of SXSW), people I've served on nonprofit boards (AIDS Services of Austin and KLRU, today) with, people I've worked for in previous jobs, and people I've simply had mutual interests with and have become good friends with.
Pushing to do right by my friends who've believed in me and this entrepreneurial path I've taken is a huge part of the fuel that keeps me energized every morning about Localeur's growth and success. It's why I'm so tireless with this work.
Now don't get me wrong, there are some headaches that come from mixing friendship with business. I've hired and fired friends many times over in the last decade, but more often than not the mutual respect and honesty in a relationship overcomes most of the obstacles that many people may assume would plague such co-mingling.
Mixing of business and personal finances is a quick recipe to bad decisions, but mixing of friendship and business can be a powerful ingredient to taking a small idea, amplifying it with big ambition and mounds of hard work, dedication and shared enthusiasm, and can lead to significant outcomes.
1+1 can equal 3
There are no hard and fast rules for how to effectively mix business and friendship, but here are two specific things I've learned along the way.
1. Don't fire people. Push them toward their passion.
I've fired one person in my life, but I've let many many more go from roles I knew they were either not completely passionate about, not fully effective in or not likely to perform to the best of their abilities in long-term. These conversations go so much more smoothly when you're talking about pushing someone closer to their passion than talking about why someone isn't performing to your expectations.
2. Respect and honesty, then everything else. Simply put, if you mix business with a friend, you can only do this if you respect that the person has integrity and will do right by you, both as a friend and an associate first and foremost. You're going to need to have some frank conversations from time to time in any business or management situation, and without that respect, it's very hard to have the kind of openness and honesty that will make for productive conversations that keep the friendship in tact and strong even if you're no longer associates. More than anything, mixing business with friendship means having a good understanding of what role money plays in the relationship, and hopefully it's role is secondary long-term, even if in the near term your business requires you to place a lot of focus on money's impact.
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7 年I like with support. MOB.08116066626. email no.sonahalder1971@gmail. com
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Owner of Honey Baked Ham (Erie,PA)
7 年It is very possible! I always make sure the employee knows were the "line in the sand is" and not to cross it (Heck I even told my daughter I will fire her as fast as any other employee). It can be a very satisfying experience to watch a friend better themselves and move on to even a more fulfilling career, even though now you will be missing the great asset you helped create. However I am always willing to help further someones career any way I can. So far I have helped 2 employees in 1.5 years further themselves from prep and retail here, to management. They then moved onto management at other types of restaurants with a very sizable pay increase. and more responsibilities which they had told me, I well prepared them for.
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7 年might be possible, but it is very very difficult.
CEO & Owner, NurseWritersGroup, LLC - Stanford Certified Science Writer - Healthcare Content Creator - Clinical Research Document Creation - Curriculum Writer - Making Healthcare Easy to Understand is My SUPER POWER!
7 年Trust in a manager is an antecedent to success; however, the personalization of that trust is a fragile thing. While you can discuss friendly items, getting personal is risky. The reality of today's manager is one must be vested in the lives of their staff without revealing deeply personal things about oneself. Take a look at this article about managerial ethics by Gayle Beebe. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byfd6SfLEPA3a294VExfVGlEWkU/view?usp=sharing