Is Business Personal Or Is It Just Business?

Posted by Jeremy Bise on Friday, June 11 2010

Sometimes stuff happens—that applies both in life and in business.  But let’s talk about when stuff happens in business for a moment.  Maybe your work or your service didn’t live up to customer expectations.  Maybe something you said or did offended the other party.  It could be that a strategic change didn’t please someone. Hell, sometimes you don’t even know what went wrong.  The moral is:  sometimes you lose.

The question is—do you take it personally?  They say not to.  As small business owners, we often can’t help but to take some things personally and I’m not so sure that we should.  If something goes wrong with a client and we don’t take it to heart, what are we in business for?  The truth is—the best small business owners out there care.  A lot.  Our business is what we do every day.  We’re passionate about it.  We do whatever it takes to make customers happy. We depend on it to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads.  We put our heart and soul into what we’re doing, and it hurts when we lose.  And it should—because we care. It’s when we stop caring that we lose what makes us great to do business with in the first place.

That said, there’s no room to let it consume us.  We can care, look at what went wrong (if it’s possible to tell) and learn how to make things go better next time. Dwelling on it and letting it get you down won’t improve a thing for anybody.

What do you think?  Is your business personal or is it just business to you?  How do you handle the situations where things go south? 

Share your thoughts in the comments below.