F*ck Me Running (a Business)!: the Lessons I've Learned from Turning My Mistakes into Successes by Nolan Garrett

Author:Nolan Garrett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2021-05-03T15:00:18+00:00

The Insidious Nature of Mixing Friendships and Business

Starting a business is scary. You take a leap of faith with your money and sometimes the money you can’t afford to spend. I bootstrapped my business with 1,500 bucks on a wing and a prayer. And a lot of stress. Knowing how hard it would be to go it alone, I reached out for help. My first instinct was to engage people who I believed were already aligned with me and what I wanted in life: my friends. I figured they would be the perfect employees—that we’d work side by side, make a lot of money together, and celebrate the business’s success over beers.

In the back of my mind, I was also thinking that if I failed, my friends would stick by me and share the emotional burden. After all, they liked me. They cared about me. In tough times, my friends wouldn’t abandon me. Regular employees might. I’ve known countless entrepreneurs who harbored these same thoughts. It’s only when you reflect on those hiring decisions that you realize how misdirected they are. By misdirected, I mean stupid.

In the first place, you can have a close relationship with only so many real friends. When your business is small, sure, you can take everyone out for beers to celebrate. Or commiserate. But once you get to a dozen or so employees, you don’t have the bandwidth to engage in a meaningful way on a day-to-day basis with each and every one of them. When you get up to about fifty people, you will be lucky to have time to say “hello” to everybody. Logistically, it’s not possible. So which employees get to be your friends, and which ones have to settle for a smile and a wave as you breeze past their cubicle?

This is a minor issue, though, because the real problem with hiring friends is more insidious, and potentially damaging to your friendships and the company. A successful business relies on the Accountability of its people, from the CEO to the executive team, management, individual contributors, and even the part-time receptionist. You cannot afford weak links in the chain of command. Holding an employee accountable to meet a project deadline that could win or lose a client is a whole different deal than meeting them for lunch. As long as a person sees you as their friend, they will not feel accountable to you to the degree required at work. If you try to enforce it, you won’t be able to maintain the friendship.

You know your friends on a personal level. You know what they’re doing outside of work. You probably know their families. So one Saturday afternoon you’re in your marketing manager’s backyard with both your families enjoying a barbecue. Your spouses get along great and they’re planning play dates for the kids. Everything’s peachy. The next night, you and your IT manager and spouses go on a double date. You all hit it off so well, you might even take a vacation together.

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