It’s never smart to do business with people you love. It’s different when two of you come together to start up a business. Like when two brothers open up a company, or a husband and wife start a business of their own. It’s different then. However, what is not smart is making business decisions that will benefit them not the business as a whole.
This is something many of us do and it’s the primary reason for the collapse of businesses today. Besides the failing economy, of course. Many of us just don’t know how to say no to family members and friends and most of the time, it’s at the detriment of our business.
Many times, people even do this without knowing it. They would feel a particular entitlement to the business and as such deserve much more than the average customer or client. It’s only loved ones who will pay you chicken change and then want you to do back-breaking work. When you try to refuse, they’ll then try to guilt trip you into doing it. Some won’t even pay you anything, they’ll use their relationship to try and get things for free and when that doesn’t work, they’ll try and get it on credit. If that works, know that they’ll never pay it back.
This is the reason it will always be a bad idea. As sad as it sounds, strangers are always the best customers because with a stranger you have no restraints. You can treat them in kind when they mess up, especially if you’re the kind of person who’s very selective when it comes to things. When it’s with a loved one, you’ll be forced to let a lot of things go even though you clearly don’t want to. This is the reason why friends will patronize strangers even though they have people who are doing that exact same thing, it’s because they don’t want to go through the hassle that comes with dealing with you.
I also have my fair share of mixing business and love. It happened a few years back when I needed to sew a dress. I was in Owerri then but I needed the dress to attend an event in Lagos (I was also going for holidays) so I needed it ready before I traveled. I decided to give it to a family friend who lived in our village with us. He was a good tailor and really knew his chops.
He took my measurements and all and when I asked him for his charge, he brushed me off and told me not to bother, that he couldn’t take anything from me. No matter how hard I tried to get him to take it, he refused. It was as if I could sense that was a trap and I didn’t want it but he kept insisting that there was no way he could take money from his own “brother”. In the end, I left it with him and returned to school. I promised to come back in two weeks to get the dress.
And so began my torture. I gave him this dress in the middle of the semester because I didn’t want anything that would make me stay longer than necessary in Owerri due to the event I wanted to attend. But that didn’t help matters at all. I returned two weeks later as promised and found out he had simply shelved the material and had not even gotten it out of the nylon. He apologized and told me to give him another two weeks. I told him how much this event meant to me and he promised to deliver it.
He didn’t. He had simply cut the dress and dumped it again. Just to sit down and sew the damn thing was taking him so long. The annoying thing was that I couldn’t do anything because he was doing it for free and that singular fact would overshadow any argument I make. It was annoying also because I wanted to take the material back but couldn’t anymore because he had already cut it up and as a result, only he could sew it up into a good dress.
Alas, he never did it! The semester finished and I returned to the village only to find that he was still yet to start, despite the fact that two days previously he promised me that he was almost done with it. There and then I told him to his face how much I regretted working with him and how it was going to be the last time I patronized him. I left his shop angrily that night. The next day, I got on a bus and returned to Lagos for the holidays and the event. I was forced to wear something else for the event and all through I was just fuming with anger.
He eventually finished the dress while I was in Lagos and then he gave it to my Dad to bring with him when coming over. This was two months after the event. I didn’t even bother to tell him thank you or let him know that I got it. I was just too pissed.
And since then, I’ve always been skeptical about letting family members do things for me for free. Unless I want to do it pro bono for you, you’re going to pay for my services just as I would pay for yours as well. That way, there’ll be stakes in the deal and we’ll be willing to defend it. We need to stop believing that our family and friends’ businesses belong to us, it’s bad.
As a child, you can eat at your Mom’s restaurant for free, no one will hold it against you. But you as a brother, bring your entire family to eat for free at your sister’s restaurant all the time is just wickedness. She might not be able to tell you because of “family” but you’re costing her a lot of money. And funny enough, when this brother is ready to spend money, he’d go to a different restaurant and not his sister’s.
It’s a crazy world we live in, and to survive you need a little bit of crazy. If you just mistakenly show that you’re weak and you allow people to walk all over you, they’ll do so mercilessly and won’t stop until you’ve got nothing else to give.
Protect your interests, protect your business. And please, protect your mental health because no one gives a damn.
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