Balancing Business and Relationships

A little over a month ago my Grandpa was honored with a lifetime achievement award at a local businessperson of the year banquet. In his acceptance speech he brought my grandma on stage with him, his wife of 60 years. Then he told of how all the achievements in his life were nothing compared to the relationships he has built – the chief among those being his relationship with his wife.

At the same banquet a new company named Tatango won the “Start-up Business of the Year” award. Since that night I’ve been following these guys, particularly the CEO of the company, Derek Johnson. A couple days ago Derek had a guest blogger write an article on his blog. This is the author’s signature line from the article, “Gabe Hoggarth is co-founder of Attractology, a self-improvement website that offers dating advice and private dating coaching for men.” I stole the title of his article for this post, “Balancing Business and Relationships.” If you would like to read his article you can do it here.

When I read the article I found myself really disturbed. I believe the ideas set forth in the post are common but I also believe they are dangerous. They’re dangerous because there is some truth in what he says. And dangerous because if we accept what he says then we will be a society of lonely people. This is a summary of Gabe Hoggarth’s article:

1. You can have a relationship or a career but to be successful at either you can’t have both.
2. You have to decide what is important to you, a relationship or money, and set your goals accordingly.
3. If you do enter a relationship both parties should set the expectations of what they should receive out of the relationship (and it is best to set the expectations low).

That doesn’t sound so dangerous and wrong does it?

My grandpa came to this country when he was 18 with less than $20 dollars in his pocket and barely spoke a word of English. He doesn’t have a college degree and was married at age 19. Nine months later my father was born. He raised 6 kids and numerous businesses. Was it easy? No. Were there sacrifices? Yes. So how did he do it? What is the secret to balancing business and relationships?

1. Begin with the end in mind. Think about your funeral and what you would like your eulogy to say. Do you want people to say, “He worked really hard, 17 hours a day, and had no time for a wife or family” or “He was the best husband and dad a man could be”? Remember, there are no guarantees in life and the end could be tomorrow.
2. Balance – If you don’t make time there won’t be time. For some reason we give permission to young people to live a life out of balance. Living a balanced life is a lifelong struggle. There should never be a time we aren’t consciously trying to keep our lives in balance. Otherwise, what happens is that young person, who thought it was fine to be unbalanced in their 20’s, gets to their 40th birthday without ever finding a balance. And in their wake they’ve left a trail of destruction in the form of broken relationships and broken children.
3. Realize it isn’t all about you. The most hideous part of the Attractology blog post is the setting of expectations. This is selfishness at its core. You want a sure fire way to fail in any relationship? It doesn’t matter if it is a business relationship, friendship, or romantic relationship, if you let selfishness have a foothold it will fail. A friend of mine and mentor is a man who owns a large business in Bellingham, WA that employs over 300 people. They are the major supplier of plants and flowers to all of the Walmart, Lowes, and Home Depots on the the west coast. When I visited his office recently he showed me around and introduced me to all of his “partners”. He refuses to call someone who works for him an employee. He looked me in the eye and said, “These people are my partners. Without them I would not be where I am today. I am always asking myself what I can do for them and because of that they are loyal.”

Every businessman or entrepreneur faces disaster at some point in their career. I don’t mean to be pessimistic but one of the realities of life is that things sometimes go wrong. Things happen that are out of your control – like a down turn in the economy. Or a pipe breaks flooding your office, destroying your computers and for some reason that isn’t covered by your insurance. Or the next round of funding you were counting on doesn’t come in and somewhere you have to reduce expenses to stay in business. When you have to face the hard decision of laying off some of your staff, all of the sudden you are the enemy. Your buddies in the office aren’t so much your buddies anymore. You walk around the corner and everyone shuts up and heads back to their cubicle. If you think it won’t happen to you then you haven’t talked to very many seasoned entrepreneurs. It isn’t a matter of if things will go wrong, it is a matter of when. It is then you find out how lonely it really is at the top. If you have only invested in your business and business relationships, what are you going to do during these times? If your self worth is tied up in a business that faces failure, what happens to your self worth? If you haven’t invested in other relationships and found a balance between business and those relationships, your tough times are going to be even tougher.

Things can go wrong. Things will go wrong. When they do will you have the foundation to weather the storm?