Too emotionally attached?

[Dave A]

One thought that keeps coming up over recent years is that "businesses are owned by real people - business owners are people too."

The thought is normally triggered when there's a dispute between a consumer or employee(s) and a business, and reports invariably portray the consumer or employee as "real people" suffering consequences, whereas I'm yet to see the same human interest value attributed to the business side of the equation.

And yet behind every SMME are real people, quite often suffering just as much anguish - perhaps even more.

This one's a little different though.

Wendy Machinik has spoken up about the events that lead to her fall. The story is fairly neutral, I guess - but I suspect many a business owner will recognise an all too human trait on display; many business owners really are emotionally attached to their businesses.

Quite often too emotionally attached.

And it does affect our judgement.

[tec0]

Judgement?

No... Ego effects judgment. I have seen enough businesses grow and enough businesses fall to know that this is the only truth of business.

[Darkangelyaya]

A friend, someone who used to be one of the richest men in SA said: 'I gave birth to my company, nurtured it, grew it, and killed it'.
Ego is what made me go into a males only industry, and prove my ex-husband wrong when he said I would never survive on my own. In direct competition with him, I kicked his alcohol preserved ass to the curb.
Emotional attachment is often the motivation required to get your backside out of bed. So hell-yes to that!

[adrianh]

A business should be treated the same way you treat your own child. You love it, nurture it but at the end of the day your purpose is to prepare it to stand on its own. As a parent / entreprenuer you should one day come to a point where you can say, I did my vey best and now the time has come to let it lead its own life. Your purpose is not to lead its life or interchange each other's lives, it is to enable the individual life of the child / business. If you were a good parent / entreprenuer, your business / child should be able to stand on its own and you should be able to set it free to do so. You are not your child nor your business, you are not the creator of the being, you are the director until you hand over the reigns.

[flaker]

I read the article. the only thing this lady regrets is being caught. If she is penniless as she claims to be, then how is she going to pay the R25,000 per month as reported. She has not come clean.

[tec0]

Reading it again I still don't get it...? See she wanted to keep the business going because of the employees? Then she was blackmailed?

I remember not too long ago I posted something about planning for when your business fail. Because it will eventually fail. She didn’t plan for it thus no recourse…

Ego gets in the way of good judgement and sound planning. It is almost always the case.

In my opinion always plan for the worst especially when your business is at its strongest.

[adrianh]

Remember John DeLorean. He tried everything to keep his business going. He got caught in a FBI drug sting when he tried to make a deal to get some money to keep the business going.

Many of his employees said that he was not a drug dealer, that he just wanted to save the company and their jobs...

[tec0]

If I ever get to the top again I will do the following.

1> Invest in my employees training
so that they can get other work
when the time comes.

2> Keep your books up to date and the tax man happy.

3> Establish backup investments.
4> Keep debt to a minimum.
5> Establish only cash accounts with suppliers.
6> Keep commodities such as Gold or Diamonds.
7> Third party investments (example: investing in other small businesses)
8> Keep a good lawyer on retainer and have regular strategy sessions with her/him.

9> Avoid all or nothing situations they never pay off.

10> Don't trust anyone.

11> Keep none digital records of everything you own and have and there value

[Citizen X]

Man in his many roles: employer, employee, customer, supplier. I think that in management ,when one has an emotional oversight, it’s taken as the cost of learning. This learning experience then leads to greater emotional maturity as time progresses. We all lose it from time to time. I’ve learned many years ago that the ‘you work or else,’ philosophy just doesn’t work in practice. I’ve learned that it takes energy to scream and shout. It takes skill to listen, understand and respond intelligently. Customers, especially in the retail industry, are not the angels they made out to be. Regardless I could pull off the ‘Yes Madam, Yes Sir,’ routine off rather quite effectively, I learned that many crave a desire for importance and use their shopping experience to rant and rave at staff for no tangible reason. There’s a reason why I like the ‘scam alert forum,’ so much, one can just respond to those characters that find themselves there anyhow! A once in a lifetime opportunity to rant! It seems human beings need many ways to let off steam. I have noticed that with service delivery protests, some protestors are there not to defend or promote the socio economic right common to the group but rather to let off steam!
In the past, we need the collosium to appease us. This was a family outing to look forward to1 We now have reality t.v and tabloid magazines and newspapers all designed to appease us.

[Dave A]

Ego, passion, call it what you will - it's an emotional response rather than a purely rational one.

And I see it as a double edged sword.

It's a powerful driver in pushing a business towards success and often is the difference between success and failure. But it's also something that can get the owner to over-commit and end up losing everything on a lost cause, or as in the Machinik case in what I'm sure she saw as a temporary setback, grab "bridging finance" that wasn't hers to use.

It's more than about the money - It's just not easy to quit on your "baby".

[Justloadit]

For a first time entrepreneur, it is very difficult to pull the plug. The typical thoughts going through your mind is that you are a failure if you close or liquidate.
This is a folly thought.

Been through this one, if I had closed earlier the first time I experienced it, i would have saved a packet of money.
The second time round, I closed far earlier, as I was seeing the signs that caused my first one to close, and basically cost me a couple of thousand Rand, as opposed to the first one, which was almost R800K.

What is great about closing, and starting again, is that you have a clean slate, and you operate differently.

[Citizen X]

Ego, passion, call it what you will - it's an emotional response rather than a purely rational one.

And I see it as a double edged sword.

It's a powerful driver in pushing a business towards success and often is the difference between success and failure. But it's also something that can get the owner to over-commit and end up losing everything on a lost cause, or as in the Machinik case in what I'm sure she saw as a temporary setback, grab "bridging finance" that wasn't hers to use.

It's more than about the money - It's just not easy to quit on your "baby".

A very good afternoon to you Dave,

Your thread made me realise that I really enjoy self-help books! I haven't read one in ages, bought several though. The one book that has consistently emerged as one to revisit is Dale Carnegie's 'How to win friends and influence people.' My position is that this classic holds some valuable insights into the human creature from a practical perspective...

[tec0]

It just so happens that before the end of 2012 that I was contacted by a friend. Now the business he works for is hitting real hard times and has difficulty paying their employees. Then the owner started giving warnings to everyone and has disciplinary hearings every day in hope to fire people rather than going through the retrenchment process.

The owner then continue to claim that things go missing from the storeroom and with no access control it is possible, however he deducts the value of the equipment from all the employees pay. Now that is not actually how it works but you can see a pattern of desperation forming.

Start of 2013 (last week) he announced to his clients that all the stuff that used to be for free is no longer for free and that he will be charging more for his services. Bing in an almost dead market I cannot see the logic behind that.

The reality is this; every ounce of money he had is in that business and because he doesn’t want it to fail he started taking aggressive and “questionable steps” hence the emotional attachment. However is it justifiable?

The man made himself guilty of questionable behaviour and when the CCMA gets involved I am sure he is going to have a terrible time explaining things. Not to mention the 24 month contracts he has with his clients. I am sure that the sudden demands may not sit well with the contractual agreement unless he provided for annual increases within the contract.

[ians]

I am in a position with one of my operations, had it for over 20 years and believe it is time to shut it down and start fresh, but it is easier said than done, it is not because it is not generating a profit, just stuff that hangs from the past and you just cant shake it free.

[PeterCarruthers]

I think it is very easy to look at her behaviour, in hindsight, and judge. I think the way the situation unfolds, slowly, is what leads to this kind of behaviour.

It is easy, when things are going well, to look at what she has done and think that she is either stupid or criminal. But, after dealing with hundreds of similar situations, with wonderful people all in a similar circumstantially challenged place, there are very few folk who can:
fire the staff, especially those who have been around for 15 years, while they walk away into the sunset;
close a business that is the source of all their income and security when they "know" the situation is temporary.

We are human first. Business owners second.

IMHO