by Randy Gerber, Founder & Principal

 

Leading an integrated life as a business owner boils down to utilizing one important tool, communication.

Business owners often times lose sight of their overall success because they fail to communicate their business plans, fears and successes with their loved ones. But preparing your friends for the entrepreneurial lifestyle plays an important role in achieving personal and professional integration.

As you begin your start-up business, use your friends as a support system. Your friends need to understand your business journey and how your relationship will change.

When you discuss your goal of launching a business with your circle of friends, they will likely begin a subliminal comparison of your mission to theirs. They received a good education, landed a steady job, so why can’t you do the same? They may be subconsciously preoccupied with their own thoughts of self-comparison to truly understand your goals.

So explain it to them!

When I first brought up the idea of launching my own business to a few of my friends they credited it to nothing more than an ego trip – I must just want the attention. Looking back, I should have had a more open approach to our conversation.

When discussing your entrepreneurial journey with your close friends, be sure to explain your mission, but also touch on how your time may be spent differently. Answering phone calls during happy hour over chicken wings may be irritating to a non-business owner, but to you it could mean a possible new business lead.

While in the start-up phase of your business, explain your techniques – A main concern from my friends was my financial spending. It was difficult for them to understand why spending money on guest entertainment was a necessity to create the foundation of my business. In my eyes I needed the golf outings, browns tickets, and dinner events to develop the relationships necessary to get my business headed the right direction as quickly as possible. These may have seemed like ‘play-time’ to my friends but those investments provided me with unique and personal experiences for new relationships and prospective clients.

You may be playing in different career pools than one another, but having the appropriate conversations with your friends will ultimately aid in your future success.