It IS Personal, It's Business
Posted on Friday 10th February 2012 at 11:56
We all know that line: It's not personal, it's business. I've never even seen The Godfather and I know it. It seems to get used a lot in the corporate world by those wishing to justify unpleasant actions or decisions, but does it really make sense?
When I decided to go into business in November 2010, I had seen first hand what it was like to be on the receiving end of a web development company who seemed to think that the Mafia were a good role model for how to do business. For the founder of the organisation I was working for though, the venture was intensely personal and being treated in a cold, distant and unhelpful manner left a bad taste in his mouth and in mine.
When I left that job a short while later, I had a theory that, actually, for most business owners, especially amongst SMEs, business is nothing, if not personal. It occurred to me that treating my clients with the same degree of respect and understanding that I extended to my friends was a pretty good model for business and would help me when making decisions with an ethical element to them.
This philosophy has served me well since then and is still at the heart of how MRG Web Development relates to clients, supplier and colleagues in the industry.
There is one element of business though, where I've had to learn the hard way that business is business too: money. One of my hardest struggles has been relating to money in a business sense, rather than a personal one.
Prior to starting in business, I was earning an average of about £8 per hour over a 40 hour week. So when someone suggested to me that £15 an hour might be a good rate to charge clients, I thought I was in the money.
What I didn't understand is that there are many aspects of business that suck up the money you charge your clients before it enters your wage packet, and that you have to charge more as a consequence. If my low rate wasn't harming my profit margins enough, my perpetual habit of underestimating my hours to avoid asking for large sums of money certainly was.
Last month I finally brought my rate up to what I've calculated will be enough to run my business: £40 an hour.
To me, on a personal level, this seems like an incredible amount of money to charge someone for my time, but this is business, it's not personal. My clients may like that I am personable with them, but they see me as running a business and providing a service. What they care about is the service that I offer them, not what I charge for it. They all know what I took a year to grasp, which is that my fees aren't for my time alone, they are for running a successful business and making a profit, and if they don't have a problem with that, why should I?
Service is personal. The fees for it are business.
When I decided to go into business in November 2010, I had seen first hand what it was like to be on the receiving end of a web development company who seemed to think that the Mafia were a good role model for how to do business. For the founder of the organisation I was working for though, the venture was intensely personal and being treated in a cold, distant and unhelpful manner left a bad taste in his mouth and in mine.
When I left that job a short while later, I had a theory that, actually, for most business owners, especially amongst SMEs, business is nothing, if not personal. It occurred to me that treating my clients with the same degree of respect and understanding that I extended to my friends was a pretty good model for business and would help me when making decisions with an ethical element to them.
This philosophy has served me well since then and is still at the heart of how MRG Web Development relates to clients, supplier and colleagues in the industry.
There is one element of business though, where I've had to learn the hard way that business is business too: money. One of my hardest struggles has been relating to money in a business sense, rather than a personal one.
Prior to starting in business, I was earning an average of about £8 per hour over a 40 hour week. So when someone suggested to me that £15 an hour might be a good rate to charge clients, I thought I was in the money.
What I didn't understand is that there are many aspects of business that suck up the money you charge your clients before it enters your wage packet, and that you have to charge more as a consequence. If my low rate wasn't harming my profit margins enough, my perpetual habit of underestimating my hours to avoid asking for large sums of money certainly was.
Last month I finally brought my rate up to what I've calculated will be enough to run my business: £40 an hour.
To me, on a personal level, this seems like an incredible amount of money to charge someone for my time, but this is business, it's not personal. My clients may like that I am personable with them, but they see me as running a business and providing a service. What they care about is the service that I offer them, not what I charge for it. They all know what I took a year to grasp, which is that my fees aren't for my time alone, they are for running a successful business and making a profit, and if they don't have a problem with that, why should I?
Service is personal. The fees for it are business.
