It's not personal, it's business

When you have a small business, you walk a fine line between business and personal every day. You want to be friendly and approachable to your customers, and you will often develop personal friendships with them, but there's a line between that person as your friend and that person as your customer. There is also a line between you as a person and you as a business owner, and you must be aware of not only where to draw that line, but which side of it you're on when.

This goes double these days in the age of Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, bloggers and the ubiquitous online culture where a seller in Kentucky can send an item halfway around the world thanks to a few mouse clicks and a Paypal account.

If you are a maker and seller of things, you have to realize that you are the business. You are the face, the management team, the PR team, the complaints line and the venture capitalist. Suddenly that line between personal and business starts to resemble a tightrope which you are attempting to traverse on a pogo stick.

Business owners are people. We have opinions, beliefs and pet peeves that all have bearing on who we are. We can make great decisions that help spur our business to greater heights of success, or we can make bad decisions that could put our business into financial or legal trouble. As the owner of the business, you get to take all the credit for the good, but you don't get to blame anyone but yourself for the bad. 

It's my belief for my business that I treat people the way I would like to be treated, and that the expectations that I have for a business are the expectations that I should meet or exceed. That means that if I forget part of someone's order and they write me to ask about it, I apologize without excuses and make it right as soon as possible. If someone's item breaks, I repair it, no questions asked and free of charge. It's what I would want, if I were the buyer. My goal is to not just make money on the item I sold, but to leave the buyer with a pleasant, positive experience so that they will enjoy doing business with me perhaps to return - and become a friend.