I will preface this by saying that this is one of the areas I have been wrong about the most in the past. Implementing has been equally gut wrenching and I don’t recommend it.

Truth is: Not everyone deserves to do business with you.

I owe this to my friends Amy Babinchak who once said “I can usually tell within 30 minutes if someone wants to do business with me” and Karl Palachuk who has written numerous articles on just what kind of businesses should build your business. Sometimes you gotta fire clients. Sometimes you gotta fire vendors. Sometimes you gotta fire employees. Sometimes you gotta fire partners. Sometimes you gotta fire yourself from the role that is increasingly producing diminishing results.

After all, your business is a reflection of your customers and the community your products and services serve.

Every year top performers get rewarded, bottom feeders get fired.

In past, my modus operandi was to cast a wide net, empower employees and try to help guide people along as they grew their business. Don’t get me wrong, we made a LOT of money doing that. The larger we have become though, the more susceptible to abuse we have become and many people took advantage of us.

The only downside is that this was a very emotionally draining role for me. I tried all I could to give to people and would instead get “courtesy” calls telling me that they appreciated everything I did for the community but business is business and they sent their clients elsewhere. I had people who would listen to the SBS Show on the road trips, call me and tell me how much they enjoyed it, signing up for services for their clients and then refusing to pay for them. One of the more fantastic losers was a guy from UK, who had a thread with over 20 messages between me and my staff asking pre-sales questions – when I checked his web site (none to be found) and called him out on it he didn’t have too “British” of a response to it (classic case of analysis-paralysis where he spent too much time playing with the toys to actually build an IT business). Folks that claimed they loved the independent and unbiased content free of agenda were shooting the very company that was putting money on the line to provide it!

In 2008, I tried to take Amy and Karl’s advice in a more proactive way. We became very selective about who we do business with. This came at a bit of a backlash as people you turn away do everything to smear you in the public… but I’d rather have them hate me than be a drain on my company and a representation of my products and services. We eliminated non-performers – both internally with our staff and externally with our partners and clients. We developed a fair process to help us identify when the things are going down the wrong path. We have setup a review and escalation model to make sure we effectively identify internal issues and external issues.

Which brings me to… A very simple conclusion.

In 2008, Own Web Now community projects didn’t get much love and certainly did not translate into much defense from our friends when we did get attacked. So while I will personally continue doing what I do because that’s just who I am, expect Own Web Now to cease spending money to support the SMB community. Say goodbye to the SBS Show, SMB Buddy, freebies and community building incentives. Votes have been counted and the market is more responsive to trade shows, biased webcasts, blatant sales and marketing gimmicks. So we’ll go down that path instead.

It’s really as simple as: I can’t spend OWN’s money to support you because you didn’t spend your clients money to support  OWN.

While this is a big personal defeat for me because it crushes what I fundamentally believe in, it is great news for people that do business with Own Web Now and promote ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey. 100% of my efforts will now be dedicated to that. Expect announcements and many surprises in January.

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