I’ve had a few days off waiting for our second child to show up and it’s allowed me a lot of time to reflect on a very busy year and business decisions that lead us to where we are now. As every business owner I have my share of regrets and opportunities, I remember exactly when the big decisions were made and how.. yet one thing sticks out:

I made it personal.

So much of me is a part of this business.

So much of my staff is personally vested in the success that we have enjoyed. Many of them put in far more than your usual 40 hours a week and very few of them have “what’s in it for me, when is my exit strategy coming?” attitude that is so frequent among corporate worker bee.

How? Well, we have a few rules.

1. Customer is not always right: Nobody ever gets to yell at or abuse you.

Ok, so maybe it’s just one rule but it’s a huge message of confidence I have in the people that make OWN execution possible. My dear friend Karl Palachuk once told me: “We don’t work with ***holes.” and I’m ashamed to admit that at the time we worked with a lot of them. It’s that typical small business hustler mentality, we appreciated every single dollar we earned even if it took us three dollars to earn it and we went home beaten down.

In my time as a business owner I’ve had some insane people find their way into the revenue stream. I’ve had folks who would not talk to women about business. I’ve had abusive clients who would scream, curse, yell and try to crush the people into violating a corporate policy for their own benefit. I’ve personally dealt with many people unqualified to hold a keyboard trying to argue with me over the functionality of the software I wrote. Death threats, rape threats and lottery claims. It’s built a thick skin.

One thing remains. This is a people business and it’s a personal one. My people, from top to bottom, love what they do and they know who they work for: our partners. And you can feel the energy and the push that comes when we add a feature, fix a problem, hear about a great deal our partners pulled off and how our work actually matters.

When you work with assholes, it works in exactly the opposite direction. People are deflated, they run out of the office without even saying a word, lots of cursing and the sound of heads banging on the desk.

There is a huge amount of business out there.

Earning every penny should not come at the cost of being abused.

Think about it. It’s the people business. It’s not a @#% business..

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