Business is Personal and Anyone Who Tells You Otherwise is Lying

One expression that I hear frequently now that I am an entrepreneur is: Don't take it personally.

I've heard this from several entrepreneurs, investors, coaches, friends, family, you name it. Usually it comes up in a conversation where I talk about a difficult issue or challenge I am facing, or something that is not going as well as I'd like. "Don't take it personally," they say, and I nod to move the conversation along.

But I feel like I need to go on some kind of a public record here and say that I don't buy that argument, not for a minute.

To me, business is all about being personal. It's both the most exciting and the most excruciatingly difficult part of being an entrepreneur. When I see a member being helped by other members on the site, when I get a note from someone saying they love Work It, Mom!, when I read a great member article, note, or blog post, I feel an unbelievable kind of pride and satisfaction. When we're not growing as quickly as I'd like, when we release a new feature or design element that's not working well, when a competitor does something better than we do, I feel responsible, stressed, and upset. I take it personally and I could not imagine not doing that.

Frankly, I didn't think anyone could not take their business personally, but apparently I am wrong. I've now talked with enough entrepreneurs who have told me that while they are working their butts off to make their companies succeed, they understand that most small businesses fail and they won't take it personally if theirs does. Are they lying about how they feel? Maybe, but during those conversations it genuinely seemed that they believed what they said.

Here's the thing -- and this is as unscientific as surveys go -- all of these people who claim to not take their business success or failure personally are men. Could this be a gender thing?

As I said, a sample of four (three guys I've talked to and me) is hardly adequate to draw any conclusions. But there was a discussion recently in one of the entrepreneur groups at Work It, Mom! where this concept of business being personal -- and causing the female entrepreneur to feel like she is on an emotional roller-coaster -- came up. And it's not the first time I've heard women business owners have this discussion. So could this be a gender thing?

When I worked in venture capital, I saw men lose millions of dollars of other people's money and walk away without feeling any personal responsibility. "It's business," they'd say. It is, in fact, business. Investors know that when they invest in companies -- or venture funds -- there is a good chance they will lose their money. But while I always knew this, I still took my investments personally -- if one was not doing well, I was responsible and I felt responsible. When Work It, Mom! has a great day, I feel responsible, just like I do when things aren't going as well.

I am curious what you think about this: Do you think women take business more personally than men? Is this a good thing -- would we take more risks, for example, or try to achieve grander success if we didn't take everything so personally? Or does the fact that we take our business -- and jobs and careers -- personally make us work that much harder at them?

OK, I am done -- sound off!

Comments

[RTIII]

As I read them, the comments so far are all written by women. As a male entrepreneur...

I was expecting something about how getting clients or loosing them was personal - to which my reply is, YOU BETCHA! People - ALL people - do business with people they like whenever there's the slightest choice, very often without regard to price or other distinctions. I'm always looking for ways to improve my and my company's approach and was hoping for a dialogue about such things.

Instead, this is apparently just about how an entrepreneur looks on their actions and success or failure of their business... "Just" isn't meant as a pejorative, I mean only that it's not about how to improve the business itself but about how to handle failure/trouble.

Frankly, I've never considered male/female aspects to such questions. How personally we take business - and by this I mean how "responsible" we feel and how much stress we take on because of it - probably has a lot more to do with whether we are the proverbial type A or B. I'm an odd blend, according to testing I took more than 20 years ago when such ideas were in vogue. ...For those who don't already know, briefly, type A people are the high-strung GO! GO! GO! types while type B people are relaxed, easy going, know how to relax and "smell the flowers." A types are usually the ones who start businesses, so I'm an odd duck.

As put by Ms. Kogan, I'm guessing she's more A type. That could be wrong. But what I can say is that I take my business VERY personally, HOWEVER, I do realize the difference between what I cause/create and what exists externally and while I get annoyed at times, I'm relaxed when things aren't going well when it's clear or probable that it was beyond my/our control.

My advice: shed the stress at EVERY opportunity. eg: regular social events, anti-stress "beer o'clock" Fridays, celebration of victories, commiseration of defeats... These are good both for mental health and team building...

[anon004]

My husband has run his own business for 25 years. It has always been personal for him. When he came close to losing his business when we were dating almost 18 years ago, he became so stressed out that he got diabetes. (Not that I'm recommending that as a way of demonstrating how much your business means to you personally.) He cares tremedously about providing the best possible service to his clients, some of whom have been with him for all of his 25 years. He's even in the process of encouraging his older clients' children to become clients themselves. So, I guess I don't think it's a "woman's thing," unless my husband is the exception that proves the rule.

[NCGigi]

I have read that men do not equate authority with responsibility. We can only be responsible for those things that we control. Many women I know tie themselves in knots feeling "responsible" for things they do not control. And thus, women work much harder than men, and yes, take failure personally.

I think this is because women are reared to succeed based on personal relationships, and men are reared to succeed based on accomplishment and relationships. Let me explain: women's power in the world has traditionally come through their husbands, fathers and sons. Thus, a woman's success historically has been dependent on how well she can manage her relationships with these men in her life.

Things are changing certainly, and yet, we cannot expect to overhaul millenia of social teachings handed down in a few short decades.

Try uncoupling authority from responsibility. This will alleviate an endless cycle of depression and gloom when events beyond our control determine outcomes. Ultimately, we can only control ourselves, and thus the responsibility to control ourselves is the only responsibility we have.

[ParentPreneur]

I don't necessarily think this is gender-based, although I know in the beginning of my business I took more things personally than I did after getting burned a few times over the 10 years. Sure, I still took pride when we had a good year and was disappointed when we had off years, but I worked hard not to let that seep into my psyche. There are so many outside influences, I tried not to take it personally. I know plenty of men who take the same approach.

13 years later I still take my business personally to the extent that I put my all into it (I am a woman, after all!), but at the end of the day, I had to learn that it is just business or risk driving myself into the ground with stress. You can only do what you can do and the key is to look for the lessons in things that don't go your way. After all, most experts claim that it takes a couple tries in business before you hit the 'big one'!

It is like with my kids: my daughter is in 6th grade and her grades were, let's just say, not stellar this past quarter. Should I take that personally? I can't. I am working with her to value good grades (and taking away the computer when she doesn't do her work) but she is the one who has to learn. She is the one who has to do it. There are a lot of outside forces that make me temper my expectations with her. I had to realize that she is not me.

It"s a fine line that just like everything else we need to balance and try to look at the bigger life picture.

[bach]

Why don't you look at it this way. Raising our children is the "business" of being a mother, albeit, we don't get paid. I certainly took that personally. I think the world would be a totally different place if women took the "business" of running it personally.