Business arrangements can be difficult enough to make when you don’t know the other party at all, but they can be downright impossible when you are friends. While you still need to make sure that everything is delivered as needed, you also need to make sure that your friendship isn’t affected. Supporting friends in their business ventures is a wonderful thing to do, and it means a lot. However, there are a few things to consider before working with friends!
I have a few friends that I have been lucky enough to hire, and every time it went swimmingly. However, I did set out from the beginning with a few rules for myself.
1) Be clear in all expectations!
If you need something by a specific date, be upfront about it. If you need it to meet certain specifications, provide those from the onset. Although they may be your best friend, they still probably won’t know that you only wanted sans serif fonts on your logo.
2) Be realistic in your expectations!
Just because they are your friend, it doesn’t mean that they can drop all other clients for you. If some makes cakes, don’t expect them to make 200 cookie pops in the same amount of time (it is a different skill). I firmly believe that this is true of everything in life, if you aren’t being realistic, you are setting yourself up for failure. And failure between friends is the worst.
3) Be fair in your expectations!
This is really in regards to payment- never expect your friends to work for you for free. I know that we all wax lyrical in the blogging world that simply sharing is a wonderful form of support, but if you are actually going to use someone’s services, you should be paying them. It could be making you food, providing art or clothing, doing your hair or make up, writing something for you, or any number of things. When you are trying to start a business, the key part tends to be payment. Would you ask a stranger to do something for you for free? No? Then don’t expect it of someone you care about! (If someone does offer to give you a service or item as a gift, I would still tend to offer something.)
Do you have any guidelines for working with friends?
Cheers,
The Historian
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I thoroughly enjoy reading your blogs and so love your commitment> I strongly agree that no matter family or stranger one should be compensated for their services rendered unless the family member or friend says otherwise.
Thank you so much!! And yes, I believe that we should be compensating everyone- work is work!