Mixing Business With Relationship: Two Parallel Lines That Cannot Meet | Hive Learners Week 101 Prompt 1

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Earlier in my life, I wanted to own businesses but I was inexperienced. As a young graduate, I was offered a very little wage as a school teacher which I accepted. There was the fear of what to eat, how to pay my bills and whatnot that sprang up. My little warming at the school usually came handy at the end of the month. Business is a different ball game. Relationships can endure a lot of biases which business dare not condone.

How My First Ever Business Collapsed

In the early 2000s, the phone call and recharge cards business was booming. From my little salary, I got an Alcatel phone and invested about two thousand naira in buying regards cards. Though it was a humbling beginning, I usually buy more recharge cards when I am done selling off what I had in stock. My girlfriend decided to help me out with the business. She would be at my stand till I came back from school when I'd take over from her.

Exactly two weeks after she started helping out, the business collapsed. Also effort to find out what transpired proved abortive. Our relationship of about two years hit the rocks as a result but I learned a life lesson.

• Conflict of Interest: It may become very difficult to separate professional decisions and emotions. I didn't want to appear to be a bad person, I just let it go. And decided that forthwith, any business I cannot run by myself or have a very close supervision with legal backing I won't venture into. The losses one would incur could be wanton.

• Breakdown of Communication:
With relationships in the core of a business, one would lose the ability to be objective in decision making. It would also make one to abrogate his sense of judgement. This affected me in no small measure. If I had employed someone else into that business, it is most likely that I would have requested for a guarantor who would bear the responsibility of paying me whatever the employee has lost or misappropriated. But in my case, it was not meant to be because the employee in question was a lover.

• Strain on Personal Relationship: As it stands, my girlfriend had to go because she could not be trusted with such a little business. How would she be able to manage a relationship or home? Hence, you can see that the relationship did not end fairly. At my end, I felt she had cheated or mismanaged my trust. Only God knows what she would be thinking..

• Legal Implications: Towing the line of legal consideration when a financial contract has been breached could involve a lot of money. Hence, one should draw a distinctive line between business and family ties or any other form of relationship. Sometimes, legal tussles of such matters could take too long and it would sour the relationship that had existed.

My very first experience taught me never to mix business with pleasure or relationship. This fact is further strengthened by a popular saying among my countrymen and women:

Business survives when family and friends pay for services rendered to them.

Overall, mixing business with relationships can pose threats, far reaching consequences that can affect both personal and professional aspects of life. It is however important to set boundaries and maintain professionalism in order to avoid foreseeable problems and disagreements.