Confessions Of A Business Owner…Part 4
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When you run a business with an open heart and no prior experience, you just might get attached to the people you employ (Please try to avoid this, it will end in tears…mostly!) and that leads to different scenarios.
THE UGLY
The thing with working closely with a small business owner is that you can finally see through them. I do think that people could finally see through me. That I didn’t have all the answers, that I was sometimes just winging life.
For some people, seeing through you evokes empathy, loyalty, and accountability. For some others, it evokes destruction. Nothing could have prepared me for an employee announcing their resignation without prior notice during a general Monday meeting. How do you tell your boss you have cancer when you don’t and take chemo money from the company? How do you steal a client’s property? What could have possibly prepared me to deal with humans with all that in their nature?
Nothing quite prepares you for people management because its so unique to each business.
THE BAD
Boundaries… People very often don’t know what boundaries are and I quickly found that as a young businesswoman, people really see you, without truly seeing you (If you know, you know).
I remember when the pressure of people management started to break me just a little. I decided that the only way to survive was to be real with all team members. I became open about my struggle with anxiety, my dreams, my worries… almost everything! I needed them to see that I was human too and didn’t have life all figured out. Damn! I had monthly cramps just like the other ladies! I had boy problems too and mornings that staying in bed longer seemed like a better idea.
In year 2, we went 4 months and 2 weeks without making a dime! It was one of my toughest seasons as a business owner. I finally got a first-hand understanding of how Moses must have felt when the Israelites kept complaining on their way to the promised land. I felt extremely lonely and soon became depressed. But guess what? I had to show up to work every day regardless of how I felt, I had to show up to some people walking in late to the office, making mistakes on proposals e.t.c and regardless of my fears, I had to instill hope and of course pay salaries from our diminishing savings account.
Then my worst fear happened, someone, resigned, while a few showed character traits that we had tried to manage for months due to the value of work they brought in. This season was a wakeup call for me, we had let a few people enter into our system without a proper structure in place. I had also become so emotionally attached to a few of them that I gave excuses for each time they did something that was anti-organizational.
But through my loneliness, fears, and anxiety, I decided that we needed to keep moving. There were still a few people who were willing to work right? I hired the service of a lawyer and a HR agency and for the first time, IBK was introduced to structure.
THE GOOD
You see, I can’t help but get emotional as I write this. My role as CEO of Image Boosters has led me to some very amazing and skilled people. I’ve met someone of the most loyal creatives in Nigeria, people that have proven to me that the stereotype of the industry has to be changed. Some of the people that have worked with us have gone ahead to be industry experts and that in itself makes me feel like a proud mother because I really know how each person’s story began.
I had and will always be interested in the well being of everyone I work with. By year 2, we had grown to the point of having about 11 employees and they would jokingly tease by calling me “Big Brother” because of my random one on one meetings about their wellbeing. These were my favorite moments; dancing to our favorite songs, ordering pizza and sharing personal stories. I was with my age group, no topic was off-limits in the office and just seeing how we were growing as individuals, kept me motivated.
