Leveraging Your Personal Relationships will Change Your Professional Life

There is a stigma in society that business and personal relationships must stay separate. I am here to refute that. Many of my professional relationships stemmed from a personal relationship or personal conversation. With boundaries, I think it is a bonus to leverage your personal relationships to help your professional life.

Before starting my own business, I had experience working full-time jobs in two different organizations. I used a very personal relationship to help get me both of those positions. I still had to interview, but that relationship got me in the door. I am not ashamed of that. Without his introduction, I would have been one of many in a stack of resumes.

You know what is more meaningful to an employer than the fact that you were in the honors college? Having someone who can vouch for the kind of human you are.

Many people can learn how to do a job. They can learn the systems and meet expectations. Not every person will remember their coworker’s favorite cake flavor on their birthday or be someone they want to spend time with on a work trip. In my experience, the people who knew the correct cake order rose much quicker than the people with a perfect Excel sheet only they knew how to use.

I carried the same mentality when starting my business. I do plenty of cold calls, but I also approach people who I know personally who are involved in nonprofits I find interesting. Some of them have said yes and become clients. Others have said no and that is OK too.

Because although business is not personal, you still need to treat those you work with as human beings first.

For example, when my grandma passed away, I was able to text all my clients and tell them I needed a few days. There was no hesitation on their end. I pushed a couple of deadlines. But – and I feel partially because they knew me as a person – nobody changed their perception of me. They knew stories about her and what she meant to me. So, at her passing, they treated me as her granddaughter, not as their consultant. I remember emailing one client the morning of her funeral and she replied saying “I know what today is. I will not be expecting anything from you. Go be with your family.”

They only had that reaction because I had let them into my life and because I had asked about their life along the way too.

Now, I do agree that every business decision does not need to be taken personally. Sometimes people move on or have different goals that you can’t help them meet. That does not need to impact the way you feel about them as a person or the way you feel about yourself and your abilities.

I think leveraging personal relationships for business is especially important for those of us with our own businesses. I am my businesses. I am their most consistent and truest marketer. When you meet someone for the first time, one of the initial questions you ask each other is “What do you do for work?” I love getting to say that I run The Good Word, Co. and host The Good Stuff Podcast. This is likely the first they are hearing of them, so their only impression of either thing is me.

Me being someone who is approachable, makes my businesses feel more approachable too. And who wants to work with a brand that intimidates them? Probably not many people.

It may not be everyone’s first choice. But, I have found that by working with people I know –  or (like when I worked in-house for different organizations) getting to know the people I worked with – made the entire experience more valuable. There is more grace to go around, the victories feel more exciting, and there is someone who cares about you for you (not you for your role) if there is a hurdle to face.