FYI About Small Businesses

I realized my last post was last Friday... and I intended to blog more than once a week, because it's important to keep it active otherwise no one will care. So this is a note that I wrote on my personal facebook page awhile back, when I saw a couple facebook business pages either shutting down or thinking about shutting down because of rude and malicious comments on their business pages. I was going to post it on here at some point anyway, so might as well post it now! And I'll try to keep up with it more... Guess I'm not off to a great start!

As a head's up, it's kind of strongly worded, and since it was on my personal page, it would only be people I know that would be reading it so I wasn't really concerned. It's not vulgar of course, but it may come across as rude itself. It wasn't intended to be rude, but as a "hey, think about what you're doing" kind of thing.

"Maybe it's because I'm stressed out and extra cranky right now, and maybe it's because in the past month I've seen two business pages want to shut down because of facebook drama, but I feel the need to say something.

For those of you who don't know how one-person businesses work (and some people clearly don't), this is how it does: There is ONE person who orders supplies, ONE person who deals with suppliers when orders go wrong, ONE person who answers emails, ONE person who maintains the website, ONE person who manages orders, ONE person who organizes supplies and tools and ONE person who makes the actual products. To be clear, this is not one person each - it's one person for everything.

In case you didn't get the hint, it is HARD to be the only person running your business, to be a "one-woman-show" as I've seen it called. Because not only are they doing all this, but they are probably working another job, taking care of their household, any kids or pets they have, and taking care of themselves.

Some people seem to think they're perfect, and they never make mistakes in the things they do, so obviously no one else should either, including these one-person businesses. And these people take it upon themselves to slander one-person businesses on the business pages, saying things that may or may not be true but are clearly rude.

Fortunately, I have not been subject to this behavior - yet. I'm sure it will come in time. But I've seen just too much of it recently. If you have a problem with your order or with the way someone conducts business, you take it up with them personally. You don't publicly berate them on their own page. People who are rude deserve rudeness back, so if you're going to dish it out you better be able to take it back without complaint (golden rule - treat others the way you want to be treated). There is a way to get your point across tactfully, and some people need to learn that. The pages I've seen this behavior on get much more positive feedback than negative, but these people don't seem to think that their problem could possibly be a fluke that could easily be corrected if they politely asked the business owner about it.

There. I feel better now."