Working As A Family

I know this sounds like it goes agents the grain of business but something happened to me recently that made me think that perusing my small business in a way that I treat other people in the same line of work as family as opposed to competition is an effective and pleasant way to go about doing things.

I was in a bar a few night back with a couple of friends, and we got to talking about are work. This is the lamest thing to talk about when you go out because the whole point of going out is to get away from work but anyway, that’s the way it went down.  

I work at a kid’s sports store; we sell anything from cleats and jerseys to baseball bats and footballs. I got to telling my friends that my boss way putting major pressure on me to find good deals online for things like display mannequins and spot lights and a whole bunch of things that I know nothing about. I heat shopping and had no interest in doing this job first of all because it was not my job, I’m floor assistance and secondly, like I said before, I heat shopping. But the boss soft of but me in a position that I couldn’t say no, so I have to deal with this annoying job now.

Anyway, in the middle of me going off like this, a guy leans over from the next table and said “did you say something about mannequins?” so I tell him yes and he says that he has a store a few blocks away and would be interested in seeing what I have, meaning what old mannequins we had in our store that we were using until now. So I told him to come over the next day and he did.

It turns out that the mannequins that we had were old and that was exactly what he was looking for! He needed vintage looking things and frankly our whole store meets that description, albeit unintentionally. Anyway we made the swap, his new mannequin for our vintage ones and I saved the boss about a thousand dollars and got in his good book to boot.

The point is that networking in business in a truly friendly way can not only make business better but also more enjoyable.