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Business Owners Are Worst Clients

zencapital.substack.com

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Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#11

Post by lelanthran »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #7
eduction wrote: post #5

Devil’s advocate: they’re more demanding because, unlike employees, they are not pushovers. They have skin in the game. You seem to have equated “more likely to terminate with critical comments” to “worst.” Seems pretty reductive.

They might be entitled people or sociopaths.

Unlikely. The majority of businesses are bootstrapped with a loan.

Those that survive are often the result of an owner who had their hand on the wheel through some very desperate times, times which would have killed the business had they stopped micromanaging.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#14

Post by eduction »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #7
eduction wrote: post #5

Devil’s advocate: they’re more demanding because, unlike employees, they are not pushovers. They have skin in the game. You seem to have equated “more likely to terminate with critical comments” to “worst.” Seems pretty reductive.

They might be entitled people or sociopaths.

Are those the only people who terminate business deals “with friction,” sociopaths?

Disagreements are normal and leaping to words like “worst” or “sociopath” because one occurs is not going to produce a sustainable business IMO.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#15

Post by lelanthran »

jeffbee wrote: post #6
accrual wrote: post #4

I wonder if there's an element of self-selection. The type of people to own a business could be more likely to put up a fight when things don't go their way (e.g. to protect the business and their investments), whereas the typical consumer is more likely to accept things as they are and not fight the business ("whatever, I'll just use another service").

I think the selection may run the other way (or both ways). The population of small business owner-operators is disproportionately stocked with people who don't get along well with other people, who selected themselves out of having to deal with an organization of peers.

How many small business owners do you know?

All the ones I have dealt with have survived precisely because of their ability to get along with people.

If you have no people skills your small business will fail.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#16

Post by ericd »

alwa wrote: post #10
eduction wrote: post #5

Devil’s advocate: they’re more demanding because, unlike employees, they are not pushovers. They have skin in the game. You seem to have equated “more likely to terminate with critical comments” to “worst.” Seems pretty reductive.

For that matter—not seeing the source interactions or the prompts—I wonder the extent to which business owners see business relationships as negotiated rather than “picked from the shelf.” When I’m dealing with small businesses, I tend to explain my frustrations long before I cancel, and offer them a chance to fix them. Whereas with an off-the-shelf product, there’s no point: I say “just cancel my subscription please…

Yeah, you’re the best kind of customer. And I’ve found that fixing those issues tends to make those customers into evangelists.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#17

Post by obsidianbases1 »

Familiarity breeds contempt. If business owners are your target, you'll quickly see the negative patterns. But same can be said about any target audience/persona.

I'd be interested if the author ever focused their efforts on a broad consumer archetype. Or worked in retail like a grocery store.

Every segment has a type that will spoil the bunch of you let them.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#18

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bix6 wrote: post #9
jeffbee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the selection may run the other way (or both ways). The population of small business owner-operators is disproportionately stocked with people who don't get along well with other people, who selected themselves out of having to deal with an organization of peers.

Damn this hits. My dream is a solo firm where I deal with nobody. I’ll never get there of course because the world runs on relationships.

Businesses actually require even more relationships than standard wage slaves. Consultants need to be even more of a "people person." The main difference is that, for an owner, they "have no boss." (In quotes, because customers tend to be even more demanding "bosses," than managers).

My experience, from knowing quite a few business owners, is that they are always "angling for the edge." They want to squeeze every bit of advantage, out of every relationship/deal they have. Almost every relationship is adversarial and competitive. Lawyers can be the same way. The best ones, consider every interaction to be combat.

I'm not wired that way, so I'm not a particularly effective business owner.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#19

Post by mikpanko »

One possible explanation: business owners have more skin in the game and care the most, so they are the most demanding and can’t tolerate waste. So they are the hardest to satisfy.

Additionally, they are not used to mincing their words because they don’t have bosses and are the most direct (and also egoistic).

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#20

Post by anovikov »

Why is this a surprise? A business owner speaks his own money. A "non-business owner" means "an employee of another business" who doesn't care about anything but clocking out at 5pm and not getting fired - they are totally not interested in stirring trouble. It's just a metric of them not caring, not of them being "better clients". And representing bigger and richer entities than those where a business owner is a point of contact, meaning whatever money is/was at stake is usually not worthy of bothering.

Naturally, it is a lot better to work for richer entities with less control and attention over money spent, milk the fat cows.

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