One of my many hats in life is that of a real estate broker (although I don't wear it much these days), and like with all other hats (spouse, daughter, sibling, business owner, etc.), the role tends to follow me and influence my actions while wearing other hats.

As a real estate broker, I had contracts just as I do now as a web designer.  I discovered a major difference, though.  With my real estate clients, it was easy to hold myself (and them) accountable to a contract.  The Big Bad Real Estate Commission would get me (and them), if we didn't uphold its terms.  There were state and federal laws that had to be followed, and I held myself and my clients to them - end of story.  If a client attempted to break a term or law, I easily, and without hesitation, reminded them of the contract and said that I could not represent them if they wanted to break it - too easy.  I never lost a client due to my being firm with a contract.

These days, I'm the Big Bad Law and Contract Enforcement Agent.  The buck stops here, but it's much easier (or tempting, I should say) to be lenient with my own laws.  Clients break them (or try to), and I worry about feelings and relationships.  Real estate contracts don't care about those things.  They worry about the interests of the parties, and I should know enough (from all the time wearing my broker hat) to worry about the interests of the parties here, in this business.  This time, my parties are not LAW > CLIENT > BROKER/COMPANY > SELF.  They are LAW > ALL MY CLIENTS > CLIENT > BUSINESS > SELF (with the last four parties being interchangeable in priority, depending on the situation and what terms are being broken).

As a business owner, I have to respect the boundaries I've set for myself and the standards I've set for my business.  That's how I protect the interests of my business, myself, and every one of my clients.

Why is law so important?  Why can't we break the rules (or bend them here and there) to accommodate someone?  After all, these are OUR businesses.  We make the rules.

But that's the answer right there.  We made the rules.  We've given a lot of thought (hopefully) to how we want things to run, to the care we want to give to each client and job we take on.  If we don't stick to the rules, we don't stick to those standards of professionalism and service, not just to an individual client who hopes to bend them, but to every other client we hope to serve.

Do relationships matter?  Is there a blurry line between what's business and what's personal?  Aren't our businesses very much personal to us?  Yes, yes, and yes.  Here's the caveat, though.  If we don't maintain some level of order, professionalism, and service, both to our clients and to ourselves, then our businesses become giant doormats, and our clients will no longer want to do business with us.  We have to hold ourselves, our businesses, and therefore our clients to a higher standard, if we hope to be better than many of the other businesses out there (flip on the news, if you need an example or two).

We have decided to be in business for ourselves, and that's very much a personal thing, but just as we are challenged to do as individuals, we must uphold our values in our businesses.  We do that by maintaining the promises we've made to our clients and to ourselves.

We can't argue ourselves down by playing the "personal/relationships/feelings" card, and we can't feel bad about it when we take a stand for our values or our terms.  It's not an easy thing to do, for sure, but very necessary to build that great business we envision.