Snyde Comments: The Real Work of Company Building
This week my wife and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. We have been together for almost 13 years, finding each other when we were still just babies. I haven’t always been a good husband, and in many ways, and at many times, I actually have been a terrible life partner. I reflected a lot on this concept this week, because the only way I can make up for the mistakes of the past is to make sure they don’t happen again. During this contemplation I couldn’t help but see the correlation between the mistakes and successes in my marriage and those that I have experienced in business.
The reality is that relationships, whether personal or professional, take real work to grow and flourish. The harder reality is that this work must happen on more than one level, as none of these relationships involve only one person.
This is why so many of CopyPress’ core values are based around qualifying how we should approach relationships:
- Community: We will give more than what we take from our marketplace contractors, and the community of Tampa, Tech or whatever other niche we fall into.
- Our Team is Our Family: We live and breathe this. We don’t always get along, but we always resolve issues for the greater good.
- The Customer Comes First: The person entrusting us with their money, and in some cases their job, deserves everything we can give them.
- Humility: This core value makes the others possible. If you put yourself first, then your priorities are out of whack in terms of relationship and business building.
To me so much of the extremely limited success CopyPress is currently having is based on relationship building and maintaining.
- Customers
- Investors
- Advisors
- Team Members
- Contractors
All of these groups have been instrumental in our growth, and each one represents a special relationship that must be managed. From my side, I believe my ability to be humble in my approach to each relationship has cleared a road for how we as a company deal ongoing with all relationships.
Almost every business I have seen fail has come down to the inability to maintain relationships with one or more of these groups, and so just as relationship management can help lead a company to success, bad relationship management can lead to a business’ demise.
Do I claim to manage every personal and professional relationship I have today correctly? Nope. Sometimes I am not the best dad, best husband, best business partner, best son, or best friend. I don’t know if I will ever become that person. The point is I have put principles into my life that make getting better at these vital connections a priority.
CopyPress writer
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