Comments on: 6 Reasons Why You Should Hire Your Friends / Family

By: 6 Reasons Why You Should Hire Your Friends and Family | The M Companies

6 Reasons Why You Should Hire Your Friends and Family | The M Companies — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:47:05 +0000

[...] [via YoungEntrepreneur] by Evan Carmichael [...]

By: Jen C

Jen C — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:44:23 +0000

My husband and I run an online store together and it’s been a great experience. Sure it’s been filled with challenges but ultimately I know that I can trust him implicitly and that we share the same end goal for our business.

By: Curt

Curt — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:06:04 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. But, when you run out of friends/family, that’s when hiring gets to be a very big problem.

By: Kevin Stecko

Kevin Stecko — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:41:16 +0000

Some of my best and worst hires have been friends and/or family. Some will work harder and be more trustworthy, others will think they can get away with things because they are your friend or family. It all depends on the individual, which is the case when hiring strangers as well.

By: Ashish Tulsian

Ashish Tulsian — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:19:58 +0000

All the reasons stated above are really good and compelling when one chooses between hiring an unknown or a friend/relative but sorry to say i don’t agree with the final result of this professional and personal mix. as i was going for a startup in the initial phase the only people who made sense for me to hire were friends as they were more loyal…trustworthy…n blah blah (all the above points) but later on i started realizing that the strategy was really saving me some hard bucks in short term but was a huge loss in long term as the people working for me were not efficient and i was not able to push them to be.
i congratulate the author on being lucky enough to have a great experience with people he hired but i have experienced this with more then 5-6 people i hired in different roles and at different times in life before i decided not to hire anymore people just because you know them.
this belief of mine was confirmed when i saw the same people moving on..working for someone else successfully and as efficiently as i wanted them to be with me.

By: Chirag

Chirag — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:52:59 +0000

Hey I would like to just comment one thing that is, you are generating profits through emotions and such profits cannot last long.

I also agree with Andee Sellman, friends and family helps us a lot but when the situation turns the other way round it can even raise the question of the existence of your business which is very hard to imagine.

By: Andee Sellman, One Sherpa

Andee Sellman, One Sherpa — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:14:25 +0000

Great thoughts Evan.
The only downside that I can think of as a balance to your great comments is that people sometimes change over time either through personal change or circumstantial change. For example, a young person gets married while working for you and now their work becomes compromised because they now have competing interests.
Now if they are a friend or family you may have difficulty in facing the circumstances and if the situation can’t be turned around you may as the business owner suffer financially or lose a friendship through a difficult exit of the person from the business.
I too really like having friends working in our business but have had to face the circumstance described above.