Do all my friends hate me?! 😰

🎶So no one told you life was gonna be this wayyyyy 🎶

If you clapped along, you’re ahead of the curve - today, we’re talking about friends. (With a lowercase “f” – but reply to this email if you’d like us to dissect Central Perk’s ☕️ real estate choices.)

We’ve heard it said that you find out who your real friends are when you open a business. It takes courage to go after your dreams, and you’ve got to get seriously vulnerable if you’re going to open a brick-and-mortar business because EVERYONE is (hopefully) watching 👀.

And so, it’s natural to want a bestie or two in your corner to 📣 pump you up along the way – and, it’s natural to assume your community of friends is going to be your initial customer base too.

And yet, that is rarely the case.

Monica is opening a bakery 🥧. She worked her butt off on her business plan, she diligently searched and fiercely negotiated and now she’s got the perfect spot. Her besties were eager product testers as she turned her apartment into a de facto patisserie, and they were there beaming with support on opening day.

Three months in… where are they?

Rachel is on a diet – she’s gunning for a promotion at work and she’s convinced it’s not going to happen unless she can squeeze into this season’s suede riding pants 👖 in the size on the mannequin.

Phoebe is pregnant 🤰 and is having insane food aversions. The only thing that appeals to her right now is cottage cheese.

Joey is macking 😘 on a waitress at the diner down the street. Their baked goods are awful, but that’s really beside the point.

As tempting as it is to conclude that Monica’s friends are unsupportive or even worse, disloyal, this happens to new retailers all the time. Some might argue that it’s a right of passage in small business ownership. 

The truth is it’s easier to make a friend of a customer than a customer of a friend. We don’t know why it is, but we know it to be true.

So, knowing this…

• Don’t have unrealistic expectations that your ride-or-die friends are going to be your ride-or-die customers. They won’t. The good news? You will have other superfan customers who will have no idea about what you did on that party bus back in 2011!
• Don’t get frustrated with your friends. It doesn’t feel good at first, but it’s incredibly common and doesn’t reflect on the strength or sincerity of your friendships.
• Don’t take to the internet and write thinly-veiled, passive aggressive messages berating your friends for shopping with cheaper, lower-quality competitors. It’s not a cute look! Your customer acquisition strategy is not guilting people into shopping with you – you don’t need pity sales! You’ve got a quality concept here!
• DO make an actual marketing plan that assumes your customers will be strangers who need clear messaging about who you are and why your business is awesome. It’s harder work, but it’s always better to launch with a plan than open for business and scramble to put one together when business slows down.

You’re going to lean on your friends a lot as you open your business, and you’ll lean on them even more as you weather the ups and downs of business ownership. In fact, you’ll grow to appreciate your non-transactional relationships that you know will be there no matter what.  You can’t put a price on friendship… but you can put a price on your muffins, so get out there and find someone to buy them!