I know, you spend every waking hour on the business and these are the only people you see. I don’t care. A great way to screw up a promising business is a personal relationship that goes bad. This includes everyone that works for the company as an employee, as well as all third parties such as customers, vendors, board members, advisors, auditors, lawyers, accountants, distributors, agencies, and vendors. It doesn’t matter that someone doesn’t report to you. It doesn’t matter that they only do a little work for the company. Hopefully this does not warrant explanation:

A friend of mine was working for a woman’s body butter company. He called me and said, “You went to law school. I have a question.” I knew I was in trouble right there. He said he had finally met face to face his European distributor. Prior to that, his team members had interacted with her and her company. It turns out she was attractive and interesting to him. He asked if I thought it would be a problem if he pursued a relationship with her since she didn’t work the company. I said, “Of course it is a problem.” He asked why, since they had no contact except their submission of quarterly sales numbers. I told him “What if the two of you had sex, and she turned to you after and said ‘Do you need anything?’ and your response was ‘Sure, I could use stronger second quarter numbers.’”

Blurring the lines between being passionate about a business and passionate about a person can happen in the midst of the entrepreneurial venture. It is one thing for the business to be under the influence of the Four Ps, the last thing you need is your personal relationships feeling pressure, passion, pleasure and pain in the middle of the workday. Never, never, never.

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