Deciding When You're the Business and When You're the Neighbor
Module: Is This Real Yet?
Here's the thing nobody tells you about this part: it's not a math problem. You'd think it would be. You'd think there's a formula somewhere that tells you "if you did more than four jobs this year, you're a business, and if it's three or fewer, you're just a person who's handy." There isn't. I've looked.
What there is, instead, is a decision. And it's one you have to keep making, over and over, because it doesn't stay made.
Let me tell you what I mean.
The blur is the problem, not the two things themselves
Being a business is fine. Being the neighbor who does something nice is fine too. What gets people in trouble — and I mean gets them tired, resentful, quietly annoyed at something they used to enjoy — is doing both at the same time without deciding to.
I underbid a graduation open house once because the family was tight on money and I knew it. Went in knowing I'd lose about sixty bucks on the job. That was fine. I decided that. I looked at the number, looked at the situation, and said, this one I'm doing as the neighbor, not the caterer. No regrets there.
What's not fine is when you don't decide. When you just sort of... let the price slide because someone's a friend of a friend, or because saying your actual rate out loud feels awkward, and then three months later you're doing the math on your whole year and wondering why you feel broke and taken advantage of even though you said yes to every single thing.
You weren't taken advantage of. You forgot to decide.
A practical way to actually do this
Here's what I tell people, and it's not complicated:
Before you say yes to anything, ask yourself out loud: is this a business transaction or a neighbor favor? Not silently in your head where it's easy to fudge. Out loud, or at least written down somewhere. "This is a favor" or "this is the business." Pick one.
If it's a favor, decide what that costs you and be at peace with it. Maybe it's free. Maybe it's at-cost, you just don't charge for your time. Whatever it is, you chose it, so it can't quietly bill you later in the form of resentment.
If it's the business, charge your actual rate. Not a friend discount you never agreed to consciously. Not "well they're going through a hard time so I'll just sort of... under-quote and not think about it too hard." That's the blur. That's how you end up doing business-level work for neighbor-level pay and feeling bad about both.
Buy for the business you have
While we're talking about deciding what's real: I want to say something about scale, because it connects.
Early on I bought a commercial food scale off a clearance rack. Twelve bucks, and it felt like a steal, the kind of purchase where you tell yourself you're being smart. I used it maybe twice. It sat in the garage for I don't know how long until I reorganized around it, which — if you've seen my garage, you know that's a whole project unto itself.
I bought equipment for the caterer I imagined I was going to be. Not the one actually standing in my kitchen doing eleven ward parties and one wedding luncheon a year.
That's the same mistake as the blur, just wearing a different coat. You're deciding you're further along, or bigger, or more "real" than the actual evidence says you are. Buy for the business you have right now. The scale, the LLC, the fancy invoicing — all of it can wait for the business you have. Not the one in your head at 11pm when you're feeling ambitious.
My honest opinion on this
Decide when you're the business and when you're the neighbor, and don't let the two blur without noticing. That's it. That's the whole opinion. Both are good things to be. Just be one on purpose.
I still occasionally get this wrong, by the way. Somebody asks and I say yes before my brain's caught up to whether I meant business-yes or friend-yes. I'm bad at no, ask my wife. But I catch it faster now than I used to, because I've trained myself to ask the question before I open my mouth instead of after.
Before next time
Think of one recent time you did something — cooking, crafting, fixing, whatever your thing is — for somebody and didn't quite decide going in whether it was a favor or a job. Just notice it. We'll use it in class.