9 to 5
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Does anyone own their own business?
What are some things you do to ensure you separate your personal life from business?
Re: Does anyone own their own business?
I own a pet sitting business. I would never become friends with my clients on my facebook (my personal page). I am very opinionated and do not need clients seeing what I post. It's also set to private.
My clients do NOT come to MY home. I pet sit in their homes, which elimintaes them knowing where I live. Unless I pet sit for a friend (still in THEIR home), clients do not know my address.
Be professional. You can still be friendly without being friends.
What type of business do you own?
I own my own business, I teach private voice and piano lessons. I have a very hard time with this issue because I teach from my home. Right now we don't have the ideal set-up, so the entire downstairs of my home is used as my studio (includes my living room, dining room and kitchen area). We're saving up money to be able to build a home which would have a separate area for my studio, like a mother-in-law apartment type of thing.
I do a lot of performing in my community, and while I do that for my own personal gain, I also do it in a professional capacity as I am a walking billboard for my business and every show that I do can have professional implications/consequences. I am also often performing with students of mine - just last night I performed at a fundraising function where three of my students were also performing, and I had several other students in the audience. And potential new clients in the 300+person audience as well!
I probably cross the personal/professional boundary more than I should. Some of my friends and family have become students/clients of mine, and some of my clients have become friends. I teach all ages (6-60's), so for my high schoolers I feel fine being Facebook friends with them and having them text me whenever they want. Some of my adult clients are Facebook friends as well, and some aren't, depending on the nature of the relationship that we have. Because of this, I don't have any potentially inappropriate posts/pictures floating around online that could possibly damage my business.
Sorry, didn't realize that would be so long! Anyway, hopefully you'll be more successful than me at separating business from personal!
My husband and I own a car detailing business. The detail shop is on our property. It's not easybecause we own it together but we try to discuss business in the office only and during office hours. Naturally it bleeds over into our personal life, but we work hard at not letting it take over.
I also shut the work phone off an hour after closing time and open it back up an hour before opening time. It's off all day Sunday and we let all calls go to voicemail.
We can't stop customers from coming in after hours and we handle them as we would during business hours, but for the most part that hasn't been too bad to deal with. They pretty much respect shop hours.
"She said she was slightly insulted, which sort of threw me for a loop."
Too bad for her. Your personal page is just that-personal. Next time, I would ignore the friend requests, and don't give a reason. Just ignore and if she ever asks, just say "oh, I am never on my personal facebook, too busy with my business!" Do you have a facebook "like" page for your business?
I also own my own wedding planning business. I agree with you that it is hard to separate the two, however I love planning the weddings and dont mind answering emails when they come in (from current and prospective clients), vendor emails wait until my next business hours. My brides are paying for a certain level of service, and sometimes that means responding to an email at 11pm or something. I don't necesarily have to answer the question, but at least acknowledging I received the email and will get back to them promptly in the AM.
As for frieding on Facebook, you do realize you can give them a VERY view of your profile, right? Some of my brides have friended my personal and I just give them the very limited view (i..e they can't see photos or status updates etc).
We're in the same boat though, I can't afford a small office space although it would be nice to have especially for client meetings!