{"id":40,"date":"2011-05-16T13:11:57","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T13:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/?p=40"},"modified":"2011-05-15T13:23:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T13:23:34","slug":"customers-enrich-a-small-business-owners-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"Customers Enrich a Small Business Owner&#8217;s Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but <strong>since leaving that huge melting pot known as higher education,\u00a0all of the people I&#8217;ve met and hang out with are pretty much like me.<\/strong>\u00a0 Roughly the same income level, kids the same age, live in the same town, share the same basic values and political beliefs.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe once in a while someone votes across party lines, giving us something to talk about for awhile.\u00a0 But, as much as we like to think we are all special and unique individuals, we are all fairly similar.\u00a0\u00a0I enjoy my friends, but sometimes while chatting at a cocktail party or relaxing at a softball game, all this sameness can make things a bit&#8230;&#8230;boring.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That brings me to one of the coolest things I love about being a Small Business owner: <strong>customer relationships enrich your life.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0In a truly Small Business, you develop an intimate relationship with your clientele.\u00a0 Over the years,\u00a0 the\u00a0formal proprietor\/customer roles\u00a0change to those of polite acquaintances, casual friends,\u00a0and sometimes trusted confidants.\u00a0\u00a0<strong>Although all of your patrons have something in common &#8211; they utilize your Small Business, most likely they come from very different backgrounds and experiences.\u00a0 This makes for a highly interesting mix of individuals with which\u00a0you might not otherwise come in contact.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>For instance, in the past ten-plus years of running my Small Business, I have met and gotten to know the following individuals.\u00a0 Some of these people merely provided interesting conversation for a few encounters, others have\u00a0become close\u00a0friends.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A scientist who spends most of his time at the South Pole<\/li>\n<li>A handful of Fortune 500 CEOs<\/li>\n<li>An American GI who liberated concentration camps at the end of WWII<\/li>\n<li>A few nationally- and internationally-acclaimed authors<\/li>\n<li>A well-known and well-respected theological writer<\/li>\n<li>A member of the 1940s Olympic alpine ski team who trained US soldiers in the 10th Mountain Division (At 91 he still rides his bike the three miles to my office.)<\/li>\n<li>A Dutch Indonesian man\u00a0who was a Japanese POW\u00a0in Burma during WWII, subsequently escaped, and\u00a0then was recruited by the Allies to lead secret intelligence missions, all before he was twenty years old (Spielberg wanted to do the movie; my friend declined)<\/li>\n<li>An apiarist (aka a beekeeper, and yes, they do get stung)<\/li>\n<li>An Academy Award winner (Oscar is heavier then he looks and slightly too big for\u00a0Barbie clothes)<\/li>\n<li>An artist who almost exclusively paints live birds; she lives with about 200 of them<\/li>\n<li>An Apollo astronaut<\/li>\n<li>An old guy who carves little baskets out of peach pits<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of these individuals are the typical\u00a0Dad in the Carpool Lane.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They range from the glamorous to the quirky.\u00a0 <strong>But, I can&#8217;t imagine under what circumstances I would have met these people in my\u00a0personal life.<\/strong>\u00a0 My Small Business has allowed me to reach beyond the confines of my own age, stage of life, religion, and socio-economic\u00a0group to meet fascinating people I probably never could have otherwise met.\u00a0 This has added depth to my otherwise small town existence and given my family\u00a0lots of awesome\u00a0opportunities, like\u00a0helping\u00a0boil\u00a0sap into maple syrup (did you know it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup? &#8211; hence the high price.)<\/p>\n<p>How has your Small Business enriched your life by introducing you to people you otherwise would not have met?\u00a0 What\u00a0opportunities have these relationships opened for you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but since leaving that huge melting pot known as higher education,\u00a0all of the people I&#8217;ve met and hang out with are pretty much like me.\u00a0 Roughly the same income level, kids the same age, live &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/?p=40\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiefcookandbottlewasher.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}