JohnJ_6_i

Business is personal: Yes I agree with Simmons, all business is personal and I believe some of the best businesses extend that feeling to their clients or customers, but I am reminded of a story that cautions how much personal involvement you should have. One of our architecture professors originally got the grant to do a public-housing project. Living in public housing growing up, this was a sector of architecture he felt very strongly about and made an effort to do the right thing. After spending lots of time on the project, the construction cost were coming in too high and parts of the project started to be value engineered out. Solid doors were replaced with hollow cores, stainless steel kitchen counter tops were replaces with cheap lament, etc, etc. The problem that many of the public housing projects done in this country are just this, cheap materials don't last and turn to slums within 15 years. He finally drew the line when the locks on the front doors were going to be down-grated to the cheapest lock possible. Knowing the future tenants would need locks that can stand up to thieves, and hold up to protect victims of domestic violence, he donated 2/3 of his payment for the project to keep the best locks. he spent a year on the project and only made a merer $15,000 on a 6-city-block development. To make matters worse, he was taken to court by the client after the project was done and lost the full payment of the work and ended out -$45,000.

The moral of the story is while business is personal, be careful not to let your emotions make bad business decisions.