The part of running a business nobody warns you about

Issue 003 — The hurt nobody tells you about when you run a small business.

This issue originally went out by email, before Still Going moved to Substack.

Hey y'all,

I know this was supposed to be bi-weekly. But I promised to keep this real and authentic and this one's been sitting on me, so I'm sending it while it's still fresh. (And yes, I got all of your responses from last time. I promise I'm going to write about every single one. I just needed to get this to you first.)

I'm going to tell you something I spent a long time pretending wasn't true.

Somewhere along the way, I got jaded by business.

For years I'd have told you it didn't bother me. That's what we do, right? Thick skin, keep moving, don't let them see it land. But if I'm being honest (the whole point of this newsletter) it bothered me a lot.

When we started Knowledge Perk, we had this huge rush of customers. People showed up, fell in love with the place, made it part of their routine. And over the years since, we've lost some of them. Dozens of core regulars. Hundreds of customers in general.

A lot of that is just business. Attrition is normal. New competition opens up. People move, habits change. I get all of that, and I made peace with it a long time ago.

What I never quite made peace with is the other kind.

The kind nobody warns you about

Some people don't leave over the coffee or the service. They leave because of something they think I said. Or did. Or some slight they perceived that I'm not even aware of.

We've had people decide I was homophobic or transphobic — never mind that some of our very best supervisors have been trans, that we openly and respectfully support people's right to live how they choose, and that two of my closest friends in this world are gay men I love dearly. None of that registers. But we hosted a worship night in our space a couple of times, so clearly I must be a hardcore extremist. People will build an entire version of you out of one data point and walk away from years of history without blinking.

I told myself that one didn't get to me either. Then last week, another customer left. Someone who'd been coming for years. Not over bad service, over a single decision I didn't make the way they wanted. And just like that, gone. Now posting about their new favorite local spot like five or six years of history never happened. Overnight.

And yes… I know it's just coffee. It's not a big deal, right? But time after time after time after time, you can't help but notice. And all those little ones quietly add up into a big hurt.

It's not the first time. And I'll be straight with you: it's frustrating, it's hurtful, and it's a part of running a business that nobody tells you about when you start. It's honestly one more reason I stepped away from social media for a while. Everything gets politicized, dramatized, taken to the furthest extreme when most things just call for a little rationality.

It's everyone's right to take their business wherever they want. But pulling support from a local place over a perceived slight from one person? That one still gets me.

"Too big for your britches"

Here's the other flavor of it.

I've been told lately that I don't do enough for the community. That I've gotten "too big for my britches" by growing the business beyond Rock Hill. As if scaling a company that now supports close to 80 jobs is something I should apologize for. (And for the record; nobody's getting rich off coffee. Trust me.)

Never mind that we do more now than we ever have. I just don't broadcast it through the company, and I post less on my own accounts these days. So the assumption is we must've gone quiet.

The truth: over the last eight years, my companies have given back (very literally) hundreds of thousands of dollars. Coffee donations, support, and time poured into the greater York County area, and Rock Hill specifically.

And it's not just the money. A lot of it is that people don't see me around the way they used to. For years I was at every event, on every board, in the middle of everything happening in Rock Hill. These days I'm rarely there and people have noticed.

But that's intentional. It's part of growth. The honest truth is that Rock Hill can't offer everything I need to keep building anymore, and stepping into bigger rooms is how I keep this thing moving forward. What stings is that instead of cheering that on, some folks would rather hold me back for daring to leave the nest.

Never mind that I still chair a foundation I helped create specifically to fill an entrepreneurial void right here…one that quietly helps dozens of business owners every single year.

And yeah. It stings that none of that seems to matter. That you can pour into a place for years and still get forgotten the second something shinier shows up.

Then it hit me

I was taking all of this way too personally.

I was internalizing something that, at the end of the day, doesn't actually say anything about me. Other people's choices — where they spend their money, who they support — are not a reflection of my character. They're not even a reflection of my company. It just is life.

Some people are rude and shortsighted. Some are selfish. Some will burn you flat regardless of every bit of loyalty that came before. That's real, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anybody.

But there are also incredible people who support you no matter what. People who get how genuinely hard it is to run a small business, and who show up anyway. I ran into a friend recently who, honestly, preached at me a little. She reminded me that what we do still matters. That it's still my job to keep giving to this community and to be honest with other business owners about the fact that I got jaded, that I've been hurt, and that I'm choosing not to live there anymore.

So that's the decision. I'm going to keep giving back quietly. Keep being a good human on purpose. Keep building something I believe will have a real impact, something people are proud to be part of.

Like Steven Bartlett puts it: you can only control your inputs. The outputs aren't your responsibility, and they aren't your business.

That's a tough one for me. I'm still working through it. But I'm starting to believe that other people's actions shouldn't have a thing to do with my intentions. So I'm going to keep moving forward, keep supporting, and keep being as much of an encouragement as I can; including by just being honest about how hard a lot of this actually is.

Your turn

If you run a business or pour yourself into anything where people can walk away without explanation, I want to hear from you.

What's the part of it nobody warned you about? Leave a comment or reply and tell me. I read every single one.

Still… not quite there yet.

Talk soon,

Ryan

Not Quite There Yet Guy

CEO & Co-Founder, Knowledge Perk | Chair, Gravity Center Foundation | EO Charlotte