The Difficulties of Being a Successful Business Owner

Someone once told me that if you’re a business owner and nobody hates you, you must be doing something wrong.  Without a doubt, money is the most coveted item in existence.  If you have it, those who don’t will look at you with insane jealousy.  Don’t ever underestimate the magnitude in which people can hate.  One of the hardest things about being successful and having a lot of money is preventing other people from trying to get at it. 

Your vendors may send you unnecessary bills and charge you more than they charge their less successful clients.  Your friends will ask to borrow money and not pay you back because they think you don’t need it.  Your employees will start asking for a raise once they see that you’ve upgraded your Toyota to a Mercedes.  Even the government has what’s called a luxury tax, which is obnoxiously designed to take more money from the wealthy, just because they have more to take.

You may have friends, employees or business associates who you believe are loyal to you.  Maybe some of them are.  However, there is a different kind of loyalty that some people seem to overlook.  Beware of the people who may seem to be loyal to you but are rather more loyal to their need of you.  Once their needs change, so does their loyalty.  For example, your employees may seem loyal to you when they’re in your employ but how careful will they be with your proprietary secrets once they’re not?  Your friends may give you bad advice because they secretly want to see you fail.

Jealousy is part of being human and we’re all guilty of it at certain points of our lives.  Being on the opposite end of jealousy can be quite tiring and treacherous if you’re not careful.  People love to see the guy at the top come crumbling down.  When an undefeated boxing champion finally gets knocked off his throne, people can’t stop talking about it.  When a corrupt politician gets busted for his skullduggery, it’s all abuzz.  Even if there isn’t any wrongdoing to be found about a successful person, someone will make something up to make that person look bad.  This happens for the same reason why more people attend funerals than weddings.  Many people feed on misery and hate it when someone has surpassed them in life.

Being successful doesn’t mean that you will no longer have problems.  It just means you may no longer have money problems.  If you are a victim of the scenarios described above, you may have to just chalk it up to human nature.  If you’ve reached a certain level of success where some would identify you as being “rich” and you haven’t experienced this, then consider yourself to be lucky.