Why I Never Work for Friends or Family… and Neither Should You

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. I earn a small commission when you click a link and make a purchase. Thanks for supporting SewingSociety.com!

Before I created SewingSociety.com, I worked as a freelance writer and editor. Friends and family knew this and sometimes asked me to edit their work. After a bad experience, I learned why it’s a bad idea to take work from friends and family. I suggest you avoid it, too, whether you sell items you make or offer any kind of service.

Don’t get me wrong. I will do writing/editing favors for friends and family, such as editing a school paper. I just won’t enter into a work relationship that involves compensation. That pretty much means no major projects that require tons of time.

Let me tell you why…

  • It ruins relationships.
  • You may never get paid.
  • It’s hard to charge what you deserve.

How I Learned the Hard Way

My neighbor lost his job which prompted him to take a break from the corporate grind and try something different. He decided to launch a coaching website where he would help people build their resumes and find work. He wrote an entire motivational course about how to market your skills to employers and land an awesome job. The plan was to sell a subscription to the motivational course.

After writing the course, my neighbor needed an editor and solicited my services. I gave him a great deal since his wife was my friend. I edited the entire course and was compensated as we had agreed.

My neighbor loved my work and decided to pull me onto another one of his endeavors. It was another website, but service oriented instead of subscription based. I obliged since the first project went so well and I didn’t think there would be any problems with the second one… I was wrong.

I edited some website content for him and then never heard back. I sent follow-up emails for three consecutive weeks and he entirely ignored them. My phone calls were also being screened. My neighbor practically disappeared — he didn’t show up to church, I never saw him outside, and I lost all communication with him. Eventually, he ended up moving to another state, and I can’t help but wonder if it was partially because he was avoiding me.

I only ended up losing about $300 on the project, but it was still upsetting.

The weird thing was that my neighbor’s wife still acted completely normal to me. I’m assuming she had no idea what was happening. I guess I could have been vocal to her in hopes of getting compensated, but I didn’t want to ruin that relationship, too. Plus, I knew her family was having a hard time financially while my neighbor was getting his business going. That’s what makes working for friends and family so hard — you feel bad about taking their money, but at the same time it hurts your business if you don’t

Have you had any bad experiences working for friends or family? I can see how handmade business owners could have a problem with this. Share your experience in the comments below.

Share this post on Pinterest!

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Gmail
  • reddit

2 Comments on “Why I Never Work for Friends or Family… and Neither Should You”

  1. I did work for my grandma and her kids cleaning up a property because a woman told her she would pay $80,000 like it is dirty or $90,000 cleaned up. My grandma said she would pay me half to clean up which is $5000. Well when my family get the $90,000 guess what they never pay me $5000. I loaded at least 12 big dump trunks and took to dump. I was out probably $2000 and they have not even offered to pay me back. They always did my dad this way also so I should have known. I just figured of all people I could trust my grandma because she was still getting $5000 and not having to touch anything. I was helping to make her and her kids extra money.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *