Professionalism in the 'at-home' Business

I’m a stickler for professionalism. I like to receive good service, and go out my way to ensure I always give good, professional service to clients.

I know some people like to have a ‘homely’ atmosphere in their businesses (especially when working from home).


I think that’s fine, in fact I thing it’s always a great idea to make the client or customer feel special, and make them feel ‘at home’ when they are conducting business in your office. But there is a line which needs to be drawn between having a homely atmosphere, and being inappropriate or unprofessional.

In my mind, an example of crossing the line is bringing up personal problems while discussing business. I experienced this recently when I met with a client to discuss some work. I had never met this person before and in the first hour of our meeting, she was getting emotional and talking about her problems at home. 


Obviously this made me very uncomfortable and, although my natural instinct would’ve been to sympathise and console her, I had to abort the conversational path she was wanting to meander down, and revert our attention back to the business at hand.


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Lucrative Games

There is so much money in sport these days:  

Football (Soccer) has always seen absurdly high wage packets dished out. David Beckham has long-since been one of the most marketable footballers in the world, with his zany haircuts and often embarrassing dress-sense (men’s sarongs?). He made a massive 27 Million pounds last year alone. 


And the most expensive footballer in world, “check-out-my-body-and-you-might-be-my-next-baby’s-mama” Christiano Ronaldo netted about a half a million less than him last season. But these aren’t even the highest-paid footballers!

Young 22-year-old Lionel Messi of Barcelona has that distinction by earning an unbelievable 29.6 Million pounds in the 2009 season. 14 Million was for playing football, and the rest came from a whole host of endorsements.

Cricket wasn’t really known for its exorbitant paycheques, until the Indian Premier league came along. 


Now all sorts of crazy money has been pumped into the sport, turning the once

“gentlemen’s game” into celebrity fanfare.

The recent Airtel Champion’s League held in South Africa demonstrated this:

Third and fourth placed South Australian Redbacks and Royal Challengers Bangalore each earned half a million US dollars. The Eastern-Cape Warriors earned 1.3 million dollars for finishing second, and the winners, the Chennai Super Kings, were paid a whopping 2.5 million dollars.

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