We just returned from my sister-in-law’s wedding in St. John, VI. It was a spectacularly beautiful place! A huge percentage of the island is the Virgin Islands National Park and untouched by commercialism. I fell in love with it and can’t wait to go back when we can spend more time there.

I was jewelry shopping in Cruz Bay one evening before dinner and happened upon a shop called Into The Blue and purchased a blue topaz ring. Everything in the shop was amazing and I was talking to the woman who working there and she told me that the two designers, Jennifer Custshaw and Osa Notting came to visit the island and fell in love with it. They decided they needed to figure out a way to create a business so they could leave their jobs in the states and move to St. John.

They opened the shop and also sell their jewelry online. I think that’s amazing because every time we go on vacation somewhere like that we’re always trying to figure out how to stay; and they actually figured out how and did it. Now, that’s inspiring! I’m working on setting up an interview with them to hear more about their story. Stay tuned….

Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University recently wrote a book called The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t . He was doing a piece for the Harvard Business Review called More Trouble Than They’re Worth and the piece inspired an outpouring of jerk-boss emails from around the world.

His focus is on those people in the workplace who deliberately berate others and are focusing their aggression on the less powerful. Many of them treat those under them abhorrently and kiss up to their superiors. Their behavior results in decreased productivity and causes qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness.

I’ve heard many of these stories and have quite a few myself.  It made me think this is just as applicable to client relationships when you own your own business. I had a client last year who was impossible to work with. He was rude to me and very difficult to deal with. I would recruit people into his company and they would quit two weeks later saying he was absolutely impossible. He expected people to work all hours of the day including weekends and berated people if they made even the most minor mistake.

I decided to fire him as a client because dealing with him was beyond frustrating and I felt like he was costing me more than he was worth. If you keep clients who take all of your energy and frustrate you to no end, you don’t have anything left for your good clients. The beautiful thing about being in business for yourself is you get to decide.

I moved into an office last week, I’ve been working out of my house for the last two years and had gotten to a point where I wasn’t enjoying my house anymore. It felt like I was there too much and it was hard to create boundaries between work and just being at home. I was also missing the social interaction of being with other people everyday.

I am the kind of person who likes to have a lot of time to myself but I also need a balance of interaction with other people! I’m sharing an office with two other entrepreneurs and I really like the set up. I can still also work from home anytime I want to and set my own schedule, but now I have a place to go that’s separate from my home. It’s also very affordable sharing space with two other people. The best part is I can bring my dog Eifis to the office if I want to. Pretty cool!