How many small business owners do you know?

All the ones I have dealt with have survived precisely because of their ability to get along with people.

If you have no people skills your small business will fail.

Maybe a better framing is “business owners are comfortable and accustomed to having conflicts in professional environments”

An employee doesn’t show up for work a few days in a row, you have to fire them the next day. Every day they’re pushing against the grain.

A vendor isn’t behaving? A business owner isn’t scared of using conflict to resolve the situation.

I don’t know it’s a toss up for me. I would say anecdotally about 1/4 of business owners I know are community pillars and truly get along with most everyone. The other 3/4 are forced into business ownership because they struggle to take direction from anyone else.

In my experience contractors are the most likely to be friendly, and small retail the most likely to be unfriendly.

I think they get along with people but don't like being told what to do, or be told "how things are".

> If you have no people skills your small business will fail.

In fact a lot of them do fail, maybe not coincidence. Also, "people skills" in some cases means being a manipulative sociopath.