Can I separate my phone numbers on my android from my gmail account?

[BVDDRUMS]

I recently had a terrifying moment regarding my new Samsung phone. I set up the new phone and everything transferred over nicely. I was trading in my old phone and so I delete my 50 phone contacts before I traded it in. When I did this I realized all of my contacts were also deleted on my new phone. this was strange and frustrating but not terrifying.
I own my own small business, I use my phone for work. My office manager called me and said all of our gmail contacts are gone, this is the terrifying part, I said what? She said they are all gone, 3 separate accounts, thousands of email contacts gone, erased. Now I have figured out how to restore them from the trash thankfully. But my question is, How do I separate these 2 entities. How is it that deleting 50 phone numbers from my phone also deleted thousands of email addresses from my business.
There must be a way to separate the 50 phone contacts from the thousands of email contacts. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Dannydet]

All you had to do was to sign out of your Gmail account on the device altogether.
By deleting your contacts, you've deleted them across all devices also, since they were linked to your Gmail account in your contacts app also.

 

[BVDDRUMS]

All you had to do was to sign out of your Gmail account on the device altogether.
By deleting your contacts, you've deleted them across all devices also, since they were linked to your Gmail account in your contacts app also.

But I need my gmail for business reasons, I just don't want them linked together.

 

[Dannydet]

You're only removing your Gmail account from your old device, you don't want to delete the account.

 

[Clementine_3]

To arrange the ones you already have - tap the avatar on a contact, (you may have to click edit) tap the 3 dot menu and select 'move to another account', click the one you want to move it to. This can be done from anywhere.
To save a new contact - if you're in contacts or the dialer there is s drop-down at the top with your accounts, pick the account to add it to. If you're in Gmail it will add to the account you already in.
The phone app does pull all contacts with phone numbers regardless of where they're saved but Gmail only pulls/uses contacts saved to that account.