I’m too nice.  I have always been that way and it’s just who I am.  I want to please people and not make a fuss.  That works well with friends and family members, but it’s not the best quality for a driven business woman who wants to make a name for herself in her industry.  Also, in what is both a benefit and a flaw, I always see the other person’s side of the story.  And not just see it, but understand and believe it. Unless you murdered someone or committed adultery, I can probably empathize with whatever you did.  Yelled at a grocery checker for no reason? You’re probably having a really bad day and I get it.  Divorce your spouse because you want them to change? There must be so much more to that story that happens behind closed doors so I get it.

But sometimes, especially in business,  you need to take a side.  You need to not empathize with the other side and be able to stand up for and defend your own position.  Like I do when it comes to my own children.  If a bully taunts my son in front of me, you better believe it I’ll bully back (yes this really happened during Spring Break camp when he was 7). Or, in a grocery parking lot while on vacation in 2014, my husband and I got into an argument about the kids and he started to walk back to the car with our daughter. I was incensed and yelled, no, screamed so the whole parking lot could clearly hear, “Bring back my daughter!!” You see, when it comes to my kids I don’t mess around, as I’m sure many parents out there would concur.

So in a recent situation where a vendor, a national demo company that we used to work with, was taking advantage of us and not providing assistance or sufficient customer service, I had to pretend that our company’s products were my children. Before getting into this state of mind, and as my regular too-nice self, I could see their side of the situation, and understand it.  They can’t guarantee the sales of their demo staff and there are so many factors that go into an in-store demo that who knows why the events turned out so poorly. I can empathize.  But in this case I had to fight back, to stand my ground and hold my position.

So I did.  I fought for more quality from their staff and told them of our expectations as a brand. I said that we cannot afford to pay for demos that sell poorly and I need them to work with us to figure out what is going wrong and how to improve. When I received no feedback or agreement that they would work with us, I knew it had to end. They were not invested in or passionate about our business so I could not continue to work with them.  I let them go on that same call that afternoon.  As my too-nice self, I would have felt bad about it. As a fighter working to have the best for my ‘children’, I didn’t regret it at all.