Is being nice holding you back?

Our premiere member experience, EVOLVE 2021 is a year-long program in which we focus on one of the four Ellivate core principles each quarter. This quarter, we’re diving deep into:

Connection

At its core, business is about connecting, collaborating with and supporting other humans. Gain more clarity on your ideal audience, uncover more authentic sales and marketing approaches, and identify how you can better meet the needs of the people you most want to serve.

This has me thinking a lot about the people we choose to work with…

Sometimes, I’ll hear some of our women talking about “that” customer. You probably know what I mean and may have one (or more!) yourself – that customer you don’t really want to work with…the one whose name you dread seeing in your Inbox or on your Caller ID…the customer that’s difficult to work with…and (to add insult to injury) they don’t seem to value what you’re giving them.

Why do we do this? Why do we engage with people we don’t enjoy working with…people who don’t even value what we’re giving them?

Certainly, everyone has their own reasons. However, I’ll take two educated guesses:

We hold a scarcity mindset. We’re afraid to lose the revenue associated with that customer. We deem the loss of any customer as “bad.” We worry that no one else will take their place.
We’re programmed to people-please. This mindset runs deep within most women I know. We don’t want to disappoint anyone. We’re afraid of confrontation. We’ve been conditioned to always be “nice,” so we feel compelled to make everyone happy, even if that comes at the expense of our own happiness. Firing a customer doesn’t feel like the “nice” thing to do.

I can speak to both of these because I’ve been there. I’m thankful that I’ve worked through a lot of these limiting beliefs…and I’m still working on them today.

I’d like to offer you a few nuggets of wisdom that I’ve learned on my own journey, in hopes they support you:

If you’re holding a scarcity mindset, I’m here to remind you that there are 7 billion people on the planet, and no two of us are alike. There are plenty of other people you could work with. You may not be able to lay eyes on them at this moment, but your ideal audience is waiting to hear from you. Unfortunately, you probably can’t find them when you’re draining all that time and energy working with people who aren’t a fit.

When you gather the courage and confidence to release a relationship that isn’t working for you, you allow yourself space to attract new, better-fitting relationships. If this sounds scary, what’s one small step you could take to get unstuck? Each small step will provide momentum for the next.

If you’re feeling the need to people please, I want you to know that you are just as worthy and valuable as any other human being on this planet (no more, no less). You do not need to sacrifice yourself to please someone who doesn’t value what you’re offering. Good relationships are collaborative. They are mutually beneficial, lifting each party to a better place that they could not reach alone.

Society trains women to “nice,” and it hasn’t served us very well. Nice is polite, which only scratches the surface. It’s not authentic. On the other hand, being kind runs deep. Kindness is truly caring and demonstrating that care through actions…even when those actions feel hard. Being kind isn’t always nice. What is the kind thing to do – for you and the challenging customer? When you release a relationship from a foundation of kindness, the process itself will feel a bit easier.