Is being nice hurting your business?

Business success takes a lot of mental toughness. It's a given - mental toughness and success go hand in hand. If you're like me, more often than not, you did it wrong before you did it right.

I'm a recovering doormat. I spent a large part of my life avoiding conflict and keeping the peace. You can imagine how that impacted my business - a venture where tough conversations are the norm especially when there is wiggle room for negotiation in price. Not a good scene!!!

I like to say I'm a  work in progress because the reality is that the tendency to be seen as nice still shows up on occasion and I have to stamp it out. It really is an ongoing battle.

In my classes, I talk about the internal workings that hold us back in business - being nice is one of those "driving with the handbrake on" moments. 

Enabling behaviour - helping someone to take advantage and mistreat us. It is often a taboo phrase - let's not talk about it in case we blame the victim. Well, I needed to talk about it because I was the only one that could stop it. 

In university, I encountered the term and it made me curious because it sounded so much like me. It intrigued me so much that I went looking for books on the topic. 

Books like Melody Beattie's Codependent No More and Beverly Engel's Nice Girl Syndrome  helped me to come to terms with the fact that 

I WAS HELPING PEOPLE TO TREAT ME LIKE CRAP!!! YIKES!!!

Are you fired up yet? The mental toughness that it takes to be successful DEMANDS that we take a long hard look in the mirror and put our finger on the problem. It's not about letting anyone off the hook - there are jerks out there!! No objection here. It's about being honest with yourself. 

Enable: to make able; give power, means, competence, or ability to authorize;

We enable when we don't speak up to someone who disrespects us. We enable when we overlook again and again. We enable when we can't find our voice.

Being nice means keeping the peace a lot of the time. To the extreme in most cases. We can't keep the peace and have a difficult conversation at the same time. The problem with being nice is that even the most professional tough conversation can feel pretty scary. Well, breaking that cycle is tough for nice people but in order to be successful, you've got to learn to be professional and to be fair including treating yourself with respect.

Respect is all about moving out of victim mindset and taking responsibility for your 

part in helping others treat you with disrespect.

"Enabling" let's raise awareness about this topic and end it today.

Join us on Nov 23rd as we take a deep dive in how it impacts our biz.  

Entrepreneurship - Fixed and Growth Mindset and Visioning

Sit quietly for a few moments and imagine that its the end of the day (I'm assuming it's morning where you are). Now take a few deep breaths and think back on the day - what made it special? Did you spend time with friends? Was it the amazing round of golf in November or did you strike it rich at the casino? Did you enjoy a day on your own while the kids went on an adventure with grandma? Now.....

GET OUT THERE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!

Fourteen years ago, when I started my learning journey, had I read this opening paragraph, I would have stopped reading. Not my thing. A little hocus pocus and foo fooy. 

But here I am today not only visioning as a regular part of my day but teaching others to vision as well. 

I used to be a Fixed Mindset gal. I can still remember Sister Mary - a nun who walked around with a stick, little black Oxford shoes, bushy eyebrows and a double chin hanging over her white wimple. She would stare at me sternly when we were caught climbing back in through the bathroom window after sneaking out for a smoke. 

We weren't taught to dream - we were taught to be obedient and to become great employees. That's what the public school system did. Entrepreneurial success requires that you be a dreamer - a growth mindset characteristic. If we don't know how to do that - we need to learn. 

I've had a few meetings recently where I had an opportunity to speak about three of the core competencies of entrepreneurship that I dabble in - communication, networking and MINDSET with the latter being the one that I enjoy speaking about most.

Generally I'm chatting with people who are old school fixed mindset - having a foot in each canoe helps me to bring the conversation to a place where they get curious about what I'm saying. That's all I want to do is start the dialogue. How do we teach fixed mindset people how to think like a growth mindset person? One part of that is teaching people how to vision. A clear vision of where you are going becomes a magnet, impacts your choices and gets you there quicker.


Here's how it looks for a 30 Day Sales Challenge.

- we have set a goal for what we want to achieve.
- we do a visioning exercise where we imagine that we're at Day 30.
- we visualize that we're looking back over the month to see what it is that we did to get here.
- use your imagination.
- what needed to go well.
- what people did we need to meet.
- what did we say no to?

Now get 'er done.