People-Pleasing IS NOT a Strategy!

I'm a born people-pleaser. 
It has let me down some terrain I should not have been on, In business and personally.
Learn to recognize when you are in frustration and what broke boundaries led you there.
Listen to the leader of a company who is breaking the habit!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Hi friends, it's good to see you again. I have decided on this topic as I've been actually doing some learning, as I always am, over this last 18 months. I actually use a corporate coach, and one of the big focuses that I've had to do over this last year is let's recognize people pleasing. I would say for most of my life, I have been a people pleaser. I am somebody who out of guilt makes choices, decisions, joins things, goes to things, um, wears things, so many things. Um, I would like to say I know what's out of the goodness of my heart. I um I think everybody by nature just wants to belong and be a part of things. But when you're a people pleaser and you're a business owner, it takes on a whole new realm of itself. So here comes Janice, who owns our foot care business. Um, I think I started about 14 years ago, and I used to be an only practitioner. I really, really struggled with people pleasing when it crossed over the line with the clients when it went into that. It's one thing to people please with your friends, but you can really get caught in that with clients, and I had to recognize it. Um I wanted sometimes to please them so much, something that say should have been$30 for a foam to help treatment or a product. It's like I wanted to please them so much. Sometimes I didn't even ask the full cost of a treatment, service, or product because I was in such a please mode that I wanted to well, sure, right? We always want repeat clients, but if you can imagine, and I mean this is over a decade ago, that I really struggled with that. I mean, the ask wasn't there. I felt almost embarrassed. Um, instead of 30, then I'd give it to them for 25. And that really made me struggle in business, especially in the early years. It's one thing to um make decisions in business such as costs, whether it be service or products, that you keep it a little lower, you're growing, and then you increase it. Um, I mean, that's a totally different um choice. That's a strategy that you're using. But what I'm talking about is when you're one-on-one with your clients and you are, oh, I've got one better. I give it to them for free. I cannot count the amount of times, I would say my first three years in business, that I was giving things away from free. I don't know what I was thinking. I think it's like, oh, well, if I do this, then you'll stay with me and you'll come with me. No, they stayed with me because I was offering amazing service. We have to value who we are and get out of that pleasing mode. So so those are some of the things I definitely, oh boy, did I struggle with in the beginning. Um, another thing too is that so when we're always in people pleaser mode, sometimes this is where our boundaries um become redefined. And most of the time kind of screwed up. Um, I lived for the personal and professionally with a good portion of my life, and the first 10 years I ran business in people pleasing mode, but that also meant my boundaries were just all over the place. I've kind of talked to you about clients. Um, another thing with clients with boundaries is it's like I know that I only want to work nine to four back then. And but that client would ask me because I was in such a people pleaser mode. So then I was doing times and days that I didn't want to do. Whereas had I not been in a people pleaser mode and kept my boundaries to the days and times I'm available, boy, if I could go back and get some of that time back. So that's something to really recognize and put in front of you. And this, you know, goes over into our personal lives too, because I'm one that just it's like the the boundaries aren't there. I'd be willing to do anything. I'm gonna talk about even staffing now, whether it be my nurse's office staff. Um, I struggled. I came from a corporate environment where I mean, maybe I'd have a hundred PSWs underneath me. It was just such a different environment. First and foremost, of course, they didn't have my cell phone and they definitely didn't have my text number, but I had um it just was business. I I guess I didn't have that back then or need to worry about it. But when you first change over and I started hiring and getting more office staff, now I'm getting out of independent mode and I'm having to work with others. And I definitely was so in please mode that I didn't have my boundaries up. Next thing you know, my cell phone is given to all of my staff. Again, I'm not talking about emergencies, I'm not talking about the um like one-off when I had one nurse, I mean she couldn't remember the PIN code and she had a client right in front of her. There there are moments. But what I'm talking about is I really blurred the line while I brought in staff um because I was in pleasing mode instead of strategizing for my company and putting very strict boundaries in place. I was having issues where um staff felt it was okay just to move their whole day um without even telling the office. So we'd be contracting them for facilities or whatnot. And um it's like you let them do it a couple times and it should be flexible, but then suddenly they're not telling you, suddenly they're moving them. You gotta be very clear. Um, since since then, we've put in a lot of policies and procedures in place, which is something that is all about the boundaries, right? So boundaries policies are really what's happening with um staff, and you may be in a position where you are expanding in your business, but I spent the last year and a half, especially making sure that I had all policies and procedures in place, and I really changed things up to not only get a good or a better uh work-life balance for myself, but also for my nurses, for my um VibCare assistant, for my office staff, because getting emails at 10 o'clock at night or texts just weren't acceptable anymore. We needed to put these things in place. So I was really worried things couldn't switch over, um, that I had people pleased, not only my clients, but um even some of my workers for long. But I can tell you anything can happen. My company in the last year has been the best run it has ever been. We just stuck to it, made changes, uh, no texting, again, emergency after 5 p.m., unless it's clinic related. Again, imagine a nurse was locked out. I mean, there are reasons, right, guys. But the bigger picture is we put those things. We there's time off request forms now. There's um no touching clients. Um, our office staff have has that, so we have more control. We we put things in place that if I could only go back, but I can't, so I'm not gonna dwell on it. But I'm just hoping to help some of you out there too. That remember that um you're offering your clients a great service, you're offering employment to the people who are working for you as long as you're a fair employer, and you know, it's not about not being kind, but you do not have to um overcross those boundaries. Uh generally, these two groups you can develop great relationships, but they're not your friends, they are not somebody who, um, you know, beyond I guess um checking in with them, there shouldn't be, yeah, like a client shouldn't be calling you. I even had, holy, now that makes me there's a good story. Good grief. Can you imagine? I actually had a nurse once who had a client bringing her in grocery bags. Why? Because she let the client know, yeah, she doesn't, you know, she's kind of doesn't have enough, and um, you know, it's always nice to get snacks for my kids. Can you imagine the overstepping? I had never seen anything like that. Um, the client actually came in with bags of groceries. Obviously, it was completely unprofessional and acceptable. Um, but everybody's got a different meter as to what they need to know is okay and not. I've had to tell nurses, please do not add clients to your Facebook page. I do not have any clients that I deal with. I have a couple suppliers, which is a different relationship altogether. Um, we communicate, especially when I'm out of country. But those are things that it's a people-pleasing mode. Um, you know, the clients are going to cross, hey, let me add you to your Facebook. Uh no. Say no, I only keep it for personal. You know what? You can even just fibble it and say, I don't do social media. There's a lot of things, but yeah, I've seen some stuff over um the last decade for sure, where people um blur the lines a lot. Um, they're they're in such that um people pleasing. Um, and a lot of times they're doing it out of guilt. I mean, guilt is the number one reason why we please and we do a lot of the things. How many times have all of us, let's talk personal life, choose to go somewhere or do something um and don't want to do it? Don't back away, I should say, from trying new things and joining because you can make the decision to not go again. But how many times do we do things because we're backed into a corner? We need to change the strategy here. We need to look at what is happening. I encourage all of you, if you can do it now, if you can do it at the end of the podcast, to get out a piece of paper and get out a pen. How many of us and divide it into two sections? Business three, business, personal, and if you need that third one, which would be staff workers, um, office staff, um, things like that. Now create a list of all the boundaries that you know are being broken in those areas. No, let's really look at it here because it's something that I was asked to do recently, and I looked at the things I I was just amazed. How are you gonna know when those boundaries are broken? You know what you're gonna feel? Frustration and you're gonna feel guilt. These are the two things that end up showing up in our body when we are in a position that we don't want to be doing things that we're doing, that it's out of our boundaries, we're just doing it to make them happy. Sit with it, write those things down when you go and um offer something to a client. Do you feel guilt of frustration after? You know you've crossed the line right there. These are things that I'm challenging you to start paying attention to in your business practice and in your home life. I have um made the resolve in this last year to move on from a lot of things. Um, sometimes even join a few things too. Uh, sometimes our people pleasing can keep us away from things that we should be doing. I know that for myself, people pleasing has even caused me to be a person I didn't want to be. I um I'd say sometimes you can even fluster with your interests or where you are um in life or what you want to be doing. I I don't know. I just I really can know for myself in this last two years. I have now a really great strong group of women that I hang out with. Do we see each other all the time? Absolutely not. Um, the amount of these people, there's no more than seven that I keep very close in my life that I can rely on. And I I realize that these are people who are not putting me into frustration or guilt. And the funny thing is with them, is because I can say no, that's a big one. Um, that they're still gonna be there for me. Um, you have to ask yourself, let's go back to clients. You gotta jump through hoops. Do you really want that client? If they're leading you to frustration and guilt and pushing your limits, it's just not worth that. I kept a lot of clients way too long that I should not have, and it definitely bit me. Um, we've also worked in this last year at looking at our clientele. Who, you know, I hate to say it, but if you're putting so much energy into those clients, or how about this? A product or a service. If it's not working, it's not working. Give it, you know, the first quarter or no three, four months, whatnot to check something out. But if it's not working and it's causing you more frustration, let it go. Recently, I actually closed down a clinic in a fire location. Why? Because it just wasn't worth it to me anymore. I found the struggle of being uh way up north was difficult replacing staff. Yes, it was profitable. I absolutely I probably you know lost about 20 grand uh that I earned off that location. But guess what? My headache's gone. And God love her. Um, my business manager for my company, Jewel, she must have cheered and slept well that night. And same with um my office staff because you have to look at yeah, what what's going on here? Um sometimes you have to let things go. I was trying to keep the nurse up there happy, the clients up there happy, the clients just didn't seem happy. No matter what we could do. I mean, there's different areas, it is what it is, but at the end of the day, it was so amazing to just like walk away and resolve from it. That was actually just recently. And how you know when you're getting rid of bad boundaries and things that you were just trying to please is that it feels really light after. So when I um closed that clinic space and I moved away from that location, I felt so light. I was like, okay, yeah, I'm walking away for some profit. But if you're not spending, it's like saying 10%, sorry, I guess it's it's like 10% of your income is coming from something that's causing you 50% of your frustration, there's something bloody wrong, ladies. There's something wrong. That's where no. If you if you're making 50% of your profit, then 50% of issues should come from that area, not the other way around. That's when you know you're you know off sync, and it could be for a service too. If the struggle is real and you've given it the proper amount of time in marketing, and um you're trying to, like I said, please yourself, please what you're sometimes in pleas mode, like we're trying to be bigger than we are, so we have to have all these services and products, and we're just in that mode, but that itself can, like I said, drag you down. So it's almost like you're pleasing yourself, if that makes sense, or you're really pleasing everyone around you because you've got this uh image that you have to obtain, and I I have to have this product and I have to have this service. I'm okay. Well, if it's gonna drag you, I mean you're getting dragged down a rabbit hole, and you're not putting the time and energy. So, like myself, we decided to move away, and now we're re-looking at okay, what pleases us the most? What is the least amount of work for us? And that's where we should be putting most of our energy and growing that area. Well, for us, our facilities and our clinics are amazing. What we learned is that we couldn't do home care in areas that we were not based with office staff and managers. That was a revelation. We stopped pleasing nurses from far away, we stopped pleasing clients that were too far and we couldn't accommodate. We chose us, we put new boundaries in place, what we were gonna do, and it has worked out absolutely well. I still, you know, I struggle with it. I struggle with making everybody happy. I'm a generally caring person, and a lot of us we're people pleasers are. We are people who it's not even necessarily about us. Um, it's that we just want to see everyone, whether it be clients, workers, and family, we want everyone to do well. But I think somewhere along the way we've got to learn that that doesn't mean giving a piece of us. So with that being said, I've been saying no a hell lot more. I have been basically I just say removing people from my life, removing activities from my life that don't suit me, adding ones that I love that please me and not somebody else. Um, I mean, I'm not kidding. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna start water aerobics next week. Why? Because I love older people, and I'm sure Betty, who's 75, is gonna be in my group as well as many other older ladies, and that's just my jam. Um, but I'm choosing to do that instead of going with the mainstream that I should be doing all these different things to work out. Um, I have a lot of people in the workout industry, so it's like, oh, I should um, you know, have to, you know, one of my girlfriends owns a yoga studio, so sometimes you feel like, well, I should be, you know, gravitating towards that. God love her. She's actually um one of my best friends, but it just wasn't my thing. So to make her happy, I had gone in the beginning, um, and then I pulled away from it. She's actually someone I see quite regularly, but she understood and she didn't even quest question me on it. Um, that's what makes a good friend. But somewhere along the way, I think that if I'm their friend, I've got to do all of these things, right? Um, sometimes supporting a friend is just listening and not necessarily having to do everything. I am a person who I can take no. If I ask you, please say no. If you don't want to come, um, if you don't want to go boating with me, if you don't want to go to lunch with me, you know what? You're busy, you've got stuff to do. Everybody's interests are a lot different. And until we really take an inventory of what's good for us, um, we we can't flip over, we can't walk away from it. I hope this talk has served everybody a little well. Um, like I said, I am queen of the people pleasing, but it took me a long journey to make some changes. I should mention just quickly. I even do it with my children and um I Kind of stepped back from that because I I started to look at well, what's the outcome of who and what I want them to be? And is it serving me to give them this, offer them this, do this for them? I mean, it can use in that aspect too. So sit back, look at the bigger picture, get out a piece of paper, write all the things that frustrate or cause you guilt that you know your boundaries are being broken, and then sit back even further. Take 10 more steps back and start to look at how can I change that narrative? How can I make steps even small to stop that? Um, you know, what do we say? It's always a broken wheel if we we don't fix it. It is a wonderful thing to be happy and to be loving and to want people to be happy. It's another thing to be a people pleaser where it breaks you apart. Don't ever forget that, ladies. I hope to see you soon on the next podcast where we talk everything business and of course advanced lifestyle and quality of life. Hope you have an amazing week.