But what this meant for SourceBottle was that I wasn’t as responsive to many of the sponsors’ requests or to administer the service ‘on demand’ as I ordinarily would. And some people were quite annoyed with me as a result. To make things worse, this just happened to coincide with SourceBottle’s official launch in North America and a speaking engagement to Aussie ‘Mum/Mompreneurs’.
Sure, being overloaded with work or life events isn’t noteworthy. But it did make me consider how to best deal with upset clients and what I could learn from the fortnight’s fall out. And I did learn something basic, but fundamental. I learnt that direct honesty is ALWAYS the best policy.
I found that when I was honest about the reasons why I perhaps hadn’t measured up to my sponsors’ expectations, not only did they start to appreciate what I was going through, they were downright sympathetic! Sure, they still needed me to meet my obligations to them, which I did, but ‘coming clean’ actually appeared to enhance rather than hinder these relationships.
So what’s my nearly four-year-old got to do with this? Well, ‘cause he’s nothing but direct and honest, every minute of every day. Even when I wish that sometimes, just sometimes he’d call a spade a shovel, and not highlight the long strand of hair growing from nanna's chin.