Day 1 – Saying YES to “Saying NO!” – (Saying YES to ME – 30 Days 30 Stories)

My journey of reinvention began in the spring of 2003 when I finally had the courage to say NO! It has been 10 long years! I had been serving my Fortune 100 oil client for 11 years. I sold products to them for five years before a $50,000 consulting contract landed in my lap. Actually there was no contract – just a handshake – and it worked beautifully for years. I helped the employees of this company get out of pain and back to productive work by finding the source of their computer related physical pain. Then I rearranged their workspace, told them what products to buy and how to reposition their bodies so they could work in comfort. Often I would hand a $10,000 invoice to my contact and he would have it paid within two days at my request!

A few years later I was given the opportunity to bid on a much larger consulting contract and after months of discussion a $1,000,000+ contract was awarded to my company. My staff and I got to work. I hired consultants to cover the Houston and New Orleans offices. We all worked hard creating systems to efficiently serve up to 1600 employees and contractors for my client. My computer science degree came in handy. I hired a programming company and together we designed an online database and reporting system for the contract. It allowed us to enter data collected in the field and to create reports so that we would always know what was going on. We even had an appointment scheduler. It was a masterpiece and I was so damn proud of what we had created.

In the beginning of the two year contract we were paid on time for the most part. Then gradually it took longer and longer to receive payment. I started to hand the invoice to my contact and ask him if we could walk together to the accounting department to make sure it was immediately entered in the system. But even then it was slow. There was always some excuse as to why the invoice was paid late yet they still expected the highest quality service from my company and we continued to serve. They withheld tens of thousands in payment and it was beyond frustrating. At one point they owed us $60,000 and said that the only way they would pay us was if we created a new system of reporting for upper management.

I said “It is not in the contract.”
They said “It’s in the contract.”
I said “Show me where”and they did not respond.

They had the upper hand and they knew it. They were using their power to get what they wanted and I did not see another way. We created the new reports. It took us a few weeks and cost my company $10,000. Then we were paid. A couple of months later they told me that we had to cut the amount of billing in half. They broke the contact, micromanaged my staff and myself and continued to pay slow. What I thought was going to be amazing turned into a nightmare.

I let them control me for several months until I finally had the courage to say no. This was after my intuition told me to pay attention to their actions and I caught them trying to hire one of my consultants away from me. They were going to break the contract and hire her to run MY contract! But she told them “no” and I had my evidence. I told them that if they wanted me to continue keeping their employees and contractors injury free they were going to have to pay me everyday.

Yes. I put my foot down finally and I knew that I was risking losing the contract completely but I just did not have the energy to go on. I finally had the courage to say NO.

Then a meeting was called in my client’s office and something very drastic happened that was incredibly shocking to all who were in attendance and to all those who happened to be in the vicinity of the office.

Once that shocking meeting was over everything had changed for me. It was the beginning of my new journey of reinvention and I had no idea how long and difficult that journey would be to find what was going to be next for me.

I will share that story next….