I enjoy reading Donald Trump's books. I used to think the books merely provided ego boosting opportunities for him but he does give some solid advice inside and of course, being a billionaire, his thinking is very different from many. Nonetheless, I think that's lots to learn from him.
One of the advices he dispense is when someone intentionally harms you or damaged your reputation, you must GET EVEN!!, go after them and fight back. It certainly doesn't sound like the typical advice but I do see his point and agree that sometimes we just have to fight back. In doing so, you'll let the other party know that you won't let unfairness and unreasonable behaviour off so easily. This will probably deter future disturbances from them.
Being a small start up, I definitely have had my fair share of bad experiences and big bullies.
One in particular stood up in my short entrepreneur career so far. My partner and myself had made the mistake to approach a big book store chain here in Singapore before we are ready. After a few weeks from the first meeting, they started to chased us for our account opening payment. Even though the executive that we liaised with changed her words quite a bit, we still went ahead with the payment.
I did had a bad feeling about them and should have trusted my gut. That feeling was that the person wasn't a nice person and not someone very reliable. True enough, more fees were needed soon after. And when we failed to deliver our first product on time. We thought that we had better talk to them and let them know that we're truly sorry. We did indeed want to show our sincerity by working out other promotions or deals with them.
At that meeting, we saw their true colours and lack of character. Both the executive and the manger started to show us their high and mighty attitude. There were no smiles and all smirk on their faces. The manager kept insisting that their is a big company and that we had no moral / ethics in delaying the product (it was delayed by our irresponsible agent by the way). Initially, we did speak to them nicely and explain that it was due to an unforeseen circumstance and that we were truly sorry. We even offered to work out some other deals as our form of apology.
We also highlighted some of the additional fees and rules that we were not informed of beforehand even though we clarified the details before signing the contract with them. The executive merely insisted that we were informed already.
So, this torturous meeting dragged on for about another 15 mins of incessant insult by the manager. I felt it was totally uncalled for for him to insult our character even if they were angry. I can understand their anger and displeasure but I will not stand up to their insult.
Well, the meeting ended in the end when I could no longer put up with this bullying attitude from them. As I was sitting there and fuming like crazy, I broke his incessant insult by telling him off that if we already knew of and read about all the additional fees and rules, we wouldn't have signed the contract too. They were not stated in the contract in the first place and neither were we informed of the additional requirements. So, there was no need to keep insisting that we were informed beforehand and was now backing off without morals etc.
With that, the manager kept quiet for a while before saying "Too bad!" to us. I replied with "Yes, it's simply too bad for us." Seriously, that wasn't the kind of response I expected form someone his level. Being a manager and a middle age person, I would expect him to be more in control of his emotions and speech too. And being me, someone who is quick and hot tempered, I found myself pretty collected throughout the whole process.
We left the meeting shortly, with them insisting that we deliver our first batch of products as soon as they arrived. Of course, that never happen. We wrote an email telling them that we won't be able to work with them for now as we foresee more upcoming problems. It was a relationship I definitely wanted to end fast! I am surprised that they even thought that we would still want to work with them with that kind of attitude. We may be a small company but we are not that desperate.
Although we lost out in this deal, but it was my way of getting even. And it's definitely a well learnt lesson. After talking to more people in the industry, we realised they already had a very bad reputation. It was a blessing in disguise that we did not place our products there and end up with more mess to clear.
My take away lesson? Stand up to bullies but do not lower yourself to their level by insulting others and losing control of your emotions.
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