Increased regulation in my industry was making it difficult to focus on marketing, on day to day operations and on customer service.  The solution was to hire some outside company to handle those regulations for us, and simply provide us with guidelines for running our business in a compliant fashion.  For years, this relationship worked out great.

Recently, they have been passing on additional costs to me, while at the same time demanding more of my time to change my business into what they think my business should be.  They disguised this by saying that these are the new rules.  Speaking with peers in the industry did not confirm this.

My resistance to their attempts to take control of my business and monopolize my time, have been met with threats that they may consider severing their relationship with me…the business owner.  Clearly they have forgotten that I pay them, and that the business is under my control.

These women who were butthurt because of my lack of response and interest formally threatened to not renew their contract in a few months.  This gave me the idea, the leeway, and the motivation to consider the same thing myself.  In my mind, they are fired.  In their minds, they are firing me – but they forgot who pays who.

My business was here before I hired and began paying them, and it will remain here after they are gone and are replaced with another contractor.

If they were working directly in my office as an employee, they would have been fired much sooner for their own lack of interest in my concerns.

Busy times ahead, but I figured I would make the point here:  When women get together in a company and rise in the power structure, they can still make decisions based on emotion rather than logic.  A business relationship that had lasted for over 15 years hung in the balance, and was destroyed by an emotionally charged female decisionmaker who did not like being ignored.

In the short term, this will cost me money.  In the long run, it will grow my business and my wealth.

Go figure.

BVC

Yes, women make decisions based on emotions. What’s commonly overlooked is that the emotional part of the brain is the primitive part. Men grow up and use the cognitive part. Eventually, children do too and become men. Women remain children.

Can you hire a full time employee(s) to fulfill the same requirement or would the cost be too much?

I ask because I am contemplating starting my own business.

Once the dynamic of boss / worker is messed up it can rarely be fixed or reinstated. It’s actually damaging your business allowing it to continue.

Look for males to fill these roles = less hassle, more respect, more loyalty to the brand.

Good luck with it.

As usual, women are overestimating their value and worth.  She probably thinks your success in the business is all thanks to her and her company.  So she thinks she has power over you and you can not let her go.  She thinks you need her, as you also pointed out.  Sounds like their approach to relationships.  He needs me and can’t let me go so I can treat him like s~~~.

Also, men create and work within hierarchical structures.  Women create and work within webs of influence.  They try to control other people to control that person’s web of influence and thus grow their own power and influence.  It sounds like that is what she is trying to do here; control you and your web of influence.  The hierarchy of customer over supplier is a concept lost on this woman.

My advice, not that you need it, is to prepare for some revenge tactics after you get rid of them because it sounds like these women are those types of people.  They will forget business and want personal gratification by seeing you hurt after you get rid of them.  Anything they have access to within your company needs to be blocked, etc.  They may even threaten to sue.  Who knows what these women will think up.  You may want to discuss with a lawyer and look at the contract that will be terminating just to be safe.