Nice VS. Kind in Business - The Difference is Shattering
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Episode Summary:
In this episode, we’re diving into the difference between being kind and being nice—and why this distinction can totally transform your business, your relationships, and how you show up for yourself. As heart-centered entrepreneurs, it’s so easy to fall into people-pleasing, over-delivering, or avoiding short-term discomfort. But what if leaning into kindness (and letting go of being “nice”) could actually create more stability and stronger relationships?
I also share some personal experiences… like navigating the holidays with ease, managing team dynamics, and even setting boundaries with clients- and how choosing kindness (aka honesty and clarity) over niceness might feel challenging in the moment but is actually so important in the long run.
Plus, a little holiday season pep talk, a reflection exercise for you around being kind vs nice, and a reminder to be kind to YOURSELF too as the year wraps up. ❤️
Topics:
Real examples of kindness in action with your team and clients
How being kind (not nice) helps you scale your business and show up authentically
What it looks like to show up with kindness in your business and relationships
A reminder to be gracious with yourself this holiday season—you don’t have to do it all!
Reflection exercise: What does being kind vs. nice look like in your life?
Episode Resources:
Reflection exercise: Grab a piece of paper, draw two columns for kindness vs. niceness, and brainstorm where you can show up with more kindness this week.
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Anna (00:06):
Welcome to the Heart-Centered Entrepreneur podcast. I want you to be rich. Yes, I want abundant financial success for your business, but I don't just care about your business making money. I care about you too. I want you to be rich and happiness in the impact you make in your relationships and in how you give back. I'm Anna. I built my six figure business as a side hustle while I was pregnant with my daughter in 2016. Now I've helped dozens of women do the same. I'm here to help you build a profitable heart-centered fully book business with the latest tips on sales and visibility with proven mindset hacks and sneak peeks behind the scenes with what's working right now in the online space and in my business ready to make more money with heart. Let's go.
Anna (00:49):
Let's talk about the difference between being kind and being nice and how I feel like this difference can really change the results we get in our business and also the amount of stability that we create for ourselves and our clients. I think as heart-centered entrepreneurs, our downside can be sometimes that we care so much that it can go to the side of over-delivering or people pleasing or we get the short and the stick or we are avoiding short-term discomfort for long-term gain, right? Like those type of things. So this concept I wanna share with you, and I'm just so excited to say happy December if you're listening to this in real time. My kids put up the Christmas tree, I can't remember if I shared this already, but my dad had been storing the tree, so he brought it over. My kids were like, we wanna put it up.
Anna (01:35):
And so they put it up early. It's not even Thanksgiving yet when I'm recording this and I was hesitant, but once it was up, I just feel like this little magic sort of relaxing glow came over our living room with the lights on the tree. And also there's just something about the winter that fills just peaceful and calm. So I hope that whatever is coming your way as we end the year, you are kind to yourself, you are gracious to yourself, you take care of yourself and you release the timelines, right? I'm giving, um, little holiday gifts to my kids teachers now I'm doing little neighbor gifts. I like to give these little scented soaps before Thanksgiving because for me, like I wanna relax in December. So just remember you create your, your own rules. Like you create your own timelines. Like who says you have to send a holiday card this year?
Anna (02:25):
Like really be easy and gracious to yourself and be mindful of, you know, the expectations. I feel like we put, okay, anyway, there's the saying that, I can say this too because I live in California, but there's this saying that people in New York are kind but not nice. And people in California are nice but not kind. Meaning that if someone in New York right sees you fall down, like they're gonna stop and and pick you up, right? But they're not necessarily gonna be like super sweet about it. Someone in California might be like sweet to your face but wouldn't help you in a moment of need. Obviously this is a generalization and I live in California and I would help you if you fell down, right? But it's just an interesting concept that kindness and niceness are always the same thing. And so I really encourage you to write down on a piece of paper, maybe you even pause this episode right now before you hear my thoughts and jot down what you feel like it is to be kind and what you feel like it is to be nice and for me.
Anna (03:24):
Okay? Hopefully you can unpause <laugh>. For me, kindness is honesty. Kindness has a grounded energy to it. Kindness has a long-term. Picture kindness is grandma energy. Niceness is little girl energy, which isn't always bad, right? But is short term, is impulsive, is more pleasure focused, is more sweet maybe, right? Is maybe saying what someone wants to hear in the moment but isn't what is true long term. And for me, I always wanna be kind. This is one of the biggest skills I work with my clients on when it comes to, especially as they're growing and scaling past six figures and they have team members, managing team members. One of my team philosophies, I have a little doc that talks about my team culture and values. I can like it in the show notes, but one of them is that we give frequent and direct feedback on my team, right?
Anna (04:20):
Because I want my team to always know my job is to, for my team to know how to make me happy and to be really clear, really direct, I, that's a big mistake I see a lot of CEOs making with their team is like not being direct, right? We think we're being kind when we're like, oh, I kind of want this thing and I, if you could get it done by next Friday, that would be great. And then we're like, oh my God, why didn't they get it done and blah, blah blah, right? Like instead of, Hey, I need this done in this way by Tuesday at five. And then the other person can come back and say, oh, I can't do it by Tuesday, but I can do it by Wednesday. Right? Like being direct and really clear is of service, right? I think about it in the past few years, my kids have had a few different teachers, right?
Anna (04:59):
And my favorite teachers that the kids have had have actually been on the stricter side, right? But they've been really clear what my kids on, like what the expectations are and what they can expect and what they can do and not do, versus teachers that have been like a little nicer, but that have been a little bit more like loosey goosey and like resentful at things. And like we as CEOs and our heart-centered business owners, we need to be kind to our clients. We need to be clear, we need to be direct. I give my clients feedback all the time if like, Hey, I know you sent that to me via email, but put it in our Basecamp chat, right? Or you know, what sessions wrapping up, but let's talk about that next time. It's okay to have boundaries and ultimately that creates safety for our clients.
Anna (05:39):
And it's our job to have boundaries and to be direct and to be honest. Anyway, back to the team doc. Like I'm a big fan of giving frequent feedback. So our team always knows where they stand, right? That they know that if they mess up, we can tell them right away and we can fix it. And this isn't, this is is without judgment, right? I tell my team this, right? When they start out like, I'm gonna be giving you a lot of feedback, but it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong or I'm upset with you. It just means that we're communicating and we're figuring this out, right? And so for me, kindness is direct and frequent feedback, whether that's with a team member, whether that's with a family member and being okay with, um, it upsetting people in the short term. My coach, I remember she told me very early on, like, Anna, people aren't robots, right?
Anna (06:26):
Like if you set a boundary or if you are honest, like it's okay for you to be honest, but it's also okay for that family member or that person to be upset with you, right? Obviously they can't be mean, but it's okay if they're sad. Like it's safe for other people to be upset and for you not to have to do anything or fix it. And I remember like when I was working on this, like I remember that person like was upset with me and then left the room and then came back a few hours later and everything was fine. Like they regulated themselves. And I just think this is such a great lesson that we think that short term like caretaking for others is useful. And it could be short term, but long term it really doesn't serve anyone. And trust me, I have learned this the hard way.
Anna (07:09):
I have learned this the hard way. Um, okay, so back to kindness versus niceness. Like, I think about this even when we, when we talk about ourselves, like what does it look like to be kind to ourselves versus nice? Like for me again, this is a picture of short-term gratification versus long-term benefit, right? This is like, what do we need to do for long-term future self-care? Are we taking our vitamins? Like are we making the decision that our future self is gonna be proud of? A lot of times as I'm like doing the dishes or like if I'm gonna go out for a night, sometimes I'll like set my pajamas on my bed before I, so I can come back and be taken care of, right? Like what do you need to do to be kind to your future self, to be kind to others?
Anna (07:57):
Okay, I wanna keep this one short and sweet <laugh> because I want you to spend some time reflecting on this. Again, make two columns and define what kindness means to you and what niceness means to you, right? Maybe under the kindness column you write empathy, honesty, others focused deep connection, long-term results. Maybe under niceness it's more about like harmony in the moment, right? Comfort, appearances, surface level. And again, it's not always bad to be nice, but for me, I always wanna be kind. I also want you to write down relationships that you want to figure out how to be more kind. With. For me, it's my team. I always wanna be kind with my team. I wanna be direct, I wanna be honest with my partner, with my kids, with my community, even in my free content. Like where am I afraid of like maybe offending someone and like not being really direct and potent in my content towards the person that I most want to hear.
Anna (08:59):
I'm thinking again, like kindness I feel like is others' focus because we're less worried about what they'll think about us, what they'll react to us, right? Like, like at the end of the day, I feel like niceness we're making it about us. 'cause we're like, Ooh, what if I upset someone and they're mean to me? What if I upset someone and they're unhappy with me? Who cares? Right? Instead, really making it about them and their highest good at the end of the day. Audience, team, family members, right? Where can we infuse more of this? And again, I feel like this is one of the biggest scaling skills because I think kindness is that long-term win when it comes to human behaviors, human relationships with clients, right? Like where am I willing to be kind and direct? Not just with my boundaries, but also with my work.
Anna (09:47):
Oh, that's what I was gonna say. Going back to the client piece, for me, I think as the coach, part of my job is to create the boundaries and the structure. And for me that in, in being honest, like for me that is kindness to my clients, is being able to be reliable and stable and trustworthy, right? Someone that's just nice on the surface, you can't really trust them because you don't really know if like they're being honest or if like what they're saying is gonna come back to bite you in the butt later, right? Like it just feels very unstable. And we wanna be women who are kind and grounded and full of integrity, full of intuition, full of self-trust when it comes to all the parts of our business. So <laugh>, I would love to hear from you what area, pick one area of your life you want to focus more of this on in this week. I think December is a great month to practice this and I can't wait to hear what comes out for y ou.
Anna (10:45):
Thanks
Anna (10:46):
For hanging out today. Please hit that subscribe button so you can make sure to stay updated anytime a new episode drops. And I would love for you to join me in my free Facebook community. It's called The Heart-Centered Entrepreneur. We discuss the podcast episodes. I regularly go live and do free trainings, and you may even meet your newest biz bestie so you can join at https://heartcenteredcommunity.com/ is absolutely free, and I cannot wait to see you in there.
PS: In the midst of this challenging time I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help? One of the #1 ways I support my clients is by helping them simplify their business so that they can increase the flow of money without creating extra work. In this season simplified visibility and sales is needed more than ever.
So if you’re craving personal support as you reposition your free and paid work, I’d love to help you simplify your sales process so that you can produce income in your business even during a challenging time. If you want support you can check out my services and book a free discovery call here, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.