“Being Easy to Work With” Is Bad for Business

Ease for others often means abandonment of yourself.

Being “easy to work with” is the business-world equivalent of the “cool girl girlfriend”, and I say that as a proudly reformed cool girl. Both roles depend on the same unspoken qualifications:

• Must have a go-with-the flow attitude: endlessly adaptable, flexible to a fault, always willing to adjust yourself before asking anyone else to adjust.

• Must be endlessly accommodating: oh, you don’t want to pay my full rate? Totally fine. You forgot our call? No worries at all! I’ll make it work.

• Must be low maintenance: minimal boundaries, minimal expectations, minimal inconvenience.

• Must be understanding and undemanding: Never ask for more time, more money, more clarity, or more respect, even when more is objectively warranted.
  

Here’s the thing: being “easy” might make you liked (though that’s not even guaranteed), but it rarely makes you respected, visible, or properly compensated. And in high-value work like coaching, consulting, creative leadership, or building a soul-led business, that’s a trade-off you can’t afford.

Because being “easy” comes at the expense of your presence, your boundaries, and your nervous system.

The cost isn’t just financial. It’s energetic. It’s spiritual. It’s somatic.

And it compounds quietly.

“Easy” Is a Trauma Response... Not a Personality Trait

Let’s name what’s often underneath the urge to be easy. For many people, “easy to work with” isn’t a branding choice. It’s a nervous system strategy.

At some point, being easy meant:

• staying safe

• keeping the peace

• not rocking the boat

• not being “too much”

• not risking rejection, conflict, or abandonment
  

Your body learned that less friction = more belonging. So of course that pattern followed you into your business.

It shows up as:

• undercharging while overdelivering

• saying yes when your body says no

• blurring boundaries so no one gets uncomfortable

• softening your voice so you don’t take up “too much” space

• tolerating misalignment because confrontation feels worse
  

This isn’t about a lack of confidence or business skills.

It’s that your nervous system has learned to equate ease for others with safety for you.

The Problem With Being Easy in Business

Here’s what most people only learn late in the game:

Business, coaching, and creative work require boundaries.

Not because you read somewhere that boundaries are “good for business,” but because they are the container that makes depth, trust, and transformation possible.

When you’re too easy:

• your work becomes harder to value

• your time becomes easier to disregard

• your expertise becomes easier to dilute
  

That said, this isn’t a reflection of the quality of your work...put simply, what lacks structure is easy to overlook.

People don’t rise to meet you, not out of malice, but because people will unconsciously take the easiest path available, and that path based on the standard you set. They follow the level of structure, clarity, and containment that’s available.

And if everything is flexible, negotiable, and endlessly accommodating, the message, however unintended, is that your work is too.

The Desire Problem

It’s not difficulty that creates friction in business. It’s unapologetic desire.

Because desire says:

• I want to be paid well

• I want to be respected

• I want my work to be taken seriously

• I want clients who rise to meet me
  

Desire has preferences.

Desire has standards. Desire is directional.

And that makes people uncomfortable. So, what often follows is a subtle form of professional slut-shaming.

Just as modesty asks women to downplay sexual desire so others feel comfortable, “ease” asks women to downplay professional desire so no one feels challenged.

An “easy” woman in business is praised for:

• Not wanting too much money.

• Not wanting too much credit.

• Not wanting too much recognition.

• Not wanting much of anything at all.

And if she does? She’s suddenly “Too much”, “Uncontained”, “Uninhibited”, or, in more familiar slut-shaming terms, promiscuous. Her ambition is treated like indulgence. Her desire, like a lack of restraint.

Though society treats this as a flaw, I want to offer a different perspective. A professionally promiscuous woman behaves as if:

• her business desires matters

• her time is valuable

• her pleasure and profit are worth pursuing

She is simply unwilling to pretend she doesn’t want what she wants. And that, ultimately, is the real disruption.

Not desire itself, but a woman who refuses to be shamed out of it.

What desire actually does for your business

Here’s the irony, when you allow desire (true, embodied desire) into your work:

• you magnetise your dream clients

• your work aligns with your values and lands deeper

• your nervous system expands to support bigger visions and greater capacity
  

Desire gives your business a spine. Just enough structure to say: "This matters. I matter. And how we do this matters too."

And people can feel that.

The reframe

You don’t need to be palatable.

You don’t need to be agreeable.

You don’t need to be endlessly accommodating.

You need to be less apologetic about wanting.

Because the opposite of “easy” isn’t “difficult”. It’s self-honouring.

And that’s how you build a business that listens to your inner rhythms, honours your nervous system, and creates a legacy.