Integrity is Everything - By Marcela

Integrity Is Everything Twelve years is a long time to build something.

When I look at The Sugaring Room today, I don’t just see a business. I see years of my life in it. I see the days when things were going beautifully, and the days when I had absolutely no idea how I was going to keep going.

I see the risks I took, the mistakes I made, the people I trusted, the things I learned the hard way, and all the times I had to pick myself up and start again. And perhaps that is why dishonesty hurts me more than competition ever could.

I am not afraid of competition. I have never believed that someone else needs to fail for me to succeed. The sun shines for everyone. There is room for all of us to grow, to create something of our own, to make money, to succeed and to build a better life. If someone who worked beside me came to me honestly and said, “Marcela, I want to build something of my own,” I would respect that. If that person had treated me with honesty and loyalty, I would probably help them. I would share advice.

I would encourage them. I would wish them well. Because somebody else succeeding does not threaten me. But how you choose to succeed matters. Building something for yourself is one thing. Building it by quietly taking advantage of somebody else’s years of work, trust, knowledge or relationships is another. That isn’t ambition. And I think somewhere along the way, we have started confusing ambition with the willingness to do anything to get ahead. I don’t believe they are the same.

There are people who want money so badly that eventually money becomes more important than loyalty. More important than gratitude. More important than the people who helped them. More important, sometimes, than their own integrity. Thank God, money has never had that kind of power over me. Of course I want my business to succeed. I work incredibly hard for it. It supports my family, my team and a life that I have spent years building. But I could never feel proud of something I gained by betraying someone who trusted me. Because success means very little to me if I have to become someone I don’t respect in order to achieve it. And yes, I have been hurt by trusting the wrong people.

More than once. I have watched people walk away with things that were shared with them in trust. I have experienced people leaving and then contacting clients whose relationships were built through my business. I have watched years of work treated as though they were simply there for someone else to take advantage of. And I won’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. It does. Not simply because of the business impact. It hurts because I trusted them. That is the part people don’t always understand.

When you own a small business, you often give people much more than a job. You teach them. You invest your time in them. You give them opportunities. You introduce them to people you spent years earning the trust of. You want to see them improve and succeed. So when that trust is used against you, there is a human cost that doesn’t appear on a balance sheet. But there is something else twelve years have shown me.

People can take opportunities from you.

They cannot take what created those opportunities in the first place.

They cannot take your experience.

They cannot take the relationships you genuinely built.

They cannot take the reputation you spent years earning.

They cannot take the mistakes that made you wiser, the difficult years that made you stronger, or the ability to create again when something falls apart. I know this because I have had to do it before. This is not the first time somebody has left and tried to take clients with them. At the time, each experience felt enormous. And yet here I am. Maybe rebuilding really is my superpower. Not because I never get hurt. I do. Not because I don’t get angry or disappointed. I do. But eventually I get back to work. I rebuild.

And every time I rebuild, I understand a little more clearly that what keeps a business alive cannot be stolen from a contact list. It lives in the relationship between a business and the people who choose to trust it. That brings me to the people I really want this post to be about. Our clients. Some of you have been with The Sugaring Room for years.

You have seen people come and go. You have watched this business evolve. You have recommended us to your daughters, mothers, sisters, friends and colleagues. You have supported us during wonderful periods and during difficult ones. You have allowed a small local business to still be standing twelve years later. I don’t take that lightly. And when something happens that shakes my trust in people, I try to remember the hundreds of people who have given me reasons to keep believing in them. That matters far more. My faith has carried me through many chapters of my life, including this one.

I believe God sees what happens when nobody else does.

So I don’t need to build my future by destroying somebody else’s.

I don’t need to step on another person to move forward.

I don’t need someone else’s light to become smaller for mine to shine. There is room for all of us under the same sun. I just want to be able to look at what I have built and know that I built it with clean hands.

Twelve years later, I can. There have been disappointments. There have been people I wish I had never trusted. There have been moments that cost me financially and personally. But there has also been so much more good than bad. So much loyalty. So much support. So many beautiful people. And so many reasons to keep going. To every person who has genuinely supported The Sugaring Room over these twelve years: thank you. You are part of this story. As for me, I will keep doing what I have always done. I will learn. I will rebuild when I need to. I will be a little wiser about where I place my trust. But I will not allow somebody else’s lack of integrity to take mine away. And perhaps that is the one thing nobody can ever take from you: the person you choose to be when nobody is watching.

— Marcela The Sugaring Room