Turning A Negative Banker/Partner

For about 12 years I put my entrepreneurial pursuits on hold to help my father with his. I don't think that I'm talking out of turn here because he knows I think he's a little too pessimistic and sometimes negative. I'm the opposite and maybe that's why we were so successful together. In the early 80's he purchased a really bare bones type warehouse market grocery operation in Sandpoint, Idaho. Did I mention I love Idaho? I moved from Spokane to Sandpoint to manage that store, his 3rd at that time. It was immediately the most profitable and was showing steady growth. About the time he had purchased that store another local grocer had sold his store to Safeway and a few years later he decided to build another store just a stones throw away from our old beat up steel warehouse with cement floors. My Father would visit the store about every two weeks from Spokane, we would go over numbers and discuss operational changes. From the time the new store up the street began construction every visit had a similar tone. From my Fathers prospective we were going to loose 35% of our business and no matter how positive I was and no matter what I was doing to prepare, he was convinced, we were going to loose 35% of our business. While all this was going on I was trying to improve customer service by training my employees in "Selling in the Supermarket" and another training program dealing specifically with customers feelings. While I was working on that at the store, at home I was working out pretty hard. I was building up for the fight. I had no misconceptions about what we were, we were never going to be the prettier store, we were the price store. We would win or loose this fight on price and customer service, that's just the way it was. I believed we would win, and my training helped keep me in a positive frame of mind, even with the negativity in my face every other week. On my Fathers last visit before the new store up the street opened he decided he was ready to do what he could to stop our 35% loss in business. He told me on that visit "spend $100,000.00 if you have to, but don't loose market share". Now that put a smile on my face, I had everything I needed to win the war. To make a long story short, the store up the street opened and within two weeks of that I was showing moderate increases again. In that quarter I had spent $52,000.00 of my allotment. Within a couple years the new store closed down, I thought I had the final victory. That's when my Father explained to me that once a store had been built, someone would be occupying it. Sure enough, I had another competitor within a year and we started the cycle over again. Stay positive, work hard, listen to the nay sayer's when you have to, but make sure they are hearing you.