Stop Being So Emotional. Then Be More Emotional.
Friday, October 1, 2010 at 9:25AM 
Several months ago I interviewed 10 solopreneurs, all of whom wanted to find more high-paying clients. They were all intelligent, thoughtful, talented people. They were also very emotional about their businesses.
They were all over the place: Angry. Sad. Excited. Hopeful. Weary. Frustrated.
You name it, they were feeling it.
At the time, I didn't think much of it. I'm pretty emotional about my business too. My business partner (Rudy Nelson) bears the brunt of it. When I'm happy about how things are going, he gets to hear "happy, pumped-up, excited" Traci. When I'm frustrated, he hears "sad, weary, disappointed" Traci. It's kind of a roller coaster, and it goes really fast.
A few days ago, Rudy called to ask how I was feeling about our 90-day plan. I felt the range of emotions rising up, but then I stopped myself. I finally said, "I wish it didn't matter how I feel about our plan on any given day."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, one day I feel like things are going great. The next day something happens and I feel down. The day after that, I'm excited again. But how I'm feeling isn't necessarily a reliable indicator of whether or plan is a good one. I don't want to make decisions based on transient emotions."
As usual, Rudy responded with excellent advice (I choose my business partners VERY carefully). So I thought I'd share it with you.
Stop being so emotional.
When you're developing and refining a strategic plan for your business, try to take emotion out of it.
Let's say you decide to contact 15 bloggers over the next 30 days to propose guest posts. You contact the first 3 and they turn you down. You (maybe) feel personally rejected. You start to question yourself. You are disappointed, hurt, convinced that the next 12 will reject you too.
Your emotional self would probably decide to scrap the whole plan. "No one likes me or my guest posts," you think to yourself, "this was a terrible idea." And that would be it.
But if you can stop being so emotional, just for a few minutes, you might realize a few things. You might decide to treat this like a game. You might ask yourself, "why would they have turned down these posts?" And then you would try to see the world from the bloggers' point of view. Maybe the posts aren't a good fit for their audience. Maybe they're too long or too short. Maybe they're too self-promotional.
Now you have the ability to adjust your approach for the next few submissions. Try something else. See what happens.
Think about the situation like a logic problem and just try to figure out how to solve it.
Then be more emotional.
Once you've decided on a plan and you're ready to execute, it's time to bring those emotions back into the forefront.
Going back to the blogger example - you took emotions out of it when you were deciding what to do. Once you decide, however, and it's time to contact a few more bloggers, you want to pour your heart into it.
You want to show your prospects, clients, and potential partners how passionate you are about what you do. You want them to feel how excited you are about your work. You want your enthusiasm to spill out of every communication. Your emotions are now an asset, not a liability.
Don't hold back for fear of looking silly. It's okay to get a little carried away when you're talking about your product or service.
If you're thinking, "well..I'm not really that excited about my offer," that means you have the wrong offer - a subject we'll deal with in a future post.
What do you think? Good advice? Have you figured out how to balance emotions and logic when it comes to your business? How do you handle it?
Please share in the comments!
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Previous Posts in "The Bad Girls' Guide to Business" Series:
Prologue - You Are Not A Work-At-Home Mom (Even If You Are) (Video)
Day 1 - Stop Being Such A Good Girl. Seriously.
Day 2 - Wanting to Make A Lot of Money Does Not Make You A Bitch.
Day 3 - Why Bad Girls Get More Buyers (Reason #1)
Day 4 - You Are Powerful. Deal With It.
Reader Comments (2)
Again, great stuff. Common sense, really, but still needs to be said.
I'm pretty good at separating emotion from business. There have been situations -- like a client selling his company, which means I would no longer be doing work for him -- where I understand that it is business. Yes, it sucks for me, but I get why it happened and even agree with the decision. I'm a grown-up. I put myself in their shoes and look at it from their perspective.
A couple of other thoughts:
In my experience, small business owners (myself included) often don't operate from plans -- it's ALL based on emotion. I swear, one of my clients is like a 4-year-old in the toy aisle -- easily distracted by the next "shiny object" that someone mentions.
I am (or can be) passionate about what I do. That's probably why I get told I'd be great in sales, even though I hate it. It doesn't even feel like "selling" when you like something, believe in it, and are passionate about it. Just ask me about Dutch Monkey Doughnuts.
So the lesson for me is, if I had a plan, it would be easier to be more pragmatic and less at the mercy of personal rejection/elation. And perhaps I need a different kind of client. (A future post will talk about how to find and connect with them, right?)
spot on, traci!
at the moment, i'm having a difficult time leaving emotion out of anything. not good. but this too shall pass.