Entrepreneurship is an emotional roller coaster. Whether you’re just stepping into the world of entrepreneurship for the first time or scaling past $30k months, you’re likely very aware of the emotional ups and downs that come with trying to make the “right decisions” to reach your desired level of success.

The Toll of Decision-Making

We all want to make the right decisions for our business and the truth is making “the right decision” often takes the most mental and emotional toll – and it makes sense because no one wants to fail. Understanding why we make the decisions we do can often help to reduce that toll, because we are able to separate our personal fears and feelings from what’s best for the business.

Emotional vs. Objective Decision-Making

So how do we know if we are making the decision from emotions or an objective point of view? Let’s start by looking at our behavior in our business.

Example:

Emotional Decision-Making: You put your heart and soul into a launch, and it didn’t pan out in the first two weeks as you had hoped, you deem your efforts a “failure”, internalize the rejection and you scrap the launch and move on to a new offer. (In reality, the launch may not have worked, but you don’t have enough information to determine why, so you are making a decision to scrap the launch based on incomplete information).

Objective Decision-Making: You put your heart and soul into a launch, and it didn’t pan out in the first two weeks as you had hoped. Instead of completely scrapping the launch, you start to get curious about what didn’t work by looking at the messaging, asking questions to those who showed interest, gathering feedback, etc.

Are You Making Decisions from Facts?

Emotional intelligence affects how you lead your business. How do you hold yourself in rejection – are you taking it personal when someone says no to an offer? How do you handle emotional moments when things feel out of your control? Take a moment to notice how your emotions are impacting three key areas in your business.

Three Areas Where Emotions Impact Your Business

1. Decision Making

The ability to make strategic decisions to grow and scale your business is often clouded by our emotional brains. Are the decisions and changes you’ve made in your business based on facts (data driven), or emotions (how you felt in that moment)?

2. Relationships in Business

Relationships are at the crux of your business. Whether it’s relationships with your team, clients, or anyone in between, as you grow and scale your business, your emotions can impact the relationships you build. Looking at this involves understanding how your emotional state of mind can impact your response to things like feedback from your clientele on what they like and don’t like about their experience in your business. Can you resolve conflict without letting your emotions take over when a client says they are ready to exit?

3. Business Capacity

Once you’ve tasted success, it can be hard to slow down out of fear of it all going away. As an established entrepreneur, you’ve got to know and understand what your capacity is and how to tweak that capacity to honor your emotional needs – i.e. saying no to unaligned clients or taking on more when you know you’re at your capacity.

Take Action

Understanding and managing the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship is crucial for long-term success. Reflect on your decision-making process, how you manage relationships, and your business capacity. 

Curious to learn more about emotions in business and how to stay rock solid during your sales process? Download the Sales Baddie Playbook and take a peek at Principle #6: Build Your Emotional Toolkit!