Photo by Marc Rafanell López on Unsplash
One of the challenges all new business owners have to face is the tendency to react emotionally to business situations. What business challenges us to do is to insert a period of reflection when we are emotionally triggered, which then helps to mitigate and inform the reaction.
Google Reviews
An example we can run into as consumers all the time is Google Reviews. One bad review may not be enough to dissuade us from doing business with someone, but a poor response from the owner to that review more often than not is the nail in the coffin. Let’s follow the path of the interaction:
- Owner sees a one star review
- Owner considers this bad for the business
- Owner also takes the review personally
- Owner responds emotionally to the review
As a business owner you want to insert a few steps between 3 and 4. They can include:
- Checking with employees/contractors to find out what their side of the story is
- Reminding yourself not to get angry or dramatic, that cool heads win here
- Check with the reviewer to get additional details of the story
- Reconstruct what happened and decide how you will respond
Now that you’ve interrupted the regular chain of events you no longer have to respond emotionally at step 4. You can either call the customer or send an email to explain and what you are going to do in response. You will then document that interaction in your public response on Google. Prospective customers will see your professionalism and sometimes give you as much credit as a five-star review in how you handled a one-star review.
Island Fever
Early on in a business journey, we are often alone and can misread the signs. We may not have been through a particular season or may not know why numbers are fluctuating. Even when looking at solid financial statements, we can make up stories about our business heading for disaster or not making payroll or any other horrifying endings. Alone on our business island, we may succumb to a mental fever.
The cure for this has two parts.
First, go back to what we alluded to above. Do not allow emotion to control your reactions to business situations.
Secondly, being alone on your business island is a bad practice. Leave the island and consult an advisory board or a peer group, then digest that feedback to head back to your island refreshed and with more context and some strategies for how to deal with what previously worried you.
Silence the Hecklers
Google Reviews can be a source of heckles, but very often what we see here at Apex is self-heckling: business owners imposing limiting beliefs on themselves. Examples include:
- “My peers are doing better”
- “I’m not good enough at sales”
- “Maybe we were lucky last year”
- “I’m letting my family down”
- “I’m out of ideas”
These heckles are emotional and so as we saw above, we need to pause and let the emotion settle, and respond to the heckles:
- “Even if my peers are doing better, I’m running my own race, according to my own metrics. Comparison is the thief of joy.”
- “If I can’t or won’t go to sales training, I need to hire that skill.”
- “Maybe we were lucky, but I’ll consult my advisory board for a second opinion rather than just rely on my own feelings.”
- “I’m only letting my family down if I’m not communicating with them on this journey.”
- As with sales, if you feel like you need help with marketing or outreach, hire it out. Don’t just sit there paralyzed.
Business ownership is personal development. You know you are well on your way to building a business for sale when you’ve put emotion in its proper place in your everyday business situations.
Do you need some help dealing with some of these challenges? We have resources we can refer you to. Give us a call.