One of my clients was telling me about a conversation he had recently, with a woman who kept insisting that he “had to be passionate about his business!”
He said she was very insistent on this point, and seemed infuriated when he calmly replied, “No, I’m not passionate about my business. I very much enjoy doing an excellent job, and making my clients happy. But I’m passionate about my wife, my friends, my personal life. I’m not passionate about dirty clothes.” (He’s involved in an aspect of the laundry business.)
I think he made a very good point. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone in an entrepreneurial training say: “You have to be enthusiastic! You have to be passionate!” as if we were all robotic wind-up cheerleaders, I would be very wealthy right now.
What is passion? Passion is “a powerful emotion or appetite, such as love, joy, hatred, or greed.” (American Heritage Dict.) A powerful emotion… Saying that you have to have a powerful emotion is like saying, “You have to be happy!” or “You must be cheerful!” It’s just not possible to be there all of the time.
In fact, we don’t have control over our emotions at all. They come in like a weather system passing through. The control we do have is how we act (or react) with an emotion. When you are angry, you can decide whether you are going to yell at someone or not. When you are enthusiastic, you can decide where to put your energy. If you are exhausted, you can decide where you are going to take a nap. (Couch, please.)
Okay, so if we let go of the cult of the “passionate,” what is left? Authenticity.
Being truly who you are, where you are. If you can be authentic, you can have a successful business. In fact, you can have a successful life.
This is a real pet peave of mine, because there is no quicker way to cut the legs out from under your business than by being dishonest. And dishonesty applies to emotional dishonesty as directly as pulling some kind of scam on your customers. And your clients can spot a scam, or emotional dishonesty, from a mile away.
What does authenticity look like? It means not hiding what is going on for you from yourself, and then responding authentically to people with whom you interact. It means being honest. Let me give you an example:
I called someone who had been interested in hiring me to get some individual support, and in the first minutes of the conversation, we asked each other, “How are you doing?” My reply was, “You know, Anthony, I’m feeling a little sad and a little ‘off’ today. I thought about not calling you yet, but it felt important to at least make a connection.”
What?! You never say that to a prospective client, or so we’re told. However, this revelation on my part opened up an honest, direct sharing that increased our connection, and deepened his trust in me, and my trust in him. It worked, because it was the only authentic response that was possible for me. If I had tried to be “passionate” it would have rang false, and it would have been another one of those shallow, 30-second conversations with prospects that end in a “no.”
Am I advocating that you spill your bleeding heart all over everyone you talk to? No, absolutely not. It has to be an authentic response. Sometimes, if your emotional weather system is a little cloudy, you may not feel like sharing with someone you are talking to. In fact, you may not feel like making the phone calls at all. In that case, you have to be authentic, too.
If you allow yourself to be authentic, then you can be fully present in your business, a rare trait today. People will trust you, because they will know where you stand. And that, after all, is what will create successful, profitable relationships with happy customers much more effectively than cookie-cutter “passion.”
Keys to The Authentic Business
• Being honest is not the same as “dumping.” If you notice in my example, I was pretty clear in myself to only say to my prospect how I was feeling, and to not bring any need to him to change me or fix me or give to me. I was just okay where I was and speaking it.
• Passion comes from clarity. There will be times, thank God, that you will be passionate. The more clarity you have around what you are doing, the more you can cultivate the stronger emotions that sometimes back it up.
• If this whole process seems unfamiliar or strange, I recommend taking an emotional “snapshot” a few times a day. Stop, notice how you are are feeling and let it be okay that you feel that way. Then look and see if your actions were congruent with how you are feeling, or if you were trying to hide how you were feeling.
