By the Ocean
Clear 72 Degrees
5:07 a.m.
Hope can be a dangerous word. Part of the issue is I’m not sure we know what “hope” means. There seem to be a lot of ways to define that word.
I can summon a feeling of hope that is powerful and focused. I can also summon a flavor that is completely delusional.
Are they both hope? Is just one of them? I don’t know.
What I’ve learned is that the wrong flavor of “hope” in the world of business can really make everything terrible.
One of those kinds of hope is when we project it onto prospects who really aren’t.
What makes a prospect?
Hard to answer really because we all get to define what that means in our own world.
- Is a newsletter subscriber a prospect? Maybe.
- Is someone who filled out a detailed form on your website requesting more information a prospect? Many people would say so.
- Is someone who receives a project proposal a prospect? Could be.
- Is someone with whom you’ve had a phone call a prospect? Possibly.
Why is it so hard to answer a simple question? Why do we have to be so wishy-washy about trying to figure out whether someone is a prospect for your business or not?
Because we’re working with humans. That’s why.
And humans have things going on inside of them that you will never know about or understand.
You are never going to change this.
I had a guy who said he was a client, said he had sent the money, and then weeks later admitted on the phone that he had lied and HADN’T sent the money because he didn’t fully trust me. (I’d come highly recommended by one of the most famous internet gurus at the time, so this was a pretty weak excuse!) This was long ago. He finally decided to send the money and I helped him build a successful business. All of those weeks I thought the money was coming were marked with a weird type of toxic, emotional soup of my own making. I was excited for it to arrive, annoyed that it wasn’t arriving, perplexed about what could possibly be taking so long. So naive I was about human.
Back then, I still worked with people like this. Even when they showed they had serious challenges with aligning words with actions. These days, I respect myself too much to do something like that.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with something I call “The Money Line.”
In the Matrix, money is a truth teller. Until it appears, you don’t know the truth.
And that’s fine. The problems only start when we think we know, or try to know, or hope we know.
So until the money arrives, no emotional energy gets projected into the future about what is going to happen. I learned to do this after NOT doing it for 15 years.
This simple shift will save you A LOT of wasted energy.
You don’t have to have an attitude about it. You don’t have to get annoyed that humans are this way. You just have to understand how humans work. How they are made. And accept that as a simple constraint inside of this game we play called business.
There’s no reason to project HOPE in places it doesn’t belong. Save that energy and use it for something better.
Why?
Because YOU are in control of your experience of your life and business. Don’t forget that.