Today the topic is the energy of desperation in business. What inspired it is that someone emailed me the other week saying, ‘Can you please teach me how to be a blogger?’ There was even no subject line.
I didn’t respond. More importantly, it didn’t trigger me. I didn’t feel the need to explain to him why this can’t be summed up in one email, why I can’t do the work on their behalf and why he must get out there and start doing their research.
This is because I’ve worked on regulating my nervous system around these things. There are people in my inbox begging me to reduce my rates for sponsored collaborations daily, others wanting to publish guest posts on my site or to ask me general questions such as ‘how to make money’.
Often, they include excuses in their emails as to why it can’t be as easy for them as it is for others, why they haven’t even started a blog or a business yet, and so on.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you might know what I have to say about this.
It’s not a business problem. It’s a mindset problem.
Where I see opportunities for growth and income, they see barriers and hardships. They think life is unfair and business is not for everyone. While I try to embrace the challenging experiences and negative emotions that come with being self-employed, they avoid them.
I have programmed my mind to know that I’m in this for the long haul and it doesn’t matter whether it takes one more year or 20 more to reach my goals. And they want quick wins. If they start something, they give up soon after.
So we have the opposite mindsets about this. But I’m very familiar with theirs. I’ve been there and I still like to reflect on those early days and to hear the stories of other business owners who were also like that once.
Obviously, that mental state and energy isn’t what will help you change your life, start a business, create something impactful online, and have a completely different reality a year or two from now.
But what’s maybe the worst of it all is the energy of desperation.
The energy of desperation
The main examples that come to my mind are related to dating.
You can have the most attractive and successful person wanting to date you and offering you the world. But if you smell some desperation, chances are you wouldn’t want to be near them.
To be desperate is to beg for something, to make yourself so available for it that you leave everything else behind.
You change who you are so you can please the other person or so you can fit the situation without actually wanting it. It’s to force something that doesn’t seem to be working out. Desperation is to be willing to do anything to get that person or thing, but not in an empowered and determined way.
Instead, you overlook your values, you let others walk over you, you don’t even tune into your heart to check whether you truly want this and understand why. You just want it. Desperation actually repels what you desire.
In terms of relationships, you pull people away. You appear clingy, possessive, not feeling worthy, and seeking validation from others.
Potential partners can easily see through your attempts to dress, to impress, to make yourself appear better than you are. Or if you’re trying too hard, if you have no opinion, if you say yes to anything only to be with that person.
How desperation looks like in sales
In sales, desperation can look like wanting people to buy so you can feel like your product is good enough, or worse, that you are good enough. Again, you seek validation in the wrong ways. You don’t love or respect yourself enough, and instead you rely on other factors to fill those needs.
This is why running a digital product business isn’t easy. To create a quality product, to nail your messaging, and plan a whole launch, and to then execute and see what it’s like to put yourself out there and be okay with rejection.
Rejection is a keyword here in this whole conversation.
Why I seek rejection
The same goes for dating. One thing I’ve been practicing in the last year or even two is to be comfortable with rejection. It definitely made me more powerful.
If I go on a date, I don’t need a partner. I’m there because I’m interested. In a relationship, again, I don’t need the other person in order to survive, to live a good life, to be happy, or to even feel good about myself.
But I want them and I choose them every day. I learned from Stoicism about the concept of even seeking rejection so you can master it. I loved it and practiced it more last year actually than ever.
It can turn into this fun game that you practice daily or whenever you have the chance. If you’re selling anything in business, you know rejection might happen 99% of the time. And it still doesn’t mean anything about you as a person.
I’ve come to the point where I love rejection. It doesn’t scare me. It makes me grow.
So anytime I get to experience it, it’s good for my personal growth and I leave the situation as a more resilient version of myself.
But I’ve definitely been desperate both in dating and in business. It didn’t feel good and yet I didn’t know any better.
It took years of loving myself and reprogramming my subconscious mind to be able to overcome this. This mindset work is very uncomfortable though, and that’s why most people avoid it. It means getting to your biggest insecurities.
Bringing the feelings of shame, anger and guilt to the surface and dealing with them. Understanding where your lack of self-worth comes from and doing something about it.
Why I didn’t respond to that email
So back to the example I started the episode with – what this person who wants to become a blogger texted me. I’ve responded to people like that before. Now, I know it’s better not to.
It’s better for me and for them. First, because it doesn’t feel right to tell them what to do and what not to do. From the way they ask the question and the lack of more details in the email, I feel like they aren’t really talking to me, but just asking a random person a general question.
They probably haven’t tried anything yet, haven’t read anything. They must have found me through my blog, but there is plenty of content there. The guides on how to start and monetize a blog are super easy to find.
So are my courses, if they want more strategic knowledge and are ready to invest in themselves. But they didn’t take any time to go through that.
I have plenty of resources on blogging in any form. But they decided to just skip to the part where they email me one question and expect me to share some quick and easy strategy that will help them become a blogger in a day.
I prefer to attract an audience of people that are curious and doing their research, who are willing to try things, who first do the work before they ask others for direction and waste their time. Who first looked around my blog, read the story on my About page and checked out my guides on starting a blog. Then they can write a more personal email to me and ask better questions.
In cases like that, I take my time to respond. In fact, I’ve written emails that are over a thousand words long to people who show genuine interest and who ask good questions and who seem like they truly want this. That’s like free coaching and it makes me happy to do it.
But when the energy of desperation is there, I don’t want to get involved.
I like giving tough love to people and telling them all this requires 90% mindset work and probably only 10% strategy. But only when it feels right.
In the case of that person, it didn’t, so I just ignored the email.
Also read: The Weirdest Business Questions I’ve Been Asked Over The Years
What to do if you’re feeling desperate in your business
If you’re feeling desperate in some way in your business, there is a lot you can do.
First, congrats on admitting it. That’s definitely not easy. Desperation equals lack. You don’t believe you can get that thing or that you’re worthy of it.
So work on these things. Get books on topics related to that so you can learn how to manage your emotions, how to practice self-love, see abundance instead of luck, increase your confidence without seeking validation and ultimately take your power back.
Desperation is powerlessness. So write down all the big and little things you do that lead to giving your power away to other people or other factors.
For example, I was once the person who was blaming my parents for everything I didn’t like about my life. Now, I’m the person who reads about what it’s like to be the kid of a narcissistic father and to have dysfunctional family dynamics, analyzes my childhood issues with curiosity, thanks for the parents I’m given and all the lessons I have the opportunity to learn thanks to them, and heals my traumas as much as I can so that the next generation won’t have to deal with the same issues.
The energy of desperation during a launch
I was once the person who spent every minute of every day during a product launch waiting for sales to happen, feeling anxious and making it mean something about me and my business. Now, I’m convinced that whether 0 or 10 or a 100 people enroll, it changes nothing about who I am. I still do the work I’m meant to be doing.
I want to attract only the right people to each program. I would stay in business no matter what happens as I’m 100% percent committed to it, I feel worthy and love myself regardless of how the launch goes.
It comes down to nervous system regulation again and to energetic detachment, which is one of my favorite topics.
Practicing detachment
It’s a spiritual concept that has to do with wanting something but at the same time completely letting go of the need to have it and also of wanting it. Because to want something too much means that you won’t be satisfied in case you don’t have it, and you give your power away to that thing.
You can still declare what you want, focus your energy on it, be in your power and know that whether you get it or not, you’ll be fine.
It took me a long time to truly grasp that concept and I’m yet to successfully apply it to many other areas in life. But I know how powerful it is and I’m willing to keep testing it.
Recently, I did the official launch of my membership for bloggers, Fearless Bloggers, an offer I’m so passionate about and which feels like something I was destined to create. There couldn’t be a better time for it than now.
So let me share with you how things looked like in the middle of the launch. A few people had enrolled already from the waitlist launch I did a month ago and a few more people enrolled in the first part of the official launch.
But numbers are numbers. I’m neutral about them. What I care about is that these people who join are asking questions inside the membership, reading my posts, giving me feedback, sharing some glitches with me so I can immediately take care of it and so I can make the process smoother for any next person who becomes a member.
These are the people who leave comments and are learning a lot from the strategies I share inside the community and who are genuinely interested in what is going on behind the scenes of my business. And in there, I share it all with them.
This result was only possible because I let go of any expectations about the launch.
There was no sign of desperation. I was in my power and stayed true to myself. I wasn’t pushing anyone to join.
I was sailing actively but from my heart.
I didn’t make the numbers mean anything about me. I was going to show up inside the membership in the same authentic way and with valuable content whether there was 1 member or 100. I let go of control because I can’t know how something is meant to turn out.
Maybe I need to become a better version of myself first and learn how to run a membership site with a small number of people first so a year or two from now it can explode and it can turn into my main income stream.
But by then, I will have mastered that business model.
I will take good care of my members.
There won’t be any tech issues and creating consistent strategic content for them will be a no-brainer for me. How about that?
In my opinion, the launch went well. The people who joined are literally my dream customers, the dream members.
It’s exactly what I was envisioning for the membership a few months ago and what is happening inside Fearless Bloggers now is truly beyond my imagination. We’re co-creating together with the members. We’re already collaborating.
People are connecting with each other. They’re sharing ideas on what more they want to learn. I did a spontaneous discount for one of my courses and one of the members got it.
She immediately applied the strategies. Then she immediately got results which was to land some partnerships with brands and just things are really results oriented. But who you attract to your offers is directly related to the kind of energy you have during your launch, and just the energy you bring to your business every day.
The energy you bring to your business every day
Right now, for example, I’m sending long emails back and forth with a few of the members of Fearless Bloggers. We’ve become friends. They’re opening up to me about their struggles in business and this is exactly what I wanted.
Most of them say they don’t have anyone else in their life to talk to about this. So my feedback is greatly appreciated. I do sort of coaching with them inside the emails.
I answer all their questions. One of the members already interviewed me and she’s going to publish that on her website because she wants to share my story.
Beautiful things are coming out of this.
I’m not planning it. There is no specific structure. I’m going with the flow.
Although there is consistent content coming in all the time inside the community. But still there is also a lot of freedom and members are welcome to post in the open topics, to share their struggles, to brag about their wins in business, to share their new content so we can give them feedback, to ask follow-up questions on my posts and trainings. Then I can create even more content based on that and so on.
It’s a beautiful place. I sort of created the community that I was dreaming about and I’m one of the members, not just the founder. I really love logging in there every day and I can’t wait to have more members so it can be more interactive and more social in there.
For now, it’s small. It’s a bit more quiet, but that’s okay. I’m learning how to run a membership.
I’m getting into a routine of creating and posting content consistently. Eventually, I want to do one big video training per month, one pdf file such as a checklist or something per month and weekly posts with strategies or behind the scenes of my business. But in between the members are asking questions in a specific topic in the membership that I have for that, and I’m answering them.
There is a collaborations topic. We’re posting there sometimes and I’m going to be offering some opportunities only for members in there. So much is happening.
If you want to join or just check out the sales page and see it’s for you, here it is.
Final words
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Let me know how you feel about the topic – the energy of desperation in business. It’s a big one.
It took me so much effort to work on this and it’s not like I have mastered it. It’s a process that can last forever. There’s still going to be moments when I’m not feeling worthy, when I have doubts, when imposter syndrome hits, when I’m launching something new.
This energy will come for a bit, but I have the tools to not let it overwhelm me and not let it be the main energy of the launch or what I’m doing. So I hope today’s episode was helpful and inspiring. I’m gonna leave you with that.
Let me know what you think. You can always contact me and share your thoughts on this or any big breakthrough you had.
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