Emotionally decoupling from your business
Hi. All the solo entrepreneurs / freelancers I know are pretty much consumed by their businesses.
Firstly because a high proportion of us are neurodivergent and our businesses become our special interests / hyperfixations.
Secondly because so many of us are banking on our business freeing us from whatever current employment hell we’re enduring, so we pour ourselves out on its altar every day.
And thirdly because, as hard as running a business can be, the rollercoaster is exciting. Being the boss feels good. In other words, we’re getting a lot of our self-worth and dopamine from the hustle.
(Read that last bit again, because I want to make sure you got it.)
It’s normal to invest a huuuge amount of time, money, energy and hope into your business. You started it with the notion that it was going to be the portal to your dreams—that you’d be doing “passion” work on flexible hours and being paid good money for it (which is not about the money; it’s about being present for your loved ones and being purposeful with your life and a whole lot of other stuff tied up with that). The more you sink into in the business, the more emotionally invested you become in it paying off one day. So you work harder and longer hours and hate yourself more than if you’d just stuck with your dumb 9-5 job.
Here’s why that hustle shrinks your business instead of growing it.
I’m so sorry to tell you this, but -
Dopamine seeking kills your marketing. If all your emotional fulfilment comes from your business, you’re going to mess the business up trying to keep yourself interested. You’ll spend hours tinkering on busy work that gives you quick little dopamine hits (like choosing fonts) instead of doing the emotionally vulnerable work that actually generates income (talking about yourself, inviting people to work with you). You’ll entertain yourself by creating new offers and switching up your message every five minutes, instead of doing the boring grind of talking about the same offer over and over again until people hear it enough times to buy it.
Not to mention the tedious repetition of systems, administration and finances that keep your business running smoothly and your client experience stable.
Creating a single great offer and marketing it in a repetitive way that brings steady results is boring, emotionally raw and unappealing. So you’ll need to get your dopamine outside your business if you want to be successful inside it.
Desperation kills your sales. If you’re showing up on inquiry calls with all your hopes pinned on that one person signing up with you, they’ll sense the pressure and want to get out. If you parlay every social interaction into a conversation about your services, people will stop wanting to talk to you at parties. You must cultivate carefree, “I’m not bothered whether you work with me” energy. I want you to scatter authentic generosity - low-cost services, giveaways, free content, birthday wishes, compliments, messages of love - into your community like seeds, having the self-trust that some people will come back and buy some time but it doesn’t matter who or when. So you can treat your audience like real human friends instead of looking at them all with cartoon dollar signs in your eyes.
Detachment from the sale is what reassures people that you’re the real deal and they can trust you with their money. You really don’t have to push for it. But you’ll need predictability and a bit of boredom in your business in order to be truly detached.
So this is the real hard work: get your emotional fulfilment elsewhere.
1. Get a ‘project’ outside your business that lights you up. I was going to say get a hobby or something fun, but I think it’s the project aspect that’s key. You need to find a place to invest some identity and get some dopamine, not just in a low-stakes “it’s fun to be at the pub on a Sunday night” kind of way, but with the intensity of “I started a discussion club about a TV show and I’m in charge of dropping the episode talking points in the facebook group every week.” Something specific, something a little unhinged, something that teaches you or challenges you and connects you with other people.
Examples from my own life include:
Yes I actually did start a book club about a TV show (we called it “show club”)
I was in a gin club that ran monthly for a couple of years
Currently I’m working on getting really good at bachata dancing
2. Schedule the fun so you can’t keep working all the time. If you booked and paid for a class, or if you agreed to meet up with a friend, or if you’re the self-appointed president of Show Club, you’ll be forced to stop work in order to show up for those things. Don’t trust yourself to regulate your own working hours. Commit yourself to situations where you’ll be letting somebody down, losing a booking deposit or getting kicked out of a club if you don’t turn up.
3. Do your most intense “selling” asynchronously. For me, a really powerful way to emotionally decouple from my business is to set up sales and marketing content ahead of time. You can schedule almost all your output (emails, social posts - you can even draft your insta stories 7 days out). So plan your launches or new offers in advance, write the content, schedule it, and then forget about it.
Since I have ADHD, I quite often literally forget. So when I see a marketing campaign from myself pop up, I’m pleasantly surprised and not that emotionally invested. I haven’t been anxiously checking my DMs every five minutes to see if anybody wants to buy my thing. This is the ultimate in low-stress, low-energy business growth: you pour the effort in for a short period, schedule it, then go live your life. Later, the campaign goes out and some people buy things from you. What a gift from Past You to Present You.
