4 tips to guarding the emotional labor tax
In my last post, we dove into a concept known as ‘Emotional Labor’ and how it can affect your team, your clients, your profits, and your will to carry on. Tons of great conversation on Linkedin is prompting a bit of a follow-up.
One thing that really surprised me, is that no one really knew this was a thing either. Not super shocked that a ton of business owners and entrepreneurs are out of sync with emotions and the toll it takes on their businesses.
It was asked, how do we lookout for these red flags of emotionally draining clients. And the truth is, I don’t know either. In fact, I’m not sure anyone is ever going to have a revolutionary model for preventing it. Humans are humans and we are all different.
I will say, knowing yourself, your team, and your product is really going to be key. I spent a lot of years sorting out who I am to my core. Some of this was through therapy, other efforts were just personal fascination of learning that a survey can dead on nail me to a T and I read the entire profile of who I am nodding along in awe that it’s like they wrote it FOR me.
For me, I’m a predictable helper. You can read people pleaser, and I have spent a lot of time minimizing the people-pleasing aspects to just helping others and remove my personal self worth from the equation. For my agency, this has become a core of who we are. We stole from the late Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and his model of delivering happiness. He famously said that Zappos is a customer service company that also sells shoes. So, Factor1, to me, is a business development and growth company that happens to produce websites and marketing. Knowing this about me, and about Factor1, tells me that not everyone likes to be managed, led, and handheld like this. So we look for the following.
Can they be lead?
Can this customer be lead by us? Our process? Our team? Will they trust an expert. I ask questions around this. Do they DIY everything? Did they build their current site? Do they manage it or does their staff? Do they hire other experts—CPAs, financial advisors, coaches, etc.?
The more they insist on DIY and not needing experts, coaches, etc, the more I’m out.
Do they let us have access?
We do our best work when we have a full view of the company. We ask questions about financial health, growth, trends, churn, etc. We want to know where they are going, how the company’s health is, and where we can help.
If they are unwilling to share that, even under NDA, then it’s an automatic out for us.
Do they have their goals crystal clear?
What’s their north star? What are they pushing for at all costs? It could be financial goals, customer growth goals, churn reduction, etc. All I know is they need to have something they are chasing.
If they don’t know or maybe it’s unrealistic, it’s a red flag, and I’m out.
What are they willing to change?
I’ll press deep into what they want and need, and how much are they willing to change in the company. I’ll pitch scenarios where maybe we need to burn down part of the content structure. Maybe we see a major problem in their product flow. Are they willing to let us reshape major parts of their business? As I mentioned above, if their goal is clear, these changes should be rooted in data and how it goes up against their goals.
