9 Ways Emotional Intelligence Turns Into Ca$h
I’ve heard people say there’s no value in emotional intelligence because it doesn’t actually help you produce tangible financial success. Those same people have said, “if I can’t see the value then I’m not going to waste my time or money.”I don’t think these statements are ignorant. In business, most things you do have the ability to measure the success. For example, if you do a marketing campaign, you can look at your conversion rates and see whether or not your investment is worth it. The challenge with emotional intelligence is, there is no direct way to measure the success rate.It’s a lot like trying to measure the value of Facebook fan page five years ago. Most people said that social media was a waste of time because they were too caught up in the need to track the quick conversion. Today you have more of an ability to measure the success of a fan page, however, five years ago it was a hard sell to convince people to invest in it with either time or money. There’s no denying the fact that a fan page is vital if you’re going to succeed in business these days. With this in mind, here are nine reasons to focus on emotional health directly affects your budget, and plays a significant role in business.
1. External Success Starts With an Internal Process
If you want your income to grow or get a promotion in your job, it’s imperative you find out the internal barriers you have. You can produce some success by ignoring them, but ultimately you will either plateau or burnout. I know so many people who found themselves stepping into a level of favor and success they could only dream of after they were willing to go on a journey of facing their demons instead of running from them. Which ultimately lead to financial success.
2. You Gain More Confidence
Growing in confidence is a direct byproduct of pursuing emotional health. It may be messy for a time as you change internal beliefs, relationships, habits, etc. However, in the long run, you’ll connect to the things that make you unique. When you learn how to love and celebrate those unique things, you become unapologetic about how you’re wired. Confidence is attractive and people will naturally gravitate to you. It doesn’t matter what role you play in a business; confidence is an accelerant to increasing your income.
3. You Can Change Your Income Reality
I recently listened to an episode of The Mind Your Business podcast titled Rewriting Your Money Story with Belinda Rosenblum. The host and Belinda go into great detail on how we are all telling ourselves a money story. Not only that but how you can change the story you’re believing to be true. If I didn’t care about emotional intelligence, there’s a good chance I'd never hear about the concept of rewriting my money story. It’s clear how doing so can significantly change things for you.
4. You Learn How to Trust Your Heart (gut)
My father-in-law taught me the value of this years ago. He said, “with time you’ll learn your gut is right nine times out of 10.” It doesn’t mean you always listen to it, but in hindsight, you realize it was right. I see your gut as your heart, your intuition etc., or the subtle nudges from Holy Spirit if you’re a Christian. Emotional intelligence strengthens your ability to both hear and respond to those internal checks you get.This is especially important if you’re an entrepreneur. It’s always been easy for me to get distracted by something that excites me. Learning to pause, connect to your heart and see if the excitement is circumstantial or something you should pursue, is critical to staying focused on what will produce success.
5. Emotional Intelligence Brings Clarity
Have you ever found yourself frustrated or confused about how best to approach a situation? It could be a relationship, a boss, an opportunity, and the list goes on. These emotions could be one of two things. Either you’re being triggered from a past experience and you’re not able to address the situation clearly, or you don’t have clarity… which leads to frustration… which often leads to making less than stellar decisions. Oftentimes making decisions without clarity is directly or indirectly going to affect your income.
6. You Operate Out of Your Strengths
I can’t stress enough how important it is to know your strengths. Obviously, it impacts more than money, but you can feel like you’re running on a hamster wheel chasing money when you don’t know what they are. Here’s an example from my own life. I’m not a detailed person. This doesn’t work well when you’re trying to build websites for a living or do SEO (search engine optimization). Both are extremely detail oriented. I’ve done both in my past. I would get so frustrated because my clients would catch things I had overlooked, even though I felt like I was trying my hardest to do a good job. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t care, it was due to the fact I was trying to build a business out of my weaknesses. Compare this to what I do now, which is Life Consulting, speaking and writing. Sure there are some details with each of these, but the driver for my success in each isn’t dependant on details. I can hire people who are ‘detail oriented’ as a strength to help in those areas. Not only am I happier, but I’m also making more money… merely because I shifted my career focus to something that comes out of my strengths.
7. It’s Not One Or The Other
You learn how to balance your personal life with business because you’re more aware of your needs. It saddens me to see so many people feel like they have to choose between making money and enjoying life. My heart is to help people have longevity and learn how to enjoy the one life they get. When you make emotional intelligence a priority it equips you to think long-term, which causes you to have the right mindset for success. It may take a little longer to achieve specific financial goals. That said, once you reach them you’re actually able to enjoy the place you’ve arrived. Otherwise, you’ll become the wealthy depressed person living on an emotional island and not able to celebrate the success you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
8. Helps Gain New Customers
How can emotional health help you gain more customers? Simple. When you become emotionally healthy you develop the ability not only to understand yourself better but also the people you are trying to serve. It opens the ability to communicate their pain points in a way that shows you as the solution to their problem. When you’re able to do this it improves your conversions, which enhances your $$.
9. Enables You to Retain Customers
Gaining new customers is only half the battle. Once you get them through the ‘door’...then what? If you're in business then you know the value of lowering churn rate. Focusing on emotional intelligence shows you how to connect better and build relationships with the people you are serving. You create life-long customers when you’re able to make them feel seen, heard and valued. You learn to communicate in a way where your customers get the things they need to make the long-term commitment to your brand.Those of you who may have a hard time justifying the financial investment into emotional health, I hope you have a better understanding of the direct impact it has on your income. Obviously the healthier you become the better quality of life you have in more areas than just your finances. Today’s post is just highlighting one area of many that can improve when you make emotional intelligence a priority. The Challenge: Find a way to integrate the pursuit of emotional wholeness to a greater degree than you so far. It may be meeting one-on-one with someone, doing an online course like my 9-week intensive, joining a membership site like Blair’s Life Consulting Course, or pick up a book like Brené Brown’s Gifts of Imperfection.