1 Simple Rule: Don’t Ignore Your Negative Emotions

Fear does not have to stop you, shift your focus to essential details.

Fear of failure can stop people from taking action. However, fear can also make you more aware of potential challenges that may come up during your journey. Indeed, fear helps you look for details that can go wrong and determine if your idea is feasible. So, you are probably better prepared for the entrepreneurial journey if you listen to your fear and protect yourself against the negative outcomes you worry about. However, while fear is excellent for focusing on details, don’t forget to allow more positive emotions to surface because they will allow you to look at your venture holistically. Balancing negative and positive emotions can help you see broad ideas and specific aspects of your venture.

Use your negative emotions for information.

Every venture can experience difficult times, which can create negative emotions. Although nobody wants to feel bad, be sensitive to your negative emotions and do not ignore them. They may entail important information about aspects of your venture that are currently not performing as expected. As you try to understand your negative emotions, you may also come to understand what you need to improve to bring your venture back on track again.

Your negative emotions tell you what you need as a person.

Negative emotions also hold necessary signals for you. If you feel frustrated and mad, think about the potential sources of these emotions. Do you have the impression that your outcomes do not match your inputs? Do you think others (or life more generally) treat you unfairly? Do you feel overwhelmed by your workload? All these negative emotions may be valid—at least to a certain extent. They can tell you that you need to take a break from your venture, that you need to talk to a cofounder or an employee, or that you should try to renegotiate some agreements. While it can make sense to postpone important decisions until your negative emotions have subsided, negative emotions represent essential pointers to the decisions you should make and the urgency of those decisions.

Greed may motivate you, but rely on social control to avoid escalation.

Being “hungry” and “wanting more” can positively affect entrepreneurs and inspire them to invest high effort. However, if you realize that you experience greed, you should think about the feelings triggered by greed. These feelings can be challenging to control and can potentially escalate into behaviors that put your venture (and you) at risk. Consider relying on social control mechanisms, such as highly competent cofounders or investors monitoring your venture, to avoid negative consequences while potentially enjoying the motivation from greed.

2 Simple Rule: Running a Venture Can Be Exhausting, So Make Sure You Manage Your Entrepreneurial Energy Right

Make sure you have enough energy to build your venture and ensure well-being.

Most entrepreneurs will tell you that building a venture can be exhausting. Your personal energy level is one of the most critical resources for successfully navigating the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey. While building a venture can be energizing, the journey’s high uncertainty, workload, resource constraints, and potential setbacks can severely deplete your energy. Monitor your energy levels and ensure they are sufficiently high for the challenging future.

Balance tasks that are energy draining with those that are energy fueling.

We all get more energy from some tasks than from others. Collecting positive customer feedback can fuel your energy, while talking to unsatisfied investors can drain your energy. Make sure you balance both tasks to maintain sufficient energy in your reservoir. Consider involving your cofounders more if you feel too many tasks are energy draining rather than energy fueling.

Be aware of the promises you make to yourself and others.

When building your venture, you make promises to yourself and others (cofounders, employees, investors, customers, collaboration partners) regarding what you and your venture can do. Successfully delivering on these promises can be energy fueling and provide key motivation for you. However, sometimes, you cannot fulfill what you have promised yourself, and such failures can drain your energy and lead to disillusionment with the venture. Make sure you that you make realistic promises (to self and others) and renegotiate them if they become unrealistic.

If your energy is draining, take a break from your venture to avoid fatigue.

Some entrepreneurs experience decreasing work motivation, lack of concentration, and an unhealthy sleep schedule. These can all signal that your energy is already at a low level; they signal you need a break. When this happens, try to participate in activities outside your venture more intensely. Engage in your hobbies, spend more time with your family and friends, or go on holiday. In most cases, these activities will be sufficient to recharge your batteries. Most importantly, get quality sleep—go to a sleep doctor if this is an issue. Work problems are magnified when you do not sleep enough the night before.

When you feel fatigued, turn to your venture members.

If your energy level has become too low or empty, distracting yourself from your venture is often insufficient to regain energy to work on it again. You are experiencing entrepreneurial fatigue—a persistent lack of energetic activation for building your venture. In this case, discuss your situation with your cofounders or mentors and ask them for support. Further, look out for positive signals indicating that some aspects of your venture are going well. You may not be able to fulfill all the promises you made, but you will likely be able to keep some—and perhaps more than you thought in the first place.

3 Simple Rule: Follow Your Entrepreneurial Passion

Passion can be the basis of your venture.

Many entrepreneurs highlight the relevance of passion for their ventures. You can be passionate about a specific product or problem, and your passion for working on it can ignite your entrepreneurial spirit. As an entrepreneur, you can also be passionate about specific activities that entrepreneurs engage in, such as tinkering with new ideas, setting up a venture, or nurturing your growing firm. Thinking about activities or topics you are passionate about is an excellent basis for starting a venture.

Considering activities you are passionate about, is the ideal career advice.

Entrepreneurs can be passionate about different activities and roles in their ventures. You might realize that some activities make you feel good while others don’t. For example, some entrepreneurs enjoy setting up a new venture but become bored when the venture grows and becomes more stable. Awareness of your feelings can help you make decisions for your entrepreneurial career. You can design your role(s) to align with your passion. If you mainly enjoy setting up ventures, you may want to think about a good time to exit your current venture and start a new one, becoming a serial entrepreneur. You may also be the person who is passionate about continuously developing and improving new products. In this case, it can be helpful to search for a cofounder who is passionate about nurturing your venture when it starts growing.

Be passionate, but ensure it is harmonious, not obsessive.

Harmonious passion is when a person engages in an activity because it is connected to who they are and generates positive emotions. Harmonious passion for the entrepreneurial journey can provide the energy necessary to drive the creativity process for an extended period. In contrast, a person is obsessively passionate about a task if they feel obliged to work on it to avoid negative consequences. Obsessive passion may initially provide the energy to work on your venture, but it is rarely sustainable. You may hear stories about entrepreneurs who are obsessively passionate about their ventures such that they work 20-hour days, seven days a week. If you become obsessively passionate where your self-worth is tied to the value of your venture, then other aspects of your life will deteriorate, and you may even burn out. In contrast, following your harmonious passion can help you find a path that gives you personal fulfillment and can thus help refuel your energy.

4 Simple Rule: Build Your Emotional Intelligence

Develop your emotional intelligence of self.

Develop your understanding of your emotions—how you feel in different situations—and develop some capabilities to regulate those emotions. Reflecting on past events can increase your emotional intelligence. You can also improve your emotional intelligence by gaining honest feedback from people who know you well.

Develop your emotional intelligence of others.

Develop your understanding of how others experience emotions and why they experience these emotions and be able to help them regulate their emotional reactions. Again, you can develop your emotional intelligence of others by reflecting on your interpersonal interactions and gaining feedback from those people. After an event, ask them how they felt and how you could have helped their emotional responses.

Deliver and receive honest feedback about emotions.

This emotional information exchange can help you improve your emotional intelligence, and your interaction partner can improve their emotional intelligence as well. This exchange can help strengthen your relationship with them. Indeed, having emotionally intelligent friends is a great asset. However, you have to be open to receiving honest feedback, which might be challenging sometimes. Similarly, delivering feedback to others about their emotional responses may also be challenging, but the benefits can be great.

Generate positive emotions to think creatively.

Positive emotions can increase your attentional awareness and cognitive capabilities for thinking creatively and generating innovations critical for the entrepreneurial process. You can also improve your entrepreneurial performance and feel more satisfied at work by generating positive emotions in yourself and your colleagues. Generate positive emotions (in yourself and others) to think creatively.

Build your emotional intelligence to enhance your job performance and satisfaction.

To perform well at entrepreneurial tasks, it is essential to regulate your emotions and the emotions of others. By improving your emotional intelligence, you can improve your entrepreneurial performance and help others regulate their emotions for improved performance. Regulating your emotions, improving entrepreneurial performance, and helping others perform better can make you more satisfied with your entrepreneurial career and life.

5 Simple Rule: Pursue Moderate Stress at Work to Enhance Life

Realize stress is an appraisal.

Stress results from your assessment of a situation and your concern that you do not have sufficient resources to address that situation or threat. Stress may be grounded in the facts of the situation. Still, it is also important to realize that it is your interpretation and assessment of the situation (vis-à-vis your capabilities and coping skills) that cause stress rather than the objective situation itself.

Stress means something important is at stake.

You do not feel stressed about events that are not relevant to you. You feel stress when facing challenging situations that are important to you. Telling yourself that stress signals the importance of a situation for you frames the situation in a more positive light—as a situation that requires a response and perhaps one that you can better prepare for in the future.

Stress can help you.

Stress can help you reach out to others. Reaching out to others can be critical in addressing the threat causing your stress and is also critical to a meaningful life. Stress can also encourage you to care for others, and when you reach out to others, they can care for you. Realizing such compassion can be comforting. Undergoing stress and experiencing others’ care can help you build resources for dealing with future adverse events. Stress can help build your resilience. The next time you face a similar situation (to one that initially caused stress), it may cause less stress because you will likely appraise it as less threatening, knowing you have the resources to deal with it.

Try to generate positive emotions in stressful situations.

This rule can be tricky to enact, but positive emotions increase your attentional awareness and cognitive capacity for creativity, which may help you deal with stressful situations.

Use stress to push yourself.

When you appraise a situation as critical and challenging, stress represents a trigger to exerting effort in the current situation. You can use stress to push yourself mentally, but be careful and watch for physical strain. Some stress is good, but too much can take a physical toll.

6 Simple Rule: Build Your Entrepreneurial Team’s Emotional Intelligence to Enhance Its Performance

Enhance your interpersonal understanding of those in your team.

Suppose you have a deeper understanding of the people with whom you interact. In that case, you can develop your knowledge of their emotional experiences and how to help regulate those emotional experiences and associated responses. This interpersonal knowledge may not necessarily come only from experiences in the work context. Perhaps this is why team-building exercises can be effective outside of the work context.

Reflect on your team’s processes and outcomes.

It would be best if you reflected on your team’s processes and outcomes to improve those processes for enhanced entrepreneurial performance. Reflecting on the emotional inputs and outcomes throughout the entrepreneurial process can help build team-level emotional intelligence. These reflections can be performed at the team level, but that requires a psychologically safe climate within your team. People need to feel comfortable talking about their own and others’ emotions. It would be best to create a psychologically safe environment so that your team members can reflect on the emotional aspects of their processes and outcomes.

Seek outside feedback about your team’s emotional intelligence.

While it is essential for your team to reflect and provide feedback to team members, it is also essential to receive feedback from those outside your team. This outside perspective of your team’s emotional intelligence can help provide critical feedback as an essential source of improvement and learning.

Confront team members’ errant behavior.

Being an emotionally intelligent team does not mean that the team is soft. Indeed, it is the opposite: if a team member deviates from team norms, your team must have some mechanism for communicating this source of dysfunction. It might be as simple as saying, “Did you get out of bed on the wrong side this morning?” or “Why are you so grumpy today?” The focal team member may have a reason for their negative emotions. Discussing that reason may allow you to help the individual with the underlying problem and their negative emotional experience. This ability at an emotional level represents team-level emotional intelligence.

Care for each other.

An entrepreneurial team is more effective when it cooperates and coordinates. Cooperation and coordination are enhanced when team members care for each other and the team as a whole. This caring can manifest as compassion when a team member suffers from an external event or the team suffers from an organizationally adverse event. Emotionally intelligent teams are self-compassionate and demonstrate compassion to other teams within and outside the venture.

Establish norms for emotion regulation.

Emotional intelligence can represent a capability of a venture or an entrepreneurial team if the detection, evaluation, and regulation of emotions are established through some norms, processes, or routines. For example, you may want to provide your team with an outlet for negative emotions, such as a punching bag in the corner of the office.