We had just received an inquiry for a session that sounded heavenly. The client, the venue, the event – it was all the stuff our dreams are made of. We have a policy about emails that we imposed on ourselves when we first started our business. We reply within 24 hours no. matter. what. We appreciate people replying promptly to us, so we assume others want to be treated the same way!
About an hour after receiving the email, we sat down to better understand the session and put together a proposal for the client. One problem – there was a big elephant in the room that we couldn’t ignore. A problem that was at the front of our minds that prevented us from thinking about this dream session we were dying to get! Naturally, our conversation drifted to the problem and we spent the next hour talking through it, coming up with a solution and executing on the problem. It felt great to have that off of our backs.
It was five hours after receiving the email when we were able to click send on our proposal. When we sent it off it we felt like we had conquered the world! We solved a daunting problem that was staring us in the face and sent a proposal that we were praying we would land. We were winning!
Except we weren’t.
Twenty minutes after sending the proposal, we received an email from the client stating they had gone with someone else.
We were crushed.
It’s not that we haven’t gotten ‘no’s’ before. It’s not that we can’t take them. It was because the only reason she stated in her email was that someone had responded sooner and she booked with them.
It wasn’t over the price. It wasn’t about our quality. It was about time.
Now, we’ll be truthful here. We felt pretty good about getting the proposal sent over in five hours and still think that it was completely acceptable and well ahead of our 24 hour rule. That said, we sat down to reply just an hour after it had been sent and couldn’t help but wonder ‘what if’ we had sent that email right then and there.
We wrestled with it for a few minutes and came to a conclusion. It really wasn’t about the five hour window it took us to respond. It was about distraction. You see, the problem we wrestled with wasn’t even related to our business. It was huge and glaring in the moment, but truthfully it was only a distraction from prioritizing ourselves first. If we had replied in that moment instead of spending time and emotional energy on the other problem, we would most likely have secured the proposal.
It made us think, how often are distractions hindering us? How often to we focus our time, thoughts and energy on things that aren’t benefitting us and are maybe even hurting us? It can be the simple weakness of obsessing over every detail in an email that hangs us up. Maybe it’s something silly we just can’t let go of. In either case, learning to recognize those moments and change their trajectory is crucial. If you can identify what is happening in the moment then you have the ability to make a concerted effort to correct it and redirect that energy and emotion to something more productive!
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