The reason everyone got so caught up in the mania of the 1990s dotcom bubble was that we got carried away with the dreams and energy of all those entrepreneurs and start-ups. Passion can be contagious.

In late 2008, I met with one of my old employees who now lives in Boulder, Colorado.  His brother was the founder and chairman of PayPal.  Twelve years before this meeting, I got a phone call from them when they were raising money for their first company, Zip2. They also had the domain name www.x.com – think about how early they were into the Internet game!When Kimbal Musk, brother of Tesla Motors Founder Elon Musk, told me about what they were building, he was gushing with optimism, and said a few times on the call, “we don’t even know what we’re doing yet, but we’ll figure it out as we go.”

In early 2009, I shared the stage at a talk with Morten Lund, who was the initial investor and co-founder of Skype.  He’d recently gone personally bankrupt and lost $40 million of his own cash but said, “I was mad at myself for a few minutes but then realized I own parts of eighty other companies already so I know I’ll make it all back.  I don’t know how yet, but I know I will.” Those are the kinds of Uniformed Optimistic comments entrepreneurs need to be making to rally their teams through the tough times and craziness of growth.

When Jeff Bezos was launching Amazon in the mid-90s, he used to jump up and down on stage because he was so excited and also in roughly a billion dollars of debt. This stage can also be dangerous. Spending money is a bad thing to be doing during Uninformed Optimism.  It’s why so many companies blew up in the dotcom era after spending millions on Superbowl TV ads.

When you spend all this money during the optimistic yet uninformed stages, at some point you’re going to cross the curve and then you’re going to find out the real picture. When you have those feelings of manic energy, you don’t want to be doing business planning, you don’t want to be working on your budget, you don’t want to be making buying decisions, you don’t want to be making hiring decisions, right?  You don’t want to be doing your accounting, or your bookkeeping. You don’t want to be doing anything that requires you to be thinking, logical, planning, or doing any decision making.  You just can’t think straight and calm enough for that!

The stuff that you want to be doing is standing in front of groups of people recruiting, looking for new employees, telling your story, doing your guerrilla marketing, going to networking events, talking to the media. Leverage your energy in a good way by being the outward face of the company so people feel your energy and buzz.

And remember that when you’re at that Uninformed Optimism stage, do anything that’s outward facing; talking about your company, selling the story, raising money, all that is stuff to do at Uninformed Optimism.  And don’t make buying, hiring, planning, or budgeting decisions.  Harness your excitement and make people flock to you and your company.

pic: FAILblog

For more information on this topic, check out: The Emotional Roller Coaster of Entrepreneurs.

This is a scary stage in your company that comes after Informed Pessimism, and can feel like you’re standing on the edge of a building needing to jump.  It will feel like all the odds are stacked against you and that everything is going wrong.  It will be hard to get out of bed in the morning.  Sleeping at night will be close to impossible due to worries and fear.  You’ll feel like you’re paralyzed and can do little more than perhaps clean your filing cabinet drawers successfully.

You definitely do NOT want to be talking to the media, potential employees or having team meetings when you’re feeling like this.

When you start feeling yourself sliding into this Crisis of Meaning stage, you really do have to reach out for help.   Don’t wait until you’re out on a ledge to call from your cell phone and say, “Hi, I’m getting ready to jump.  Can you help me?”  They won’t get to you in time!

We all need to really understand the feelings that we’re having as we move down the roller coaster. For women entrepreneurs, this can be a little easier since they know how to tap into that emotional intelligence and intuition from years of practice, and frankly, it’s more socially acceptable for them to do this. They’re also more likely to talk to others about their feelings, whereas we guys tend to think through stuff silently from our little caves. The bottom line? We all need to listen to our bodies and brains more because they actually send out these chemical responses within our body for a reason.

That anxious feeling in your gut is a chemical reaction that your brain is triggering. Realize that your body is saying, “Slow down.” This is the time to call on your friends, business advisers, banker, accountant, and call on people you went to school with –anyone who can lend an ear—and ask them for guidance. Call on organizations likeEO or YPO, and say, “I’m feeling stressed, worried and nervous. I’m not sure what to do or where to turn next. Help!”

And don’t feel ashamed of it because every single business owner goes through this stuff.

When you’re at this stage you should do things like:

·Clean your filing cabinet drawers – seriously.  Doing a few little things can often perk people up.

·Reach out to your support groups like friends, family, your church, groups like the Entrepreneurs’ Organization or similar ones and ask them for help, advice or to just lend an ear.

·Try to set your TOP 5 daily and only work on the most important items each day.

·Write lists – lists about your strengths, lists about what you love – make lists that when you re-read them will help re-build your  confidence.

·Go to the movies. Just a complete distraction.  Two hours of escapism.

·Read an inspirational (NOT an instructional) book.

You should avoid doing things like:

·Don’t talk to people that are depressed or negative.

·Don’t turn to vices: porn, liquor and drugs will destroy you.

·Don’t think that you can “handle it” on your own.  You can’t.

Make sure you have the mental capacity, supportive people, time and resources to get you through rough patches.

And remember:  THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

For more information on this topic, check out: The Emotional Roller Coaster of Entrepreneurs.