Managing your own psychology.
One of the most underrated skills in business is managing yourself.
Early in my career I nearly killed a deal because I couldn't control my emotions.
I was moving a young striker from Liverpool to Fulham. The player and his dad wanted £10,000 per week salary. I'd done the research. Comparable players at both clubs earned similar numbers. The ask was reasonable.
Fulham offered £2,000.
I took it personally. It felt like they were disrespecting the player and exploiting my age and inexperience. So I became adversarial. Thought that's what the situation required - Fight the player's corner. It became a complete stalemate and the relationship soured. I felt like I’d butchered it.
I had to bring in a much more senior colleague to rescue the deal. We went back into the club together a couple of days later. He listened and thanked them for their time. Said Fulham was a fantastic club and he could see a great pathway for the player. Then calmly explained we differed on value, walked through the comparable salaries we'd researched, and suggested £10,000 was reasonable based on the data.
Same information. Completely different delivery.
The tone shifted. Collaborative instead of combative.
We finished around £7,500 a week. He moved them five times further than I had using the same facts. The difference was composure.
Managing your own psychology, and not letting your emotions run the show, is the most difficult skills in business.
The external challenges are tough but the internal ones can be debilitating.
1. Get it out of your head and onto paper
When your mind is racing with doubt or anxiety, write it all down. The act of putting thoughts on paper separates you from the emotion. Turns a chaotic feeling into a set of problems you can actually analyse and solve. You stop being a victim of your own psychology and start becoming its master.
2. Define your own scoreboard
Stop measuring success against someone else's highlight reel. They have different circumstances, different goals, a different path. The only comparison that matters is you versus you yesterday. Are you learning? Are you improving your process? Are you staying true to your own goals? That's the only scoreboard that leads to sustainable success.
3. Detachment from outcome matters
When you need a deal too badly, you make concessions you shouldn't. The other side feels it. The fix is having real alternatives. When you can genuinely walk away, your entire demeanour changes. The other side feels that too.
4. Train yourself to pause
Silence is uncomfortable. Most people fill it by talking, and they give things away. When someone makes an offer, don't respond immediately. I prefer to sleep on any offer and respond in the morning. A rested prefrontal cortex handles judgement with more precision, and sleep gives better clarity
5. Seperate rejection from failure
Deals fall apart for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Managers get sacked. Budgets change. The agents who last process collapsed deals quickly and move to the next without carrying emotional baggage into the next conversation.
The great ones aren't the ones who never feel doubt or stumble. They're the ones who face it, manage it, and move on.