Be Soft and Be Awesome At What You Do

As an entrepreneur (or professional), have you ever thought to yourself, “I am too soft for this. My skin is too thin. I care too much.”

I am a tender-hearted person, who experiences life emotions-first.?

Here’s how that looks in the everyday: I tear up or cry at the world’s panoply of inspiring and desperate offerings each and every day.?

My instincts are to give before I get.?

I am not naturally predisposed toward numbers or the sciences.?

I find it challenging (it requires extra, specific focus) to emotionally disengage from people and set boundaries.

I have been blessed to be a sounding board and safe place for strangers or dear loved ones as they share their deepest emotions.?

I care and worry often and incessantly at times.?

When I was very young, before the world imprinted an idea of what a business owner looked like, I saw myself as an entrepreneur.

I had many visions of me sitting at a desk in a fancy office creating and running the show as a fashion designer.

Once our culture and society prescribed what entrepreneurship looked like to me, that vision of me faded.?

Our culture told me entrepreneurs were cut-throat, apathetic, conniving, male, white, well-funded, good at numbers, product-driven and motivated by making money.?

I was none of those things (except white).

There was another version of entrepreneurship I was also exposed to. The one where the entrepreneur was a wide-eyed optimist, forever living on the edge, and never really making it, with multiple failures under his belt. Growing up in the 80s and 90s in the boom and bust real estate-driven economy of Phoenix, my family knew a lot of these. They were the kind of people that grown-ups, responsible and stable adults, shook their heads at when they heard about yet another business failure.?

I didn’t want to be that, either.?

So for years, I disassociated with the idea of entrepreneurship.?

The notion of entrepreneurship scared me, destabilized my idea of how my life would unfold.?

I believe we are called to return to the dreams of our childhood again and again along our journeys.?

In 2011, I became an entrepreneur (although I didn’t call it that at the time). Then in 2016, I made it more official as I cofounded and launched Root + River.?

I did this in a moment of soulful clarity that didn’t take into account how I as an emotional, highly creative, empathetic, feelings-, experience- and a relationship-driven person would fill the role of an entrepreneur.?

And how I would combat or push against the old models.

And what kind of difficulty that would bring my way.

And what it would cost me.

And how I would need to support myself through it.?

Those are all things I have had to learn as I go.?

Over the years, I have also learned how to fill out other sides of the sketch of me, the entrepreneur.

I learned about money management and operations, gained knowledge of accounting and finance and profit and loss to be skilled at running a business.

I learned how to make difficult decisions that involved people, I have tried and tried to create an environment where people enjoy their work and are given opportunities to grow.?

I’m a good student and love to learn so I have taken on these challenges in that spirit.?

This skill-building has made it technically easier to be an entrepreneur and to succeed.?

Yet it hasn’t erased my softness.?

Do I want it to?

I wrestle with that question.

On hard days, I think,

“Wouldn’t it be nice to not have all these feelings to feel? Wouldn’t it be nice to be more automatic and impassive?”

On flourishing days, when I receive feedback about what our work has meant to other human beings and I feel it down to my core, I’m good.?

We live in a time when the entire notion of entrepreneurship and work is being re-invented.

Founders are becoming more diverse.

Funding is loosening up. (A work in progress.)

Support for entrepreneurs is expanding. (Although we still have a long way to go.)

What’s also changing is the character of entrepreneurship, the way our society defines it for us, and how we as individual professionals define it ourselves.

You don’t have to be the hardened and hard-charging hungry wolf entrepreneur.?

You don’t have to sell your soul to sell a service.

It doesn’t have to happen overnight.

You don’t need a glossy, always-available persona with the perfect lighting.

You can be soft and be awesome at what you do.?

You can take your time and pay your bills.?

You can grow in seasons.?

And it’s a good thing to be soft. It keeps you in contact with the people you serve. It makes you thoughtful about the lives you touch and the way you go about doing so.?

It slows you down so you can breathe and remain grounded.

And it’s a normal part of being a human.

So if you need to pull over the car and cry a little after that tough meeting, it doesn’t mean your softness is a shortcoming.?

It means it is how you process tough moments.?

It means you’re soft enough to know when to care for yourself – and carry on.?

Emily Soccorsy is owner and lead brand strategist of?Root + River, a brand strategy team that believes brand is how others experience your soul. Root + River provides brand messaging, language, positioning and bespoke content for brands, leaders and teams who want to change the world, their industry or their community with their brand. She's also a speaker, and an award-winning writer, who feels most alive when creating word alchemy or visual art. Emily is the co-author of?Rooting Up: Essays in Modern Branding?and is the author of the newsletter,?Thought Cookie.?Emily has been a lifelong empath, and a daughter, mother, partner, sister, mentor, creator and sometime baker and runner.

She is a member of?Ellivate Alliance,?The W Source?, and a contributor and guest of the?EntreArchitect??community. She is a cohost of?Reclaiming Ourselves?podcast and a participant in?Love and Healing Work.