How To Be Passionate Without Sounding Salesy

Yeah. Maybe even you.

The leader with the big heart, the best intentions, and a deep well of caring that I know you are.

You know the one, though. The salesman.

A little too eager to help. Answering questions you didn’t ask. Already three steps ahead of you, hand on the hood, telling you why this one’s perfect for you before you’ve said a word about what you’re looking for.

And the more he wants you to want it… the more you want to leave.

None of it because he’s a bad guy. He might really believe it’s a great car. He might really want to help you.

That’s what makes it so uncomfortable.

In Part 1, Why the People You Want to Reach Keep Pulling Away, I wrote about the loop so many passionate leaders get caught in — how the very eagerness to share what you know can become the thing that pushes people away from it.

Over-explaining.

Mistaking their genuine “not now” for a reason to push the timeline.

Offering details that scare them away, instead of understanding what they care about and want to know.

This is the part that stings:
How much you care isn’t landing with the other person as “Wow, they really care about me.”

To them, it feels more like how you feel standing next to that salesman.

The thing you’d stake your name on — the insight you know in your bones would change everything for them — comes across as over-eager. Heavy. A little slimy.

It’s not because of how much you care. It’s in how you’re caring.

Case in point

Recently, I introduced two friends of mine.

One had been curious about joining a men’s group. The other has been in one for years — loves it, swears by it, has watched it change his life.

Perfect, right?

Both have big hearts and solid communities of people who love them. They have a lot in common in business, too. It seemed like an easy connect.

Then I heard back from the curious one.

“Oh, my God. Why is he so pushy? I was grossed out. It kind of sounded like a cult.”

Now — I’ve known this friend for nearly twenty years. He’s one of the most discerning people I know. Good read on people. Relationship-driven. Not reactive, not dramatic.

And the other one is genuinely one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. Has done a lot of work to blend his logical and intuitive sides. Can speak of the deep stuff in layperson’s terms. Nothing pushy about him. Nothing culty about him.

He was just excited. He loves this thing. It changed him, and he wants others to have that too.

And that pure, good-hearted excitement came across as the exact opposite of who he actually is.

So what was my friend actually reacting to?

Not the words. 

Not even the enthusiasm.

Something running underneath both — so subtle that the person carrying it seldom catches it.

There are many layers. Many ways it can show up. Many related underlying factors.

All of them can be easy to get lost in.

It’s the thing that has you talking for hours with your therapist, who also thinks you’re right on track.

You feel relieved to “get to the bottom of it” — only for you to end up repeating the same patterns. And wondering, “So if that wasn’t the core, what the heck is?!”

But actually, it’s simple.

It’s separation. Just that.

Not the word you were expecting, maybe. But stay with me, because it’s the thing underneath all of it.

Because here’s what happens when we’re lit up about something that’s changed us: without meaning to, we start to hold it as the thing we have, and they don’t. The gift we’ve found, and they haven’t yet.

We’d never say it that way. We might be a little mortified to realize we’re thinking it at all.

Because consciously, you’re probably not.

It comes from somewhere older and more deeply interwoven than thought: the unresolved places in your system that still carry a quiet undercurrent of:

I’m all alone.

What I have to give isn’t wanted.

It’s safer if they don’t see me.

You’re not thinking they’re not there yet.

Something in you is bracing to not be received — and that’s what comes through in your communication.

So if you just felt a clean, “that’s not me” — I believe you. It’s not you, at least not up in your thinking.

Stay with me anyway, because that’s exactly why it’s so hard to catch.

The subconscious carries “I’m all alone” or “It’s safer not to be seen,” and it manifests in the in-between as a subtle “I’m here, and you’re not.”

And people feel that. Instantly. Before a single word.

They usually can’t name it. My friend couldn’t — he reached for “pushy,” “grossed out,” “kind of like a cult.” But it all came from the separation.

The subconscious message tucked inside all that caring: there’s something about where you are that needs fixing, and I have where you’re supposed to be.

Nobody opens up to that.

People don’t feel safe to look at what’s hard, or admit what isn’t working, or let something new land — when they can feel you looking at them from their problem. From what’s missing in them.

They feel safe when they can feel you hold space for what’s possible for them.
For their greatness.

When they feel met as already whole — not as a project you’re excited to improve.

That’s the line the salesman doesn’t know how to cross. And it’s the line almost every big-hearted leader is missing by a hair — not for caring too little, but because their caring still has separation folded inside it.

The work to resolve this isn’t in over-editing yourself, learning new persuasion tactics, or reading more books on leadership.

You can do all of that and more, and the obstacle will remain — because the separation bias does.

You can name the beliefs.

I’m all alone.
What I have to give isn’t wanted.

You can sit with them, trace them back to where they came from, and understand them. And it’s certainly ground worth standing on.

But once we’re standing there, it becomes time to meet what’s underneath it.

Because naming what’s running isn’t the same as meeting it. And meeting it will lead us to the core.

And what opens when we do is a way of leading where your gifts don’t have to be pushed at all, because people move toward them on their own.

Ready to explore the solution to this growth epidemic? Read part three of this series, here.