I read a post on Seth Godin’s blog about the unlimited power of enthusiasm. Like a good blog post should, it kickstarted my thinking.

Enthusiasm and excitement are infectious! Would you rather be around an excited, upbeat person that’s excited for the future, or a moody, mopey person who’s complaining about their troubles?

I know my answer!

Here’s a secret—when you’re excited and enthusiastic, your confidence will soar! If you’re having challenges with your confidence level, instead of concentrating on confidence-building excercises, concentrate on building enthusiasm and passion about what you have. Get excited! You can help people with what they need! You can help them solve their business problems!

If your object is to make some sort of sale, passion and enthusiasm will close more people than cold, hard facts about what your product or service does or is.

If I’m talking to someone about building a blog site or web site for them, which do you think they’ll react more favorably to: a dull recitation about the capabilites of their finished site in terms of ROI, increased product exposure, and less employee maintentance, or this:

“We are going to do this so you can do all the changes yourself! Update this, delete that, whatever your heart desires! Change the design! [you really shouldn't, because it'll probably be butt-ugly, but hey--it's yours!] You’ll make yourself more money because everything is fresh, people who visit will see all your new stuff, and you don’t have to hire a rocket scientist to do it!”

All right—maybe that’s not a completely well-thought-out presentation, but I think you know which one would work better, regardless. Details can come later.