It’s the deal that falls apart at the last minute. The video that comes back wrong. The client who changes their mind.
In a market as challenging as this one, it’s part of the job.
The question, according to Caroline Bolderston, isn’t how to prevent these moments.
It’s what you do in the seconds after they happen.
Recently, Caroline was working with a client whose associate was relatively new to the industry and struggling.
“She was feeling the pressure,” she explains.
“She feels everything has to be perfect. And so when things don’t go perfectly, her emotions spike. She can lose perspective on the actual issue because of how she’s feeling, like she’s letting people down, and dropping the ball.”
The root of the problem, Caroline identified, was a belief that high performance means everything goes perfectly.
It’s a belief many agents hold, and in a market that rarely cooperates, it’s a recipe for emotional exhaustion.
“It’s not that high performers don’t have things go wrong or don’t make mistakes,” she says.
“It’s just that they recover faster, and they recover without as much emotional impact to themselves. That’s what we need to look at.”
What followed was a practical framework Caroline developed.
A structured way to interrupt the emotional spiral and move back into action.
Rename it
The first thing Caroline noticed was the language her client was using internally.
“I’ve really stuffed it all up.” “Everything is ruined.”
Emotionally loaded words that made the problem feel bigger, more personal, and more catastrophic than it actually was.
“I said to her, you need to rename that situation so it’s neutral, not emotional,” Caroline explains.
“Not ‘I’ve stuffed it all up.’ Instead: ‘This part of the process has a gap.’ That’s it. Label it neutrally.”
It sounds simple, but the shift is significant because we can look at it clearly and start thinking about what to do next.
Contain it
Once the language has been neutralised, the next step is to ask, what is the actual impact here?
In her client’s case, the issue was a video that had come back from the editor looking wrong.
In her mind, it was a disaster, everything was ruined, the campaign was in jeopardy.
When Caroline walked her through the real consequences, the picture looked very different.
“I said, contain it. Ask yourself: what’s the actual immediate impact right now? Don’t exaggerate it.”
The client paused, thought it through, and realised the delay was minor.
The campaign launch wasn’t affected at all and they had time.
“Step two is about getting honest about the size of the problem,” Caroline says.
“Not minimising it, but not blowing it out of proportion either.”
Move into action
This is the step that breaks the tailspin.
When emotions are running the show, we stop being able to make decisions.
The antidote, Caroline says, is to ask what your next move is.
“You’ve got to look at moving forward. It’s either: what’s my next move to fix this, or what needs to be done right now?”
When she put that question to her client, the answer came quickly.
Close the loop
The final step is also the one most often skipped over – taking the learning.
Once the immediate crisis has been navigated, Caroline encourages her clients to pause and ask what the experience has taught them and whether anything needs to change going forward.
“What’s the learning in it is always the best way to finish,” she says.
“It closes the loop. And it means the next time something similar happens, you’re not starting from scratch emotionally.”
The difficult moment stops being something that happened to you and becomes something you moved through and grew from.
The effect on her client was immediate.
“I could tell she just felt lighter instantly. She said, ‘Oh my god, I can use this for everything.'”
Most human beings crave certainty.
And in a world and a market that rarely provides it, learning to handle uncertainty with structure rather than panic is a fundamental life skill.
“Whether it’s a deal falling apart, something that came back wrong in your marketing, or a conversation that went the wrong way, there’s always uncertainty. But I don’t think we’re taught how to handle it properly.”
“Suppression is not a long-term solution. It’s not that you’re not allowed to feel anything. It’s: recognise the emotion is there, and then ask – how do I move through this?
“Because when people don’t know what to do, that’s when the overwhelm comes in.”