The Desperate Ex Syndrome & Why Your Business Needs To Play It Cool
A true story...
The desperate ex syndrome and why your business needs to play it cool.
Remember your first teenage relationship? The one where you thought calling him 17 times a day and "accidentally" showing up wherever he might be was romantic? Yep, that didn't end well, did it?
Turns out, that same cringe-worthy neediness that sent teenage boys running for the hills is exactly what's happening in people's business right now. And it's killing sales.
The neuroscience of want ...
There's a reason behind why we want things we can't have.
When something is scarce or slightly out of reach, our brains release dopamine - the same chemical that makes us addicted to checking our phones and eating crisps. It's the anticipation, the chase, the mystery that makes our primitive lizard brains light up like a Christmas tree.
But the moment something becomes too available, too eager, too desperate? That dopamine tap turns off faster than you can say "please buy from me."
It's why the girl who kept a bit of mystery got the guy. And it's why your business needs to stop acting like a stage-five clinger.
I'm seeing posts from people trying to "hack the algorithm" - posting 12 times a day, hoping Facebook will push their post to a few more people.... but haven't they realised....
The algorithm doesn't buy from you. The algorithm doesn't sit there thinking, "Hmm, should I invest £5,000 with Karen or that other business coach?" The algorithm doesn't have a credit card. The algorithm doesn't give a toss about whether you can actually solve their problem.
HUMANS do.
And humans can smell desperation from a mile away.
Visibility does not equal sales.
You know what desperation looks like in business? Promoting something different every five minutes.It's the business equivalent of that ex who keeps texting "u up?" at 2am.
It screams:
"I don't have enough clients. I'm panicking. Please, please, PLEASE buy something from me."
And just like in dating, it sends people running for the hills.
What if instead of chasing clients through social media like a desperate ex, you built a system that attracted them to you? A proper system. An asset. Something that works whether you post today or not. Something that brings you clients while you're living your actual life.
This is exactly what I've been developing this year.
Over the past year, I’ve been paying close attention to how people actually make decisions and what drives sales... The old assumption was that momentum comes from noise: more visibility, more pressure, more urgency. For most businesses, that model doesn’t work anymore.
The market is more saturated, more discerning, and far less responsive to manufactured urgency. Repeating the same launch mechanics from two or three years ago without adapting is why so many “big launches” have quietly underperformed over the last 12–24 months and why so many people are finding that social media isn't working.
What I’m seeing now is that conversions are increasingly the result of environment, not intensity. That’s why I’m no longer interested in teaching people how to promote with old methods. I’m focused on helping them build human-led client engines that do the heavy lifting without outdated tactics + social media dependency.
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