How To Deal With Energy Vampires

I wanted to talk about one of the best videos I’ve ever actually seen. And it’s helped me so much in my business. And the video is about how to deal with energy vampires. And it’s by a monk called Dandapani. Although, I believe he left the monastery and then became a priest afterwards and an entrepreneur. So, someone showed me this video, and it was actually filmed at the San Francisco Zero Convention in 2016. I wasn’t there personally, but I watched the recording afterwards, and it’s an absolute amazing video.

So, I suppose this doesn’t just apply to business owners, but a lot of business owners will be able to relate to it. So, one of the toughest things in business is nightmare clients, who are just sucking all the energy away from your business. A lot of the time it’s because perhaps they haven’t been quite managed in the right way, or there was never a good fit in the first place. But for whatever reason, you ended up doing work together. And ultimately what happens is every time you interact with these energy vampire clients, you end up being absolutely exhausted and depressed because all they’ve done is have a bit of a moan. They probably not doing too well in their own businesses because of that mindset they’ve got, which is about scarcity and complaining about everything rather than finding a solution. So, what the problem is because you spent time with them, all their negativities transferred over to you as well.

So, this video by Dandapani, what it does is it gives you an amazing solution to do with energy vampires. So, before you can actually go into solution, Dandapani talks about something really, really important, and that is to understand the two different types of energy vampires; the inherent and transient.

So, the first type of energy vampire is called a transient vampire. So, that’s someone who’s going through a really tough patch. It could be because something went wrong in their business. It could be something. Because something’s happened in their personal life, and it’s having a knock-on impact in their business and the way they treat people and the way they behave. The difference between the two, transient and inherent energy vampires, is that the transient energy vampire is just going through a rough patch and they’ll get over it eventually. Hopefully, not too relatively quickly. But it could be because they might have lost a family member. It could have been because something’s happened to them. And ultimately they do need a lot of more attention and support from the people in their network. And that can include you. So, it’s really important to identify that. Because if someone’s going through a rough patch, you don’t want to just label them an energy vampire and then start taking actions to distance yourself, because they could need genuine support.

But the other type of energy vampire, which is an inherent energy vampire, according to Dandapani, is someone who is always going to be a drain, an emotional drain, on everyone they work with. And it’s really important to understand who those are, because ultimately there’s pretty much nothing you can do to fix those people. So, you’ve got to take the right kind of actions to make sure they don’t affect you. Sorry. And when I say there’s nothing you can do to fix those people, I tend to mean there’s nothing you can practically do to fix those people, unless they’re very close to you. In which case, you can invest a lot of time and effort in supporting them and changing the way they think. But for day-to-day business transactions, being able to understand the difference between two is really important.

So, what Dandapani says is if they’re a transient energy vampire and they’re important to you, then obviously support them in any way you can. But if they’re an inherent energy vampire, then you need a strategy to actually deal with them. And the strategy to deal with them is to give them a task. So, inherent energy vampires, despite probably not liking garlic, they hate being given a task to do because all they want is your time and energy and attention. But whenever you ask them to do something back, they will not do it. And then, they’ll just come back to you and then ask more time, energy and attention.

So, what Dandapani says is like every time you interact with someone you’ve identified as an inherent energy vampire, give them a simple task to do. And especially if they’re asking for you to do something for them. It could be a big thing. Or if it’s a big thing, give them a task to do first. If it’s just a little bit of advice or something, but you’ve identified them as an energy vampire after giving that advice, give them a task to do. So, ultimately, it could be… Well, if you want to get into the right mindset for growth and retaking control of your life, do something small every day, like make your own bed or go to the gym. Or from a business context, it could be just do something as simple as keep your accounting software up to date.

And the idea behind that is, if they actually go ahead and do it, firstly, then you’ve probably miscategorized them and they’re not inherent energy vampire. But the chances are, if you did categorize them correctly and essentially they don’t do it, the next time they come to you for additional support, you can go back to them and say, “Hey, did he do that thing I asked you to do? Because any further support I give you relies on that thing being done.” And 99% of the time, if they are inherent energy vampire, they won’t have done it because energy vampires don’t like doing stuff. So, this is… I’m not suggesting manipulate them. All I’m saying is just before you give them your attention, make sure they give you something back, or even give themselves something back. Don’t invest in people who don’t want to invest in themselves obviously.

So, the whole point behind this video is really to just help you understand that if you’re in business and you’re dealing with nightmare clients… I did do another video in the past about how you create your own nightmare clients. So, that still applies. But sometimes, if for whatever reason… Yeah. So, sometimes though, if you are dealing with nightmare client just because of their personality type, then this is a really good strategy to turn them from not being a nightmare client and turn them into being a good client. Because you can always control the amount of energy you actually give out to them.