John Bradberry of Charlotte, North Carolina, has a background in psychology and works with both early stage and mature companies on organizational development. His book, 6 Secrets to Startup Success, helps founders and investors evaluate and improve their readiness to launch, and grow, a company.

John Bradberry on falling in love with your business; on why founders need to assess their own physical and emotional health; and why passion is not always a great thing when you’re launching a company.

Q: You speak and write a lot about passion.

A: It’s impossible to understand a business and what makes it successful without understanding that it is a personal and emotional process for the founder. It can be both wrenching and glorious.

Q: How do family and personal relationships factor in to your assessments of an entrepreneur’s “readiness”?

A: I come at the topics you write about from another direction. What’s good for the business aligns with what’s good for the personal side of the entrepreneur’s life. You can’t extricate the two and deal with them separately. When we assess the strengths of a business, one of the “assets” we assess is the founder—how much gas does he have in the tank? Is he physically and emotionally healthy? Enough to stay in the game for the long haul? A lot of businesses blow up because the entrepreneur’s personal life is not working.

Q: How do you go about making this kind of personal assessment?

A: We ask founders to think it through. If they are pre-launch, we tell them to take a good hard look not only at their path to profitability, but also at what sacrifices the business will require of their families. The typical founder drastically underestimates how much time and money it will take to get the business to viability. He assures his family he’ll be more available to them since he’ll be his own boss; he thinks his business is going to be a quick hit. But then he finds himself working nights and weekends, and staring at a $50,000 hole he’s created in the family’s budget. So the price of his underestimation is some desperation on the family’s part.

People who go into business are an optimistic bunch. But then they get this growing, gnawing awareness that things are not unfolding as planned. We help founders remove the rose-colored glasses.

Q: So passion in business is great, unless it fosters delusions.

A: That’s right. People literally fall in love with their businesses. The more passionate an entrepreneur is about her product, the more she’s likely to assume that others—customers, investors, and family—feel the same way. It’s parallel to going on a transformational retreat somewhere, and the session leader warns you not to go home and dump your profound experience on your spouse. Don’t assume they’ve traveled the journey with you. Give them time to absorb the new you.

Q: Tell me more about falling in love with your business.

A: I think the brain changes, just like it does when you’re in love. There is data related to the neurological changes that occur when people hold deep emotional beliefs. And just like when you fall in love and can’t wait for everyone to know about it, so some entrepreneurs have much too much urgency around ramping up their businesses—putting a dent in the universe, and fast. But just like in any long-term relationship, they need staying powe, the ability to persevere beyond the honeymoon. To stay in the game you don’t have to hit a home run in the first year or two. Take a little pressure off yourself. The ability to withstand and survive over time is underrated. You can lose some battles and still win the war.

Q: How does falling in love with the business adversely affect how well you communicate with your spouse about it?

A: The entrepreneur needs to align expectations with the spouse. You can’t do that unless you have frank, rational conversations up front about your assumptions going into the startup. Often founders are not honest with themselves because they are emotionally attached to their ideas.

There are some very real dilemmas here. That’s why some investors say they’d rather invest in a single 26-year-old with limited personal obligations than in someone who just had two kids in the last four years. Family is important. So when we ask entrepreneurs what they’ll be willing to sacrifice, it shouldn’t be time with family. Better to give up the nine holes of golf twice a week.