Decisions Made from Fear

“I’m taking the logos off my trucks. It just makes them a target for personal injury lawyers.”

“I don’t want to put our newest product innovations on our website. The competitors just copy them.”

“We pay all of our employees to bring their vehicles back to the yard every night. We don’t want to be responsible for what they do on their own time.”

“We were thinking of opening a new location, but the news says the economy might dip.”

“I thought about hiring another salesperson, but I can’t be sure they’ll pay for themselves.”

“Our margins are shrinking, but a price hike may cost us customers.”  

Sound familiar? These thoughts creep in as your business grows. You’ve overcome a lot. From taking that first leap into business, pushing through uncertainty, making tough calls when the stakes were high. But now, you’ve built something substantial and you have something to lose. The fear of getting it wrong can paralyze progress.

There’s a well-known quote from Elon Musk. When asked, “What words of encouragement would you give to an entrepreneur?” he answered, “If you need words of encouragement, don’t become an entrepreneur.”

Starting a business meant stepping into the unknown. You did it once—and maybe you’ve forgotten how much courage that took.

“We know about 50% of what we need to know. Another 25% is stuff we know we don’t know. The last 25% is stuff we don’t know that we don’t know.”

It’s that last 25% that causes the most anxiety. The unknowns we haven’t even considered yet. So, we do what feels safest-nothing. Better to protect what we have than risk the comfort of the present for the uncertainty of the future.

But here’s the truth: standing still isn’t safe. It’s just quietly risky.