When I was first starting out, I had to make decisions that felt enormous, even though on paper they were fairly small. These are the ones that followed me around at night:
- How much inventory should I buy?
- Should I hire this person?
- Can I afford to pay them full time, and for how long?
- Should I invest in better equipment and new machinery?
- Can I really afford a second hire?
- Do we need to move into a bigger space?
- Should I hire the marketing firm?
- Is this service or subscription worth paying for?
- When should I sell the business, and to whom?
I still ask myself these things. Not as often as I used to, but some days they show up right on schedule.
About ten years ago, we bought our building. It took almost two years to get there, and I second-guessed myself all the way up to the day I signed the papers and they handed me the keys. Right up to the end, I was asking:
- Should I be doing this?
- Am I in over my head?
- Do I really know what I'm doing?
The honest answer was that I probably had no business doing it. I was putting my company into a building I had no real right to own, and I was counting on a long list of things going right that I could not control. I was gambling everything.
I lost sleep over it for years. In my early 40s I hardly slept at all, because I was afraid. I'll use that word plainly, because it's the true one. I was afraid of what might happen.
Things began to change when I started pushing through some of that fear. The world did not end. Some of my decisions were wrong, and I messed up more than once. But I kept making the hard calls, the ones that stretched me, and yes, they hurt, at least at first.
It's the same as going to the gym or lacing up for a run. The discomfort is the whole point. All that inconvenience and soreness is what builds a stronger, healthier person on the other side.
So if you know your pain tolerance is low and you have no interest in raising it, entrepreneurship may not be the right road for you, and there is no shame in that. But if you want to grow your tolerance, if some part of you is tired of staying small, then start the business. It will stretch you. It will change you. It will shape you in ways nothing else I know of ever will.
If you're standing at the edge of your own big decision right now, feeling the fear and wondering whether you're ready, I want you to hear this from someone who has been there. You are probably not ready, and neither was I. Nobody is. Take the step anyway. The fear won't disappear, but you'll get braver, and one day you'll look back at the thing that scared you most and realize it made you who you are.
