I could see her panic, mingled with disgust, at the blatantly anti-social nature of my action. Her eyes betrayed her, but the sweet smile remained as she discreetly nudged my coat, which I had dared to put over the back of what was apparently ‘her chair’, onto the floor. She quickly spread her computer and other bits out over the table. I had gone to get a coffee and noticed this as I reentered. I wandered over.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I had been told that I could sit anywhere,” as I bent to pick up my coat and smiled.

“I’m so sorry. Were you sitting here?” she said sweetly, an apologetic look on her face. We both knew the subtext. If it had been a scene in an American gangster film it would have sounded more like this:

 “Hey! Yes you. Did you disrespect me? Did you disrespect my chair? This is my space.” 

I would then have probably got out my gun…. maybe not.  It was the plush carpet of my client’s office after all, and blood never looks good on a carpet.

But we all hate it, don’t we?  Illogical as it is, and we hate admitting it, we are just hard-wired animals.  We like our dens, just like our pets do. We like to feel comfortable, have our routines and know what’s happening. Otherwise fear kicks in. Good solid animal fear. 

Our growth and our firm’s growth starts at the edge of your comfort zone.  You have fantastic ideas for your business, and for yourself, and you don’t do them because of the fear factor. The comfort zone. The same reason guinea pigs never make a run for it out of their cage, although they could.  I leave the cage door open to perform my scientific experiments into pig psychology. 

We end up lying to ourselves  – Yes, I was right not to do it because it would never have worked. In fact, the universe would have collapsed and we would all have been dragged  into some wild gravitational fallout and the end of the world would have come. Disaster. The fearsome word – FAILURE. The reality is that our inner animal is working against us. Chimp brain has taken over. Not quite the same as acting like a chimp. And I do know a few that fit into that category!

So what do we need to defeat the chimp? When I started my own business people laughed. Literally laughed at the mindless stupidity of giving up a great job at Andersen (ha ha in hindsight) to start a small business, which would of course fail. 

Well, I’ve had 23 years to consider my potential failure and to be honest, the business is kinda working for me.  So why is launching into something new so hard?  What is the worst that can happen? Failure. So what? 

Try a new approach to marketing. Try new AI. Try it. Perhaps fail. Move on. 

But how often does failure actually happen when we dare? Bring it on.