The Decision Framework Every Fractional CFO Needs (The Fear Index)

Have you ever worked with a fractional CFO client and you've told them exactly what they need to do to unlock their next level of success, to help them achieve their goals, or to get big things done, and they just won't take action? You ever sit back and ask yourself, like, oh my gosh, what are you scared of? Why won't you just do the thing that I'm telling you to do?

It's actually a pretty insightful question because.

It turns out there are four fears that keep human beings from taking action. Those four fears are the things that keep you and your clients from having the impact that you know is possible. In today's episode of the CFO Report, I'm going to break down each of these four fears that are keeping your clients from taking action. And I'm going to give you some really specific ideas on ways that you can work with your clients to help them work through those actions so that they can ultimately have the success that you know is possible for them. But I also want you to watch this really carefully because these are the same four fears that might be holding you back from taking action and having the impact that you want to have as well.

Let's dive in. And so what I want to share with you today is a lot of times there are fundamental fears that hold us back or our clients back from taking action. Yeah, this is a little bit of like, you know, more on the woo side. Right. This isn't as much about forecast and projections and those kind of things, but it's important to understand some of the fundamental psychology that goes into people in decision making and action taking. Because of that fundamental truth that I shared with you where, you know, if the client isn't taking action, we have no impact. If we aren't taking action in our firm, we have less impact. And so understanding the psychology behind decision making and action taking is really important for a fractional CFO that wants to maximize impact through action. And so today, what I'm going to share with you are four of the fundamental fears that get in the way of human beings taking action. And with each of these, we're going to walk through, what is that fear? What does it look like, you know, as you're working with your clients or you're reflecting and self evaluating yourself, what are some signs that this fear, fear might be in place? We're going to talk a little bit about where each of these fears come from. I'm going to give you some examples. In fact, all of these examples are examples from my life Examples from how these fears have, have held me back from taking action. I've got a couple in there around clients as well. And then I'm going to share with you, like, what can we do to overcome this? What can we do as fractional CFOs, as CEOs and entrepreneurs to help our clients or help ourselves kind of circumvent or work through each of these four fundamental fears that hold us back. So the first one that I want to share with you today is the fear of failure. Each of these, I think you're going to find, resonate with you, but you're also going to see that they resonate with your clients. So don't be the yeah, yeah, yeah. Learner on this, where you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I already know all this stuff. Write this down. So the first is the fear of failure. I did a pretty decent amount of research, you know, in preparation for this. This isn't all stuff that I just pulled out of my head. And what I was learning is fear of failure is actually the most common fear holds human, human beings back. The. The fear of failure. And when we think of the fear of failure, it's this idea that, you know, it's like, there's no chance this thing is going to work out. There's no chance that if I do this, it's going to meet my expectations. If I do this, it's not going to meet my, my partner's expectations or my client's expectations. Whatever it is that we're thinking about doing or that our clients are thinking about doing, it's not going to work out. If we do this thing, it's going to ruin me. And that's kind of a key word here. And I'm going to talk a little bit it as we go through this fear of failure, but look for signs of this idea of ruin. It's a huge symptom that the fear of failure is at place. So when we're, when we're thinking about our clients or ourselves, what does the fear of failure look like when it surfaces? What are some signs or symptoms that the fear of failure might be at play? The big one is indecision. When we're talking with our clients and, you know, they, they need to make a move in their business, and they're like, oh my gosh, I just can't decide, right, if I do this, then maybe this. If I do that, then maybe that. And it's constantly this, like, almost frustrating circle for us because it seems like we keep bringing the same Thing up, the same decision that has to be made and they just can't make a call. And so when you see that lack of decision making, oftentimes fear of failure might be in play. Another one is anxiety. That one resonates with me quite a bit personally. When we're worried about ruin, we're worried about failure. We're worried about all the catastrophic things that might happen if we make the wrong decision. I tend to get a lot of anxiety. I tend to have a hard time falling asleep at night. I have a hard time focusing because of that level of anxiety. And I've seen it with clients too. And you can, you've probably noticed it before as well. When the topic keeps coming up, you can see like the physical manifestation of their anxiety. Huge sign that they're worried about failing. Another big one is self sabotage. When we're worried that if we do the thing, if we take that next authentic action that we know that we should do, but we're fearful of failure will self sabotage will cause the thing to not work out. We'll destroy a relationship. We'll burn something down because we would rather feel like we're in control of the situation than let the situation cause our own failure. So there's signs of self sabotage. Huge. Another one that's really common with the fear of failure is the pursuit of perfectionism. And I think in our industry, that is probably the most common one that I've seen. Especially those of us that are accountants, CPAs, we've always been taught that things have to be just so. We've been taught in condition that everything has to be perfect, everything has to balance, everything's gotta be, you know, t's crossed and I's dotted and pretty and ready to go. And so what we do is we try to make everything perfect. And when we get the sense that if we do the next thing or if we take the next action and it might not be perfect, we equate that lack of perfectionism with failure. If it's not perfect, then we failed. And so if you see yourself or your clients slow to take action or not taking action because they're trying to continue to polish and to continue to plan and continue to know exactly what's going to happen, it's often an indication that they're ultimately worried about failure. On the surface, a lot of these things, the indecision, the anxiety, the self sabotage, the pursuit of perfectionism, a lot of times those can be confused with laziness. And for me, I haven't seen that as much when I'm looking outward, but I see it more when I'm looking inward. And maybe you know what I'm talking about. We've got a project that we know has to get done, and we're just not doing it. We're finding things to distract us. We're in the scroll hole on social media, we're working on the spreadsheet a little bit more, and I end up. I'm telling myself I'm lazy because I'm not doing the thing, but the reality is we don't get into business. We certainly don't get into this line of business if we're lazy. Normally, when I start doing introspection, when I'm judging myself for being lazy, what I realize is, oh, I'm actually fearful that the thing that I need to be working on isn't going to work out or that people aren't going to like it or it's going to flop. And so instead of taking action, I actually do things that distract me and it feels or looks a lot like laziness. And as most things in life, a lot of times this fear of failure comes from our parents, right? This goes all the way back to those, you know, maternal and paternal relationships that we had where our parents held us to this standard. Normally, that looks a lot like perfection that was either unachievable or just flat out unrealistic. And for some reason, that's so common in our industry. A lot of us that get into the financial world, our parents were actually, if you think back to elementary school and middle school and high school, a lot of times our parents were setting these crazy standards for us, and we latched onto that need to continue to meet that bar of excellence into adulthood and then into our professional lives as well. I'm not an accountant, but I'm an engineer. And I know that that was certainly true for me as a kid. The expectation was always that I was going to go either University of Florida or Auburn or the Naval Academy, and I would go be an engineer. And in order to be successful as an engineer in high school and middle school, I had to have the gpa. And that meant that every homework assignment had to be an A and every test had to be an A. And so we latch onto this idea. It's been just ingrained into us that we have to be perfect. And it came from our parents at a very early age. Another big one is this fear of failure a lot of times comes from unsupportive spouses or a partner. Maybe that's like A life partner or a business partner or somebody like that where they're not supportive of us. And they tell us sometimes through the guise of loving words, but they tell us that we're not going to be able to do it. Or they plant these seeds of doubts and questions in our mind that maybe we're not cut out for this, maybe we don't have what it takes to do this. A story that comes to mind from my personal experience that really highlighted this, and I think I shared this with a lot of you at Accelerator Live is when I was thinking about starting my firm. I went to the bar one night with a buddy of mine for a beer and he had an MBA from a great school and had been working in corporate America. He's 10 years older than me. I really looked up to him and I told him that I was thinking about starting a CFO firm. And with a loving smile on his face, he takes a sip of his beer and he's like, huh? What makes you think you're qualified to do that? And I was like, shit. Well, I thought I was until. Until you said that. And so then I start telling myself all these stories. Maybe I'm not qualified. Maybe I don't have what it takes. What would happen if, you know, I went and did this and now I'm leaving the job in corporate America, I'm leaving the benefits and all the things. And now I'm going to fail. And then I start getting into that story of ruin. I'm going to ruin my life if I go and do this thing. And so it's really important to understand that a lot of times these fears, particularly the fear of failure, it comes from a deep seated, long history again for whether it's from parents or a spouse, business partner or friends. And a lot of times they're not even trying to be negative about it. But a lot of times these fears come from the people that are closest to us. I'll tell you another story. Really, this was a fear of ruin. I really and for a long time didn't want to have DFO Accelerator Live. And it was due to this fear of failure, particularly the fear of ruin. As I started looking at what it would cost to put an event like that together. And I'm. I mean, we're all CFOs here. It's $125,000 was the out of pocket expense. And then I started thinking, well, what if we don't sell tickets? My wife and I, we knew we were going to be adopting and then we want to go buy this house in Dallas, and Dallas isn't the cheapest market. And so if put, you know, 120 plus thousand dollars into the accelerator and we don't pull it through, that comes out of our pocket. And that money specifically would end up coming at the expense of the down payment on our house. And so I started getting this whole thing in my head is like, oh my gosh, what if it doesn't work out? What if it doesn't go to plan? What if nobody comes? And I started to get paralyzed by the fear of failure and specifically the fear of ruin. Right. But in our minds we don't ever, or you know, when the fears come in, we don't go to that place of logic, we go to that place of emotion and start going, you know, what are all the worst case scenarios that are going to happen? Rather than focusing on what is the likely case scenario that's going to happen. And in fact, the approach that I like to take for my clients, and this is what I did for myself with Accelerator, is what's like that best case scenario, the likely case scenario in the worst case scenario. And when I say the worst case scenario, I don't mean like in the example of Accelerator Live. The worst case scenario was honestly never going to be zero ticket sales. But that wasn't the true worst case scenario. The worst case scenario was probably that we would sell 50 or 60 tickets and the loss isn't $120,000, maybe the loss is $60,000 as an example. Right. So when you're working with your clients, it's a lot easier to do this. But try to do it with yourself. Think through what are those three different, different case scenarios, the best case, the likely case and the true worst case scenario, not the emotional worst case scenario. And think it through. Now the great thing is as fractional CFOs, we've got some amazing tools that can help us do that again for ourselves or for our clients. And use like cash flow forecast and projections. You know, if you've got a client that's in this fear of ruin, oh my gosh, what's going to happen? Let's bust out the cash flow forecast in the projections and let's just think through like those three different scenarios. Maybe you've got, you know, the, the good the better, the best or the best, the likely and the unlikely. But use those forecast and projections to show them the story economically of what ruin might actually look like. And a lot of times when you're able to paint that picture, they're like, oh, okay, all right. This isn't as catastrophic as I thought. If the worst case scenario happens, I'm not truly ruined. A lot of times we don't do that. Right? But I think we've got to be aware of this fear of failure and the fear of ruin with our clients, particularly when they're not taking action. We've got to say, like, okay, are they showing some of those indicators? The indecision, the anxiety, the talking about perfection and not taking action? Are they doing things that look lazy? Oh, wait a minute. Maybe this is them worried about ruin. This is them worried about failure. What do I have in my toolbox that I can leverage to help them work through it? So again, I like the cash flow forecast and the projections, but I also of just having like a plan B. Have a plan B for yourself or for your clients. And so when you get to that and they're like, oh my gosh, this, this true worst case scenario, I don't love that. And we say, okay, if we get to a point where this is true, that thing that looks like the worst case scenario is happening, what can we do? What pivots can we make? How can we back out of it? How can we move forward but in a different direction and help them think through what that plan B might look like? And the last thing I'll share with you on this, this is true for the fear of failure, but it's also true for the rest of these. One of the biggest mistakes that we can make as people, and specifically people that need to have empathy, people that need to have emotional awareness and emotional intelligence, which I think that all of US as fractional CFOs are called to have in order to be able to serve clients. We cannot immediately combat fear and emotional based responses with logic. Like, write that down and put a star next to it. We cannot combat emotional based responses with logic. And I'll tell you, I'm so guilty of this with my wife. You know, when, when my wife is like, we can't do this because of this. Oh my gosh. And if I immediately whip out the cash flow forecast, she's going to knock me in the head, right? Because emotion always trumps logic. So remember that you've got to show up and be empathetic with your client, with yourself, with your spouse, and acknowledge that there's some fear. Like, hey, I can understand that making a decision like this could maybe freak you out, because I can understand why you might think this. Or when you say this, I can totally understand where you're coming from. But what if we were able to paint a financial picture that kind of showed what this could look like or what the worst case scenario looks like? Hey, you know what? I know this feels scary. Let's go ahead and just map out on the projections what the worst case scenario really looks like. Right? So take that empathetic approach, regardless of which of these four fears we're thinking about before you try to come in with logic. Guys, I'm speaking to you mostly on this one. So we've got the fear of failure. The next fear I want to share with you is the fear of success. It's an interesting one. And the reason is, I was researching this. The reason that I find fear of success to be so interesting is because in a lot of ways it looks a lot like the fear of failure. I'll share with you why that is. But what is the fear of success? Fear of success is where like, oh my gosh, let's say that I try this and I actually succeed at it. And then the feels come. Will I be able to sustain that next level that success would bring me? Will I be able to do the job? Will I crumble under my own success? Is all of this just a house of cards that will immediately fall apart If I get that next level, if I achieve that next goal, if I accomplish the thing that I'm thinking about, is it all going to just fall apart? And it's interesting because counter to like the fear of failure, which is very surface this, right? Like we, we can see that it's normally right here on our sleeve. We feel it, People around us feel it. Interestingly, fear of success tends to hide. It tends to live more in our subconscious than our conscious. And I think from my research, the reason for that is, is because very rarely do we think about, and even more rarely do we talk about what happens if I hit this goal, right? So it's not in the, the front part of our brain or it's front of mind. It's certainly not something that we're talking about. It tends to live in the back of our minds. It tends to live in that place in our brains where it's only active like when we're sleeping or, you know, when we're driving to work or we're in the shower. And so we're not as aware of it as we are. The fear of failure. Another way to think about this is the fear of success is the fear of the consequences of our success. Will we have to sacrifice something that we value now as a result or a consequence of our success. And another way to think about it is the further we climb, the further we'll fall if it doesn't work out in the end. The one that really resonates with me is, will I have to sacrifice something I value? Now, if I'm successful in the. In the goal, in the endeavor, in that action, what does it look like? What are kind of some of the symptoms of it? Well, similar to the fear of failure, you know, we're looking at avoidance. We're just not taking action. We're procrastinating. A lot of times we feel like we have a lack of motivation. What else could it look like? It could look like things like where you're saying or your clients are saying, oh, my gosh, if I take my business to the next level, do I have what it takes to manage 50 people? If I land that bigger client, I don't know that I have what it takes to serve them on that level that I'll need to. To justify the price. It's these stories that we tell ourselves or that our clients are telling themselves about why we don't want to accomplish the thing. Another example, I saw Mary. Mary got to here, and do you know what happened with Mary? She ended up not seeing her kids anymore. Or did you see Mary? Mary's health tanked as soon as her business got over this level. Oh, my gosh. Bill's marriage started to suffer as soon as he did this. Right? So he looked for those stories. Look for those stories that your clients are saying or that you're saying about why they don't want to accomplish the thing. One thing that was a big eye opener for me as I was researching this, I actually talked to my wife about it. My wife works in corporate America. I don't judge her for that, but she works in corporate America. And what I was finding in my research is a lot of time there are gender stereotypes at play that will lead to a fear of success. And what I found was in a lot of cultures, and honestly, a lot of times in our culture, women are prone to unfavorable reactions when they hit a particular level of success relative to men, right? These stories start getting told about why Mary was able to do this. You know, the only reason Mary did this was because of. And normally those. Because ofs have nothing to do with their hard work, their tenacity, her blood, sweat, and tears. It has to do with some other thing. And so a lot of times women will have this fear of success because they don't want to be subjected to that kind of talk. And so I went to my wife and I said, hey, you know, I was, I was researching this. Is this true? And she's like, oh, hell yeah, it's true. She said, I see it in corporate America all the time. You know, when Bill gets promoted, it's because Bill's put on all this effort. But if, if I get promoted, there's always some kind of side bullshit story that comes along with it because of this or that or the other that really had nothing to do with my grit and determination and the 25 years of experience I have in the industry. So gender stereotypes can be a big driver for a fear of success. Like, you don't want to be subjected to those kinds of comments. Another big one is imposter syndrome. Well, how does imposter syndrome deal with the fear of success? Well, when we have that imposter syndrome, like, what are the stories we're telling ourselves? We're telling ourselves, I don't deserve this. I'm not worthy. And so if I hit this goal, it's going to become obvious to everyone around that I'm an imposter because it's not going to work. Because if I get to the point that I need to have all these employees, or if I get to the point that I'm charging this much and the clients leave after 15 days because I'm not providing the value, or the employees quit because I'm a horrible leader or a horrible manager, then everyone's going to know that I'm an imposter. I already know it. I'm just waiting for that one thing to happen, that we're one thing away from the rest of the world, knowing that I'm as full of shade as I know I am. So imposter syndrome, really big driver in the fear of success. And another one that was really surprising to me, that this really resonates with me because of my family of origin, is feelings of guilt around success. I don't deserve to reach this thing because others that I know haven't had this level of success. My parents certainly didn't get here. My siblings never got here, My friends haven't been there, whatever that relationship is. But you're saying, like, I don't deserve this because others haven't achieved it. My peers, my. The people I graduated with, they haven't achieved it. So I don't deserve it. So be aware as you're thinking about yourself or your clients, this fear of success, like, it's really important to understand, like, where does this come from and why is this showing up now with what's going on in my own business? In particularly, I guess it was really with both KFP and the CFO accelerator. The idea of growing the team has been really scary for me. What if I get the company to this point of revenue and I've got to bring in more people to support? What happens if I'm not able to maintain that level of revenue that's required to cash flow all of these people, Am I going to be able to hold it together? Has this whole thing been a fluke? The last two years of the CFO accelerator, we got to 150 people. It's. It's amazing. The accelerator was great, but it might have all just been a fluke. And now I'm bringing all these people in, I'm adding all this headcount. These people are counting on me to pay their mortgages and their rent and to feed their kids. And I don't know if I have what it takes to keep the money coming in to support them. And I'm going to have to lay people off and then everybody's going to find out about it it because they're going to shit post about it on LinkedIn and the whole thing's going to come crumbling to the ground and the whole world's going to know I'm a phony. This is a very real thing that I struggle with, and same thing's true with my firm. Am I going to be able to hold it all together? So how do you overcome it? Like I said earlier, it's the fear of success is a little harder to identify because people don't talk about it. We don't have those conversations out loud about like, what happens if I succeed? What does my business look like? What does my life look like? My relationship with my spouse and my kids and my friends and my health. What does it look like if I succeed and hit these goals right? It's much more internalized dialogue normally in the subconscious. So I think the first step is like just really recognizing that the fear of success exists. And for me, the best way to do that has been through journaling. Really works hard to develop this daily journaling habit. I don't do it every day, but four or five days a week in the mornings, writing in my. What is it called? I don't even remember little E ink journal thing that I have. And every so often as I'm thinking about the goals, I'll just ask myself, I'll prompt myself what does life look like if I hit this goal that we talked about in our last EOS meeting? Or what does life look like if we hit this goal that I was sharing with one of my coaches that I was looking at? And I'll think about it in all those different facets, right? What does it look like in the business? What does it look like as far as my health goes, My wife. Now we have a kiddo. What does it look like with my team? And I'll just start listing those things out. And what I'm looking for is answers that scare me. If I. When I come across those things that scare me, I'm like, oh, here's the fear of success. This is one of those things that's okay. I've got a fear of success here. And I think, like, tactically, like, how do you work through that? What I do is very similar to what I do when I'm thinking about fear of failure. Right. A lot of times the worst case scenario that I tell myself around the fear of success is actually a lot less. When I start writing it out, when I start like, okay, let me actually make my calendar. Let me actually do the forecast and the projections. Let me actually think through this and like, what is that worst case scenario? Not the perceived one, but the real one. If I'm marching down that path and I find that we're quickly getting there, what's that? Plan B? What's the plan B? Okay, this is clearly not working. Here's plan B. And when I've got the path and I've got the alternate path, I'm like, okay, it really kind of subsides the fear and lets me lean into taking the next action I need to take for whatever that authentic goal is, that authentic ambition that I have. Third type of fear, fear of rejection. It's exactly what you think it is. We're worried that others are going to reject us. We're worried that others are going to judge us, people are going to shun us, they're going to belittle us for taking whatever action it was that we knew we needed to take. And this pulls at a very, very basic human need. And that's this. This need for acceptance and love and validation. It's common to all humans is, you're listening to this. If you're like, oh, fear of rejection is not real for me. I'm like, stay tuned because I'm going to go ahead and argue that it is. Don't kid yourself and say that the fear of rejection never holds you back. It holds all of us back because those are innate human needs. Acceptance, love, validation. That fear of rejection can literally come from anything that would result in our spouse judging us or in our family thinking less about us or our business partners being disappointed in us. The fear of rejection can come from the idea that we're going to get on a sales call with a new lead, going to pitch our new services at our higher price. We're going to go through the whole thing and they're going to tell us no because the price is too high, the scope is brought isn't broad enough, we don't do enough things or we don't have enough experience. It's fear or rejection. What if they say no? We know that we need to go negotiate prices with our vendors, our cost of goods are too high or your clients cost of goods are too high. You got to get our margins up. We don't want to get on the call with the vendor and negotiate prices because of that fear of rejection. That fear that they're going to tell us to screw off and not do business with us again. What does that fear of rejection look like? How does it surface? One is you're a people pleaser. People pleasers are a lot of times the most subject to that fear of rejection, particularly people that please others at the expense of their own self. People pleasers that will please others at the expense of their own self are the most subject to the fear of rejection. And you can probably see that in your clients too as you really get to understand your clients and know your clients and get to know them as people people. We've all had those clients. Or you will at some point that won't do the thing they need to do because they're worried what their employees will think. They're worried what their business partners or their clients are going to. I don't want to raise prices because you know, my, my clients, they need to keep the prices down right now because we're in this recession. I'm like, but what about your family? What about your needs? And so we have people pleasers that are pleasing others at the expense of their own self interest. People that just can't say no. People that just can't say no. Know really vulnerable to that fear of rejection. Look out for things like this, whether it's you or your clients. Like what is my partner going to say if I do this thing? Or what is my client going to say? What will they say on social media when you hear those stories of what will so and so say or what will so and so think if I do this? Normally, there's a fear of rejection at play. Another big one is a lack of authenticity. Whether it's us or our clients or whoever, when we're living behind this mask of what you think others expect from you, rather than being or doing the thing that you know is authentic to you or to your client. The social masks, big indicator of that fear of rejection. Like a lot of other things in life, you know, where does it come from? It comes from our parents, it comes from our spouses, it comes from other relationships, comes from scars, you know, from. From just being in relationships with people, particularly when there's been abandonment or we've been given up on in some way. You know, as I was thinking about talking about this, one of the things that really came to mind was my ex wife. My ex wife was adamantly opposed to me starting a business, and she wasn't shy to tell me that. Now, there were a lot of factors that played into our divorce, but the straw that broke the camel's back was certainly starting my firm. And so what ended up happening later, as I met my current wife, I had to learn that it was safe to do things. I had to learn that it was safe to take action and to take risks and to have ambition. And honestly, that slowed me down tremendously. And this was all despite her being just so loving and supportive at every turn. I was telling myself these stories about being fearful of rejection. And so I protected myself. Right? And it took several years to overcome that, to build that trust. So really think about that again. If it's your clients or yourself or people on your team, look for some of those signs that maybe there's a people pleaser, maybe there's somebody that wears those social masks. Look for those signs and be like, okay, this might be a case of a fear of rejection. And use that to determine how you need to lead them. There's a great book by Brendan Burchard called the Motivation Manifesto. It's a great book. It's like 10 bucks or something. It's thin too. It's not a long read, it's not a heavy read, but it really gets you on this. Fear of rejection really gets you fired up. The other thing that I think so important, like write this one down. If this fear of rejection speaks to you, rejection is not a reflection of your self worth or your self value. And that can be a powerful reminder to your clients, to your team, to your spouse, to yourself. If that fear of rejection is holding you back, really important for me is just leaning on friends and peers and mentors and coaches and just talking about that. It really disempowers the fear when you just talk about it. Or maybe for you, maybe it's being that friend or peer or mentor or coach. Just have those conversations with whoever that person is about, like, hey, what, what's going on? What's driving this? I know a lot of this stuff doesn't feel like fractional CFO stuff, but again, like, understanding these fears and how they impact action and how that limits your impact is kind of everything. Like, understanding this psychology, it's. I don't know, like, it's. It's so important. I think if you want to have the level of impact in the world that you want to have, you've got to understand and have the empathy to recognize when. When people are showing up with these different fears. The fourth fear is the fear of the unknown or the fear of uncertainty. Most psychologists will argue that the fear of the unknown or the fear of uncertainty is the most powerful fear for most human beings. It's a survival thing for us. Caveman days, right? We want to know what's going to come next. We want to know what to anticipate. We want to be able to plan. It was essential for survival, right? This fear of the unknown, the fear of uncertainty, this is the thing that keeps us from leaving the comfort zone. Zone. This is the one thing. What does it look like? Well, when people are talking about the lack of predictability or a lack of control, often a symptom that there's fear of the unknown, when decision making creates extreme anxiety or even depression, a lot of times, symptomatic of the fear of uncertainty. When you start hearing a lot of like, but what if stories. Fear of uncertainty, another big one. And gosh, we see this a lot. We saw this a lot during, like, Covid, and we're starting to see a lot of it now in a lot of ways. But when there's these, like, rush emotional business decisions, like, think about Silicon Valley bank. Like, when they went down, how much panic and like, just people going apeshit with their money was going on, like, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? I don't know what's going to happen with my bank. Should I take my money out of this bank and put it over here in this other bank? I don't know. Well, let's do it. Well, why are you taking money out of that bank and putting it in that one? Well, I don't know. That's what Jim Cramer said. Well, Jim Cramer also said that Silicon Valley bank was one of the best deals in banking. Right. But so when we start seeing ourselves or our clients getting into these, these rushed emotion based decisions, particularly in times of economic hardship or uncertainty, normally there's a fear of the unknown driving those decisions. And where does it come from? Again, this is like one of those basic human fears, like we're going to get in the cave and build a fire at the front of it at night because we don't know what's happening in the dark outside of the cave. We're not going to leave the cave because we don't know what's happening out there. We're uncertain. I think also common to all human beings is we want to have at least a perception of control. We also want to have at least a perception that we have autonomy. And when we feel that we have lost control or that we don't have autonomy, it creates this fear of uncertainty. So we start making decisions and taking actions to create the illusion that we are in control and we do have autonomy.

Right.

When we feel like we're losing control or autonomy, we start to make decisions or take actions to create that illusion that we do have control or autonomy. Fear of the unknown. For me, particularly when I get into a disagreement with my wife or we're, you know, we're having an argument. And I think these all stem from the way that I saw my parents argue and how I argued with my ex wife. But when I get in those situations, I feel like I'm losing control. And so I start to look, look for things that I can control. And so for me, and again, this sounds so ridiculous. I'll be the first to tell you when I feel like I'm not in control at home, I clean. The dishes are all done and they're not in the dishwasher. They're all washed and dried and put away. The vacuum comes out, the floor gets mopped, all the beds are made, the laundry's done and folded and put away. And it's 2 o' clock on a Wednesday. And that's because something came up in my life that I felt like I didn't have control. I do the same thing in my office. This when I feel like I don't have control over something and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm freaking out. Everything gets picked up in here and it looks immaculate. The whiteboards are all like sprayed down and cleaned. That's my way of attacking or confronting that fear of the unknown or the fear of uncertainty and creating this illusion for myself that I'm in control. And my guess is we all have different versions of the Swiffer when we feel like we don't have control or when we feel like we're in uncertainty. The people that were worried, they were uncertain about their money in their bank. And they're moving it like, okay, I have control now of my money. I'm exerting control. I have autonomy, I move. I don't know if the place that I moved it to is any better than the place that just failed, but at least I'm in control. A lot of times as leaders, what this will look like is we start micromanaging employees, we start telling people what to do. I'm in control, by God, not of this important thing over here, but of you. I'm in control. So look for those symptoms in your clients and in your business and in your relationships. I'll give you an example of a client, client. Like they really wanted to go buy. Like that was like their plan for growth was they were going to acquire other similar businesses in their geographical area. The reality was they didn't have the profitability or the cash or availability to a line of credit to be able to do it. And so the business owner really wanted to do that thing and felt like he didn't have control. He was uncertain about how to do it. And so he started grasping at things that he could control, which looked like, like making stupid decisions on cost cutting. And it was all driven by this fear of uncertainty around how he was going to grow his business. And so he starts nitpicking on, you know, $80 and 200 expenses and making just rash decisions around cutting expenses that were required to keep his business going. And it's because he didn't feel like he had control. He. There was this uncertainty that led to him feeling like he wasn't in control of his business. And so he started doing dumb things in treating people poorly to exert that control. I believe it was due to a fear of uncertainty. And so when we see this like another great opportunity, we have forecast and projections like, remember, we gotta lead with empathy, we've gotta lead with emotional intelligence. And then once we've established that, like, let's come in with forecast and projections, let's start looking at the numbers to tell the story of what's going on to bring it down a notch again, like mapping out that worst case scenario, usually a lot worse than whatever it is we're thinking in our heads. The Other one is, we talked about this at Accelerator. Accelerator Live is like bold baby steps, right? When you feel like you're getting paralyzed by that fear of uncertainty, don't think about, like, oh, my gosh, how am I ever going to be able to afford this other business? Just think, like, what's that next thing, that next action of integrity that I can take that's going to move me closer towards that goal. That one bold baby step is going to help you reestablish the fact that you do have control and you do have autonomous economy. When you find clients or yourself that are kind of falling victim to these four fears, what I want you to do is like, remember, you've got those in your arsenal. And so you ask yourself, okay, there's a fear of success here. How does my client need me to show up? Do they need me to show up as a cheerleader? Do they need me to show up as the teacher? Maybe it's the challenger. Sometimes it's that disagreer. And so I want you to think about that. Remember, you've got that arsenal of different types of coaches coaching that you can leverage based on where they're at. And it's so important to understand which of those four fears is present. Understanding, like, what's causing that fear. And that just comes from building relationships and knowing your. Your clients, knowing your team, knowing yourself. And it's like, okay, how do they need me to show up? Gosh, they've had a lot of people tell them they can't do it before. I need to be the cheerleader. I need to be the one that's coming in and celebrating them and telling them they did a good job job and cheering them on. Maybe you need to be the challenger, though, based on where they're at. And it's good to do that introspection, too, when you realize, oh, my gosh, I've got this. This looks a lot like a fear of uncertainty. Who do I need around me to help me get through this? I don't need a teacher right now. I need someone that's going to challenge me. I need somebody that's going to force me to think differently about what's going on and then go find that. Communicate with your partner, with your spouse, with, with. With your coach. Hey, look, I really need you to challenge me right now because I think I've got this mindset block due to some uncertainty on what I'm doing.

When it comes to running a fractional CFO firm, taking action is everything.

And that's particularly true when it comes.

To sales and marketing. But if you're the kind of firm owner that really struggles with getting new leads and closing clients, then I want to invite you to join me at the 2024 CFO Accelerator Live, happening right here in Dallas, Texas. Now, I can't reveal all the details yet, but as long as you promise to keep this between me and you, I can tell you it's going to be heavily focused on sales and marketing. Go to the cfoacceleratorlive.com to learn more and to be notified as soon as tickets go on sale here in the.

Next 30 days or so.

In the meantime, I can't wait to see you back right here next week, my friends.

I'll see you then.