The Business Fix
Tune in to The Business Fix, the podcast where CEO vision meets on-the-ground operations. Join Chrissy Myers, HR expert and CEO, and Josh Troche, marketing and operations guru, as they tackle the challenges facing small and medium-sized businesses today.
Each episode, Chrissy and Josh dissect a common business problem, offering diverse perspectives and actionable solutions. Whether you're in service industries or product development, with 10 or 150 employees, you'll gain valuable insights to improve your business. This isn't your typical dry business podcast. Chrissy and Josh bring a conversational, down-to-earth approach to the critical aspects of building a thriving business.
Follow us on social media or visit thebusinessfix.com for more resources and to connect with our community. Let's fix your business together!
The Business Fix
Smarter and Stronger Business Decisions Start with Overcoming the Fear Behind Them
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What if the biggest thing holding your business back… is a fear you haven’t even named yet?
Most leaders think fear shows up as hesitation but in reality, it disguises itself as over-preparation, procrastination, busyness, and even perfectionism.
In this episode of The Business Fix, Chrissy and Josh break down how fear silently shapes decisions inside small and medium-sized businesses. They reveal why fear isn’t the enemy (unmanaged fear is) and walk through practical tools to help business owners and managers regain clarity, momentum, and confidence. From identifying catastrophic thinking to applying structured decision-making, this conversation reframes fear as something you can measure, manage, and move through.
You’ll learn how to recognize fear-based behavior in yourself and your team, assess whether a fear is objective or imagined, calculate the real cost of inaction, and build simple habits that help you stay grounded when stakes feel high. You’ll also hear how intentional time-blocking, naming your fears out loud, and shifting from “thermometer” to “thermostat” leadership can create lasting stability in your culture.
By the end of this episode, you won’t just understand your fear, you’ll know exactly what to do with it. You’ll walk away with actionable frameworks that reduce overwhelm, strengthen decision-making, and help you lead with more confidence and clarity than ever before.
We’ve heard it: “Nobody wants to work anymore.”
People do want to work. They just may not want to work for your company, your culture, or your leadership style.
That’s what we’ll be addressing at the COSE Big Summit on October 15 in Cleveland.
If you’re ready to stop blaming “the workforce” and start a team, join us.
Visit COSE.org for more information and tickets.
Your culture is not the poster in the lobby.
It is what your team does when you are not in the room.
That is where The Business Fix on the Road comes in.
We help leadership teams fix the people stuff with keynotes, culture consulting, and practical strategies that create clarity, accountability, and real results.
Book us for your next event, conference, or team meeting at businessfixpodcast.com.
ClarityHR is your fractional HR team, giving you real people, real support, and real solutions. Whether it’s compliance headaches, hiring struggles, or just needing someone to take the people stuff off your plate — we’ve got your back. So if you’re ready to stop using duct-tape and hope as your HR strategy and finally get some peace of mind, head over to ClarityHR.com
If you're looking to start your own podcast or maybe you just want to add the next level of professionalism to your podcast and brand, you should be working with the producers behind The Business Fix at Pedal Stomper Productions. Click the link to learn more about how you can get your podcast to the next level. https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com
🎙 Ready to Fix What’s Holding Your Business Back?
The Business Fix podcast delivers real-world strategies to grow your business, lead your team, and reclaim your time. New episodes drop weekly—packed with insights for business owners and managers who want to do better.
🔗 Connect with Chrissy and Josh at https://www.businessfixpodcast.com/ for more tools, support, and clarity.
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Josh Troche: We're starting different. We are starting. And it's not a bow tie this time. No, no, but we are starting different because I'm going to start with a quote that I absolutely love about this week's episode. And Chrissy is sitting here just scared to death. And I think this quote is going to ring home with her. Also, most people do not think about stuff enough.
This week we are talking about fear. We talked about that in episode 25. We're going to talk about some of the psychology in it and how to avoid it and get past it. As a business owner, by the laughter, I think Chrissy approves.
Chrissy Myers: I do.
Josh Troche: She's the CEO.
Chrissy Myers: He's the marketing and operations guy.
Josh Troche: If it's broken, you need.
Chrissy Myers: The business fix.
Josh Troche: It's banter time.
Chrissy Myers: Yeah.
Josh Troche: What is it? How the hell are we in December?
Chrissy Myers: Holiday chaos. It's fourth quarter. It's the. Don't talk to me season.
Josh Troche: What do we call that? We call it something. Fourth quarter. Something about off. Yes.
Chrissy Myers: Yes, that's exactly what it is.
Josh Troche: Yeah. Started. It was another f word.
Chrissy Myers: Don't ask me to do anything else. Not anything else.
Josh Troche: No, no. Like a one legged man in a butt kicking contest. Yeah. No, I'm glad I'm not in your industry.
Chrissy Myers: Hey, would you mind if. Yes, I would, and no, you cannot. That's how it works right now.
Josh Troche: Someone comes up to you just before they even open their mouth. Nope. Nope. Could we do. How about new? Yeah.
Chrissy Myers: Oh let's try something new. No we don't try anything new in December.
Josh Troche: Our world. Let's try something new. Yeah. How about you shutting the hell up? Walk away. Just walk away.
Chrissy Myers: How about you? You're feeling better?
Josh Troche: I'm mean there. I'm good. Okay. Still some. The problem is, is my December now. My November is now part of my December. No. And it's trying to catch up. It's trying to get organized. Yeah. It's just all the and I, I do not like the holidays. Yes. I'm just not a fan but there's some other work that we do with stuff. I mean I was filming for Black Friday, because, you know, I want to be in the mall. It took me 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot. That's how busy the mall was. So if you think retail's dead.
Chrissy Myers: Not on Black Friday.
Josh Troche: No, it is definitely. Definitely not. That being said, fear was one of the things like I experienced it.
Chrissy Myers: Yeah. Black Friday shopping, filming, black Friday filming.
Josh Troche: I was Black Friday filming. I didn't buy anything. Cash? No.
Chrissy Myers: On principle, no way.
Josh Troche: Right, right, right. I was getting paid to be there. Otherwise, there's not a snowball's chance that I was going to be there. I did have a great fear of being. There was a big piece of that. Yeah. See? Like, do you like my second?
Chrissy Myers: Do a good segway?
Josh Troche: We want to talk about how it holds us back. It's a destructive mental game. I like how to put this, There. I was listening the other day. Chris Williamson a few months ago had his 999th podcast. It's the Modern Wisdom podcast. He talked worrying about the thing we can't predict usually involves us going through a nightmare fantasy, which is almost always way worse than what is probable, or what could typically even happen in reality. We'd rather invent a catastrophe than deal with the uncomfortable step. And it's funny, I just the look on your face, Chrissy, as I'm going through this, you're like, yeah, this is this is an uncomfortable podcast.
Chrissy Myers: Self torture.
Josh Troche: Yeah. Yeah. And we've all been there. I mean, we're all like, oh my gosh, what if I do this and it goes wrong? It's it's part of the thought process. It truly is. Is it useful? Yes. I mean, obviously it's I believe it's an evolutionary thing that's kept us alive for a couple of million years, so. Sure. Probably useful is it is useful in 2026, 2025 when we've got I mean, we're sitting in a heated room. I just had a snack. I've got a hot coffee in my hand. I don't feel real threatened unless someone asks you to do something in December. Yeah. That's the only way that I'm going to feel threatened.
So what I. What I'm excited to hear about is because of your focus on resiliency. You look at a lot of the, Oh moments. Fear is it's the direct opposite of confidence. I've got a thing about affirmations that I love that I can talk about later, but like leaders so often, myself included, we get stuck in this catastrophizing cycle where we're like, oh my God, the sky is falling. And some cases it is. How does like the lack of resilience, the lack of I'm going to say it. Clarity.
Chrissy Myers: Nice.
Josh Troche: How does that trickle down? How does that impact not only you, but your entire team? And then what is the healthy, resilient approach to facing that uncertainty?
Chrissy Myers: Yeah.
Josh Troche: So if you can't get past the intro, she.
Chrissy Myers: Can't.
Josh Troche: Go. She sold that.
Chrissy Myers: Good job. So first thing I would say is that fear is absolutely normal. And as a leader, if you don't have it, then I think you should probably have more concerns. I mean, first is it's a it's a normal thing that rational people have. And excessive worry is something that most entrepreneurs have. So if you don't have it, I would have some concern. I would say that I you're talking to somebody who gave herself an ulcer in elementary school. So like worries. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Whoa. Yeah.
Josh Troche: New high score.
Chrissy Myers: Thank you. Thank you. I know my parents were so.
Josh Troche: Proud.
Chrissy Myers: Because, again, everything was perfect in my life. I really I had a great childhood, so I didn't have any reason for and truly have a reason for an ulcer. But I gave myself one. But what I would say is, as you, as you move into leadership and hopefully you don't give yourself ulcers that maintain, mine is healed. I don't have one anymore. But catastrophizing is something that often leaders do, especially when you're new into leadership. And then I think as you continue to climb, if you don't create those skills that keep you resilient and mentally tough, it's really easy to go down a rabbit hole. And you have to remember that when a leader catastrophizes, it doesn't just stay in their head, it leaks into meetings, it can leak into emails. It can leak into, I mean, even the silence between sentences. It can go everywhere within an organization. So I would say there's there's three things that I've learned because we like to keep things simple. Right.
Josh Troche: So just so I can understand exactly.
Chrissy Myers: So the first is that you set the temperature. So your team isn't just listening to your words. They're really reading your energy. They're reading your facial expressions, they're reading your body language. And they're constantly scanning and thinking and asking those questions. Are we okay? Can I relax in the work? Do I need to brace myself? Is there something that's going wrong? Are we in trouble? And that's why I like to say that the leader is the thermostat, not the thermometer. So you're saying. Yes, you're setting the temperature so.
Josh Troche: Your people are the thermometer?
Chrissy Myers: Pretty much. Yeah. You're the thermostat. So if you're running hot, if you're anxious, if you're overwhelmed, if you're spending and creating stories for yourself, the team is going to heat up right alongside of you. Your panic becomes their panic because they're going to match your energy. And then when fear sets in that temperature, everything then becomes reactive. So small problem start to feel like really big one's progress stalls while people are waiting in the room for everything to cool down, or they're waiting to see how's the reaction going to go. So your steadiness doesn't just impact the vibe of where things are, it drives the entire pace and confidence of your team. So you are the thermostat. You set the temperature. That's number one.
Josh Troche: If you appear in a oh mode.
Chrissy Myers: Not oh mode. Oh mode is fine. Oh mode is hey, we got to do something. Okay. It's the oh mode. Oh, yes. Okay. There is a difference between urgency and panic I think I agree. Yeah. And a lot of times I think business owners think everything is urgent. Everything is important. No, it's not. It's not. And if you if that is how you're running your life, I mean, you better name your ulcer because it's not going anywhere.
Josh Troche: I just say name your ulcer. Chrissy.
Chrissy Myers: No, not Chrissy. So the second thing I would say about navigating fear is that you don't have to have all the answers, but you do need to stay grounded. Yes. Yeah. So I mean, you have to remember that resilience doesn't mean pretending everything's fine. We're not that dog in the bar. We're not that meme. It really means standing in the unknown and saying, you know, this is uncomfortable, but I can separate what's real from what's imagined. What are the current facts? What is the current situation? And then I can take the right next step. And I can lead myself through this because your team doesn't expect perfection from you. They expect presence. They need your brain, they need your calm. And they want to know that even when the path is unclear, you're not going to spiral and drag them with you because that's the other part. Don't drag your people into your fear spiral. Don't do it.
Josh Troche: I can I touch on the your team doesn't expect perfection.
Chrissy Myers: Yes.
Josh Troche: Oh my God, my team does not. They catch my screw ups all of the time.
Chrissy Myers: And you need to tell them thank you. Because that's really why you pay them 100%.
Josh Troche: I hate it when I see people that are like, oh yeah, they get all grumpy when someone catches their no. Like you. Yes. Thank you. Glad that's why. Yes.
Chrissy Myers: Well, and even if they're willing to help catch your mistakes, and they're also going to be willing to help make you better. And that's the other part is I want team members. I'm gonna say like, a third of the team is there to prevent me from doing something dumb. I really do think that many of my assistant, especially, she, is there to make sure I don't do anything.
Josh Troche: I think it's more a half my team, but yeah, sure. Hey, we need more resources to. Yes.
Chrissy Myers: So and then the third thing I would say about, you know, navigating fear and using resilience is that resilience isn't loud.
Josh Troche: It's measured well like that.
Chrissy Myers: Yeah. So resilient leadership isn't about big speeches. It's not about taking heroic action. It's not about always being the hero. It's really about modeling calm clarity when things feel shaky.
Josh Troche: I wanted to get my cap out.
Chrissy Myers: You know? Damn. No, cap is silent. So really resilient. Sounds like as you're dealing with fear, here's what I know. Here's what I don't know, and here's what we're going to do next. And that kind of leadership doesn't just stabilize. It helps build culture. And it helps build momentum in the organization. Because when leaders model that clarity over catastrophe, it gives permission for the whole team to breathe, which is good. Your team needs oxygen.
Josh Troche: They do, they do, they do that.
Chrissy Myers: Yeah. So I would say to you like, you know, resilient leaders, they don't just power through the storm. They plan through it. They breathe through it. They teach each other and teach others how to do the same. And they don't have to be unshakable. And that's I think oftentimes as entrepreneurs, especially when we're new to having a team, we think that we have to appear bulletproof to the people that are around us. And that is just it's not true. You have to just be grounded enough to remind your team that you've got it.
Josh Troche: It with that. So I, I want to ask something on that. So you think showing fear is perfectly A-okay? Fine. It's just making sure that they also know that you're, like, looking at it in a calculated manner and haven't switched on to hair on fire mode.
Chrissy Myers: Yes, I think that fear fear gets a bad rap is a word. Sure. So. But you can replace fear with uncertainty. You can replace fear with concern, and when you replace it with those words, it seems way more reasonable and manageable. You're like, I'm fearful about this. And you, you're visibly showing freak out as opposed to I'm concerned this might be something that we need to work on. I'm concerned this could leave us vulnerable. How you use your language around fear, I think, is also just as important that 100%. I don't hide under your desk either. That's. Just saying.
Josh Troche: If your team walks in and sees you under your desk with a helmet on and some aluminum foil, they're probably going to.
Chrissy Myers: They're going to have concerns. Now. That's it. I have there been times where I'm laying in the middle of my office on the floor trying to, like, calm myself down. Yes, I shut my door and nobody needs to see that. Right?
Josh Troche: Right. In a meeting I.
Chrissy Myers: Had a meeting occasionally. I mean, it does, because occasionally you're going to have as a business owner, there are going to be moments where you are going to panic. Not everybody needs to see that. So you need to get a handle on yourself and keep moving forward. So I mean, that's why, you know, we talk about is I want to transition to operational perspective. You know, catastrophizing is an emotional choice.
Josh Troche: Yes.
Chrissy Myers: I think we both would agree with that.
Josh Troche: 100% terrible.
Chrissy Myers: Results and terrible business decisions. So I want to talk about the operational cost of this behavior. How can a leader use simple systems to force themselves to be calculating instead of catastrophizing?
Josh Troche: It's funny because I when I start to think of some of this, I realize in many ways I am more calculating than most. So I'm like, okay, how can we adapt this? I lack some emotion in some areas. I get it, it's late. It's always it's four hours after the fact. When I freak out, it's okay.
Chrissy Myers: That's that's really good. That means that you're really good in the moment.
Josh Troche: But I want. Right. But I want to try and present this in a way that's adaptable for normal humans. One that I found that was interesting is like when we catastrophize stuff another Chris Williamson Williams quote is most people will deal with years of misery instead of facing a few moments of pain. That is why 90% of people are still in relationships.
Chrissy Myers: It's this sweaty ten minute conversation by Gay Hendricks.
Josh Troche: Exactly. It's 100% that they don't want to have that. And that it's delaying a difficult decision, a difficult conversation, a layoff, a price increase, a client termination. You're going to delay that for months because you're like, Now now's not the right time.
Chrissy Myers: [Laughter]
Josh Troche: No it's it's it's never the right time.
Chrissy Myers: It's never going to be.
Josh Troche: It's never the right time to break up. It's never the right time to increase prices. It's never the right time to tell a client. It's been real. It's been fun. But it hasn't been real fun. Get out of here. What? So many people don't realize is not making a decision is still a decision.
Chrissy Myers: It is an expensive one, usually.
Josh Troche: Oh, gosh, is it ever. And, I mean, I know I think back to some stuff where I'm like, yeah, we're just going to put that off a little bit. And then I sit there and think and it's like, oh, that probably cost me only like 4 or 5 times more.
Chrissy Myers: Exactly.
Josh Troche: The ways that people do this are what is tough. Get the and I've done this. Let's wait and see. Now, I've actually used this as a tactic when I was at the Semitruck dealership. The, the corporate office, the, the, the manufacturer was actually like, hey, we want you to build another dealership. And I'm like, oh, you've given us data, but the data doesn't. This data isn't clear. It's kind of dirty data. Get us clean data, which I knew they couldn't for another couple of months get us clean data and then we'll we'll go ahead and make the decision. And they're like, okay, we'll do that. And I'm like, great. We already knew what we needed to do. I used it as a delay tactic. Thankfully, it was the one time that it was to our advantage. If a vendor is becoming unreliable, I mean, start working on switching. First off, you shouldn't just have one vendor anyways.
Chrissy Myers: Keep a bench.
Josh Troche: But yes, but start start working on those types of things. The other one is too is I'm going through this with my father right now. Option overload. Oh, he's looking at a purchase. It's several hundred dollars. I can't say what this is because it's for someone else. It's a it's a present.
Chrissy Myers: Okay.
Josh Troche: Several hundred dollars. He has sent me ten of these items to compare. I know he has probably spent 7 to 10 hours on this.
Chrissy Myers: Yes.
Josh Troche: And I'm like, no, just. And they're all going to work fine. Every single one of them.
Chrissy Myers: Just pick one.
Josh Troche: Just pick one. It's like going to a car dealership. Like there's ten different cars sitting here on the lot. This one's a blue one. That one's a red one. But this one has the heated seats. But that one has that. Just pick one. This is it. It's not a decision that needs to take two weeks of your life.
Chrissy Myers: Yes.
Josh Troche: Figure out what fits your budget. Figure out what you have to have and go get it.
Chrissy Myers: Well, and there are very few decisions in business that are absolutely life and death. Even tattoos can be removed. So stop.
Josh Troche: It. I've never, never, ever, ever had one either.
Chrissy Myers: But they're removable, right?
Josh Troche: Right. No, it's it's a great advantage for.
Chrissy Myers: But they're removable.
Josh Troche: Right. Things can be undone. That's the yes. The the thing that I see with it so often is people are so shy to pull the trigger on something. Yeah. And they've already got momentum in that direction. So now all that momentum is gone because of like I'm going to do more research because I've got 500 options. Nope. Pick one, which we were talking about this year before. Yeah. In terms of CRM, I'm like, hey, what CRM to use? Because I'm looking at 2 or 3 of them, but we're really just going to be like, you know what? This covers the basics. Done. I'm not going to I'm not going to spend a week on this. It doesn't make sense to do it. But so many people want to want the perfect decision that they just either a waste time or never make a decision. The other one is, is the what if. Oh, God.
Chrissy Myers: Yes. We see this in HR all the time.
Josh Troche: So I'm sure you have some stories.
Chrissy Myers: Well, yes. All very expensive ones. So.
Josh Troche: Yes. Very expensive ones. And probably not ones that we want to record. No new. Yeah. People don't typically spend it like they'll sit there and they'll worry about like, all the bad things that can happen, but they won't focus on the actual worry. What happens if we do this? Like, we might lose our biggest client, whoever. Okay, but if that's 20% of your business, that sucks. Yeah, but you're not shuttering tomorrow. What happens if the new product launch might fail? I just heard something, too, that, Darwin kept the theory of evolution in a drawer for 20 years. Really? Yeah. It wasn't until someone else came out and started to talk about it that he finally said, oh, yeah, I've had this book. Because once again, there was that fear of what's going to happen with it. The problem is, is we spend so much time like looking at the bad outcomes of this. I just worked with, a client that we did a bunch of great videos with them. It was to help promote them and to to get an issue to pass. And they were fun. They I mean, they were good quality stuff. And they were so worried about two bad comments from people that always make bad comments that they were unwilling to go out and get those thousand or 2 or 3000 people that never would see the stuff otherwise, because it's something that was edgy and not even edgy in a bad way. Edgy in a funny way. Someone could be like, oh, why are they doing that? That's wasting time. Or wait, it was 30. Yeah.
Chrissy Myers: So number one, to the trolls.
Josh Troche: And that's it. They looked the the guy was working with I, I asked him about it and he goes, look, he goes, I look at everything is like, how can I cover my ass now? And I'm like, no, you need you occasionally need to get punched in the face. It may it's going to hurt. Is it going to you're going to wobble around for a few seconds? Yes. But if you are so worried about getting punched in the face that you just keep your hands up.
Chrissy Myers: You're you're going to throw a punch.
Josh Troche: You're never, ever, ever going to throw a punch. And then you're just sitting there like a sitting duck. The other thing that I, that I always work with on this is I assign a measurable cost. Yeah. I look at things like, let's say, hey, we lose our top client. What is that? Is it is it 10% of the business? Well, okay, when you add that up. Okay, that's a shot to the business. But, I mean, it's not crushing.
Chrissy Myers: Now, can you quantify it because. Right. I think often we we overestimate what that actual number is. There's a lot more feeling to it than there is fact to it. And I would say to going back to you what you were saying about, you know, defining the worst probable outcome. As I think often we are, we are always good to plan for when things go wrong. But I think as a, as a business owner especially, we need to plan for when things go right because you will die from success just as likely as you will die from failure. Actually more from success. It's more likely that you're going to die from success, and you are going to die from failure because it can crush you very quickly. It's like what happens if no one buys our product? Well, what happens if everyone buys your product too? Like, you need to think like, oh.
Josh Troche: You should you should never have the mindset. Holy shit, it worked. Yes.
Chrissy Myers: Agreed.
Josh Troche: You should go into it with the confidence. Yes. That you expect it to work.
Chrissy Myers: Exactly.
Josh Troche: It is. It's funny, I'm going to go back to the affirmation saying. And I heard Jimmy Carr, the comedian, said it's and he kind of pulled it from Alex Hormozi. But he said after he goes, you do not gain confidence from shouting affirmations in the mirror every morning. You gain confidence from doing the thing and proving with irrefutable proof that you can do it. And that's where this comes in. You can prove that you can do it. And if you didn't do it, yes, what you reset. And the next step that I have is creating a mitigation plan.
Chrissy Myers: Yes.
Josh Troche: So that way when it doesn't work now, just like what we've talked about in preparing for like stuff to go sideways, preparing for the client to leave, preparing for a vendor to collapse, preparing when you've created those mitigation plans, when you look at it like, oh, okay. First off, this didn't 99.9% of the time it is going to go a quarter sideways than you think it will.
Chrissy Myers: Yes.
Josh Troche: You're you're you're thinking this is going to be the full 360 burning into the wall. You're going to spin out, you're going to look around, you're going to be like, okay, not a big deal. Anyone see that? Look both ways. Get back on the road. If you've got that mitigation plan. Yes you know what the actual cost is. And then you can start to take those steps as soon as you start to see it go sideways. The one that, like I said, if, if, if, if it's something that could lose a big customer, you look at like as you do that you ramp up lead generation. Yes. Oh, hey, we could lose someone in this. Guess what? We should probably go find more other. Someone's.
Chrissy Myers: Yes. Or if you want to have steady growth year over year, you should be doing that anyway.
Josh Troche: Yes.
Chrissy Myers: I think often, especially when you're new to building your business, it's easy to turn things on and off, as opposed to maintaining and remembering that, you know, momentum is okay. And something that I'm working on with my business coach right now. As I told her, like, I just I'm struggling in trying not to control freak my momentum like there is a certain speed that I am ready to move at and I feel like I'm getting pulled a little bit faster and I need to do a good job of not freaking out and pulling everything back, because I've built a team that knows what they're doing.
Josh Troche: How did you say that again?
Chrissy Myers: Control freak. My momentum.
Josh Troche: Once again. Yes, I think me sitting across the table, I can speak for our audience and saying, you are the only person I would ever expect to say those words together. It's like 100%. That's that, that, that, that's a Chrissy-ism.
Chrissy Myers: It's maybe it is, but it's how do you I mean, even as you're maintaining whether you're building something or you're maintaining a level success or you're moving and you're accelerating up your own success spiral, how do you not freak yourself out and pull yourself back down? Because that's the other part. When things start to get uncomfortable and we start to move into a level where we haven't been before, it's easy to shrink. And so that's where I'm like, don't shrink and don't shrink the people around me, because that's the other part, is what we've been doing this year to you. And clarity is really building capacity and adding additional team members who can really help with key, key things that are no longer within the absolute claw of my control. And so I'm having to do this and release my hand from everything when I really just want to pull it back, because it's safer when I'm just doing it. But it's also a lot slower.
Josh Troche: I feel like this should have involved you sitting on a couch and me taking a chair. This this is the this is the therapy session. Yes, I love it. Boy, you do not. That's a that's a that is a bad mistake that you should fear is having me as your therapist.
Chrissy Myers: Yeah, I would agree.
Josh Troche: The other one that I'm going to say real quick is calculate the delta, like, oh, yeah, the emotional weight of your initial worry. Like, what is that? And think about if you think about that with intention, you realize I am carrying around a 20 pound bag of nothing. Yeah, it's really only got 2 pounds in it, but I'm treating it like it's got 20 in it. So that is the thing to look at because once again, we're typically going to look at what happens when this goes sideways. Also balance that with what happens when this goes right. That's I mean you know that my favorite saying is is when my esophagus and large intestines have swapped places. Yes, that's.
Chrissy Myers: True.
Josh Troche: We have all had. The other one that I use on the motorcycle is I had I didn't need a seatbelt. I had a firm grip on the seat. I tried to wrap this all up and stop with my nine year old analogies. Actionable steps. For me, one is name the fear, calculate the cost. Stop saying it could be a disaster instead, right? The most probable worst case scenario is X. And when you say most probable put like okay, this this is where we could land. Not a big.
Chrissy Myers: Deal. Yeah I would say be a thermostat. Remember from number one, you know, as the leader you set the temperature. So remember to model what you want to see in your team.
Josh Troche: Love it. Another one that I heard is run into the storm, not away from the storm. Yeah. If you run away from the storm, you end up longer in the storm. If you run through it. So put the ten minutes on the calendar and commit to getting the tough part done. Mediately.
Chrissy Myers: Yeah. And I would say practice probable not possible. Love it. So when your brain jumps to the worst case scenario, you're going to pause and ask yourself what is most likely to happen. Because resilience comes from training your mind to stay grounded in what's probable, not what's terrifying. No more ulcers.
Josh Troche: Courses on the anti ulcer.
Chrissy Myers: I am.
Josh Troche: For me this is easier for me that than many others. But lead with fact, not emotion. Just I mean data numbers. Those are what speak not your anxiety. Like, if you just peed yourself. Change before you talk to your team.
Chrissy Myers: Yeah, I agree, and I would say shrink the fear with the first step because action is the antidote to anxiety. So picking that small step, sending the email, looking at the numbers, starting the conversation. Fear grows in avoidance and it shrinks when we're in motion.
Josh Troche: Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that, fastest way for a leader to destroy all trust when fear becomes the crisis.
Chrissy Myers: So it's panic in front of your team. Yeah, yeah. Second they see you unravel, they start imagining the catastrophe because they assume you know something they don't. Yeah. Be steady. Be an anchor. If you lose it, the whole boat starts to drift.
Josh Troche: Josh is looking for a job. Does that mean we should be looking for a job?
Chrissy Myers: All exactly right. Yeah, I know, right. So what's the single best operational method for forcing yourself to stop catastrophizing?
Josh Troche: Time on the calendar. Like a worst case cashflow projection that forces you to put real, measurable, like number on the imaginary disaster. Nice. So if it is the if if you're avoiding something like why and put a number to it. Yeah. If you've got a number to it you can figure it out. If I'm paying someone that's putting in half the effort for six months, that's expensive as hell. Yeah.
Chrissy Myers: Don't do it.
Josh Troche: We've both done it. We've asked on it.
Chrissy Myers: More than I want to admit. And way more money than I want to ever tell anyone.
Josh Troche: Oh, God. Yeah. You know, like, how many numbers are left of the decimal point, Damn it. Yeah, that's my retirement.
Chrissy Myers: I don't want to. Yeah, we can talk about million dollar mistakes. Multimillion dollar mistakes. Yes.
Josh Troche: Yes, yes. Before Chrissy and I start to cry at the end of this episode thinking about those types of things, we definitely really appreciate, all of you guys. To me, it's trade your nightmares for spreadsheets. Oh, yeah. Chrissy, once again, thank you for the insight stories and everything like that. And the resiliency that you have with us is awesome. And the clarity at which is presented. I'm getting I'm getting better at this.
Chrissy Myers: You are.
Josh Troche: This is a good, do me a favor. Do us both a favor. Business fix podcast.com. Follow us on all the social medias at The Business Fix. We've had a pretty good run on Instagram recently. Yeah. Was fine. Yes. Review subscription on any of the podcast platforms. We greatly appreciate. Next week we are talking about what employees expect from you. Yeah. Besides bad jokes, as always, do us a favor. Take care of yourself. If you can take care of someone else, we will see you very, very soon.