A few years ago, Eric bought his dad’s company.
His dad was a good businessman. Careful. Protective of what he’d built. And very clear about one thing: growth costs more than it’s worth. More to manage. More that can go wrong. Stay small. Stay safe.
Eric had run the company that way. But he kept watching peers of his grow — and actually enjoy it. He started to wonder if his dad had gotten that part wrong.
Then a big opportunity landed. One that could double the size of his business. It meant hiring two senior people — the largest investment he’d ever made.
Eric had found me through another client. His company was smaller than many of my other clients, so I suggested he start with two days and we’d talk about more from there.
“No.”
He didn’t hesitate.
“When I start, I want to be all in on the full year.”
Sometimes I hear that and I know it’s a delay tactic — a way of saying not yet while sounding decisive. With Eric it was the opposite. He meant it. He had one thing to handle first, came back exactly when he said he would, and we had our two days in Denver at the end of August. Two sunny days in the eighties. The kind of weather that makes everything feel more possible.
The shift happened at lunch on the first day. Outside. Sun reflecting off the glass buildings around us.
We’d been talking about the opportunity — what would happen if the investment didn’t work. What would happen if it did. He’d been going back and forth on it for a while. Weighing it. Protecting against it.
And then, midsentence, he stopped.
He smiled.
“What am I so worried about?”
That was it. Not an answer. Not a plan. Just the worry losing its grip.
In the months that followed, he hired the two senior people. A critical team member left — and instead of scrambling, he saw it immediately as a chance to rethink the role entirely. He redesigned it for the company he was building, not the company he’d inherited. He started developing a young protégé to eventually succeed him. The right people started appearing for the roles he was creating.
His dad wasn’t wrong, exactly. Caution kept the company alive. But Eric had been running someone else’s fear. And once he saw that, he couldn’t unsee it.
He continues to take on more and more.
And he’s having fun doing it.
An Opportunity for Deeper Work
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