Feel the Fear

There are certain books that arrive in your life at exactly the right moment. For me, one of those books was Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. I read it in my early days in business, at a time when I was full of ambition but equally full of uncertainty. Like many founders, I thought confidence was something you had before you took the leap. Susan Jeffers completely changed that belief.

Her message was simple but powerful: fear never really disappears; growth comes from learning to act despite it. That idea transformed the way I approached business, leadership, and risk.

Even now, more than a decade after Susan Jeffers’ passing, her work continues through global workshops, coaching programmes, and training built around her teachings; proof that her message still resonates strongly today.

Fear Never Leaves When You’re Building Something Meaningful

When people look at a successful business from the outside, they often assume the founder must have been fearless. The truth is usually the opposite. Every major stage of growth in my own journey came with fear attached to it.

😱Fear when I founded my first business.

😱Fear when I hired people and became responsible for livelihoods.

😱Fear when I committed to bigger contracts.

😱Fear when the business scaled towards £8 million turnover and the stakes became higher than ever.

😱And perhaps the biggest fear of all - what happens when everything you’ve built starts to unravel.

For me despite building a successful company, we ran out of cash. That moment could easily have defined me.

For many business owners, setbacks like that create a permanent fear of trying again. You begin to question your judgment, your resilience, and even your identity.

But Susan Jeffers’ philosophy stayed with me: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

👉Not recklessly

👉Not blindly.

But with the understanding that courage is not the absence of fear; it’s movement despite it.

Starting Again During Covid

Years later, during Covid, I found myself starting again in an entirely different industry. On paper, it looked irrational. The world felt uncertain, businesses were pulling back and nobody knew what was coming next.

But experience had taught me something important: Fear is rarely a sign to stop. More often, it’s a sign that you’re stepping into growth.

One of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is that resilience is not built during easy seasons. It’s built during the moments where you have no guarantees and choose to move forward anyway.

That applies whether you are:

☑️launching a business

☑️hiring your first team member

☑️stepping away from day-to-day operations

☑️raising your prices

☑️changing direction

☑️or rebuilding after failure

The fear changes shape, but it never disappears completely.

The Hidden Difference Between Successful Founders

Over the years, I’ve worked with many business owners, and I’ve noticed something interesting. The founders who grow are not necessarily the smartest, they are the ones willing to keep acting despite discomfort.

☑️They have difficult conversations.

☑️They make decisions without perfect information.

☑️They take responsibility when things go wrong.

☑️They keep moving after setbacks.

Mindset matters because business growth always requires entering unfamiliar territory, and unfamiliar territory naturally creates fear. The problem is that many founders interpret fear as evidence they are making the wrong decision. In reality, fear often appears precisely because the decision matters.

From Fear to Leadership

What Susan Jeffers taught me wasn’t just personal confidence; it was leadership because leadership means being willing to move first. Your team watches how you respond to uncertainty. If you panic, hesitate constantly, or avoid difficult decisions, that fear spreads through the business. But when you stay grounded, take action, and show resilience during challenging periods, your team gains confidence too.

That doesn’t mean pretending to have all the answers; it means trusting your ability to handle whatever comes next.

One of Susan Jeffers’ most enduring ideas was the phrase: “I’ll handle it.” That mindset is incredibly powerful for founders, not because everything will always go perfectly but because believing you can handle setbacks removes the paralysis that stops so many people from growing.

Why This Matters for Business Growth

Many businesses don’t stall because of lack of opportunity; they stall because the founder becomes trapped inside their own fear:

🤷‍♀️fear of delegating

🤷‍♀️fear of losing control

🤷‍♀️fear of hiring

🤷‍♀️fear of investing

🤷‍♀️fear of failure

🤷‍♀️fear of judgment

🤷‍♀️fear of making the wrong decision

But growth requires movement, and movement requires courage. That’s why mindset is not just a personal development topic, it’s a business growth strategy.

Within my B.U.I.L.D Framework, this connects strongly to the L – Leverage stage because you cannot truly leverage your team, systems, and business if fear keeps you holding onto everything yourself. Eventually, growth demands that founders step beyond the comfort of being the person who does everything and become the person who leads everything.

And that transition always feels uncomfortable at first. Looking back, I can honestly say that some of the best decisions of my life began with fear.

Not certainty...Not confidence...Fear

But every challenge I faced from building and growing a multi-million-pound business, to losing it, to starting again during Covid reinforced one lesson: You do not need to eliminate fear before you move forward. You simply need to trust that you are capable of handling what comes next. And often, the life and business you want sit just on the other side of the thing that scares you most.

For anyone building a business right now and doubting themselves: Fear is normal. growth is uncomfortable but courage is built through action - one decision at a time.

For more on Susan Jeffers’ work and the ongoing “Feel the Fear” training and workshops, visit Susan Jeffers Official Website.

About the Author

Sarah is a business founder, MBA graduate and coach who has built and scaled businesses to over £8 million in revenue with teams of up to 25.. She now helps ambitious founders gain clarity, build motivated teams and create businesses that support the life they want to lead.

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☑️Recruit the right people first time so they fit with your core business values.

☑️Motivate your team and communicate effectively so they consistently deliver beyond expectations

☑️Step back from the day job and replace yourself with your team.