I was 36 years old before I made the call.
Ever since I was a kid, I’d wanted to be a black belt in martial arts. I thought about it for years. I told myself I’d get around to it. And every single day that I didn’t pick up the phone and book that first lesson, I had a perfectly good reason why.
Too busy. Not the right time. I’ll do it next month.
The call you avoid often costs the most.
Then one day I made the call. It took about two minutes. And it changed everything.
That call wasn’t extraordinary. It wasn’t brave. It was just easy to do – which meant it had also been easy not to do. For 36 years.
Now let me ask you something. What’s the call your business has been avoiding?
Because I talk to SME owners every week who know – and I mean really know – what needs to change. They’re not confused. They’re not waiting for more information. They already have the answer. They’re just not making the call.
Maybe it’s the conversation with your accountant about what your business is actually worth. Not what you hope it’s worth. What it’s actually worth – and why the gap between those two numbers exists.
Maybe it’s the call to finally sort out your key-person risk. The one where you admit that if you stepped away tomorrow, the whole thing would wobble. You know it. Your team knows it. But no one’s saying it out loud.
Maybe it’s the recruitment call you’ve been putting off. The senior hire who would free you up to work on the business instead of in it. You’ve been “nearly ready” to make that move for eighteen months.
Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe it’s just the call to sit down with the right people and get an honest picture of where your business actually stands – structurally, financially, operationally. Not the version you tell yourself at 6am when you’re feeling optimistic. The real one.
Here’s what I’ve learned. It’s never the call itself that’s the problem. It’s the story we tell ourselves about why now isn’t the right time.
The business isn’t ready. Things are too uncertain. I’ll do it once this quarter settles down.
But the quarter never settles down. And the thing you’re avoiding doesn’t get easier to fix – it gets more expensive.
The owners who build businesses worth buying, worth scaling, worth handing to the next generation? They’re not smarter than you. They’re not luckier. They just stopped waiting for the perfect moment and made the call.
They chose easy to do over easy not to do.
So I’ll ask you again. What’s the one call your business needs you to make right now?
You already know the answer.
The only question is whether you’re going to make it.
Easy to do, not to do. Your choice.
Author: Peter Thurin, Keynote Speaker, Consultant, and Mentor
