Trending
Well, not to cut straight to it, but I've never been one to beat around the bush. It's probably why, when I speak at events, my presentations are usually under 10 minutes. That's about my attention span when listening to someone else's monologue anyway.
Now, teach me something? Start a conversation? Ask me a question? Good luck getting me to stop talking.
So, I guess I contradicted myself already.
Anyway … I didn't do it. I did not make enough money selling banana bread to cover my bill.
As startup businesses go, though, I'd actually call it a success.
I didn't invest any of my own money. I used the profits from a previous garage sale to pay for the newspaper ad and ingredients, and after everything was said and done, I made $83 in profit. If I count the money I recycled from the garage sale plus the new profit, that's not too shabby for an idea that started in my kitchen.
Even better? I still have enough left to reinvest. Fifty dollars can buy a Meta ad. It can pay for a month of a software subscription. It can become supplies for another product.
Small amounts of money have a funny way of turning into opportunities if you're willing to keep putting them back to work.
What surprised me wasn't the money. It was the fear. Calling to place that newspaper ad took everything I had.
The moment I made that phone call, it became real. There was no turning back. People were going to see it. They were either going to buy…or they weren't. Suddenly this silly little banana bread experiment felt oddly personal.
Here's the funny part.
I didn't actually need the money to pay the bill.
It would have been nice, of course. It would have been satisfying to say that banana bread paid for it. But whether I sold one loaf or one hundred, my life wasn't going to change dramatically.
I had almost nothing to lose. And yet, my brain acted as though everything was on the line. Isn't that interesting?
How often do we convince ourselves not to try because we're afraid of failing…even when the consequences are incredibly small?
We hesitate to start the business. We don't submit the application. We don't go to the networking event because we convince ourselves we'll walk in and no one will talk to us. We don't raise our hand. We don't make the phone call. We don't post the video.
Our minds are remarkably good at creating stories that feel completely true, even when there's very little evidence to support them.
Fear has a way of making tiny risks feel enormous.
I've learned something over the years: the only reliable way I've found to quiet that fear is to walk straight through it. Because every single time I've done that, whether in business, writing, running or life, I've discovered that fear usually shrinks the moment action begins.
Would I sell banana bread again? Maybe.
Hopefully The Vindicator will let me run another little experiment someday.
This time, though, I've decided the proceeds from my banana bread adventure will be donated to the Women & Girls Fund at the Community Foundation. Those dollars can go much farther helping women and girls throughout our community than they ever could sitting in my kitchen.
Of course, my brain is already spinning. What if we did a banana bread collaboration to raise even more dollars for the fund? But that's also my problem. I don't always know how to shut the valve off once the ideas start flowing.
Then again…maybe that's not such a bad problem to have.
So, from me to you…
What's the thing you've been talking yourself out of because fear has convinced you the risk is bigger than it really is?
Maybe today is the day you make the call. You might not make enough to pay the bill. But you might earn something far more valuable: proof that you're capable of doing hard things -- even when you're scared.