If you want to make exponential gains in your business, you must understand one thing:
Your high-impact decisions will always come with uncertainty.
There are no shortcuts through it, and you can’t logic your way into a guaranteed outcome. In fact, the moment something starts to feel certain, it probably means there’s not much upside. It’s like investing in a treasury bond. Safe? Sure. But you’re not getting exponentially richer on a 4 percent return.
That’s the trap too many leaders fall into. They chase certainty and comfort and wonder why their results are average.
However, it’s important not to throw caution to the wind. Betting big doesn’t mean betting stupid. It means knowing how to evaluate risk intelligently — and that starts with asking one critical question:
“What’s the worst-case scenario if I’m wrong?”
If the answer is something along the lines of “We go out of business,” “I lose everything,” or “This can tank our entire team,” then chances are that’s a bet you can’t afford to make.
But 99.9 percent of most decisions don’t carry that kind of downside. You hire someone and it doesn’t work out? You lose time, money, and maybe some momentum, and that stings. But you’re not going to end up homeless and bankrupt. You’ll be able to come back from it.
So the real art isn’t in correctly guessing the outcome; it’s in the ability to rationally evaluate the expected value and make the best decision based on that evaluation.
In his book Principles, Ray Dalio urges us to think in terms of probability-weighted outcomes:
- What’s the upside if you’re right?
- What’s the downside if you’re wrong?
- And what’s the actual likelihood of each?
If the upside is game changing and the downside is tolerable (even if it’s uncomfortable), that’s a bet worth considering — especially if the probability is in your favor.
Too many people rely solely on gut instinct. While your gut can be powerful, it’s not a solid strategy tool but one data point. Sometimes it lies, so you need to back it up with real evidence.
At the same time, it’s important that you don’t get paralyzed trying to predict every variable. You control way more than you think.
The trick is finding the right balance between your gut and your brain.
When you make a hiring decision, you control how you recruit, onboard, train, and develop that new team member. You control the culture and the leadership. You’re not tossing dice. You’re building a system. Same with marketing. You choose the message, the medium, and the audience. You get feedback and you adjust.
So bet big but be smart.
Know the downside and respect the risk, but don’t let fear of failure keep you stuck in the shallow end of the pool.
As we like to say here at Crisp, the worst decision is no decision at all. The biggest wins come from choices that feel a little scary — the ones where you’re not 100% certain, but the upside is massive and the risk is manageable.
That’s how you scale. That’s how you lead. That’s how you build something great.
