… when it feels like every decision is made by you and only you.

… when you question your choices, your path, yourself.

… when you think how lovely it would be for just a day to be a child again, when everything was so much simpler and most decisions were made for you.

Others are quick to remind you that you chose this path, but even so…

There are days.

We love solving problems, but avoid criticism.

We love to help everyone, but resent feeling overwhelmed.

We love to be needed, but resent dependence.

We love to be successful, but eschew failure.

There’s nothing wrong with being a contradiction, but sometimes it’s helpful to look at why you run away from one thing, when you run toward something seemingly very similar. Maybe it will help you work through it, or maybe you just shrug and think, ‘Hey, I’m a walking contradiction.’

I totally understand the idea that there is a cost to simply turning on a machine, or getting labor to complete a task. For me, whether you order a single dozen or 1000 dozen, the fact is that I have to come into work, and in the time that it takes me to complete 1 dozen, I could just as easily make 1000 dozen.

On the flip-side, as a small business owner, scales of economy work against me and challenge innovation. If I want to launch a new product, the cost of printing packaging can be really minimal… if I order 100,000 units. But, if I want to assess the viability of a product or the packaging design, and the product hasn’t been given national, ubiquitous distribution, I might only need or want to order, say 1000 units. Well, unfortunately, to order 1000, it’s going to cost me nearly as much as if I ordered 100,000.

So I’m forced to decide between two equally difficult options:

1. I eat into my profits, just to test the waters. I order only what I need, and pay a high premium for a small order. In the case that the product doesn’t succeed or I decide that I want to change the packaging design, I don’t have money sunk into a bunch of useless inventory.
   OR
2. I take a leap and hope that the product is a giant success, and order 100,000 units. I gamble that the product will fly off the shelves, and that massive distribution will follow very quickly (otherwise don’t forget, I’ve now got storage costs for warehousing these 99,000 extra units).

The funny thing is no matter which way you look at it, being an entrepreneur means running toward risk. Either you risk paying a higher initial price for things in hopes that you’ll recoup it with volume and growth, or you risk purchasing way more than you currently need in hopes that you will, one day soon, need them. As entrepreneurs, we run toward our dreams, knowing full well that the bridge may not be that sturdy, but our conviction in our goals leads us to believe that if the bridge gives out, we will fly. We embrace this path filled with uncertainty, contradiction and odds, sometimes forced to choose between pragmatism and optimism. And if you’re out there reading this, and feeling like you’re the only one making impossible decisions on a daily basis, you’re not. So there.