Your Fear Has A Bad Watch

A motorcycle track coach taught me the most useful thing I know about business, and he did it by making me afraid on purpose.

Going into a corner at speed, there is a moment where your whole body screams brake. Not a thought. A flood. The coach watched me obey it for a few laps, then handed me a strange instruction. When the fear hits, notice it. Name it. Count to three. Then turn in.

The first time he said it, I thought he wanted me to be braver. He didn’t. He wanted me to learn that the fear was early. It always was. It arrived a full three seconds before the corner actually needed anything from me. My fear was not lying about the danger. It was lying about the time.

Last week I was sitting with the founder of a SaaS company, talking positioning, and I felt the old flood come back. That nervous spike that says you are about to not be impressive, so soften it, hedge it, give him the tidy version he probably came in expecting. Brake now.

I counted. Then I said the thing I actually believed, which was that I wouldn’t touch his positioning for where the company sits today. Positioning is a hockey instinct. You don’t pass the puck to where the player is standing. You pass it to where the player is going to be. He went quiet, then leaned in. It paid off.

Now the honest part, because the clean version of this story is a lie. I did not find my braking point by being wise. I found it by running off the track.

Same corner, a few laps in a row, holding the pause a beat too long, sailing wide into the grass with the throttle full of regret. Three is not a magic number. Three is a search. You overshoot, you clip the apex late, you adjust, you try again. The seconds were never the lesson. The braking point was.

And once I had it on one corner, I could carry the same motion into the next one.

Fear is a now signal. The alarm is real. Its sense of timing is garbage.

Stay Positive & Count…Then Turn In