Tackling the fear of rejection and/or failure is about the most potent obstacle you’ll ever be faced with and which you’ll overcome.

The fear it creates can often lead to business decisions which aren’t, by anyone’s standards, profitable.

In business, and especially in small businesses and start-ups, it’s worthwhile asking yourself consistently:

What am I afraid of doing next?

And by that I mean, if you weren’t afraid of anything, what would you do next?

It’s a powerful question because it may well identify important actions which we’ve overlooked because we don’t want to contemplate them.

It’s easy as a home worker for example, to spend a a disproportionate amount of time on Twitter or “learning” when actually you should be making sales calls, or doing something else you don’t like.

We don’t like to look at what we fear, but by facing them we grow, we open up new possibilities.

And if it’s just as hard for a competitor to pick up the phone and make a sales call (or whatever it is you have to do) you have a competitive advantage the moment you break through it and act even despite your fear.

Courage is taking the next step, it’s an accumulation of small steps taken.

Moreover courage happens only in the presence of fear.

What are you afraid of doing next to make your business more profitable?