How to Make a Scary Decision
Entrepreneur|March 2022
Growth often requires doing something a little dangerous. Here, six entrepreneurs share the calculus behind their biggest risks.
Illustration by Tommy Parker
How to Make a Scary Decision

1/ Go with what you know.

After a year in business, we broke even without spending much on advertising. So I looked at the media landscape. The digital and paid social spaces were saturated by DTCS.TV and print would be hard to break through. But radio was a channel I'd had great experiences building brand equity on. So we went all in. I remortgaged my house five times, but by the end of our second year, we had grown 10 times. -SCOTT TANNEN, cofounder and CEO, Boll & Branch

2/ Trust your vision.

When I was 21, I raised capital to build a six-story mega hostel in Eastern Europe. Days before we broke ground, the Russian ruble crashed. Suddenly we had 30% of the $3 million budget in investor commitments and a 25-plus-year lease with my name on it. I was terrified. But I signed personal guarantees left and right, promising to pay everyone in future profits. It became one of the most profitable youth hostels in that part of the world.

This story is from the March 2022 edition of Entrepreneur.

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This story is from the March 2022 edition of Entrepreneur.

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