When I first started my business, I found myself staring down an empty work calendar. I was totally unbooked–except for one tiny little workshop gig. I didn’t know how to get work, I didn’t know what I was selling. I had no clue what to say at cocktail parties.

I felt like an impostor.

I was feeling that kind of panicked overwhelm when you know you need to take action but you can’t even think straight–when a friend suggested I should ask for help–why not hire a business coach?

Some quick research revealed that it was going to cost me $1500 in a month in which I made $980.

Confidence Hack #3: Make the Investment

If you’re like me, you obsess (over-obsess) about any little decision…and this was not a little decision. I obsessed over whether I should spend the money. I obsessed over which business coach to hire. I wrote a nine-point document about what I wanted to get out of the coaching that was waaaay more than any one hire could handle.

I would have obsessed forever, but finally, realizing that if I didn’t figure this out, I’d have a hard time paying rent, I took action and hired a coach. She helped me define my target client and write my sales and positioning language.

And you know what? She didn’t get it quite right.

But it was still the best investment I ever made in my business.

Within 3-4 months I realized that the customers and offers we defined weren’t quite who I wanted to be serving and what I wanted to be doing. But at that point, I’d had a solid business plan I’d been working from for a few months, that gave me confidence in my offer. I’d been recruiting clients. I’d had something to say at cocktail parties.

The “answers” my business coach helped me develop were a raft in a big, overwhelming ocean. They gave me a platform to stand on and start moving forward, instead of acting frozen, petrified with fear. My work with my business coach was my training wheels. By the time I was sailing forward, I didn’t realize that I didn’t need them anymore. From there it was easy to adjust course to redirect towards what I really wanted.

I look back on that investment as a turning point in my business. It was the upfront investment that marshaled me–my best resource–into taking action. And it was making the investment–when I was scared to do so–that helped. It committed me to the fact that I would move through this period of uncertainty. I would get everything I could out of this coaching. This ends here, girl.

We don’t move forward by ruminating and planning. We move forward by doing, taking action and deciding.

And even if it’s not always 100% right–it often gets us closer to what’s right. And I’d rather be there than still contemplating the thought.