When there are unknowns or you are engaging in something you haven't done before, the best guiding principle is actually pretty straightforward: move forward with curiosity instead of fear. People tend to frame uncertainty as something they must eliminate; however, I now see that it can be a signpost indicating that you are about to grow. Building Legacy Online School has been an ongoing process of learning what to do when there is no set path. The educational landscape is changing quickly, families' needs are also evolving, and there will always be no single path to follow for an extended period of time. Initially, my efforts to mitigate any uncertainty resulted in over-planning; however, staying curious and testing out options, listening to responses, and making changes in the moment is far more beneficial than trying to plan everything out in advance. Staying curious creates the ability to remain stable - curiosity will expand your thought process, whereas fear will limit you. Therefore, when something appears to be unknown, instead of rushing toward an exact answer, ask better questions: What do we hear from families? What are the assumptions that we are making? What are some of the smaller steps we can take to gather additional information? This line of questioning leads to momentum rather than stagnation. Curiosity also builds trust between members of a team; the willingness to explore uncertainties creates a safe environment for a team member to experiment. Students who engage in exploration learn more successfully than those who are restricted from doing so, and decisions made by leaders are more predictable when leaders willingly engage in the same exploration with others. I don't believe certainty creates progress. Adaptability does. When you choose curiosity over control, uncertainty stops being something to avoid and becomes something to work with. That principle has carried me through every new chapter and continues to shape how we build at Legacy.
When we were building Dirty Dough, I loved what we were doing, but you have to be practical. We'd kill a marketing strategy the moment it failed and I got good at saying no to tempting ideas that would have slowed us down. That mix kept the stressful growth periods actually manageable. Keep your heart in your work, but let your head make the big decisions.
To be honest, I've learnt to see any unknown as a test of constancy. So, even when I don't have a comprehensive plan or I'm doing something new, I stick with what I do know and keep showing up. The firm stays grounded by that inner voice that tells you to "stick to your gut." This could mean keeping to our sourcing rules or not compromising on formula ingredients when supplies are low. You can't control changes in the market or noise from competitors, but you can control what you do every day. For me, it's been about doing the right thing even when it seems like the longer path. At one point, at the beginning, someone informed me it would be "way easier" to cut out the wild fish oil and use a synthetic DHA instead, which is cheaper and lasts longer on the shelf. I mean, absolutely, that would have fixed a lot of problems right away. But I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't give it to my own child, and I wasn't going to give it to someone else's. At that moment, consistency was more important than convenience. And that way of thinking has helped us get through anything from delays in manufacturing to problems with the law.
Whenever things get hectic, I bet on people. During a crazy season at Jacksonville Maids, I poured time into training and actually getting to know the crew. They started covering gaps I didn't even know existed. When your team feels supported, all that uncertainty just isn't so scary anymore. You figure it out together.
I learned at Titan Funding that in real estate financing, you have to stick with the real numbers, not the pretty estimates. When the market moved, this kept everyone from panicking and let us make actual choices. It's not the only answer, but it's the one thing that's consistently helped me keep our team and clients level-headed through the tough spots.
Here's my trick. I track everything. How much we spend, how much we make, what it costs to get a new customer. It turns that scary unknown into a simple spreadsheet. When we launched CBDNerds, we were running on fumes, and looking at the numbers every day kept me from freezing up. In the usual mess of a startup, obsessing over the data is how I stay grounded and catch problems before they blow up.
What I've learned most is to question what people say is impossible. When we created the SearchGAP Method, everyone insisted you couldn't get fast SEO results without backlinks. We just kept testing until it worked. To be honest, challenging what's 'supposed to work' and proving it for yourself is how we've made our biggest strides.
I've managed $350M+ in ad spend across 47 industries, and the pattern that shows up everywhere is this: **clarity removes uncertainty faster than confidence does.** When you don't know what's next, most people try to feel ready--I've learned to just get specific instead. When clients come to me stuck, it's almost never because they lack skills or budget. It's because they're operating with vague goals like "grow revenue" or "improve the funnel." The second we define the *actual* bottleneck--like 68% cart abandonment or messaging that doesn't match search intent--the path forward becomes obvious. The action isn't scary anymore because you know exactly what you're solving for. I saw this play out hard during Google's AI search rollout in 2024. Clients were panicking about dropping ad performance, but the ones who survived didn't just "adapt"--they got forensic. We shifted to longer-tail keywords that matched the new conversational search behavior (like "kid-friendly pizza with play area" instead of "pizza near me"), tightened ad groups, and added hyper-specific negative keywords. ROI jumped 3-5x because we weren't guessing--we were responding to what the data was screaming at us. When I don't know what to do, I don't brainstorm possibilities--I measure what's breaking. Uncertainty disappears when you replace "what should I try?" with "what does the evidence say is failing?" That single shift has carried me through pivots, platform changes, and industries I knew nothing about.
I've sold a yoga studio, co-founded a med spa that grew from a single room to a multi-million-dollar practice, and joined a new integrative wellness brand--all different industries, different teams, different markets. The mindset that's kept me moving forward is **accept honesty about what you don't know, then attack it head-on**. When I transitioned from yoga and wellness into medical aesthetics in 2015, I had zero clinical background. Instead of pretending otherwise, I told my team and vendors exactly where my gaps were and spent six months buried in training, shadowing providers, and asking uncomfortable questions. That transparency built trust faster than any fake confidence would have. I saw this same principle work when we expanded Tru Integrative Wellness's service portfolio in 2022. We were adding hormone optimization and sexual health treatments I'd never marketed before. Rather than guessing, I interviewed patients about their actual concerns--performance anxiety, relationship impacts, scheduling around pills--and built our messaging around *their* language, not ours. Our consultation requests doubled in four months. Uncertainty doesn't disappear when you admit you're figuring it out. But it stops paralyzing you, and you start moving faster than people who wait until they feel "ready."
**"Design *with* people, not just *for* them--especially when you don't have all the answers yet."** I've been doing this for 30 years, and the biggest lesson came early: when you're stepping into unfamiliar territory, bring people along instead of pretending you've got it figured out. We had a project for a school in Ghana--I'd never designed for that continent, didn't know the culture, building practices, or climate challenges. So instead of guessing, we flew the founder to Columbus and spent days learning directly from him about how things actually work there. That mindset paid off again recently when we partnered with a security firm to design safer schools and churches. I'm an architect, not a security expert--but I knew our clients needed both. So we teamed up, co-hosted safety seminars, and now we're actively designing over a dozen projects with integrated panic buttons, visitor tracking, and crisis protocols built in from day one. I couldn't have done that alone, and I didn't try to. When you hit uncertainty, resist the urge to have all the answers yourself. Find the people who know what you don't, ask better questions than you give answers, and make decisions together. You'll move faster and build something way better than you could've solo.
Managing Partner at Zev Roofing, Storm Recovery, & Construction Group, LLC
Answered 3 months ago
I've spent 15+ years in structural steel and DOD projects before running Zev Roofing, and the principle that's carried me through every pivot is this: **build for the worst-case scenario, then you'll be ready for anything**. When you're engineering commercial structures or storm recovery systems in West Texas, you don't design for average weather--you design for 100mph winds and softball-sized hail. When I transitioned from steel framing to roofing, I didn't know the residential sales side at all. But I applied that same over-engineering mindset to learning the business. I spent six months studying every failure mode--insurance claim denials, bad installations, customer disputes--before we took our first client. When the actual challenges hit, we'd already prepared for worse. The concrete example: standing seam metal roofs we install are rated for wind uplift way beyond code minimum (Class 150 vs Class 90). Costs us more upfront, but when a derecho rolled through Lubbock last year, our clients had zero claims while neighbors with code-minimum systems filed for emergency repairs. That over-preparation turned into our biggest referral source. In new territory, most people ask "what's the minimum I need to know?" I ask "what's the catastrophic failure I haven't considered yet?" Once you've planned for disasters that probably won't happen, the everyday uncertainties become trivial.
When I started Latitude Park in 2009 as a solo designer, I had no business running an agency--but I had one guiding principle: **test fast, fail cheap, then double down on what actually works.** Every time I hit uncertainty, I'd run a small experiment instead of overthinking it. Perfect example: A few years back, one of our national franchise clients got hammered by a Google core update--their templated location pages tanked overnight. Instead of panicking or guessing at fixes, we picked three underperforming locations and rewrote their pages with hyper-local content, added schema markup, and kicked off targeted local PR. We tracked everything weekly. Three months later, organic traffic across those test locations jumped 42% and they were back in the top 3 for their priority keywords. Only *then* did we roll it out to all 80+ locations. The mindset isn't "plan perfectly before moving"--it's "move small, measure obsessively, then scale what wins." I see too many business owners freeze when things get uncertain. I'd rather spend $1,000 testing Meta ads in two markets than blow $10,000 guessing what might work nationwide. You learn more from real data in two weeks than six months of strategy meetings. Same goes for our video ad push--clients kept asking if video was worth the cost. We didn't debate it internally for months. We built three scrappy, high-impact videos on a tight budget, tested them against static ads, and watched engagement spike. Now it's a core offering because we *proved* it worked, not because some trend report said so.
I've built Sexual Wellness Centers of America in a field where most people feel embarrassed to even ask questions, and the mindset that's carried me through is this: **the discomfort is where the opportunity lives**. When everyone else is avoiding a conversation, that's your signal to lean directly into it. Opening our first center in Colleyville meant talking openly about erectile dysfunction and vaginal health in a community that wasn't used to hearing those words in public. Instead of softening the message, we made it more direct. We trained our team to use clinical terms without hesitation and offered free consultations before anyone committed a dollar. That transparency turned a taboo topic into our biggest competitive advantage--97.2% efficacy rates speak louder when people trust you enough to walk through the door. The practical application: when you're uncertain, find the thing that makes you most uncomfortable to say out loud, then say it first. I did media interviews with Dr. Doug Weiss specifically discussing our patented protocols for sexual dysfunction reversal. Those conversations felt risky at first, but they positioned us as the experts who weren't afraid to educate. Now patients drive from across Texas because they know we won't dance around their actual problems.
I've built businesses across emergency medicine, hospice, industrial sales, and memory care--each requiring me to step into completely unfamiliar territory. The principle that's guided me through every pivot: **focus on the human problem first, then figure out the business model around it**. When I became CFO at Memory Lane, I had zero experience running an assisted living facility. But I'd seen families in the ER struggling with dementia-related emergencies, and I knew the system was failing them. We built around one insight: families need consistency and predictability more than clinical perfection. That's why we maintain a 1:3 staff-to-patient ratio during the day versus the industry standard of 1:10--it costs more, but it solves the actual problem of meaningful human connection. The same approach worked when I started Responsive Visiting Physicians. Bringing ER-trained doctors into homes seemed backwards to everyone, but seniors kept coming to emergency rooms for non-emergencies because they had no other access point. We identified the gap and built the service around it, even though the logistics were messy at first. When you're uncertain, don't ask "what's the safe play?" Ask "what problem am I uniquely positioned to solve that nobody else is addressing?" The business structure follows from there. I went from industrial sales to hospice care using this same framework--totally different industries, same human-centered filter.
**"Ship fast, then iterate based on what breaks."** When I started learning Webflow in 2020, I had zero coding experience and was terrified of building something that wouldn't work. Instead of spending months perfecting my first site, I launched a buggy prototype within three weeks. Clients pointed out what actually mattered--loading speed and mobile responsiveness--not the fancy animations I'd stressed over. That same mindset saved Project Serotonin when they needed to impress investors. Their old site was slow and poorly designed, but instead of overthinking every detail, we prioritized performance first--minimal design, no heavy animations. They raised funding because we shipped a clean, fast site quickly rather than waiting for perfection. The principle is simple: uncertainty disappears when you put something real in front of users. Over 5 years and 20+ clients across Healthcare, SaaS, and Finance, I've learned that your assumptions about what matters are usually wrong. The market tells you what to fix, but only if you give it something to react to first.
I'm one of the founders of Two Flagstm Vodka, a Polish-American family business. When my father and I faced the uncertainty of launching an ultra-premium vodka brand, we followed one principle: **honor what you know works, then build boldly around it**. We didn't try to reinvent vodka itself. We stuck with what Poland has perfected over centuries--organic Dankowski rye, five-times distillation at the historic Old Distillery in Rawicz, pristine mountain spring water. That foundation was non-negotiable because it represented proven craftsmanship. The adventure was in everything else: bringing it to America, connecting two cultures through General Pulaski's legacy, positioning luxury quality at accessible pricing. When the Beverage Testing Institute rated us "Exceptional," it confirmed something crucial--**betting on authenticity over trends pays off**. We could have chased celebrity endorsements or gimmicky flavors, but we trusted our roots. Most recently, we're sponsoring Taste of Polonia 2025 in Chicago, which felt uncertain as a newer brand. But we committed because it aligned with our core story, and that's where real growth happens. The mindset is simple: know your unshakeable foundation, then take calculated risks everywhere else. For us, Polish craftsmanship was the anchor. The American entrepreneurial leap was the adventure.
I've built companies in biotech, finance, and now automated disinfection--none of which I had formal training in. My guiding principle is simple: *If something needs to exist and doesn't, someone has to build it.* When my 33-year-old friend died from a staph infection she got from a door handle, I didn't wait for scientists or engineers to solve it. My husband and I started tinkering in our garage in 2019, even though we had zero background in UVC technology. The mindset that carries me through uncertainty is *resourcefulness over credentials.* We built the first GermPass prototype without knowing if it would work, got it independently tested at Boston University, and proved it killed COVID-19 in one second. That validation didn't come from having the right degree--it came from being willing to look incompetent while figuring it out. Most people stop at "I don't know how," but I've learned that's exactly where the opportunity lives. When you're staring at something genuinely new, expertise doesn't exist yet anyway. I spent 20+ years in finance and sales performance before pivoting to germ-killing technology. The skills transferred because problem-solving frameworks are universal: identify the gap, build a minimum viable solution, test it objectively, and iterate. We went from garage prototype to 99.999% lab-certified efficacy in under four years because we stayed focused on *does it work* instead of *are we qualified to try.* The breakthrough moment was realizing no one else was going to solve high-volume touchpoint contamination--not because it was impossible, but because it required someone naive enough to attempt it. That's the open up: when you don't know all the reasons something "can't" be done, you just go build it and let the data tell you if you're right.
I've built 500+ websites over my career, and the mindset that's saved me countless times is this: **start messy, iterate fast**. When I don't know how something will turn out, I launch an imperfect version in days rather than waiting weeks for "perfect." We once slashed our SEO production costs by 66% because I stopped overthinking the process and just tested a streamlined system on five client sites first. It worked, we scaled it, and suddenly we could undercut competitors while maintaining margins. That only happened because I was willing to ship something rough and adjust based on real data. The biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs make with new ventures is analysis paralysis. When we expanded into custom landing pages, I didn't build out a whole service offering first--I offered it to three existing clients at a discount, learned what actually mattered to them, then formalized it. That "test first, polish later" approach led to 50% more repeat business because we solved real problems instead of imagined ones.
**"Fix what's broken before you add what's new."** I've installed PPF on over 3,000 vehicles, and the biggest lesson came early: customers don't care about your fancy film if you rushed the prep. I used to think speed mattered most when we had a packed schedule. Then a McLaren owner came back after six months--edges lifting because I'd skipped proper paint correction on two panels. That one redo cost me three days and taught me that uncertainty disappears when you control the variables you can actually control. Now when someone brings in a Cybertruck or a Model S with factory clear coat issues, I spend extra time on paint correction even if it delays the install by a day. Our 5-star ratings stayed consistent because we stopped chasing what looked impressive and focused on what actually holds up. The principle works beyond installs too--when we became XPEL certified, I didn't immediately market it. I waited until our entire process, from bay climate control to final QC checks, could deliver on that certification every single time. The mindset shift: new territory isn't scary if your foundation doesn't have cracks. Whether it's a new product line like STEALTH film or a challenging build, I ask "what's the one thing that could fail here?" and I address that first. Most installation failures trace back to rushed prep work or skipped steps, not the film itself. Once you lock down your process, the uncertain parts become way smaller.
**"Build the plane while you're flying it--but know your gauges."** In 1999, I started CC&A as a basic HTML and Flash website shop with zero idea that digital marketing would explode the way it did. When clients started asking for SEO work I'd never done before, I didn't say no--I said "let me figure this out" and taught myself search algorithms at night. That uncertainty forced me to become an expert witness for the Maryland Attorney General's office years later, because I'd been in the trenches solving problems I had no business taking on at first. The principle that's saved me: commit before you're ready, but measure obsessively while you learn. When we pivoted CC&A from web design to full-service marketing psychology, I didn't wait until I had it all figured out. I took on one client who needed behavioral insight in their campaigns, tracked every metric we could--click patterns, engagement drops, conversion points--and used that data to prove what worked. That single case study became our entire repositioning strategy. Uncertainty doesn't need a roadmap. It needs a dashboard. I've launched services, spoken at events with Yahoo's CMO, and led CEO delegations to Cuba--all situations where I had no template. But I always knew my numbers: what's working, what's dying, and where the audience is actually paying attention. The adventure part is fun; the gauges keep you alive.