Sometimes when going for large scale growth in your business, you run smack dab into worries about the future. A business is never more at risk than when it is growing. Growth means more sales, which means more need for production of goods and services, which means either more money tied up in inventory, or in staff costs or both.

Increased sales also means increased accounts receivable for many businesses, which eats up available cash. Your employees don’t care about your accounts receivable when payday comes around. They want their pay and they want it cashable today… not tomorrow, but today.

There's more than one potential cause for worry. There are many. Anything that human beings have the capacity to fear is a potential source of worry.

How do you stem the tide of worry?

Steps to Take

Step 1. Change your operating cycle. Instead of focusing on your annual operating cycle, or a quarterly cycle, or even a monthly one, start thinking in terms of a Daily Operating Cycle (or DOC for short). The Daily Operating Cycle has you focus on what you can do today (not tomorrow or the next day or next month, but today). By breaking things down and dealing with what you can today, the tomorrows take care of themselves.

Step 2. Write down what specifically, is worrying you. If your worry is too general or all-encompassing, then break it down to its sub-component pieces. The smaller the pieces, the more easily things are to deal with when the time comes.

Step 3. List options for what you might do about it. How can you deal with what worries you? List your options. Make sure you have identified at least 5 of them before you move to the next step. When you are brainstorming for these, make sure you put down the silly ones. They free up your mind to think up the great ideas.

Step 4. Pick one of your options as your course of action. Once you have brainstormed, pick an option to implement. Sitting on the fence won’t help you here. Pick an option, and you can then move forward.

Step 5. Take action. Action is what moves things. Life rewards action. What you know is nice, but it’s what you DO that counts. Take actions and things will start to move and change.

If you’re thinking of your daily operating cycle, taking things one day at a time, and then you follow these other steps for dealing with worry, you will find yourself regaining your confidence. You will deal far more productively with any worries that do emerge as you grow your business, consistent with your goals and commitments in life.