What is going well and what is going wrong can always be traced back to those at the top. Good things about an owner become the strengths of the business; conversely, if an owner is weak in one area, the business will be weak in the same area. If owners pay attention and are willing to see the good and the bad about what they have created, they will have the opportunity to go through what I like to call “smack-you-in-the-face therapy.”

I believed with 100 percent conviction that I was going to accomplish the task I set out to do, and since the brain doesn’t understand time so well, it was confused about the reality that I hadn’t achieved that task yet. It was cognitive dissonance at its finest. When my brain thought it should be at the goal, but in reality I wasn’t there yet, my brain was constantly trying to bridge the gap.

But to grow a business, you have to take action—that’s a given. And since every action has a potential risk, you also have to take risks. I’m not a risk-taker—in fact, I’m very risk averse. Contrary to popular belief, so are many other entrepreneurs. But risk is almost always outweighed by reward for taking an action when you add in the second part of that reward: learning from your mistakes.

In the brain of an entrepreneur, there is a direct, unavoidable link between the action taken and the reward.

Someone once asked me how I knew it was the right choice to continue growing my business. I remember at the time thinking that I didn’t have a choice. Instead it felt like the business had chosen me and wouldn’t loosen its grip.

There are two types of people in this world. The first type allows outside circumstances to dictate where their life will lead; they let life control them. The second type learns that they can change their own life—that they can dictate where the future leads and create their own opportunities. It is the second type of person who can become a successful entrepreneur.

At the time, I was listening to Tony Robbins’s CDs, and he had a technique that I thought might work. If you wanted to change something about your life or rewire your brain in some way, he advised using a mantra. One stipulation was that the wording had to state the positive. For instance, my mantra couldn’t be I’m not scared in social situations, because that was a negative mantra. I thought about this for a while and came up with I’m calm, cool, and collected under pressure. That became my mantra.

One of the downsides of being obsessed with the business was that only two things could free me from my obsessive thoughts: when I became interested in something else or when I had enough to drink. And since true obsession implies that nothing else can wrestle its way into your consciousness, alcohol became my outlet.

Sometimes you look back at things that happened and say, “This was one of the hardest times in my life.” If you are a first-time business owner, you will be confronted with those times while you learn. Each time you grow, there will be growing pains. What makes you successful or not will be your grit. Do you give up easily when things get tough, or do you persevere?