Our brains are wired to seek safety. Our fear-tuned brains hate it when we stick our necks out, create something that could be criticized, or take responsibility for something that could fail.

If you need someone to pass the buck to, you will miss the chance to lead something all your own. If you need assurance you won’t fail, you will miss the chance to do innovative work. If you need assurance people will like it, you will miss the chance to create meaningful art.

The biggest price of entry to a bigger future isn’t money or talent, it’s the willingness to feel fear and go forward anyway. Fear, that potent, invisible, indiscriminate force, keeps a lot of us out of the big leagues of our own lives.

Yes, you can miss out on a lot by playing it safe. Or you can go forward in spite of the fear, and in so doing find that you’ve chased it away.

Get out of your routine and spend 1.5 days working on your leadership and your goals. My friend and colleague David Martin and I will host an intimate group event in Houston, TX on April 20th and 21st, 2015. Tough questions, gutsy participation, and courageous ambition will be in the air. Come join us.

The event is limited to 10 participants, selected from applications on a first-come, first-serve basis. You can get details and a link to apply right here.

As a leader, one of your top priorities is to clearly communicate your expectations to your team. This includes your expectations for how they perform their work, your expectations for the results they achieve, and your expectations for how they treat people.

It takes what feels like over-communication to maintain clarity with your team. Don’t assume expectations are clear because you’ve said enough to feel like you are restating the obvious.

Try this. Ask your team members to tell you in their own words what your key expectations of them are. The first time I did that I was surprised to find out how much had been lost in translation. I thought I’d been over-communicating. I was wrong.

Make sure your team members are clear on your expectations for their actions and results. This is one of the pillars of a high-performing team, and it’s the leader’s responsibility.

Marketing and sales used to be about correctly guessing what type of customer was most likely to buy what you were selling, and interrupting them with an advertisement in their favorite magazine, or maybe a phone call. You had a chance to talk to them before they made a buying decision.

The Internet has empowered media consumers with a large number of choices, including ad-free or ad-skippable choices. The days of effectively interrupting your target market while they read, listen, or watch are all but over.

The Internet has also empowered consumers to look for what they want, when they want it, at the price they want to pay. This is even more important than the changes in media consumption. Modern businesses often don’t get to interact with the potential customers at all until after they’ve made a purchase decision.

People increasingly shop online for everything from routine purchases like insurance, to big things like cars and houses. By the time I call a salesperson I often know exactly what I want to pay for. The company I didn’t choose won’t even know I was looking.

The job of most modern marketers is to do the work in advance to be found and be chosen. This means appear in search results and other places customers are looking, and prepare a web site, pricing, and product offering that fit what the customers want. You don’t find them, they find you.

I never want to stop stretching and putting more of my potential to use. Courage and stewardship of my resources say it’s time for me to expand beyond the businesses I started.

I’m looking for businesses to buy and investments to make. I’m happy to consider a broad range from down to earth businesses to unique or unusual opportunities.

If you know of a business for sale, or someone who needs capital to start or grow their business, please put me in touch with them. I’d be very grateful.