If you think you’re the only one with questions about your business, I have news for you.
A quick search brings up questions entrepreneurs just like you and me have rolling around in our heads and are too afraid to ask. Questions like:
- “Am I the only one who doesn’t understand the financial side of my business?”
You’re not. 42% of small business owners say they had little or no financial literacy before starting their business. (Source: Intuit QuickBooks, Financial Literacy Statistics) - “Why am I working so hard and still not paying myself?”
It’s more common than you think. 62% of small business owners have skipped or reduced their own paycheck to cover business expenses. (Source: Bluevine, Small Business Financial Stress Study) - “Is it normal to lose sleep over my business?”
Unfortunately, yes. 68% of business owners report losing sleep because of financial stress. (Source: Bluevine, Small Business Financial Stress Study) - “Why does this feel so much harder than I expected?”
You’re not imagining it. While most entrepreneurs say owning a business is worth it, 27% admit the stress and burnout have been worse than they expected. (Source: Bluevine, Expectations vs. Reality Survey)
So why are you embarrassed to ask questions?
Entrepreneurship sells you a lie: that confidence and competence are the same thing. They’re not. You can be a phenomenal operator and still feel a flicker of dread every time you open your accounting software. Competence was never about certainty. It’s about being willing to learn.
The entrepreneurs I admire most ask questions constantly, and it’s not because they’re inexperienced, but because they never stopped learning past the point where everyone assumes they should already know it all. I’ve sat across from founders running businesses worth more than I’ll ever build who still ask, “Can you explain this to me like I’m new here?”
That’s why they’re still building twenty years later.
Embarrassment has a price tag most people never add up. Every month you avoid a hard question is another month you delay the fix. The gap between “I don’t understand my numbers” and understanding them might be a single ten-minute conversation. Let shame block that conversation for a year, and you haven’t avoided a hard moment; you’ve spent twelve months making decisions on bad information.
Your business doesn’t need you to protect your ego. It needs you to protect its future. Confuse the two, and you’ll stall out quietly, without ever knowing why.
So this week, I’d ask you to do something uncomfortable but genuinely useful. Sit down with these:
- Name the thing you’re pretending to understand. Every entrepreneur has one. It’s usually something you nod along to in meetings while doing math in your head to keep up. Say it out loud, even just to yourself. Naming it is the first step to closing it.
- Put a number on profit. Not revenue, but what you keep, after everything, that’s genuinely yours. Most owners can tell you last month’s sales instantly and have no idea what they personally banked. If that’s you, open your account and look. Discomfort here is information, not failure.
- Find who already knows what you’re trying to figure out. Somebody in your circle, or one connection away, has already solved the exact problem you’re sitting on. Find them before you reinvent something they’d hand you for the price of a coffee.
- Ask one question you’ve been avoiding — this week, out loud, to a real person. Not a search engine. A person. The specific act of saying it to another human strips it of most of its power. And I am willing to bet that they tell you aboue a question they have at some point, too.
- Pick one small skill to close the gap. Not a course, not a certification, but one skill, practiced once, this month. Understanding a profit and loss statement. Running a single team meeting without over-explaining. Growth compounds, but only if you start.
One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is permission to admit you don’t know everything. That’s the kind of leadership that holds up under pressure, because it’s built on honesty instead of performance.
Normalize asking for help, starting with yourself. Your team, your mentors, and your peers don’t expect your perfection. They expect your honesty. Give them that instead, and watch how much lighter the whole thing gets.
You’ve got this.
-Mike
PS – Have a question you want to ask me? Email support@mikemichalowicz.com and I will answer you!
