In the second instalment of Having a Crack, Simon Davies turns his attention to the moment before the moment, the waiting, the second-guessing, the search for a perfect set of conditions that never actually arrives. He explains why the founders who build something real aren’t the ones who wait for certainty, but the ones who start without it.
Everyone is waiting for the right time.
The right client. The right market conditions. The right amount of money in the bank. The right level of experience. The right moment when everything aligns and the risk feels manageable and the path forward feels clear.
It never comes. And the people who wait for it never start.
I started my business with a funeral home and some fridge magnets. I’m not being self-deprecating — that’s genuinely what happened. A family friend ran a funeral services business and needed help with their marketing. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t the grand vision I had for what I was going to build. But it was real, and it was someone who believed in me enough to pick up the phone. This funeral services business was the first client I ever had on my own. The start.
Here’s what I’ve learned about starting: the conditions are never perfect. They weren’t perfect for me. They aren’t perfect for anyone who has ever built something worth building. The founders who succeed aren’t the ones who waited until everything was right — they’re the ones who started when everything was wrong and figured it out as they went.
Momentum favours the brave. It sounds like a motivational poster but it’s actually a business principle. The act of starting creates energy. It creates learning. It creates the first client, who leads to the second, who leads to the network, who leads to the opportunity you could never have planned for. Nothing compounds unless you begin.
I was studying an MBA @ Monash University, I met Mike a fellow student, who happened to be a Brand Manager at a large Pharmaceutical company. We started speaking about marketing in class one day and ended up working together. I knew absolutely nothing about pharmaceutical marketing at that stage. But I did know how to communicate effectively with an audience and I was willing to learn and that start led to this client staying with us for 5 years and being the foundation client of Bastion Brands.
Now, the fear of starting is real. I won’t pretend it isn’t. The fear that you’re not ready, that you don’t know enough, that someone else is already doing it better, that you’ll fail publicly and everyone will see. All of that is real. And all of it is irrelevant.
Because here’s what nobody tells you about the fear of starting: it doesn’t go away when you’re ready. It doesn’t disappear when you have more experience or more money or more certainty. The fear is just part of it. The people who build great things aren’t fearless — they’re the ones who started despite the fear and kept going anyway.
I’ve spent time with hundreds of business owners over the years. Founders, agency heads, entrepreneurs at various stages of building something. And the single biggest difference I’ve observed between the ones who build great things and the ones who almost do isn’t talent, or intelligence, or even hard work. It’s the willingness to begin. Start the business, start the development of the new product or service, just move and learn and build along the way.
The ones who almost do are still waiting. Still refining the business plan. Still doing the research. Still waiting for the moment when it all feels right.
The ones who build great things started on a Tuesday with whatever they had. They figured out the rest from there.
What does this actually look like in practice? It looks like sending the email before you’re sure the service is ready. It looks like taking the meeting before you’ve rehearsed the pitch perfectly. It looks like saying yes to the funeral home with the fridge magnets and delivering something genuinely good, because a real client in front of you is worth more than a hundred imaginary perfect clients in your head.
It looks like making the call. Writing the proposal. Opening the door. Committing to the thing before you’re completely sure you can deliver it — and then making absolutely certain that you do.
The best founders I know share one trait above everything else. They have a bias for action so strong it’s almost uncomfortable to be around. They move fast. They decide quickly. They’d rather be in motion and course-correct than stand still waiting for certainty that was never coming.
So here’s my advice, Stop waiting. Start now. Use what you have. The business plan doesn’t need to be perfect. The timing doesn’t need to be right. The safety net doesn’t need to be in place.
Everything else — the clients, the team, the revenue, the reputation — follows from that one decision.
What is stopping you from getting started today?……….. nothing.
