When Fear Hijacks Your Intuition: Making the Right Decisions for Your Business

In this Hidden Value session, Tanya Moushi and I explore the themes of creativity, freedom, and the complexities of personal and professional responsibilities. Tanya shares her struggles with creative paralysis and the desire to compose music, while I encourage her to prioritize her desires and define what freedom means to her. We discuss the importance of intentional planning, the weight of familial expectations, and the need for open dialogue about responsibilities and guilt. Ultimately, the conversation emphasizes the significance of creating space for personal fulfillment within the framework of a business.

Andrew Fink left a stable career in management consulting to build a solo writing practice helping founders turn their ideas into newsletters, LinkedIn content, and now even books. His business is working. He makes a good living, has freedom to travel, train for races, and design his days. But lately, he’s been wrestling with a big question: should he grow this into an agency for more financial upside, and if so, what does that cost him?In this conversation, we uncover the tension beneath that question: the pull toward growth and challenge on one side, and the desire to protect freedom, flexibility, and a life he actually enjoys on the other. Together, we explore how to move beyond rigid either/or thinking and into reversible experiments that generate real information instead of endless planning.Because whether you’re a founder, consultant, or creator, most big business decisions don’t get solved by more thinking. They get solved by taking the next small step, seeing how it feels, and letting that experience guide what comes next.

Mohammad Khan helps deep tech founders make their complex ideas understandable and compelling. But lately, he’s been facing the same challenge he solves for others: how to articulate the unique value of his own work. When AI can write copy and marketing teams can polish messaging, where does his kind of storytelling fit?In this conversation, Mohammad and David uncover the real tension beneath that question: the difference between marketing a company and marketing the founder behind it. Together, they explore how the recognition and visibility comes from the story only you can tell.Because whether you’re a founder, creator, or consultant, the hardest story to tell is often your own. But that’s where your unique value lives.

In this episode, I sit down with Cris Valerio, a former journalist turned tech innovator, as she shares her career journey from the newsrooms of New York City to the tech scene of Silicon Valley. Cris opens up about her midlife transition into entrepreneurship, driven by a desire to create meaningful impact beyond the corporate ladder. We explore how she's redefining success by focusing on relational impact and Main Street business ventures. We uncover how Cris is leveraging her experiences to build a legacy that truly resonates with her values.

In this Hidden Value session, David sits down with Latham to explore his journey from engaging in the education of his child through homeschooling to aspiring to turn his insights and experiences into a community-centric business.Latham shares his passion for education, the challenges of transitioning his ideas into a business, and the importance of understanding his potential market through meaningful conversations.The discussion covers personal experiences, strategies for validating ideas, monetization, and overcoming the fear of rejection when presenting a new concept.Join us as we dive deep into creating impactful learning experiences and the entrepreneurial steps involved in making a significant societal contribution.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Setting the Stage00:17 Reflecting on Personal and Educational Journey01:14 Transitioning from Personal to Professional Goals01:52 Exploring Business Opportunities and Challenges02:32 Strategies for Engaging Potential Clients03:42 Understanding the Market and Client Needs04:54 Overcoming Personal Barriers to Business Conversations06:45 Developing a Business Model and Pricing Strategy09:03 Executing the Plan and Seeking Feedback19:00 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

When Charlie Ward built Ramen Club (an online community for SaaS founders) and Ramen Space (a physical coworking hub in London), he found himself running two thriving but different businesses—one online, one offline.In this Hidden Value conversation, David Sherry and Charlie explore what it takes to scale a hybrid business model, balancing physical operations with digital growth. Together, they unpack how sequencing, delegation, and education can unlock new levels of scale—without taking on unnecessary risk.Charlie shares how he’s reframing growth from “open another space” to “build digital leverage”, and why his sweet spot lies in teaching founders how to find and validate ideas through smart market research.Key Takeaways• A hybrid model can leverage the best of online and offline communities.• Scaling a physical business requires different strategies than scaling digital.• Educational content creates scalable, de-risked growth opportunities.• Market research should come before user research when validating ideas.• Finding your “sweet spot” means aligning business potential, customer need, and personal excitement.

When Saara Lampwalla left her corporate role to build something of her own, she entered a season defined by visibility, vulnerability, and the courage to be seen in a new light. In this episode, David and Saara explore what it means to align your inner values with how you show up in the world — and how that alignment shapes both your fulfillment and your freedom.Key TakeawaysVisibility is a double-edged sword — it can both empower and intimidate.Aligning inner values with outer expression builds authentic leadership.Transitioning from corporate to personal work takes courage and experimentation.Being seen and being perceived are not the same thing.Redefining success on your own terms leads to fulfillment.Chapters00:00 – Exploring Visibility and Authenticity01:56 – Transitioning from Corporate to Personal Paths05:04 – Balancing Public and Private Selves07:04 – Aligning Internal and External Values09:10 – Embracing Authenticity in Professional Spaces11:51 – Redefining Success on Personal Terms13:57 – The Power of Being Seen17:12 – Navigating Professional Growth19:39 – The Journey to Personal Fulfillment26:53 – The Courage to Be SeenCredits & LinksHost: David SherryGuest: Saara Lampwalla

I spoke with someone recently who was *really* stuck. I’ll call him Joe. Joe was not just stuck professionally, but with his relationship (on again off again) and with his work (not sure if he should change careers or Not just professionally.When some people get stuck.. they get really… really… stuck. They find that multiple areas of their life start to feel stagnant. They can’t choose where to live. They can’t decide if they should quit their job or leave a relationship. They seem to be caught oscillating between these decisions, never moving forward.The good news is that if you can start to make progress in one area, you can start to make progress in many. All it takes is a little momentum, and suddenly the damn will burst. If you aren’t feeling like you’re making progress, the good news is the worse it gets, the more likely that it will get painful enough to break the tension.Tension is what you feel when you get pulled forward and backward or left and right with no progress.The trick that’s being played on you is that you think it’s about deciding. Being so focused on a decision, such as “Should I quit my job or not?” Or “Should we break up or not?” Is actually the wrong focus. It’s not the decision that is the problem, it’s something deeper which is preventing you from trusting yourself and hearing yourself enough to make natural decisions that move your life forward without so much effort, thinking, overplaying, and pain.What we’re really talking about here is our energy, and whether or not it is flowing or whether or not it is trapped and stagnant. We stop our own energy from flowing, and that keeps us stuck.The trick to breaking the damn is to get your energy flowing again, and that involves trust. Trust is needed to move forward, because decisions we feel are important require us to take a leap into something unknown. No matter how much you want to predict your future, or how much you think you can even project the future, you can’t. Ultimately it takes a leap of faith to move forward.The good news is you can start small. You can domino small decisions into larger ones. What’s one thing that has been put off due to your inability to decide or take action? What’s one small thing you can clear from your backlog?A client of mine, a CEO of a $30M+ company, he realized that he was prone to letting his metaphorical “Desk” get messy. It was so messy with so many problems and decisions and moments of not saying how he truly felt that it was covered with so much it was hard to work.The trick was to start clearing his desk. One thing at a time until he finally started to get some space again. Then, in the future, it was about being proactive enough to clear things before they became a problem for him.Your energy unlocks when you let tiny decisions compound into bigger ones, and when you let your energy flow instead of stopping it by trying to predict and protect yourself from the unknown.

Join David Sherry in this episode of Founder Therapy as he discusses the crucial distinction between intuition and fear in decision-making. Learn how to recognize whether your decisions are driven by genuine intuition or by underlying fear, and discover strategies to navigate discomfort when stepping into unknown territories. David shares practical insights from his experience working with successful entrepreneurs, including a real-life example of a challenging executive hire decision. Watch now to gain clarity on making the right choices for personal and business growth.

One of our earliest photographers at Death to Stock was Patrick Chin. Patrick had built a business in the luxury hotel and fine dining space. This meant that Patrick had to fly around to take photos at beautiful beachside hotels, or snap images of Michelin star Chef’s beautiful creations…getting to taste the dishes afterwards. Poor Patrick.Patrick showed me that who you choose as your customers matters. And that if you’re going to choose someone to serve, choose someone great.I had another friend who was a photographer for new startup retail businesses. They had very little money, fast turnaround times, and often burned through the images quickly. This other friend was constantly struggling with business and was frustrated. Given that you can choose your customers, who are the best customers worth choosing?