Most business owners are making decisions every day but how many of those decisions are actually built to last? Dawn K. Kennedy, author of Before You Decide: The Field Manual for Durable Decisions Under Pressure, joins me on the Interview Connections podcast to talk about why so many businesses fail not because of a bad idea, but because of how decisions get made (or avoided) along the way.

Dawn brings a uniquely grounded perspective to this conversation. She's a business law attorney, a former Army Capabilities Developer and Fortune 500 Intelligence Analyst, and the co-owner of a family coffee roastery, giving her real skin in the game across both service-based and product-based businesses. Her book is not a fluffy entrepreneur read. It's a field manual, and it shows.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why the 50% business failure rate at five years hasn't moved since the 1980s and what's actually behind it
• The difference between micro-decisions you make on autopilot and high-stakes decisions that require deliberate thought
• How our hardwiring for certainty pushes us to make decisions before we're ready
• Why "move fast, break things" works for VC-funded startups but can quietly destroy a small business
• The pendulum problem: how market shifts catch business owners off guard, and what to do when the strategy that was working stops working
• Why second and third-time business owners succeed at much higher rates and what first-timers can learn from that
• The real cost of "bootstrapping" that nobody talks about
• Why we pick the decision that relieves pressure instead of the one that keeps us moving forward

Resources mentioned:

Before You Decide: The Field Manual for Durable Decisions Under Pressure by Dawn K. Kennedy — available on Amazon now.

Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara — recommended by Dawn as a companion read on staying true to your original purpose as a business evolves.

Free resources and guidebooks available at DawnKKennedy.com.

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