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.
