If you follow me on social media, you know that my family and I recently bought a 130-acre farm. And one of the first projects we took on was restoring an incredible barn that was built in the 1800s. We were excited to bring it back to its former glory.
Then my phone rang.
It was the contractor overseeing the restoration. Before he even finished his first sentence, I could hear it in his voice. He was bracing for impact.
A section of the barn had collapsed. A gust of wind had come through, lifting the roof just enough to snap the original support beams—beams that had held since the late 1800s. More than a century of standing, gone in a single gust.
He told me no one was hurt. The contractor’s insurance would cover the repairs. And then he went quiet. Waiting.
I’m pretty sure he was expecting me to lose it.
Instead, I told him two things. First, I’m glad no one got hurt. Second, what’s the point of being upset? It doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t fix the beams. It doesn’t make the barn stand back up. It just adds stress to a situation that already has enough. Let’s take it one step at a time and figure it out.
He seemed almost surprised. Like that wasn’t the script he had prepared for.
But I’ve learned, after years of building a business from nothing, that crisis is not the exception; it’s the operating condition. Fight or flight isn’t something that happens to you occasionally; it’s the environment you live in when you’re building something. The question is never whether something will go wrong. The question is what kind of leader you’re going to be when it does.
And the people around you are watching, every time. The contractor on that call, my team in a difficult meeting, my family when something falls apart—they are reading the room before you say a single word. Your energy sets the temperature. If you panic, they panic. If you spiral, they spiral. If you get calm and get to work, they follow.
Anyone who leads people through hard things learns quickly that the ability to remain calm is a survival mechanism, and it doesn’t come naturally. You have to build it like a muscle. I built it the hard way. After countless crises, I finally realized getting upset was just expensive, and there was ROI. It cost me time, energy and (worst of all) credibility I couldn’t afford to spend. So, I stopped. Not because I stopped caring, but because I cared too much about the outcome to let my emotions run the room.
Here’s the part I don’t sugar coat: Most of the time, when I look calm and certain, I’m also making it up as I go. I don’t always know the answer. I don’t always have the plan fully formed. But I know that projecting steady and moving forward is almost always better than projecting panic and standing still. People don’t need you to have all the answers. They need to believe that answers exist and that you’re the kind of person who will find them.
The barn will get fixed. The beams will be replaced—probably with something stronger than what a hundred years of weather and time had already tested. And we’ll be better for having dealt with it.
That’s usually how it goes.
The next time something collapses on you—and something will—ask yourself one question before you react: Is what I’m about to do going to help fix this or just help me feel something?
If it’s the latter, take a breath. Then get to work.