Picture this: you’re sitting in your favorite chair, drinking a lukewarm coffee that’s been on your desk all morning. Your inbox is bursting at the seams with unopened emails, each one labeled “Urgent” in the subject line (as if that’s fooling anyone). Your to-do list is a mile long—maybe two. But instead of rolling up your sleeves and diving in, you figure, “I’ll get to it eventually.” Sound familiar? If so, you’re already feeling the sting of what business coach and author Simon Severino calls “the cost of inaction.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking: cost of inaction? Isn’t that a fancy way of saying “doing nothing?” Bingo! But here’s where it gets serious. Doing nothing is never truly free. Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur with a big idea—maybe a groundbreaking app or a can’t-miss service. Every minute you spend hesitating is a minute your potential competitors are out there hustling, promoting, iterating, and scooping up the customers (and dollars) you could have had. Meanwhile, you’re back there reheating that cup of coffee for the third time, telling yourself you’ll “start tomorrow.” Spoiler alert: tomorrow might never come.
Simon Severino, who once joined The Mark Howley Show for a wide-ranging chat, would argue that recognizing the cost of inaction is the first step to snapping out of this inertia. The concept is simple: even if you do absolutely nothing, the world keeps moving. Markets evolve, consumer tastes shift, technology marches forward. We’ve all heard about the fierce competitor that quietly perfects a product and emerges seemingly overnight as the next Netflix, Uber, or TikTok. That speed doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of consistent, tiny decisions and experiments made every single day. Meanwhile, the business owners who wait for a perfectly polished plan often find themselves losing ground by the second.
But let’s get real about why we stay stuck. Maybe we’re afraid of making mistakes. I get it—nobody likes to look foolish, especially if you run a high-ticket business and are charging top dollar for your expertise. Maybe you’re not exactly sure which move to make first, so you flip-flop between ten different “strategic” paths until your wheels spin out of control. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ve convinced yourself that a month, or two, or even a year of indecision won’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But that’s where folks like Simon come in, waving a big caution flag.
When you consider the hidden fees of inactivity, the numbers get ugly fast. Let’s break it down in everyday terms. Suppose you have a service that could net you $10,000 in profits a month if you properly launch it. Even if you wait just three months, that’s $30,000 gone. To put it another way, you’re essentially burning three months’ worth of rent, groceries, or even your next summer vacation. And that’s just the cash you’re leaving on the table. You also lose the brand recognition you could have built, the testimonials you’d collect, and the early momentum that often makes or breaks a launch. Time is one resource no amount of money can buy back, and every day spent in neutral is a giant leap backward compared to your more proactive peers.
The worst part is, the cost of inaction doesn’t just creep up on your balance sheet. It can gnaw away at you psychologically, too. Nothing is more demoralizing than sitting on the sidelines while others execute the very ideas you once jotted on a napkin. Weeks turn into months, and before you know it, you’re reading an article about someone who had “your” concept, succeeded wildly, and got a glitzy profile in a major publication. Then you’re left with a head full of regrets and a brand-new realization: that could have been you.
The good news? It’s not too late. You can stop hemorrhaging opportunities by taking a single step forward, right now. Maybe that step is emailing a potential client, booking a mastermind session with a coach, or simply writing a short pitch to test the market. Action of any kind immediately reduces that looming cost of inaction because you’re shifting the momentum in your favor. Just ask the thousands of entrepreneurs Simon Severino has helped—once they recognized the financial and emotional toll of standing still, they were unstoppable. They discovered that while making mistakes is inevitable, sitting frozen in place is far worse.
So, if you find yourself nodding and thinking, “Ugh, yep, that’s me,” consider this your wake-up call. The cost of inaction is real, and it stacks up faster than your streaming subscriptions. If you’re waiting for a perfectly timed green light, you might be in for a long wait—and in business, that’s a recipe for regret. So switch off autopilot, ditch the stale coffee, and remember: sometimes, the biggest risk is taking no risk at all.
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