This hotel lobby is packed with bodies. It’s very early. What is going on?

I’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s talk about your clients.

Your clients are scared to death. They make many of their decisions out of fear.

We all do it. I do it. You do it. It’s just part of the human experience.

Being fearful some of the time is helpful to us. In fact, once in a while, it saves our lives.

There’s tremendous value for us as business owners in understanding fear.

Knowing what fear feels like helps us better relate to our clients. It helps us better represent them, better market to them, and better sell our services to them. It’s imperative that we understand the folks we help. Without understanding them, it’s nearly impossible to adequately serve them.

We’ve talked about fear before. We’ve talked about how it affects you in your business. You know that I worry that the fear causes you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t do or, more importantly, not do the things you ought to do.

I thought of fear as soon as I figured out why this hotel lobby is so crowded so early in the morning.

I’m working in the lobby of a big hotel. The lobby is hopping. It’s early—just 6:15 AM—but there are a ton of people here. Some are coming down for breakfast, and some arrived early on flights across the ocean. This place is crawling with people.

I just realized that it’s crowded mostly because people are standing around waiting for the hotel restaurant to open. It’s a typical hotel restaurant. It’s mediocre. It’s overpriced. It’s about to be very crowded.

You’ve eaten in the hotel restaurant before. We all have. In some places, it’s the only place to eat. Anything else would involve an expensive taxi ride and a big hassle.

But in this city, we’re surrounded by restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops. The cafes are visible from the windows. There’s no reason to eat in the hotel and pay three times as much for one-third the quality. We can walk for 90 seconds and improve our situation dramatically.

But that’s not what many of us do. We eat in the hotel. Why? Because it’s convenient. Because it’s predictable. Because it’s the path of least resistance.

But mostly we eat in the hotel restaurant because we’re afraid of the uncertainty of walking down the block. We rationalize our decision to eat mediocre food at high prices in an unremarkable setting. Convenience and predictability are the stories we tell ourselves. They make for much better stories than those involving our fear.

Sadly, eating in the hotel is a loss. It’s not a big loss. It’s not as big as the loss we suffer when we won’t call the other lawyer about lunch. It’s not as big as the loss we suffer when we describe ourselves as “affordable and excellent” instead of “awkward and anxious” in our website copy. It’s not as big as the loss we suffer when we won’t send the invites for the party at our home.

But eating in the hotel is a loss.

We could have discovered the most amazing chocolate croissant ever. We could have had the best coffee of our life. We could have eaten the full Irish breakfast and experienced the black and white sausage (yuck). Or had the Turkish menemen (awesome). Or the Vietnamese bánh mi (delicious).

Our clients are those folks who eat in the hotel restaurant. They’re fearful on a normal day. But we don’t get to see them on a normal day.

They come to us on their worst days. The fear is all consuming. They lose track of what’s real, what’s important, and what’s rational. They are making their decisions from their anxiety, their stress, and their uncertainty. All of their actions and inactions are driven by the fear.

Our clients, like us, believe they’re making good decisions even as they’re driven by their fear. We can’t see how the fear influences our mental processes. The fear is invisible when it comes to judgment. We can’t see the impairment we operate under when the fear has taken control.

But the fear controls our decision-making. It’s in charge. It calls the shots.

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Hotels put the restaurant in the lobby. They make it easy for the fear to keep their business thriving.

Put yourself in the place of your clients. Step into their shoes and spend some time living their lives. Think the way they think, decide the way they decide, and feel the way they feel.

Each practice area is different, each type of client is a little different, and each market has its uniqueness. But the fear is omnipresent. It drives decision-making much of the time.

What’s your lobby restaurant? What’s your path of least resistance? What story can your clients tell about why picking you was the right thing to do? How do you use your understanding of their fear to make your business, and their lives, work better for them?