Success Quote by Mack R. Douglas

“Courage follows action” flips the Hollywood script where bravery arrives first, like a warm-up act to heroism. Mack R. Douglas, speaking as a businessman, is selling a more transactional model: courage is not a personality trait you either possess or lack; it’s a lagging indicator. You move, then your nervous system catches up with a story that makes the movement feel intentional. The line is short enough to fit on a slide deck, but its power is psychological: it reframes fear as a normal pre-action state rather than a disqualifier.

The specific intent reads like a corrective to corporate paralysis. In business, waiting to feel “ready” often disguises risk-aversion as prudence. Douglas is arguing that momentum is the real antidote to doubt. Take the meeting, ship the beta, make the call, ask for the raise. The act itself generates evidence, and evidence is what courage feeds on. Even failure can be useful here: it proves survivability, which lowers the cost of trying again.

The subtext is also a quiet rebuke to meritocratic mythmaking. We love to crown certain people as naturally fearless; this line implies they just have a higher tolerance for starting scared. It’s motivational, yes, but also managerial: if courage is downstream of doing, then leaders can engineer courage by engineering action - smaller steps, quicker feedback, lower stakes, repeated reps. In that sense, it’s less a pep talk than a playbook for turning anxiety into output.