If you’ve ever wanted to start your own business but somehow never seemed to get up the courage to take the plunge, you might be suffering from a common malady affecting roughly 70% of the population: Entrepreneurophobia!
Quite simply, after growing up believing that you’ll work all your life for a large company that will take care of you and provide for your family, taking the leap into what most would consider an uncertain future is quite daunting. But take heart: as an entrepreneur myself, I’d like to share with you a new way of looking at what’s holding you back so you can break free and achieve your own entrepreneurial dreams!
Being an entrepreneur has the glamorous image of being in charge, calling the shots, setting your own hours, access to more personal freedom – and, just possibly, making it really big with that new idea, service or product.
On the down side, there are long hours, uncertainty, and of course risk. Success is not guaranteed and the money doesn’t always come with the regularity of a day job. As a result, many of us choose to suffer a job in silent desperation while our own dreams lie unfulfilled.
What keeps most of us shackled to the nine-to-five grind is plain, simple FEAR.Fear of the unknown. But don’t worry, even successful entrepreneurs experience fear. It’s part of being human. The trick is not to let it scare you into inactivity. The first step in conquering this fear is naming it: Entrepreneurophobia, the fear of being an entrepreneur.
Most of us have been programmed all our lives to believe that “success” is simply going to school and getting a good job. While these are admirable goals to pursue, they don’t encompass the entire realm of ways to live our dreams. Unfortunately, this programming is so powerful that any endeavour we perceive as not being based on those norms is threatening to us, and to others.
Starting one’s own business is a bold move which little of life’s teaching prepares us for. As a result, we are likely to suffer discouragement and even ridicule from family and friends who view such plans as silly and destined for failure.
In addition, we often have to overcome our own insecurities: What if I can’t sell my product, what if my business fails, what if I get sued, or end up in more debt? How will I pay my rent? What will my family and friends think of me if I fail? What will I think of myself?
Overcoming these self-doubts and negative influences doesn’t mean you’ll be successful. In fact, it may just be the beginning of your troubles – because while many of us suffer from a fear of failure, an equal number suffer from what we can only call a fear of success!
It’s true. There are many individuals who don’t know how to handle success. When things are going well, they appear to do everything in their power to destroy everything they’ve worked hard to achieve. The story of the superstar who “had it all” and then threw it all away on drugs, sex or gambling, is the classic example.
Even after we have achieved success, our own low self-esteem may come back to haunt us. The external image we’ve created – the one that everyone else has of us – doesn’t quite match the one we have of ourselves. So we subconsciously do what we can to get our own image to match reality. Then down comes the façade of wealth, confidence and success, to be replaced with the old one of poverty, lack and negativity.
That is what fear can do to you. While the bad news is that you may never get rid of your fears completely, the good news is that you can learn how to manage them.
When you’re in business for yourself everything related to your business – sales, employees, expenses, taxes, growth – requires effective management. Fears, too, are part of being an entrepreneur, and need to be managed. Many potential entrepreneurs fail even before they write their business plan, simply because they don’t practice fear management well enough – either in advance or during the life of their venture.
To help you get a handle on your fears and practice fear management, here are a few basics you should know.
Fear is at the basis of most human activity. It is one of two reasons why we humans do anything. (The other reason is love).From working to war, religion to politics to sex, practically every aspect of what we call civilisation is in response to some fear or another. Fear of starvation leads to the development of agriculture; fear of poverty leads to the pursuit of wealth; fear of the elements leads to construction of a shelter; fear of death leads to the development of religion. Fear of losing freedom, independence or territory leads to war.
Behavioural psychologists say that the only fears we are born with are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All others are learned and, like a bad habit, can be unlearned. So there’s hope!
Fears are not real. Fears are illusions. Fears do not exist. They are your response to ideas that you’ve created from unreal beliefs. They have power only because you give it to them.
Remember the first time you spoke or performed in front of an audience? The first time you dived into a pool? The fear at those times was so overwhelming that you thought you wouldn’t survive into the next day. Well, you did survive, hopefully with the knowledge that our fears are usually far more powerful than the thing we fear.
As you face your fears, ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen? If your product or idea doesn’t sell, will the death penalty be imposed? Many of us, if we did a realistic assessment, would realise that our deepest fears are actually unfounded. But many of us never do, because it’s easier to magnify our fear than to admit that the only thing holding us back …is us.
Fear signals an opportunity. The only way to grow in life is to take yourself out of your “comfort zone”. As long as you keep doing only what you are comfortable with, you will never grow. If something you’re considering doing causes you fear, that feeling of fear is probably an indication that this is something you NEED and MUST do to grow into the next stage of your life.
As a child, you couldn’t walk until you conquered your fear of standing. You couldn’t run until you conquered your fear of walking. Fears are the mind’s way of identifying areas in your life that you need to work on. And, as you do, you may stumble or even fall, but you always learn and grow.
Walt Goodridge is an entrepreneur and author of several books. His company, Niche Market Exclusives, publishes his books and other “success tools”, which he creates especially for MLM Entrepreneurs, Hip Hop Entrepreneurs, Internet Entrepreneurs and others to show how to succeed in business.
Copyright 1994 by Walt Goodridge (originally published in The Fever Magazine).
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