Are you thinking about starting a business but you have some fear? It’s a very common fear to have. Let’s talk about how we can overcome it.
First, I like to start with a fact.
Did you know that one of the biggest regret people have on their deathbed is not starting a business they wanted to start?
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Why do people fear starting a new business?
There could be many reasons why you are doubting whether to start your business. Here are some possible reasons you may have some doubts:
- You worry whether you will succeed and turn a profit and if so, how much?
- You worry whether your effort will be compensated fairly or will you be working a whole lot for not enough in return?
- You worry that people will judge you and think you’re crazy
- You worry that people will think you’re wasting your time
- You worry that you’d be wasting your time and money
- You worry that your customers won’t pay on time
- You worry that you’d be wearing too many hats
- You worry about the complicated taxes
- You worry about how expensive the startup cost would be
- You worry about not raising enough funds to start the business
- You worry about how you’ll pitch your idea to investors
- You worry about how much time you’d have to put in to work on your business
- You worry about losing money and time
- You think you should use the money and time on your family and yourself instead of wasting it on a business that may not succeed
- You think you’re not cut out to be a business owner
- You think you are too tired to start a business
- You think you have too much on your plate
I can go on and on. There are countless reasons and excuses to not start a business.
Let’s look at how we can overcome those fears.
1. Visualize your regret on the death bed
If you start a business and you failed, you’ll never wonder what if you had tried.
But if you never start that business you always wanted, you may forever wonder what if you had.
Here’s what I want you to do: imagine that you’re on your deathbed surrounded by your loved ones.
You look at your grandchildren and think about how much life there is ahead of them, just like you once had.
You were young once full of hopes and dreams. And, business ideas. But you didn’t start.
You see, I don’t care what age you are, what I want you to know is that there will always be ‘what-ifs’. Some of those what-ifs are inaction when you should’ve taken the action.
You can’t go back in time to do anything you didn’t do but you are now in a time where you can do something that your future self will thank you for later.
So go ahead, figure out what you have to do to get it started!
2. Know that most people don’t know what they’re doing in the beginning
A lot of people mistakenly believe that you have to have everything figured out in the beginning before you start a business and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The truth is, you’re allowed to plan, go with the flow, adapt if necessary, and change if need be.
Do a quick Google search of Google’s old logos and you’ll see the following:
I’ll be honest, the earliest Google logo looked horrendous. I can’t even see if it was a ‘G’ or an ‘S’ at first glance.
The color is way too oversaturated and there is simply no design reason behind its slanted and upturned typography.
It makes me want to switch to different tabs quickly (sort of like Instagram’s latest oversaturated logo design).
Most websites along with Google have evolved over the past 2 decades from simple HTML web pages with no styling to ones that look extremely pleasant to the eyes (thanks to UIUX Designers).
From there on, it slowly got better looking.
Now Google doesn’t even spell out its whole name because everyone automatically assumes the colorful ‘G’ stands for ‘Google’.
Amazon also started out as a website that sells books and now it sells everything.
You see, no one has it all figured out in the beginning. We can plan all we like but without starting we’ll never know!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to have a good roadmap of where your business is heading, what you’re going to sell, how much you’ll charge, what will the startup cost be, etc but it’s okay if you haven’t quite figure out everything yet.
Just prepare well and start!
Ps:
Currently, this blog, “HelloMoneyTree” is a couple of months old. I started posting content on this blog in early February of 2022 and it’s now mid-May there are currently over 104 articles on the blog with an average of 2000 words per post.
I’m very excited to see where this blog will take me in the future, what subcategories within the personal finance niche I will discover, who I will work with, etc.
3. Learn to give yourself time
A mistake many business owners make is not giving themselves enough time to figure things out.
Many people selling on Amazon KDP struggle to make any sales (by the way, if you want to find out how to make money self-publishing, click here), and they wonder how anybody did it.
The truth is, there is no secret. People have just been in it for long enough that they figured out what works and what doesn’t.
Similarly, in any business or any brand, there will be a time of trial and error where you learn what your audience wants and what they don’t want so you can double down on the things that get you more results.
Before you start any business, go in with the mindset that it’ll take time to see any significant result. There is no overnight success.
It may take you more than a year to figure out the basics and it may take you two years of consistent hard work before you see some significant result.
If you go into a business thinking you should see some success within a short amount of time, you may just give up too soon.
Manage your expectation. Allow yourself more time to figure it out.
4. Don’t compare yourself to people ahead of you
It’s easy to compare ourselves with someone who is ahead and feels discouraged.
You’d think about how far you’d still have to go and how hard you are working and how little result you’re seeing compared to the massive success that other people have.
As a blogger, I look at other personal finance bloggers who started way before I did.
Truth be told, I’ve already been planning on maybe starting a personal finance blog for YEARS now and I finally registered the domain name in late 2021 and only started working on it in early 2022.
People who have started earlier than I are already seeing massive success meanwhile I’m still struggling with the HelloMoneyTree blog as of May 2022.
Don’t compare yourself to people ahead of you because they had the advantage of the time at their disposal.
One year from now you’ll be at a place someone wishes they’d be with their business.
The best time to start was yesterday and the second-best time is today.
Just focus on doing your best and don’t worry about how someone else is doing. This isn’t a race against anybody but yourself. Keep your eyes in your own lane. It’ll prevent you from stressing out over the disparity between someone else’s success and yours.
5. Visualize success
Visualize how it’d feel when you finally achieve what you set out to do with your business.
I want you to visualize it clearly.
For example, say you want to start a business selling soaps on Etsy. The success you should visualize should be:
- How many soaps will you sell at that point?
- How much money will you bring in per month at that point?
- How many people do you have on your mailing list at that point? (Click here to see which email marketing platform you should choose!)
- How would you feel at that point?
- What would you do to reward yourself at that point?
- Who would you share the story of your success with?
- Who would be happy for you? How will you tell them?
- What is the next step for your business at that point?
When you can visualize success clearly in your mind, it’ll motivate you to work harder and not give up.
6. Don’t tell anyone your plan
Click here to read the blog post on why you shouldn’t tell anyone about your plans.
Many of us fall into the trap of telling everyone our plans before we get there.
Some of us may believe that telling someone our plans make us less likely to give up as the pressure of failing in front of others causes us to buckle down and work harder.
That’s what I thought too when I was preparing for a career as a doctor. I told many of my peers what my career goal was.
If I had actually gone down that route, I’d be in my 2nd year of med school by now. If you want to hear the story of why I decided not to become a doctor, click here.
I personally don’t think telling anyone your plans actually cause us to work harder. In fact, it may actually cripple us when we aren’t getting the result we planned for in time.
Instead of giving ourselves more time to figure it out, we may panic and of course, that wouldn’t be good as a business owner.
It’s always nice to take it at your own pace so you remove the overwhelming pressure that may present when you encounter setbacks (trust me, there’ll be some unexpected detours).
You’d never have to worry about explaining your detour to anyone if you haven’t gotten around to telling them yet.
7. Write out a good road map
To ease the possibility of failure it’d be a good idea to draw out a good road map.
You should write down a few things on your road map:
- How long will it take for you to start making a profit?
- How long will it take for you to break even?
- How much money do you need to start the business?
- How will you make money in your business?
- What equipment will you need?
- What recurring payments will you be making?
- How long can you operate without profit?
- Where will you source your equipment or ingredients?
- What would each per unit cost be?
- Will you have a website for your business? What pages will you include? Click here to learn how to start a blog for beginners.
Write out everything you have planned for your business and see whether there is anything, in particular, you should take heed of.
Don’t over plan but definitely plan well and plan enough to get started.
8. Seek mentors
If you are afraid of failure, you should seek a mentor. A mentor won’t prevent you from failure but they can help guide you in the right direction.
No, they won’t do everything for you. You have to do the heavy lifting but having someone there to light up a path for you will save you a lot of headaches and make you more confident that your business will succeed.
It really says something when someone believes in you and your business.
9. Normalize failures and setbacks
Failure and setback is part of the journey.
Normalize seeing failure and setbacks on your way to success.
You’ll realize that you can persist longer when you see any setbacks as a normal part of the process.
10. Find supportive friends
There’s nothing like supportive friends. The last thing you need as a new business owner is someone telling you that you’re doomed to fail.
Find positive supportive friends who are happy to see you succeed. They’ll encourage you when the times are tough.
11. Find a business partner
Having a business partner can reduce the risk you’re taking on. You can share the cost of starting up a business but it’ll also mean that you’d have to share the profit as well.
Make sure you write up and sign the partnership agreement to prevent any misunderstanding in the future.
Having a business partner also means an extra set of helping hands and another brain to help you get through tough times.
But you must state clearly whether you are equal partners in business or if one of you is the main founder and the other is more like an employee.
12. Understand what is sunk cost
Something that a potential business owner like yourself should understand is the logic of sunk cost.
Sunk cost is the money, energy, and time that you’ve put into your business that you can’t get back.
If your business is failing and it has a very low chance of being revived, you should consider abandoning it. Don’t hold on out of nostalgia or out of fear of sunk cost.
I know you may think “But I already put so much work into it”, “But I already spent so much time on it”. All that is sunk cost. The further you stay, the deeper you’ll sink so it’s best to get off the boat now.
You won’t be starting from scratch the next time you start a business. You’d be starting with experience.
As a business owner, you should know when to give up and when to persist so you aren’t holding on to a crumbling sandcastle when there’s a diamond mine nearby.
13. Write down reasons why you want to start the business
You should write down your reasons for why you want to start the business so you can refer back to it at times of low profit.
For instance, your motivation could be:
- To escape the rat race
- To be your own boss (click here to read the 8 Reasons why you should be your own boss)
- To not have regrets later in life
- To work fewer hours per week so can you spend more time with family
- To pursue a passion
Whenever you feel like giving up, you should look at your list of reasons and be motivated enough to continue working hard.
14. Network with other business owners
Another thing you can do as a business owner is to network with other business owners.
You don’t necessarily have to connect with business owners who are in the same niche as you.
The sense of community and the support that you’d get between business owners can be the exact thing you need to push you forward on your journey.
Final thought
Starting a business can be tough and scary. Especially if you’re investing in a lot of capital.
Don’t invest the money you can’t afford to lose. It’s okay to take risks but don’t take on more than you can handle.
You really wouldn’t know where your business will take you if you don’t start.
Nobody has the perfect formula for starting a successful business because the market shifts and there are too many other variables.
All you can do is plan, find a mentor, do your research, try your best, and persist.
Good luck!
Tell me what your business is in the comment section below!
