Three Steps to Understanding and Overcoming the Fear of Starting a Business

While some may find it easy to launch themselves onto the entrepreneurship track, others struggle with the decision and become paralyzed through inaction because of the risks that a new business venture imposes. If you are struggling with the decision of whether to start your own business; here is your chance to settle the matter. Not all of us are meant to be business owners, but if you feel drawn to the entrepreneurship track it’s probably because you belong there. There three important considerations that will guide you and inform the decision process. Using CD Consulting’s Three C’s Principles, you are guaranteed some respite on the indecision that has been plaguing you.

Admittedly, starting a new business is one of the riskiest decisions that a person can make. However, your decision should not be made out of fear. One of my favorite quotes that I relay to ambivalent clients is that: “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” Fear is an operative agent in all of our daily lives. It is that self-imposed barrier that we place on ourselves not to take certain risks. Most of the times, it is unspoken. People don’t go around admitting to themselves or others that fear is what is stopping them. Instead, people come up with a myriad of excuses, not justifications. There is an operative difference between excuse and justification and it does not hinge on wordplay. The former is using a temporary barrier as an impediment to getting out of doing something that a person feels ambivalent about; whereas the latter speaks more to a rational reason that may temporarily delay or permanently prevent someone from doing something.

Consider the following scenario, a person plans to walk to the convenience store and it starts to rain. Since the person can use an umbrella or walk to the store after the rain stops, not going to the store because of the rain is a mere excuse. On the hand, if there is storm warning and it hailing, not walking to the store at that exact moment would be justified. The inherent risks to starting a business are certainly more contentious than the possibility of getting wet in the rain. Nonetheless, people come up comparable excuses such as the fact that they have bills to pay, children to support or not having enough money, as excuses to delay or ignore their entrepreneurial aspirations.

Confront – Face your Fear

The first of the Three C’s which will help you overcome your indecision is to confront your fear. You will confront your fear when you acknowledge that your well-rehearsed excuses are just that. When you confront, you have listed all of the excuses that stopped you from starting the particular business you intended. It is not a simple matter of making an acknowledgment to yourself of the most obvious excuses that you can regurgitate. Rather, you have to dig deep and think of all the ones that you will potentially come up with. The last thing you want is to leave any space in your mind for more excuses to plant seeds. Be sure to take a good amount of time at this stage to address all excuses that have hampered the deliberation process of entrepreneurship.

Counter – Positive Outweighs Negative

Now that you have listed all of the excuses, you need to address them. Next to each excuse that you wrote out, you need to need to counter it with facts. For instance, if one of your excuses is “lack of funding to start a business”, you can counter than with many facts: grants, small business loans, investors, a partnership with others with financial resources. The claim of lack of financial resources is one of the top excuses that people use for not starting a business. The immutable fact is that if you have a genuinely innovative business coupled with a strong business concept and appropriate planning, you will find ways to finance the business. As you counter each excuse, you will notice that the positive will outweigh the negative most of the time.

After you counter the excuses, you might be left with some items on your list that do not necessarily fit the excuse category. Or you may not have anything left. If there are no more items left on your list, you should identify rational drawbacks. These are called justifications. They are not meant to stop you from engaging in a particular act. Instead, they weigh on the timing and most efficient way of completing the intended venture. For example, “economic downturn” would not qualify as an excuse, because it is based a rational concern for the potential success of the business. To deal with the potential drawback of the “economic downturn” you may strategize that your business should be conducted online to lower your costs and increase chances of profit; you may decide to keep your day job while running your business part-time; or you may even decide to implement this business based on predictions on when market trends indicate that it will be profitable. Your approach will vary depending on the business idea.

Commit – Seal the Deal

All of the hard work you have completed so far will not matter unless you make a commitment to yourself. This commitment is one that may require some more thinking and re-visiting the two previous steps above. In the context of having confronted your fears, countering them with facts and dealing with the potential drawbacks, you need to make a commitment to yourself that you will either start a business or not. Your thinking process must be geared towards starting a business in the near future because the imminence will force you to stay true to your commitment. Regardless of the decision, you must abide by it and know that it was made in light of reasonable justifications.

About the Author:

Catherine works as a business consultant empowering entrepreneurs with the necessary tools and resources to bring their entrepreneurial aspiration to success. She holds Juris Doctorate degree of law specializing in Business and has extensive experience with all aspects of business formation. Connect with Catherine at Catherine.delcin@gmail.com, or connect with her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CatherineDelcin .