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How to Overcome Fear in Starting Up
June 10th, 2008 | Author: 
The numero uno problemo in entrepreneurship is fear.
Fear suppress your productivity, decision making ability, creativity, and – believe it or not – success it self.
Fear comes in many forms you know – Fear of failure; Fear of leaving your day job to be a full time entrepreneur; Fear of losing customers; and so on.
How to befriend fear
You have to admit that fear can’t be eliminated. In fact, fear is needed to keep oneself true.
You can’t hope that someday fear will give you a break. You have to learn the art of ‘tricking yourself’ to befriend fear in starting up a business:
- I always love this motivational words about opportunities – “You will miss 100% shot you don’t take.”
Just do it, and simply deal the consequences. That’s life – no big deal. - Surround yourself with people that are motivators and mentors.
‘Lean’ yourself to them, and let their guidance turns your fear into energy to succeed. - Prioritise exit strategy in every start up.
An exit strategy is key to secure the future of the start up. Having one is like having a safety net to fall onto if there were something wrong with the start up.
Do you have any success stories related to fear management in entrepreneurship? Please share them in this post :)
Ivan Widjaya
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About the Author
Ivan Widjaya is the Owner/Editor of Noobpreneur.com. He is a web property investor, blogger and web property maker, and currently manages and writes for My Web Estate. He also runs a web design business, Chalcedony Design, specialising in Wordpress theme creation, and plenty other web business.
Visit Noobpreneur's profile and other posts.
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Somewhat reminds me of a book I read way back in ’82 called “The Fear of Success” by Leon Tec. Essentially he said that people have a comfort level with failure because they are more familiar with it. It’s the devil they know where as success is more elusive. People are uncomfortable as to how to handle it, so they shrink from success to familiar territory – failure. It’s a lesson I never forgot.
Ed,
That’s, unfortunately, true all the way.
We often stop challenging ourselves, thinking that we are already successful – we are not – success is not the end goal, it’s the path we walk.
If we felt comfortable with the way we are right now (in our familiar territory – failure – like you’ve said) what exactly kind of path we walk right now?
Thanks for sharing your valuable insight, Ed! :)
You know noob, you could say that the “goal” in a sense could be seen as the bad guy as it puts an artificial end to something. Reaching that “goal” limits our reach. AND of we set our goals low, then what are we saying about our faith in our own potential?
Many people see the goal as an end where as we should be seeing the goal as the beginning to greater things. If we strive to surpass our goals, we are all now striving to be great.
(interesting discussion, eh?) I guess to, that going back to fear of success – we could use goals as a form of therapy to getting over that fear. Goals being stepping stones to greater things. So, long as the goal is not seen as an end but perpetually set, rising the bar each time.
The sad thing with most small businesses is they see view the goal as an end. What to do when the goal is met? Repeat it again next year, with a few points added. Why do we challenge ourselves so modestly?
Ed,
To comment on goals being stepping stones to greater things – I agree that goals are best viewed as milestones.
I love sports – and to an extent, business is just like sports.
In endurance practice, you set to run 5 miles today. Once you achieve that, you raise your bar to 6 miles tomorrow, 7 miles the day after tomorrow, and so on. When the time comes – i.e. the London marathon :) – you are prepared to achieve great things, because you constantly challenge yourself to reach new milestones.
Yes, it is sad to see small biz treats the goal as an end. That’s why small biz remains, well, small :) – unless you planned to keep it small, of course – but, again like you said, Ed – why do we challenge ourselves so modestly?
Interesting discussion, indeed :)
Exactly. We should view our goals as a beginning, not an end.
That would be the ultimate challenge.
Ed
Ed,
Cheers! Thanks for the interesting discussion :D
Hi noob,
Nice post and interesting discussion (thanks Ed) :)
Re: the post, I agree with an “exit strategy”. I am just starting out on an idea with some websites of mine and I have no idea if they’ll be successful so it seems a bit preemptive to think of an exit strategy but…the reason I do it 1) to sell my “idea” once its matured because I think there’s a market and 2) It means I have a bit of confidence in what I’m doing.
I agree with Ed in that failure is more familiar to EVERYONE until we achieve enough times that “failure is not an option”. But, that takes a bit of blind faith to get the positive experience of success.
Hi David,
Actually, selling your idea once it matured is an exit strategy :) – you see, exit strategy doesn’t have to be a bad thing, i.e. selling an ailing business.
Selling 100 times your initial investment is a more desired exit strategy :)
About blind faith – that is actually what make or break, doesn’t it? No faith, no success. Period.
Thanks for sharing, David :)