The Six Fears Every Entrepreneur Must Overcome

Have you ever thought of starting a business? This definitely sounds like a good idea especially if what you’re thinking of offering is something that you love to do or falls under your interests. So you set about in knowing what are the steps you need to do in order to get started.

In the course of finding out, you realize that being an entrepreneur is quite different from the rosy picture you painted in your mind. As the realities begin to unfold, you start to doubt if you have the ability to pull this move off. Pretty soon, you’ve pretty much concluded that you don’t have what it takes or the guts to risk the capital you’ve saved up from many years of hard work. And you go back to being the employee that you’ve always been.

Does this scenario sound familiar? Many of us have gone through such a phase and because we easily get discouraged, we have hindered ourselves from starting a business that would have been successful. The key here is to have faith in ourselves and conquer such fears. Here are six of these that every entrepreneur needs to overcome:

1. Risk and failure

If there’s one thing you need to understand, it’s this reality: Even with all the marketing and feasible studies, investing on a business is a risk and putting it up will leave it vulnerable to failure. That’s the norm on any business man’s life; hence, if you’re planning on putting up a business, understand that fact and don’t let it stop you from pushing on with your plans.

Why? Because it is with this risk that you can reap the rewards of your efforts. While there are some who see risk as a setback, there are also some who look beyond it and choose to face it head on despite the odds. Yes, you may fail but together with this failure are valuable lessons which you wouldn’t have learned if you never risked anything in the first place.

2. Other people’s opinions

We are in a society where people root for other people’s failures instead of their successes. Again, this is another biting reality. Try not to dwell on what other people have to say about you and the business you choose to have. If you will take any negative thing they say, your business will never get started.

Moreover, when you’re already running your business, other people will still have negative things to say. You will always be prone to criticisms about how you run it or manage your employees. The lesson you need to keep in mind is you can never please everybody so build up belief and confidence in yourself and what you want to achieve as this will serve as your motivation to continue with your business plans.

3. Wrong decisions

People who have ambitions of becoming entrepreneurs most often have stable jobs already; however, they’ve always had this desire to work for themselves and give work to other people as well. There are some people who choose to pursue this long time goal of setting up their own business while there are likewise others who will not take the risk for fear of compromising the security of their future.

Some ways of lessening chances of making the wrong decision and fostering confidence about such a move is doing a market share on the profitability of your business plan. You can likewise seek the advice of business experts or have a talk with entrepreneurs who are successful to find out how they started their investment. You can also test your service or product on a focus group to see how well receive public response.

4. Inexperience

Fearing that you don’t have experience or expertise is natural and expected for a first-time entrepreneur. One look at a successful business man’s resume would be sometimes have an overwhelming effect on you who’s just starting up the ladder and make you start to doubt if you could do half of what that person has done in the first place.

But here’s the thing: You can!

Many of the world’s successful entrepreneurs didn’t have it easy. Some mostly struggled with formal education yet they still made it big. Hence, fret not if you weren’t able to finish college. We can now see that this is not a prerequisite to starting a business. Give it a shot! If you have passion, determination and commitment, all these will work wonders in making it work for you.

5. Financial ruin

Every businessman has fears of financial ruin and that’s expected. After all, it’s not easy to invest a major amount of money, putting it on the line, so you could follow what you want to achieve. To avoid adding to what financial insecurity you already have, take steps in steering away from extensive debt. Stretch as much as you can especially if you are still at the startup stage of your business. Prepare a business plan as well. Be active on making sales forecasts and monitoring your progress to ensure that you are on the right track.

6. Consume one’s life

Starting or running a business is very much like taking care of a child. It will need your time and attention for it to flourish. Sadly, this can take your time away from your family, friends, hobbies and the lifestyle you’re used to.

So, for you to maintain a healthy balance of things, find aspects where you can delegate certain responsibilities and tasks to others. For your peace of mind, choose or hire the people with the right expertise and training for each task. That way, it will be easier to manage your everyday operations making it smoother and allowing you time to spend time with the people and things that make you happy.

Starting and managing a business is indeed not easy. I'm speaking from experience as I, too, have had my share of difficulties and challenges in running them as best as I can. In my case, time management is the key in order for everything to work and flow smoothly.

What about you? What are your fears of running a business? Do any of the above-mentioned six apply to you? Or you have other fears to share? Tell me about them in the comments below.

If you wish to read more of my blogs, let's get connected at Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Here are some of my recent posts:

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About the Author

Jason Bettinger is the entrepreneurs, entrepreneur. Through experience of starting, running and selling 9 prior businesses (he's on his 10th), he does know a thing or two about what makes or breaks a business! You'll find him at the forefront of web innovation and digital marketing, teaching business owners how to leverage Social Media and Search Engine strategies in optimizing websites and online branding.

Today, he focuses in his company, Web Fixers, www.webfixers.com.au which helps businesses demystify the web through fixing websites, putting in social media, Google SEO and landing page strategies that work together to produce fantastic results (digital marketing). Such systems create online lead funnels and automation, which result in more website traffic, more inquiries and more sales. Jason delivers monthly in person education segments about this, held in Sydney area of via his webinars and podcasts such as:

Websites

• "How to Build a Sales Focused Website"
• "10 Things to Fix Your Website Right Now"
• "Website Security: How to Prevent Malware and Hackers"

Social Media Marketing

• "How to Leverage Social Media in Creating Leads"
• "How to Create Offline Relationships, Online"
• "How to Build Your Email Marketing List"
• How to Become Famous on YouTube"
• Build Your Linked Profile Right Away"

SEO/ SEM

• "How to Rank Page #1 in Google Searches"
• How to Get Most from Google Adwords / PPC"
• How to Optimize Your Site for Keywords"