Conquer Your Fears of Business Failure

Conquer Your Fears of Business Failure

Everyone has fears. Some people are afraid of enclosed spaces, while others are deathly afraid of spiders. As a business owner, you may be afraid that your business will fail. It’s an understandable fear. About one-fifth of businesses fail in their first year, and over half fail within the first five years. While it’s ok to be concerned, if you allow your fears to overtake you, your business won’t be profitable. Research shows that it is the people who aren’t afraid to take a risk in business that are truly successful. If you don’t know how to conquer your fears that your business will fail, we have some suggestions that will help you conquer your fears. Conquer your fears of business failure with these suggestions.

You Need to Operate Your Business with an Eye Towards Growth

Research tells us there are only two kinds of people in the business-owning world. One group of business owners works to maintain what they have. The other group of business owners focuses on growing their business. It’s easy to see how the second mindset will help you grow your business because a growth mindset operates from a place of strength rather than weakness.

In order to operate from a position of strength, you need to think in terms of which practices will help you grow your business. What can you do to expand your marketing to reach new customers? What new products or sales can you offer? It’s only when you begin to look at growth in a positive way that you can really allow your business to take off.

Take Positive Action

Along with adopting a positive mindset, you need to take action on your new ideas. If you sit back and talk yourself out of a great idea, how are you working to move your business forward? If adapting a large idea seems too overwhelming at first, you can break it up into chunks to tackle a little at a time. As long as you’re moving forward, you know that you’re moving towards productivity.

Consistency Is Important

You need to be implementing the change or promoting practice consistency. Remember that an object in motion—your business—tends to stay in motion; while an object that is not in motion will tend to stay immobile. If you are persistent with your business practices, you stand a greater opportunity to make your business a success.

For example, if part of your marketing plan is to post on social media every day, why not do it first thing in the morning when you wake up? That way, you can cross that chore off your list for the day. While we’re on the subject if you like making lists, why not make one for your business? It’s easy to set daily, short term, and long term goals with a list. Lists help lots of business owners stay on track. You can choose to do a list on paper, in a planner, or even electronically.

Make Fear Inspirational

All business owners have fears. However, if you work towards making your fears the inspiration to do more, or move your business further, that’s a great use of your time. If you’re not sure how your fear can inspire you, get some outside help. You may want to enlist the help of an inspirational motivational speaker to get you focused and ready to spring into action. There are some amazing motivational speakers in the business community who you may find you can really relate to and get ideas and techniques from. You might also find help with a group of other business people. We’re willing to be that they learned how to conquer their fears to move their businesses forward.

Another way that business owners find ways to make their fears inspirational is by finding a mentor. Mentors are a great way for new businesses to get help from someone whose business is already established. You may want to look for a mentor in the same kind of business you’re in—but outside of your service area, so there’s no competition. You could also look for a mentor in a related field, but not your exact business field. That way, you and your mentor can work together without a conflict of interest. It is much easier to learn from a mentor than it is to try and try out new ideas or new concepts alone.

Accept That You’re Going to Make Mistakes

Every business has some failures, even the most profitable ones. Remember New Coke? That didn’t go over so well with the public, and Coca Cola has been a successful company for decades. Every business that is a success couldn’t have gotten there without some spectacular failures. If you know that your business is going to experience failure, it is easier to move forward and take risks. You need to think of failure not as a failure in itself, but instead as an opportunity to learn.

Plan Ahead

When you are a business owner, it is all the more important that you plan ahead. In fact, planning is the key to business success. One reason that planning is so important is that planning and thinking where your business needs to be six months from now can help you pinpoint potential roadblocks and work to eliminate them now.

Planning ahead also allows for flexibility. If you have a pretty good idea of what’s coming, it may help you adjust your timetables for your business goals, so that you can make changes. Businesses that aren’t flexible have a hard time with success because the inflexibility leads to business stagnation. 

When you are starting a business, a little fear is natural. Everyone has fears. Don’t let your fears overwhelm you and cause you to stagnate in one place. Growth and change are inevitable, and the sooner you embrace growth and change, the faster your business will grow. We all conquer fear in the business world every day—what are you going to work on conquering today to help your business grow?