☑ HOW DO YOU HANDLE THE FEAR OF FAILURE WHEN STARTING A BUSINESS?

The greatest risk an entrepreneur has to face is the act of starting a business. Anyone can just plan a business and its usually one of the more fun aspects of entrepreneurship. Once you execute the plan, however, it’s no longer fun and games. It’s for real, involving real money and real risks. Failure translates to real embarrassment; success means real rewards. It is no wonder, then, that the single biggest deterrent to starting a business is the fear of failure.

If not for fear of failure, many more people would be in business for themselves only because the benefits are so good. Among people who took the time to enroll in a livelihood or entrepreneurial training course, only about thirty-five percent follow through their training by establishing a business of one form or another. The culprit is sometimes indecisiveness, or lack of adequate capital but a significant portion usually confess to being paralyzed by this fear of failure. Here’s what you can do to “attack” or overcome this initial fear:



DEVELOP A PLAN OF ATTACK

Before you start a business, any business, it best to ask oneself again whether one is committed to be an entrepreneur and whether one is committed to enter the particular business he or she is about to embark on.

If you still have the desire to start a business after a thorough self-examination, then create a “plan of attack” based on thorough preparation. Such a preparation is an investment in itself and it could take months or even years depending on your needs and the unique needs of your business. Here’s a rule of thumb:

• Study everything you can get your hands at about the business you want to start. 


• If you plan to do it with a business partner, learn how to objectively evaluate a partnership. 


• Be committed to Quality and plan how you can assure its delivery to your customers. 


• Never start a business without first launching a “pilot operation”. 


• Take up business management courses if you don’t have one. If this is your partner’s expertise, it is still best that you develop competence in this area. 


• Don’t start the business without knowledge of basic accounting. Indeed it is best that you keep your own books in the initial stage of your business so you can develop a “mental map” of what is going on in your business’ state of finances. 


• No matter what business you get into, make Cash Flow Management your expertise. 


• No matter what is your level of success, continue learning from others. 


• Most importantly, no matter how rich you are, never risk all your resources on starting a business.

MATURITY

Of course no amount of preparation can guarantee success. Great preparation can only diminish risk and increase your chances of success. Remember that even big companies suffer from the fear of failure every now and then when they launch a new product, brand or open a new branch. The only difference is that big and established companies actually experience less failure than start ups. The lesson here is that risk diminishes as the business matures, or in that case, as the entrepreneur matures.