STARTING YOUR own business can be nerve-racking. You know that being your own boss would make you happier, but when you think about all that could go wrong, you start to doubt your abilties.
Its normal to experience fear of failure when you think about all the risks that come with leaving your current job.
In this article, you’ll learn how you can shift your mindset from failure to success. More importantly, you’ll learn how to harness enough courage to take a leap of faith and execute on your business plans.
Do This Before Building the Courage to Start Your Own Business
If you’re considering to start your own business, you must take 3 important factors into consideration. It’s important you spend as much time as possible considering these factors because they strongly affect your chances of success:
1. There Must Be a Market for Your Idea
One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make is that they build and market a product before they verify a need in the market. You might think you have a good business idea, but if there aren’t a lot of people who would consider purchasing from you, then your idea might not be so good after all.
Therefore, the first thing you should always do before launching a business is to verify a market need. This helps save time down the road and ensures that you can make enough money to support your personal life and business.
2. You Must Have a Passion for Your Business
If you’re planning on opening a coffee shop but don’t enjoy drinking coffee, then you’re bound for failure. It doesn’t matter how great your idea is; A lack of passion for your business will keep you from doing an excellent job and inhibits your own success.
Before you quit your full-time job and start on your new venture, you should first ensure that you’re passionate about what you’re planning on doing. How do you know you’re passionate about something?
3. Eliminate Financial Pressures
In The Personal MBA, author Josh Kaufman recommends that you start your business with a method called bootstrapping, if possible:
“Bootstrapping is the art of building and operating a business without funding. By limiting yourself to the use of personal cash, personal credit, the business’s revenue, and a little ingenuity, you can build a successful business without seeking funding at all.” writes Kaufman.
Many people assume they need to attend business school to learn how to build a successful business or advance in their career. That’s not true. The vast majority of modern business practice requires little more than common sense, simple arithmetic, and knowledge of a few very important ideas and principles.
When you use your own money and profits to finance your business, you eliminate the financial pressures that come with financing methods such as secured loans, bonds, and angel capital—methods that often require large shares of your business and much money.
The 3 Steps to Harnessing Enough Courage to Start Your Own Business
Any successful entrepreneur knows that the only way start a business is with courage. Having courage means that you’re confident enough to face a difficult challenge head-on.
Great things never came from comfort zones. If you want to have a good chance at making it, you must leave your comfort zone, embrace personal growth, and overcome all feelings of fear.
Starting is the hardest part. Harry Hoover put it best, “If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.”
So, how can you strategically start your own small business? Consider these 3 pieces of advice:
1. Consider What You’ll Miss Out on If You Don’t Start
A great way to build your courage is by considering all the success you could miss out on if you don’t take a leap of faith. Make a list of the new skills you won’t learn, the business success you won’t be able to enjoy, and the freedom you’re missing out on.
If you want to launch your own e-commerce store, your list might look something like this:
- I won’t learn how to design a website that converts
- I won’t be able to create passive income
- I won’t be able to travel the world and work from my laptop
What does your list look like? Make it length, if possible, and then reflect on it.
2. Prepare Everything Beforehand; Don’t Quit Without a Plan
When we struggle to take action on a big goal, it’s often because we lack clarity about the steps we need to take. If starting your own business seems impossible to achieve, make a list of everything that you need to get done to get there.
There are many benefits of goal setting, and it’s possible that your list of action items is shorter than you expect:
- Save $5,000 to account for a possible lack of income
- Design a business plan and a plan of action
- Register your business with the government
If any of your tasks seem too big to achieve, you might want to consider breaking them into smaller chunks of work. When you break large tasks into small goals, you can tackle them one by one until you’ve completed everything on your list.
3. Capitalize on a Moment of Courage
Once you have all the logistics figured out, it’s time to act. If you don’t feel enough courage just yet, it might be worth waiting until you do. However, moments of courage can be rare, so it’s best to act on one as soon as you experience it.
You might feel motivated after writing out a plan for your future. Or maybe you’re capable of good decision making when you make a list of potential clients.
It doesn’t matter how you make the decision but when you make it. Only then will you be able to take the first step in living your dream life.