Entrepreneurs, Don’t Let the Fear of Failure Stop You
Life is full of ups and downs, successes and failures. The landscape of business is no different. The longer you stay in the business world, the more likely you are to see that bear out. But, don’t hold back your entrepreneurial dreams because of potential failure.
Determine how you will respond to failure and setbacks in advance. When you do this, you take away the power of failures and setbacks. Decide now that you will treat any setback as a learning experience.
The basis of scientific research is trial and error. You try one experiment and it fails. The next time, you vary one chemical or condition and try the experiment again. Each time that you do this, the end results are recorded regardless of whether they are the results you wanted or not.
The entire scientific process is about evaluating the outcomes of your experiments. The failed experiments are as important as the ones that succeeded. Here, we are speaking of failure as an outcome that was unexpected and unplanned.
Failure is one reason that many individuals won’t realize their entrepreneurial potential. One mistake or error makes them gun-shy. It prevents them from taking another step forward.
Anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit knows that nothing is certain in life or business. The only way to find success is to take a leap forward and risk failure. At the least, you will learn something about yourself in the attempt:
1. You weren’t afraid to try.
2. Failure is not fatal.
3. Now you know what not to do.
One way to avoid some mistakes it to solicit the advice of a mentor or coach. There are those that have gone before you. Don’t neglect their wisdom. You will still make mistakes but you can avoid some of the most deadly ones.
For an entrepreneur, even a failure is a great opportunity. There are at least 3 categories of failure. Entrepreneurs can make rookie mistakes, trust mistakes, and poor business decisions. No one is immune to any of the three.
Rookie mistakes could be choosing a poor domain name, not performing enough market testing, or issues with business start-up. A good way to avoid these rookie mistakes is to get an advisor who understands this area. If you do make a rookie mistake the best thing to do is begin again with new knowledge that you didn’t have the first time in these areas.
Further down the line, maybe you formed a partnership and they got the better end of the deal. Once again, you dust yourself off and start over.
No one said it wouldn’t be painful to deal with these setbacks, but the challenge is to profit in these areas as well. If you scan the business information on the Internet, you’ll see that there are as many courses and eBooks on what not to do as there are on what to do. How do you think the entrepreneur got the information for the former? They experienced it.
People new to entrepreneurship want to know what they should and should not do. The ones who have experienced failure are more than happy to share their knowledge so someone else can avoid hard knocks. That, in itself, is a marketable business opportunity.
Embrace all aspects of business including the possibility of failure. Once you dig yourself out and dust yourself off, you could be standing in a goldmine.
It is easier to digest failure when you realize that no one is immune to it.
It doesn’t take away the fear, I feel it right now as I sit here typing, but it does ease the feeling.
Fear is accompanied by embarrassment and depression for me.
However, I will forge foward knowing that not only the good, but the bad can work in your favor.
You can learn from all experiences.
Thanks for the great advice, it is greatly appreciated.