5 Kinds of Fears That May Be Holding You Back as An Entrepreneur

Every entrepreneur has something that is giving him or her sleepless nights, though this varies from one business owner to another. Highlighted in this article are five kinds of fears that may be holding you back as an entrepreneur. Efforts are also made in this article to explain how you can strategically overcome these challenges and boldly cruise to victory in your business pursuits.

                         Fear of failure

Running a business isn’t a joke—it will take almost everything you’ve got out of you: Your time, money, relationships, family, etc. Considering this enormous investment in their businesses, most entrepreneurs grapple with the fear of losing it all from time to time. However, instead of using the energy from that kind of fear to supercharge their activities, they find themselves in a continuous state of trepidation, sleeplessness, and worry.

                Fear of the New Times

The current dispensation in entrepreneurship differs in a number of ways from two or three decades before, and the approaches used in running businesses have changed dramatically. New times bring new challenges. One of the difficult things business owners have to contend with is satisfying the ever increasing demands from customers, employees, and partners. Every time a new invention emerges in an industry, it shakes every player in the industry. And those who are not prepared for the shakeup get swallowed by the new trends in their respective industries. The modern customers have new ideas about consumptions; they want to be treated as “kings” as required by higher tastes and expectations that are characteristics of the new times. Take for instance, a great number of customers are no longer shopping on their computers. It is estimated that in 2020 alone, 167.8 million people in the United States shopped on their mobile devices. That translated into about half of the American people. It is evident that any businesses that fail to migrate its operations to the mobile platform are losing big in the global marketplaces.

             The issue of Perfectionism

Gone are the days when everything must be perfect before an entrepreneur opens his/her business to the public. Mark Zuckerberg once said that any entrepreneur who is lagging behind the others might probably not moving fast. He said, “move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” On the other hand, perfectionism expects you to wait until every thing is perfect. Unfortunately, there is no perfect business in the world. Every now and then even big tech corporations get their systems hacked or have to struggle with one bug or the other to stay in business. Most of the billion-dollar corporations today started scrappy and on shoestrings. The main message here is that perfection shouldn’t be one of the criteria for launching or running a business. That is why there is an MVP (minimum viable product) ideology now. If it doesn’t work as a small representation of your product, tweak or refine it until it become great!

            The Fear of Entrepreneurship

Going through many business blogs or listening to some Apple podcasts, you would have discovered from time to time that some guests on those business podcasts heighted their fear factors by telling people that entrepreneurship is tough. To a certain degree, they may be true but entrepreneurship isn’t in any way different from other professions people choose to earn their livelihoods from. When asked if entrepreneurship is doable, their affective responses usually border on fear and confusion; they possibly cannot separate their own emotions from their tough experiences as business owners. Is entrepreneurship a force for good? Sure. Can someone do it without so much pain and trouble and make an outstanding success of it? Definitely. At least, there are millions of successful entrepreneurs around the world that prove that running businesses can be a gainful career.

             Fear of No Second Chance?

One of the misconceptions that flies around the word “entrepreneurship” is that it is a do-or-die thing—you either hit or get hit! There is, indeed, a second chance in entrepreneurship. Many successful business owners did not technically get rich from their first two or three ventures. Some have tried their hands on different businesses before eventually hitting a home run with one of them. Success is in stages; there is no need expecting a short cut to entrepreneurial success. It is imperative that you get your hands dirty and learn from day to day until you can master the processes. If an angel investor chooses not to invest in your business, thousands of investors are in the world waiting to getting to knowing your groundbreaking idea. Just keep pushing!