Starting a Business: The Fear That Stops Many from Starting Their Business
A lot of people desire to start their business and be their own boss, and possibly become rich from it, but they never get to starting the business. And the major reason is the fear that they may not have known all they needed to know to be able to run the business successfully.
You may have birthed a business idea for many years now, but you are not confident you would succeed if you go ahead with it and so the business is still only an idea. It will never be realized if you don’t confront this fear – the feeling of not having adequate knowledge to be successful in business. But how do you deal with it, and what do you need to know to be able to start and run a business successfully?
The entrepreneurial couple, Paul & Sarah Edwards in their book: Why Aren’t You Your Own Boss?: Leaping Over the Obstacles That Stand Between You and Your Dream Discussed this fear in one of the chapters of the book, and proffered practical solution to dealing with it and getting your business started right away.
Here is the excerpt, it will greatly help you:
I Don’t Know the Nitty-Gritty of Starting a Business
I don’t know anything at all about business-how can I get one started?
How do I attract enough customers to make money?
I’m not any good with numbers-how will I keep track of my money?
I’ve already read a lot of books on starting a business – is there a better way to learn what I need to know?
Business. It’s all around us – from your telephone company, to the factory that built your car, to that doughnut shop down the street. We all have many dealings with businesses every day. But, despite all of these interactions, business remains something of a mystery to many of us.
What exactly do they do all day behind those closed doors? How do you turn a little bit of money into a lot of money? Like that scene in the Wizard of OZ when Toto pulls the curtain away to reveal the man operating the machinery who is the “Great and Powerful Oz,” many of us may not have a clue what is going on behind the curtain until it is revealed to us.
While most of us have at one time or another worked in a business-and we are certainly familiar with what it’s like to be an employee – few of us have ever run a business, much less started one from scratch. So, when it comes time to think about starting a business, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the many different things that we don’t understand -what’s going on behind the curtain.
The fact is, you don’t know what you don’t know. The good news is that the mysteries of business can be revealed, and the answers to your questions are all around you.
So, if not knowing anything about starting a business is getting in the way of your dreams of independence, here’s what you can do right now. Don’t allow the nuts and bolts of business continue to be a mystery – step your way around this obstacle by asking the following questions:
1. What do I really need to know to start my business?
2. What don’t I need to know to start my business?
3. Where are the best places to get the information I need?
4. How can I start with what I’ve got?
Let’s go through these questions in detail. By the time you’re done with this chapter, you’ll be able to lift the veil of mystery away from starting a business. In addition, you’ll understand exactly what you need to know to start your own business, and you’ll be able to focus on just that – and not on the things that you don’t need to know. You should be well on your way to leaping over this particular barrier and on the path to making your dreams of independence reality.
Question 1: What Do I Really Need to Know to Start My Business?
Believe it or not, you don’t need to know everything there is to know about business before you start your own business. You don’t need a master of business administration (MBA) degree, you don’t need to take classes after work at your local community college, and you don’t need to buy every book on the business bookshelf at your local bookstore.
When it comes right down to it, there are only a few essentials that you really should know about before you dive into your business. Take a little time to get to know them, and you’ll be on your way before you know it. These things include:
learning the nuts and bolts of business,
finding customers, and
keeping track of your money
Remember: There’s nothing standing in the way of your starting your own business right now-this very minute except yourself. Think about it. Why aren’t you in business right now? What’s holding you back? Most successful entrepreneurs don’t see barriers; they only see opportunities.
To highly motivated entrepreneurs, barriers are simply minor speed bumps on the way to achieving their goals of independence and success. More often than not, they simply blast right through them. And you can, too.
When Barbara Beckstrom and Linda Hicks lost their jobs because the northern Michigan construction firm they worked for went out of business, they soon realized that they just might have been handed a tremendous opportunity to start their own business.
Despite the fact that they knew nothing about starting and running their own business, they forged ahead, driven by the excitement of being their own bosses and the need to make money to live.
Barbara and Linda started their own company-Right Rail, which specializes in installing highway guardrails and fences. But, rather than allow the fact that they lacked even the most basic knowledge of running a business get in the way of their dreams, they learned all they needed to know about starting and running a business by spending time at their local library, eventually creating a business plan to secure financing to buy equipment and materials and to pay wages.
The company quickly grew to annual sales of more than $2 million and eighteen employees.
By deciding you’re in business, you are in business. That’s one of the advantages of free enterprise. You see, in the beginning, It s much more a state of mind than anything else. The formalities of the mechanics of starting your business are details that you can catch up with along the way-just don’t wait too long to catch up!
Despite this fact, many people allow the mechanics of starting a business (or, more likely, the fear of the mechanics) to get in the way of their dreams. Instead of just doing it, they waste days, weeks, and years fretting about the things they don’t know, rather than simply diving in and learning along the way as Barbara Beckstrom and Linda Hicks did.
Key Questions: Are you allowing your lack of business knowledge to get in the way of your starting your own business? Do you always seem to have just one more question that needs to be answered, or one more thing to learn, before you can take that last step and open your new business to the world? If so, step back from your questions for a little bit and ask yourself this: “What is the one thing I could do right now to put myself in business?†Here are some suggestions for what that one thing might be:
- Print business cards with the name of your business, your name and title, and contact information.
- Create a flyer announcing your business and deliver copies to all your neighbors.
- Send an e-mail message announcing your business to all your friends, relatives, and other acquaintances.
- Create a simple, four-page catalog of your products or services on your computer and mail it out to all your friends, relatives, and other acquaintances.
By doing as few as one of these things-and forgetting all about your other questions, at least for a while – you’ll find that your perspective will be changed. Instead of thinking about starting your business, you will be in business.
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Thank you so much for this great post. It’s not only educational but encouraging as well. This knowledge will certainly help me act faster in implementing the idea I have for a business. I have also enjoyed the other articles on how some of today’s great companies came about. This is a website I have bookmarked and would reccomend to anyone who has ever dreamt of starting a business. Good work.