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There are countless people out there who have heads bursting with great business ideas, but have various factors that hold them back from pursuing them. There’s a fair chance that you’re one of them! With some things, like family obligations and major financial constraints, there’s simply no way around them. However, it’s often fears and qualms that are the main thing between you and your dreams. Here are a few common ones you may be experiencing.
Failure
We’ll start with the most common, and in some ways, the most rational of all the fears that can hold someone back from starting a business. Imagine putting nearly everything you have – your time, your money and your dreams, into starting a business, and then seeing the venture take a nosedive and leave you with nothing. This certainly isn’t an irrational fear – only around half of businesses survive their first five years of trading, and after that an even smaller proportion will survive the next five. Some entrepreneurs get around this fear by redefining what they think of success. If a decent pay rate, the promise of promotions and financial security pale in comparison to being your own boss and seeing your dreams become a reality, then business failure seems much less ominous. Remember, whatever odds are stacked against you, you’ll never know until you try!
A Lack of Professionalism
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One of the biggest barriers that holds people back from success is that they feel they have a lack of professionalism compared to other business owners out there. You may be all too familiar with that little voice in your head, telling you that no one would take you seriously as a CEO if they knew what you were really like, and you simply don’t have the knowledge and experience a business owner needs. Yes, there are services like Wix that have made it so much easier to set up a website, and all the cool free stuff you can get with Vista Prints. However, a business is only as good as the people running it, right? While knowledge of a certain industry can certainly help, the only way to become an effective business owner is to learn through experience. The important thing is thinking before you act, going out of your way to expand your knowledge of your chosen market, and always learning from your mistakes.
Falling into Poverty
Another perfectly understandable fear, though one that it still pays to examine. Many of us have had hard times with money in the past, and if you’ve managed to hold down a decent job for a while, why let a good thing go, right? In many cases, this fear can be borne on an irrational “scarcity mindset”. This is basically thinking that you have to cling onto the few financial wins in your life, or risk losing absolutely everything. Yes, there’s some assurance in sticking to what you know, but it’s also a great way of holding yourself back, and never realizing your potential! There are risks in every business, and you eventually need to put a price on your dreams.
