Starting a new business is always a risky proposition, but the hiccups that many start-ups encounter can be daunting for even the most stoic of entrepreneurs. Fear shouldn’t stop you from achieving your personal and professional goals. Learn more on how to overcome fear in new business.
Using tried and true methods for managing the risks you may encounter not only diminish the fear of uncertainty relative to the success of your business but also expand your knowledge of how to properly position your business for long-term success. Here are 7 ways to overcome fear in a new business startup.
Have a mentor/ learn from others
Having a mentor, whether from within the market or industry, you are trying to enter or someone who has past experience starting and operating a business can offer valuable insights into navigating the challenges inherent in starting a business, from managing assets to maintaining equipment and infrastructure as well as hiring appropriate personnel.
Finding a mentor doesn’t take a whole lot of skill, simply some enthusiasm, honesty, and socializing with the right people. Attending entrepreneurial networking events, industry conferences, and trade shows as well as engaging indirect competitors can provide valuable insights into the nuances of managing a start-up.
You can even try online platforms such as Linkedin or Facebook as well as contacting friends and family to see if there are any contacts worth consulting. Finding a mentor can lead to amplified opportunities to build a successful business from the ground up and overcome any fears you may have.
Find a partner/ delegate
Having a partner not only helps with brainstorming ideas for growth possibilities and pooling resources necessary to get the business going, including finances, personnel, and equipment but having a partner can allow individuals to delegate tasks that aren’t their specialty to someone who can handle them more effectively, allowing for greater productivity.
Similar to finding a mentor, finding a partner, if you don’t already have one, requires tapping into the abundant small business networks that exist to find someone you trust.
If you aren’t already working with your friends, then finding someone of similar working standards is integral to the success of the business. Former colleagues and co-workers can also provide potential business partnerships, as can industry events and even online networking sites.
The key is to know your strengths and know what you are looking for from a business partner to find the most compatible pairing to strengthen your business.
Properly research your market while creating a community
When it comes to fear in starting a startup, the uncertainty of a product or service succeeding in the marketplace and leading to a loss of credibility is a big one.
Like any other concern with forming a startup, the key is to properly research the potential pitfalls. While it doesn’t seem complementary to gaining credibility, creating a community can help to ease the transition into being a credible business.
Engaging a community offers valuable benefits to growing startups. First, community-centered businesses create a loyal fanbase that offers the most reliable form of advertising: word-of-mouth.
Secondarily, creating and engaging a community creates a platform to exchange ideas with other businesses and potential business partners while also gaining access to discounted materials and equipment, thus helping the financial hurdle many startups encounter.
Finally, engaging in a community creates a more dynamic brand that allows potential customers to experience while also helping to soften any volatility or obstacles encountered with regard to funding, legal accessibility, or distinguishing from competitors.
Start small/ don’t over-invest
Among the many challenges that cause fear for any entrepreneur is managing cash flow and assets while growing one’s business.
Tempting as it is to acquire as much funding as possible, giving away too much equity, or raising too much money can minimize control over the direction of your business while also creating too much debt that revenue might not be able to accommodate.
Knowing the direction of your business and what investments you need helps to concentrate asset allocation where it’s most useful so that revenue can accommodate assets that facilitate growth.
Reviewing investments already acquired as well as what areas are most imperative to supporting the growth of your operation can help to acquire investments that can be paid off in appropriate timescales.
Likewise, knowing the timeframe for growth considerations influences what investments are most feasible relative to your revenue structure.
Invest in proper capital and equipment
At the core of every business are the location, facilities, and equipment necessary to deliver a quality product or service. Shoddy equipment that requires constant maintenance or underperforms can’t create a successful brand or follow.
Before investing in personnel or extensive advertising, ensuring that you have appropriate equipment, sufficient production facilities, and an accessible retail location (as well as capacities for online retail if you’re looking to maintain a digital presence), are essential to ensuring that you can consistently produce and sell what you are promoting.
Work with something that you know thoroughly
Being knowledgeable about a specific field doesn’t mean that you have to have a doctoral degree. It just means that you should be fully aware of what your intended market wants at the present moment, what your competitors are offering, and how you can consistently provide and differentiate yourself.
The uncertainty of success often hinges on venturing into uncharted terrain, but when you know what you are getting yourself into, you can be better prepared for any obstacles that you may encounter relative to changes in market demands, and changes in marketing strategies, and alterations in production.
Stay organized and create goals
Starting a business requires a great deal of organization. You need to be able to manage a team, network with potential clients, manage assets and cash flow, properly document and demonstrate business solvency and consistently maintain production levels to meet client demands. Without proper organization, your business is going nowhere.
As an impetus and a structure for organizing one’s business, you should always have clear goals. A properly written business plan should include a mission for your startup that internalizes the long-term goals for your business.
More importantly, breaking this goal down into smaller segments, such as quarterly or even monthly targets relative to production goals, revenue goals, funding goals, or even personnel performance, helps to keep you and your entire team on track to consistently perform and overcome any fears encountered along the way.
Stepping into the unknown is what every entrepreneur does with every startup. Despite the incredible amount of fear and anxiety that consistently plagues every process while growing, and even operating a business, there are a variety of tactics that you can employ to overcome your fears on the road to startup success.
