Have no Fear

Being successful in business requires taking some risks. Not jumping off a cliff risks, but calculated risks. If you just sit home and do nothing, you won’t be successful. Even bloggers aren’t successful if they don’t type anything. But taking risks also means that sometimes you might fail, and this is scary to most people (including me). In fact it is so scary that sometimes we don’t even try to succeed!

I remember one day in high school when I was taking a difficult test. I was worried about getting a good grade and had spent time studying for the test. As I walked into class I heard a student say he hadn’t even studied and so, of course, he was going to fail. I remember being amazed at that attitude. I didn’t get it. As I got older, it actually began to make sense, in a convoluted way. If you don’t try, of course you are going to fail. Many people do this with their jobs, or their companies, as well.

So how can you get over this fear of failure? Fail!

That’s right. Experience a failure and recover from it. I have had many failures in my life; both personally in the form of a divorce, and professionally when I was fired from a job. Neither one was an experience I would like to go through again, but I learned that life goes on. In fact, life can actually get better. The “being fired” was one of the big factors that helped me start my own home-based business years ago. I so thoroughly enjoy working from home that I won’t go back to “corporate America” again.

Many well-known multi-millionaires have experienced failure in the form of bankruptcy. This list includes Walt Disney, Henry Ford, J.C. Penney, and Sam Walton. They lived through their bankruptcies and went on to create huge, profitable businesses. In fact, according to Dan Kennedy (who has also been through bankruptcy), “bankruptcy is one of those profound experiences that leads the entrepreneur to full and complete understanding of just how replaceable money is.” He goes on to state, “fears about money inhibit your wealth attraction powers. Absence of fears about money releases your full wealth attraction power.”

Isn’t that the truth! We all want to do business with successful individuals who are not desperate. I think it’s because success breeds confidence and confident individuals make better decisions. So how can you gain this confidence to take risks? Once again, just “Do it,” as the Nike ad says. Are you sometimes going to be wrong and make mistakes or fail? Sure; but just like a baby learning to walk, you can get up and try again. Babies learn how to walk by falling down many, many times. If we gave up as babies the first time we fell, none of us would be walking now.

If you need some confidence launching your small business, or marketing campaign, or have any ideas on this subject, let me know. I love to learn from others’ ideas. That’s one of the reasons I started this blog.