Know the four main fears of entrepreneurship, Obviously the number of qualities and attributes needed to succeed in business is quite extensive. So, does that mean that an entrepreneur needs to be a superhero to triumph in the business world? Absolutely not. Few people are born with all the marvelous abilities that are needed to succeed in life.
Yet successful business owners appear to get around their shortcomings by learning as they go, admitting their frailties, and shoring up their weaknesses – a process that helps overcome their fears.
Fear is a common emotion that often manifests itself into excuses, procrastination, or inaction. Indeed, many psychologists say that fear is the root cause of most human problems. Listed below are four of the most common fears associated with starting a business.
Age.
Exactly what age is too old or too young to run a business? Years ago, the owner of a sporting goods store in the USA celebrated his 100th birthday (he opened his enterprise in 1933).
He was only working four hours a day, but he was still working, and introducing new products, and beating his competitors. Colonel Sanders, the man who invented Kentucky Fried Chicken, began selling his secret formula to franchisees at the age of 64.
Ray Kroc, a malt-shake machine salesman from Illinois, bought four California hamburger restaurants when he was 52 years old and re-tooled them into the McDonald’s empire. And so, it goes as the number of entrepreneurs over the age of 50 is expected to rise dramatically according to industry experts.
At the other end of the scale, Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computer, began his first business at the age of 13. By the time he turned 19, the computer parts business he ran out of his college dorm room was grossing $80,000 per month.
Not to be outdone, Bill Gates started Microsoft at the tender age of 19. And today, millennials are starting businesses at almost twice the rate of their older peers (Petrilla 2016).
The overall message is that age is not a determinant factor when it comes to starting and running a business. Attitude, courage, and action are far more important.
- Lack of Money.
There’s no doubt that having lots of capital makes starting a business somewhat easier. Yet a sizeable number of successful practitioners steadfastly believe that having a better-than-average amount of start-up capital has little to do with overall success. Indeed, quite a few hard-nosed entrepreneurs claim that it’s actually beneficial to create a business with as little money as possible.
Their belief is that too many individuals, when starting with a pile of cash, waste it on things they don’t need – an office, a secretary, expensive computer equipment, and so on. On the other hand, having a small amount of start up cash teaches frugality and efficiency. If you’re not convinced by this argument, consider the hundreds of thousands of folks around the world who began their businesses with little more than chump change and a burning desire to see their idea bear fruit. For example, Disney, Apple, Hewlett Packard, and the Mattel toy company, all began life in garages. Seattle based teenager Jim Casey founded UPS with $100, two bicycles, one telephone and six employees.
The Nike Corporation began in 1964 when Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman each invested $300 in a shipment of athletic shoes and sold them out of a car at track meets.
Eighteen-year-old Joyce C. Hall started the Hallmark greeting card company with an armful of postcards he kept in two shoeboxes.
Thomas Monaghan, who spent his early life in and out of orphanages and foster homes (and was kicked out of everything afterward from a Catholic seminary to the Marine Corps) started Dominos Pizza by turning a bankrupt pizza parlor – half of which he traded for his Volkswagen Beetle – into the USA’s number one pizza delivery service.
And the Marriott Hotel chain began its life as a humble root beer stand in 1927. Simply put (as the old saying goes), success in business is usually based on 10% capital and 90% guts. Stated another way, people that can’t make money without money usually won’t make money with money. According to successful business practitioners, mind power, diligence, and passion are far more influential.
- Fear of Rejection.
Most successful business owners readily admit that the path to prosperity is paved with rejection. Indeed, many hard-core entrepreneurs state quite openly that they often fail twice as much as others. So why do they end up succeeding? Because they try more. Instead of giving up, successful business owners learn to deal with failure and adversity and then move on.
Take for example Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank who, in 1978, joined forces with co-worker Ronald Brill and founded Home Depot – after all three men had lost their jobs in a corporate buyout. Or consider King C. Gillette, the inventor of the safety razor, who suffered six years of humiliating rejection from companies, investors, and toolmakers while they laughed out loud at his innovative new product. When King eventually decided to produce his invention himself, sales rose at a rate of 1,000% annually!
The story of Ewing Kauffman provides another good example of how successful entrepreneurs rebound from rejection. Shortly after WWII, Kauffman was fired from his job as a salesman because his commissions exceeded the president’s salary at the company where he worked. Undaunted, he descended into his basement and began making calcium pills from oyster shells. Years later, after capturing forty percent of the $100-million calcium supplement market, he sold his company to Dow Chemical for a fortune.
Such bounce-back stories are not the stuff of old-fashioned motivational stories. Indeed,
millennials seem to be more prone than their elders to learn from failure, brush it off, and then parlay it into victory (Petrilla, 2016).
The lesson here is that winning often lies in the mind. Success to those with the perseverance to stay in the game is usually nothing more than failure turned inside out.
- Lack of Education or Experience.
There is evidence that suggests a college education does not guarantee business success. Indeed, it sometimes appears otherwise.
Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, for example, founded Apple Computer after dropping out of college. Neither one of them had any entrepreneurial experience.
Michael Dell, the multi-millionaire founder of Dell Computer, is also a college dropout. The same goes for Ted Waitt, who, after quitting school, underwent nine months of on-the-job training at a computer company only to leave and start Gateway 2000. Ten years later, his salary exceeded $500,000 per annum. John Bond, former chairman of HSBC (one of the world’s largest banks), also never went to university. Still not convinced?
Then consider the story of Ian Leopold, whose college professor failed him because of the unrealistic business plan he submitted in class. By sticking to his instincts, Leopold turned a $48 investment into $4-million in ten years with the very same plan (writing university guidebooks). And in the last years of her life, multimillionaire Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, advised entrepreneurs to ‘stay away from business schools’. Her belief was that business schools focus too much on the financial side of business and ignore the all-important human element.
Of course, this does not mean that education and experience are not needed to start and run a business.
The following statement was relayed to me several years ago by a successful entrepreneur in France:
- ‘I didn’t learn any ground-breaking secrets in business school,’ he said.
- ‘Most of what I’ve learned I experienced on the job.
- Yet one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that no matter where business studies are taught, the folks who need this information the most are usually nowhere to be found.’
His point is that there’s no shame in not knowing everything there is to know about running a business. There is only shame in not admitting it and ignoring the need to improve.