Overcoming Negativity in entrepreneurship, Perhaps now it’s easy to understand why so many people forgo the notion of starting their own business and choose to work for someone else instead. Simply put, building a business is hard work and the odds of succeeding are harsh. That being said, if starting a business seems beyond your reach because the people surrounding you – not the facts – are filling your head with negative thoughts, the following advice from experienced business practitioners may be worth considering:
- as a rule, most people in life will tell you what you cannot do rather than what you can do.
- just because someone doesn’t believe in you doesn’t mean you can’t succeed.
- no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
- your past does not have to contaminate your future.
- where you come from isn’t important, it’s where you’re going those counts.
- if you focus on what you want, instead of what others deny you, you’ll have a much greater chance of succeeding.
- fear of the unknown (and the known) can be controlled once it’s admitted.
Developing a Healthy Definition of Success
Still afraid of taking a risk and stepping out into the unknown? You’re not alone. It’s not uncommon for even experienced entrepreneurs to measure themselves against unreasonable standards and see themselves falling short. For example, a successful entrepreneur in the UK once admitted to me that he thought his business was a failure. This was unusual because there was no doubt in my mind (or anyone else’s) that he was doing quite well.
‘How long have you been in business?’ I asked.
‘Sixteen years,’ he replied.
‘And how many similar businesses around here have come and gone during that time?’ ‘Seven,’ he answered.
‘What about your salary? Do you make a good living?’
‘Oh yes,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got a nice car, I live in one of the better parts of town, and I usually take two vacations a year.’
‘Tell me about your employees. Do they leave every few months or do they stay with you?’
‘All of them have been with me for years.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘maybe I’m missing something. Where do you think you’re going wrong?’
Do You Have What It Takes?
He got the point. He was confusing his desire to do better with failure. Like so many people he saw other entrepreneurs who had more of something than he did and he immediately assumed that he was losing. The message? Be reasonable with your expectations and learn to view your business goals as a staircase rather than a one-chance shot to the moon. This doesn’t mean settling for less, it means being realistic and progressive when it comes to your aspirations. As one entrepreneur I interviewed put it, ‘tell your readers that the fear and insecurity of running a business never ends. Indeed, the very concept of entrepreneurship involves overcoming the daily nagging dread that even after serving a satisfied customer we are, in effect, unemployed until the next customer can be secured. It’s just something we entrepreneurs have to learn to live with.’
The Other End of the Scale: Overconfidence
Wilbur Wright, the co-inventor of the airplane, once wrote to his father, when flying, I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks. Put another way, the inventor of one of the world’s most useful devices firmly believed that a little fear is a good thing. His contention is that fear keeps one in check. ‘Overconfidence can lead to misjudgement, disregard, or the ignoring of good ideas and advice,’ says psychologist Amanda Druckerman. She goes on to say that people who believe that they’re superior to everyone else (which is partly what defines overconfidence) are often incompetent and self-deceptive, which opens the door to missing out on opportunities.
Think about Druckerman’s words – and those of Wilbur Wright – when contemplating the oftreported line that the majority of the world’s business ventures involve little more than: (1) manufacturing a product, (2) providing a service, or, (3) distributing or selling a service or product.