Entrepreneur Magazine has a great article on the top five fears of entrepreneurs. They are:
1. Fear of Failure: “Without a doubt, an entrepreneur’s biggest fear is failing–understandably, because 95 percent of all businesses fail within the first five years. When you’re starting with those kinds of odds, it’s OK to be a little freaked out.”
2. Economic Uncertainty: “Five years ago, the economy may not have been of forefront concern for a startup entrepreneur. But today, businesses big and small, young and old, are worried about what the declining economy means for them.”
3. Being your own Boss: “As a small business, especially during the startup stages, there’s very little stability and security. Unlike traditional employment, you probably don’t have an office, employees, benefits or a paycheck. And what you definitely don’t have is a boss, someone guiding you along.”
4: Consuming Your Life: “The idea of not having any time for yourself, neglecting your family and giving up your social life can be terrifying.”
5. Staying Afloat: “You need money to start up; you need money to operate; and you need money to grow. Throw the dismal economy into the equation–when people are spending less and it’s taking longer for small businesses to get paid–and money is even harder to come by.”

Why stop at five? Here are five more.

6. High-Wire with No Net: When you have been in your own small business and survived the early years that weed out most startups, you have the fear that you can never turn back to “the devil you knew” (i.e. traditional employment). The struggles of entrepreneurship make you forget why you left corporate America in the first place and your memories become revised to dwell on how easy and happy it all was “back then.”
7. Losing Ground to the Jones’s: Even though your business may be getting more profitable every year, you look at your old car in the driveway and the Jones’s new Lexus and feel that if only you’d stuck to being a corporate (fill in the blank) you’d have new toys, too.

8. The Merry-Go-Round Stopping: Your business is cooking, but you worry that somehow, someday, and soon, the phones will go silent and no one will want what you sell anymore.
9. Stuck in Third Gear: You know how to cruise at 40 MPH but you need and want to do 90 (this is metaphorical).  You fear you will never break through the wall of your business being merely “okay”.
10. Emperor Has No Clothes: And the big-daddy of all entrepreneurial nightmares–you dream that you’re walking down the street and suddenly you discover that you forgot to put your shorts on. Perhaps if you act natural no one will notice. Lots of entrepreneurs think everyone else is smarter than they are and live in fear of the world finding out their secret.

I could go on. So could you, so let’s have it: five more entrepreneurial fears from the front lines.

Oh, you were waiting for some advice on how to cure yourself of all these? How’s this: You can’t! Not completely, anyway. And I don’t think you’d want to. Fear is a great motivator. Ask anyone who owns a business if fear helps them get up in the morning and do what has to be done.

Tags: entrepreneurship, small business success

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Keith Ferrazzi has a nice piece on his blog called “Surefire Tips for a Successful Sales Call,” including a useful 2 minute video. He focuses on relationship selling–making the customer feel comfortable by focusing on her favorite subject–herself.  He gives six great suggestions.  Read more…

Tags: follow up, Keith Ferrazzi, relationship building, Rennie Crabtree, sales, sales call

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As many of you know, I own a franchised business in addition to being a coach for people who are considering franchises or other business startups. My franchisor refers people to me regularly for what are known as “validation” calls. Prospective franchisees call around to existing franchisees to do research on the franchise and learn what it’s like to be in the system. If they ask good questions, they can come out of the process with a much clearer decision path (pro or con). The trouble is, 90% of the people who call me ask the wrong questions! Read more…

Tags: franchise, small business, startup

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• MONEY PIT #1. We put in a pool when we moved here seven years ago. It’s not a fancy pool: 16-x-32, semi in-ground with a deck around half of it. Total cost with deck around $25,000. Add to that the annual cost of having the pool guy open and close it, and chemicals, and we’re up at around $32,000 (not including forsaken risk-free appreciation I could have had in a CD).  In seven year I estimate we have used the pool 70 times for a total of 35 hours. Let’s see, what else can I buy for $900+ an hour! (Eliot Spitzer, any suggestions?)

• MONEY PIT #2 and #3. When I was younger, I kept thinking that if only I had a bigger house, like the other senior executives in the company, then I’d be happy. My wife was happy with our 1200-foot, three-bedroom house on a fifth-acre. Had we stayed there (my wife always described it as her dream house) the mortgage would have been paid off about 10 years ago. But no, I kept wanting more. Soon it was a 4,000-foot house in the same town, then a bigger house in another town. I never felt so stupid as the day I closed on that house and had to write an unexpected check to New York State  for $10,000–a “millionaire’s tax” for buying a house that cost over $1 million. We hated the new town and moved back to our old town less than two years later, around the time I started self-employment. Our house (and this is the last one!) is half the size, half the cost, easier to clean.  (Still paying off the mortgage, though.)

• MONEY PIT #4. Like any exercise equipment, my treadmill was totally useless all the years I had it!  One thousand dollars wasted. How about eating less and walking more? My happiest day was when the basement flooded and I finally got to drag that thing to the curb. Forget treadmills, forget health clubs. Tie some $10 weights to your ankles and get your butt outside!

• MONEY PIT #5+  I long ago gave up buying pens that cost more than $2; suits from anywhere except Men’s Wearhouse; any kind of collectible, like Playboy magazines from the Fifties and Sixties (for the articles, of course), which lost value faster than a Zimbabwean dollar. And so on.

Tags: cost savings, entrepreneurship, money

[2] Comments

As a parent of one child a year out of college and another one heading into college, I was struck by a statistic quoted by Seth Godin that only 20 percent of 2009 college grads who applied for jobs got one. Ouch! Seth goes on to convey some great suggestions for what the unlucky 80 percent of grads can do while they wait for the world to catch up to them. Things like mastering a programming language; giving a speech a week to local organizations; self-publishing a book; writing a regular blog on a subject you care about; and a bunch more. Great ideas!

But not just for unemployed grads. I coach executives in the 40s, 50s, and 60s who are either out of work, see the writing on the wall with the current job, or might be spray painting the wall themselves just to get the hell out of corporate America. Seth’s ideas can work for them, too.

Getting outside your own head is great advice. Too often we brood on our situation instead of creating something new and re-energizing our career prospects or entrepreneurial desires. What’s one project you can start this month that will take you to a new place and get you passed where you’re currently stuck?

Tags: Career Coaching, Seth Godin

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