Conquering your fear of failure

I have seen first-hand the limiting effects of fear of failing on a business and its owner. My role as a business mentor continues to astound me with how many people with great ideas are stuck in fear of failure.

So here’s a question: What would you do if you couldn’t fail?

How much further with your goals and aspirations would you be? What if all you did was strategically invest the time to confirm what your worst outcome would be? And the empowerment of this clarity proved for you to put wind in your sails and get going?

The greatest challenge for people is making decisions based on their current ‘bank account’ for something in the future based on their past thinking.

Shake off your fears, and start the sprint to business success with a small and medium business mentor. Right here in Melbourne, plenty of other small and medium business owners like you have conquered fear and seen their businesses grow. Find out more about finding a small or medium business mentor.

Change the way you think about your business

Most people use small strategic thinking to play a bigger game. Sometimes it’s the stuff you don’t know or haven’t prepared for that will create the fear of failure. This fear leads to slow progress towards your business goals.

We all need an education and a growth mindset. More than motivation is required to ensure your business’s prosperity — you also need to be educated.

You and your staff need to learn the fundamentals of running a business. For example, you may need to move from being a plumber to being somebody running a plumbing business, from an accountant to somebody running an accounting practice or from an editor to somebody running a publishing business.

Your expertise in your field is most likely what got you started. It would help if you moved above and beyond this to achieve long-term success and growth.

Know what you don’t know

Many people are happy to stay in mediocrity because they don’t know what they don’t know.

As a business mentor, I have seen many business owners who think they’ve reached their full potential. But they don’t know what else is out there in many cases. They don’t know that abundant opportunities are just around the corner.

But the real problem comes when people learn what they could be doing and still do nothing about it. It is known as conscious incompetence. If you do nothing at this point, your small or medium business will miss the opportunity to grow.

The more educated you are, the more motivated you will be to get great results and the more you will have the capacity to do that. If you have become more skilled and knowledgeable, you can see the path ahead, which provides motivation. It becomes a cycle of positive reinforcement that leads to even better results.

Education breaks glass ceilings 

When you hit a glass ceiling, this indicates a need for more education. When you reach a point of frustration and genuinely want to grow but don’t know how it’s time for more learning, it could be from business meetups, coaching groups and events or getting a business mentor. Whatever stage you are at, there is always more to learn.

You will never ‘make it. The moment you think you have ‘made it is when you and your business start going backwards.