Do you want to start a business but are afraid to Fail? Don’t beat yourself up, fear is a good thing and in this article, I’ll show you three simple ways to get your business off the ground and put yourself in a position to succeed despite being afraid of failure. Before diving in, let’s talk about the fear of failure.

Fear is a phenomenon that’s common to all living things. As humans, we have an instinctive aversion to certain things. According to psychologists, fear is one of many innate emotions humans experience and it doesn’t just happen. This means there is something that triggers this experience. For someone who wants to start a business, the most common trigger will be Failure.

Fear of failure is not something new. We all experience this type of fear whenever we embark on something new and challenging. But not every new experience triggers failure. So what is it about entrepreneurship that scares people off? For one, it’s the fact that we have to put everything on the line, and that’s not only our resources like money and time, but our pride as well.

Here are some famous entrepreneurs and what they have to say about failure;

Henry Ford

Henry Ford was an automotive manufacturer from the US. His impact in the industry is far-reaching and this wasn’t achieved by sheer luck. Ford faced several challenges in the early days which is fair seeing that he was attempting something that had not been done. Regardless, he persisted and overcame these setbacks to create one of the biggest automobile companies in the world. According to him

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently

Fred Smith

The founder of the logistics company FedEx was stricken by a bone disease at a young age. Despite this adversity, Smith forge ahead in life, beating the disease. Perhaps this had helped him develop resolve which helped him navigate the world of entrepreneurship.

The idea for his FedEx came to him while enrolled in college but was nearly ruined by the discouraging opinion of Smith’s professor who said the idea was “interesting but not feasible”. Despite being told this, Smith persisted and today, FedEx is known across the globe. Fred Smith said;

Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something

Steve Job

The name needs no introduction. Jobs transformed the mobile phone and personal computer industry through his company Apple, which is one of the most successful companies today. But while Apple was still a newly formed company, Jobs was fired. Getting kicked out from a company he started is an experience no entrepreneur wants to have.

But Jobs' resolve helped him navigate this challenge until he was later rehired by Apple. Here is advice on failure;

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations

Arianna Huffington

Author and businesswoman, Arianna Huffington said “Failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success.” Huffington noted that success and failure are one and cannot be separated, meaning that one should expect failure on the road to success. It is simply part of the process. Huffington co-founded Huffington Post a well-known news website in the US.

Failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success

Vera Wang

Vera Wang designs wedding dresses, but before getting into that line of business, she was a figure skater. In 1968, Wang failed to make the U.S. Olympic figure skating team. She later pursued a career as a fashion editor, and after giving 15 years of her life Wang left Vogue to start her own company after she was turned down for the editor-in-chief role.

Like Huffington and other entrepreneurs mentioned here, Vera Wang understood that these failures were just part of the journey. According to her;

Success isn’t about the end result; it’s about what you learn along the way

Expect failures and prepare for it

As an entrepreneur, acknowledging that Failure is part of the journey is critical to your success. But this is not going to come as easily as you would like it. As I discussed at the beginning of the article, failure has a negative correlation in our society and nobody wants to be associated with it, not willingly at least. But most people learn faster than others that avoiding failure is nearly impossible, not if you want to accomplish anything worthwhile.

Simply put, if you let failure stop you, then success will remain a dream. Since failure and success are intertwined, then the best way forward is to prepare for it. By this, I mean having a contingency plan. So should anything threaten to veer you off your entrepreneurial path, you will not be taken by surprise, but easily fall back to your contingency plan. But a contingency plan means you must have something else, a structure.

Have a well-defined structure

This may seem like an overkill but with failure lurking around the corner, you need to take every step you can to guarantee success. This includes having a well-defined structure for how to run your business long before you start the business. Yes, it will take time and patience to develop such a structure and it may never be perfect, but the effort will be worthwhile in the end.

Like Abraham Lincoln quipped, “Give me six hours to cut down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe”. Having a well-defined structure eliminates redundancy, saves time, and speeds up decision-making. A structure helps you know what tasks to automate, delegate, or source out to experts. It also helps you properly incorporate technologies into your business plan in a meaningful way.

Accept your mistakes and learn forward

So you have a structure and plan, does that mean you can’t fail? No. The truth is, no plan is perfect and no matter how well-structured your business is, there are bound to be loopholes. These loopholes may be due to human error, change in policy, or environmental conditions. All of which could threaten to bring your business to its knees. So what then? Let’s take a page from Steve Jobs’s playbook. The veteran entrepreneur said;

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations

Meaning, don’t get stuck in your mistakes or failures. But admit them, learn from them, and move on. The key here is acknowledging your mistakes early enough, otherwise, it could be too late. This can be a tough decision like firing an employee or shutting down a business operation that’s not profitable.

Starting a business can be rough and you need all the advantages you can get to become successful. I hope this article was helpful, if you like to read more articles like this, we encourage you to visit our blog. But why stop there? You can reach out to us for a one-on-one or even subscribe to your newsletter for more condensed insights on how to start and grow a business.

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