What happens if I fail?
Doubts about entrepreneurship
and having your own business
You would love to start and have your own business, but you have a bad feeling inside your head that does not let you make the final leap, and is the fear of failure, what happens if I fail? what people will think of me? will I be able to recover?
We assure you that almost all entrepreneurs have gone through this phase before starting, they had struggled to overcome that fear of failure and have succeeded. Therefore, you can also get it and we are going to tell you how.
From a psychological point of view, What is the fear of failure?
Fear is a fundamental part of human psychology. Our brains are programmed to feel fear because it helps us avoid dangerous situations; keeps us safe.
Fear can hold us back if we let it. Fear feeds on fear, which means that the more we try to avoid something that scares us, the greater and deeper our anxiety becomes. To overcome it, we must face our beliefs and concerns.
Know your fears and find a way to overcome them
There are many fears that entrepreneurs face: failure, criticism, rejection, fear of losing a stable job, wasting time, money, and effort, starting alone without the help of a partner, making mistakes, getting out of the comfort zone, facing debts, etc.
Faced with these situations, most people flee or remain paralyzed and do not take any action to change their lives.
This may not be the answer you expected, but the only way to overcome the fear of failure is to face that challenge. Whatever your fears are, now is the time to face them and overcome what otherwise prevents you from succeeding.
How to overcome the fear of failure when starting a business?
If you are self-employed and want to start your own business, fear of failure can affect your ability to make many important business decisions.
Like any emotional or mental challenge, there is no solution that works for everyone. Instead, you can practice different strategies to prevent or overcome the fear of failure.
1. Accept and welcome failure
In actual culture, it seems that everyone succeeds, and no one fails, since only the best moments are shown on social networks.
However, we must have in mind that everyone fails, and it is something that we can share and ask others to tell us about their experiences. From all of them, we will get some learning.
2. Identify it as an opportunity to learn
Taking time to reflect on the mistakes you've made can help you turn failure into personal or professional growth. Set up a system where you ask yourself a series of questions, such as:
- what went wrong?
- what could I do next time?
- Is there anything I can learn from this experience?
3. Evaluate the situation objectively
One of the challenges we have when we start a business is that we face a situation that has never occurred, a future situation; so, until it arrives, we won't know exactly what will happen. Don't try to predict the future.
Reason why we must keep in mind the following ideas:
- Are the threats we see real, or can they really happen?
- What is the worst that can happen to us if we fail?
- What is the percentage probability that the situation we fear will occur?
4. Manage your expectations and set realistic goals
Many times, the fear of failure can be motivated because we have high expectations with our project, so we think of the result as a resounding success or nothing.
It is a good idea to set mid-term goals, challenging, but not impossible, that move us away from the probability of failure.
5. You don't have to do it alone
If you are not able to overcome the fear of failure, you can always go to a health professional to give you guidelines to follow and manage it properly.
Also, if you feel more confident opening a business with backup, you can always seek for the options to start with a partner, invest in startups, create crowdfunding projects, or open a franchise, which allows you to have a team behind you that will be there helping you throughout the process.
So, what happens if I fail?
If you fail, nothing will happen. What in most cases happens is that you will learn from the processes that you have done to make it more efficient for the next time. The knowledge you will get will be higher than the failure you have experienced.
In other cultures, such as the United States, failure is something that is accepted as a normal option when someone opens a business, those who fail in their first project are not criticized or belittled, since it is understood that you must go through learning phases until you find the point where something works.
Therefore, if you do not put your well-being and your family at risk, if you want to undertake, just do it.
Many studies show that 80% of entrepreneurs close their businesses during the first year of life, so if you accept this reality, the fear of failure will decrease, and you will have more chances to succeed.
In addition, you can reduce the chances of failure by joining a franchise, since it is a business model that has been proven to work and you will have the support of a team that will work to make your company move forward.
If you are looking to live from sports, opening a Sportmadness franchise will allow you to be up and running from day one, with a small investment and with all the support of the central.
Entrepreneurs who failed before they succeeded
Finally, to give you some ideas about entrepreneurs who failed before having successful companies, we are going to give you some examples.
We are aware that we are talking about companies that have become world-famous, but it may help you to know how entrepreneurs that we consider successful have also gone through phases of failure and did not give up, today we can learn about their successful history.
- Henry Ford Ruined his reputation with a couple of failed car deals, years later he managed to change the car industry forever with his mass production.
- Soichiro Honda was a fan of the motor world who created a company that manufactured piston rings for extremely poor-quality engines, hence his great failure. It was then that he attended University to train on the manufacture of pistons and years later he founded Honda Motor.
- James Dyson took 15 years to develop his famous vacuum cleaner and designed 5,126 unsuccessful prototypes on which he spent all his savings to become one of the most famous vacuum cleaner manufacturers in the world.
- Steve Jobs had to go through several relatively unsuccessful attempts before his efforts resulted in what would become the Apple I. Jobs was later fired from his own company: Apple. It was then that he founded NeXT, and since it had a great impact on the business world, it was acquired by Apple, that is, Jobs returned to the company from which he was fired after being one of its founders.
