MBA1709 How To Be More Comfortable Taking Risks

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When you're an entrepreneur, you're essentially an investor. You're investing in yourself, you're investing your time, you're investing in your money in the hopes of getting a return on that investment. There are no guarantees. It's a risk. So why do these entrepreneurs do this? Well, they've done it enough to know that most of the time it's going to work out somehow, whether in the short term or in the long term, it's going to get them closer to where they want to go. But just by knowing this in your head doesn't make it easier for you to take those regular risks and make those decisions to move you closer to success in your business. So I want to share with you some strategies that are going to help you get over that hump and get better at taking risks in your business, in your life. As an entrepreneur, I want to start with with a quote from a speech from Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn is one of the founders of Personal Development. If you don't know Jim Rohn, YouTube him. He is fantastic. He says it's all risky. Starting a business is risky. Not starting a business is risky. Whether you take action or don't take action, you are taking a risk. If you don't do what you want to do in your life. If you don't take these risks, you are taking a risk of not doing it. You're taking the risk of living a unfulfilled life. The risk of regrets, the risk of wasted time, the risk of opportunity costs. Every day that goes by, you are getting older. No one lasts forever. And time is limited. So if you want to do something in your life, if you want to build something in your life, you are taking a risk by delaying that because it Gets harder and harder, right? You have less time to build. Now, I'm not saying that if you're older, you can't start a business. Of course you can. But you improve your odds definitely the sooner you start. So this concept of it's all risky, it's a great mindset to have this concept of if I don't make decisions, if I don't take risks, calculated risks, and we'll talk about that in a moment, then I'm not moving forward. I have to. It's a must. I can't even get around it. So get comfortable with that concept in your mind. The other thing you need to understand and really think about deeply is the people that really make a lot of money in this world, that build amazing things that make a huge impact on other people's lives, They've made some huge risks in their life. They took some huge risks. But if you look back at any story, they didn't just make a huge risk one time, right? They took smaller risks beforehand and built up to that point, they built that muscle, they built that habit, because basically it's momentum. The smaller the risks, the smaller the reward. But as you build up, you get.

More and more reward.

You use those rewards to build upon your success and build upon your business. And therefore you can take bigger risks. So understand, you have to build this muscle. Just like if you want to get a six pack, you got to do sit ups. You have to start taking smaller and smaller risks. So starting a business on the side while you're working is a very low, low risk. You're not quitting your job. You still have your income. The, the only risk you're taking here is you're risking your free time, right? You're just not Netflix and chilling for a while. You're dedicating a few hours every weekend to work on your thing to build your business. That's the risk you're taking. It's a very low risk, but it's a risk, okay? You are taking your recreational time and replacing it with building your business. And you're just building that habit. Start small. Then you're gonna start taking another risk, which is risking your money, taking and investing some of the money that you have spare that you would normally spe on, maybe coffees or dinners or long weekends, and taking that money and building your business with it again. The risk here is that you're not gonna be able to enjoy those things for the next few months. But the flip side is that if your investment pays off, you're gonna be able to enjoy those things at a completely different level when you're successful as an entrepreneur. So as you can see, these are just examples of baby steps of building the muscle of taking a risk. You have to be willing to take these steps. If you're not willing to take these small, minimal risk steps, then you need to reconsider if you really want to start a business. Because this is something you have to get used to. You can't say, I want to be an Olympic athlete and then not be willing to work out. This is the workout you need to do in business next. One of the things I did that really helped me with this concept of man, what if I lose it all? What if I quit my job and my business busts and I, you know, I'm going to be homeless, I'm not going to have any money, right? What's going to happen? So I did something. When I started my entrepreneurial journey, my full time entrepreneurial journey, when I quit my day job and was a full time business builder is I drastically lowered my expenses as much as possible. I lived a minimal viable lifestyle. I didn't have a car, I lived in a one bedroom apartment, I cooked at home as much as possible. All these things helped me understand, hey, I can live with very little. So even if for some reason I can't make this thing work, my expenses are not that much. It can be covered. Even if it means I have to work, you know, on Saturday and Sunday in a part time job just to pay my bills, that's fine. But by lowering your expenses, you are saying to yourself, hey, this is the worst that can happen, right? And I'll still be fine, I'll still be okay. Now you may not be able to lower your expenses to that extreme. And I don't even think my situation was extreme. I didn't move back into my parents house. I was still pretty independent, right? But just understand that your air, your oxygen to survive in business is money, is capital. And if you don't need that much capital to sustain yourself, to sustain you and the people that are around you, that allows you to last longer. It gives you more time, it buys you time, it gives you Runway. Now that leads into another strategy, another exercise that you can do is when you're about to take a risk in your business, you're going to launch a new product, you're going to change your pricing, you're going to make a big hire. Ask yourself, what's the worst case scenario? What's the worst that can happen in this situation? What's the doomsday situation here. This will actually be very comforting. It's not some sort of doom and gloom exercise. It's an exercise to face reality. What's the worst that can happen? And is that bad? I launched this thing, it flops. I don't get that many customers. That's the worst case scenario. One, I learned something. I didn't get my result, but I learned something. I learned how not to build a product or a business. Two, I can reiterate off that and build something better. Three, for most people, it just means being very modest with your expenses for another couple months. The next exercise you can do to improve your appetite for risk and be okay with lowering your expenses with being a little bit modest in the beginning while you're building up your business is reminding yourself what life will be when you are successful, what life will be when you build that business that you want. Reminding yourself why you're doing this. Okay, this is temporary. This temporary stage where you're learning how to take risks or maybe things are not paying off, where you're not getting that return on investment that you're learning. Understand that it's all going to be worth it once you actually have that product market fit and your risks pay off. This is all about wanting it, wanting the vision of what you have out there for your life and for your business. Lastly, you have to take calculated risks. Not all risks are created equal. Don't just risk everything without doing any research, without understanding what the pros and cons are. Don't do anything you're not willing to do if the worst case scenario happens. This is why the worst case scenario exercise is important. Because you plan it out. You say, okay, if this fails, this is what it's going to look like. Am I willing to live that life? Is that okay with me? If that's okay with you, if you can endure that, then take the risk. But if you can't, then don't. That's what calculated risk is all about. If I take $5,000 and invest in a company and I'm hoping to get a return on investment, and if I don't, if I lose all my money, does that mean I can't pay my rent? Don't take that risk. That's a horrible situation to put yourself in. But if you're going to be just fine, it may just mean that, you know, you're not going to be able to go on that fancy vacation you wanted to go on. And you're okay with that. That's a calculated risk you can live with. Also, a part of that calculated risk equation is understanding your likelihood of success, how confident you are based on actual facts, actual things in front of you that you or your team can provide that says, hey, this can get pulled off if XYZ happens. And you can even use a conference confidence scale from 0 to 10 and say anything 7 above I feel comfortable with.

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To wrap up today's lesson, you gotta build this muscle of taking risks. Risks are a part of business. I look back now on every single day I go to work and I make little, little risks all day long that I would have lost sleep over a decade ago. It's because I just become immune to it. The feelings that were behind those risks are no longer there. I've kind of said, hey, you know what? It's no big deal. I'm going to be fine. Part of that is detaching your personal identity, your personal emotion with the decisions you make in business. These are experiments. These are chances for you to succeed. And sometimes you will fail. But it's not really a failure because you're gonna learn from it so you don't make that mistake again. It's all risky. As Jim Rohn says, whether you take a risk or you don't take a risk, you're taking a risk. Thanks so much for listening and subscribing to the podcast. If you haven't subscribed yet, smash that subscribe button on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Spotify, Stitcher Radio, Apple Podcasts. We're on every single one. Also, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride. Every Friday, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away Easy course over at EasyCourse co. It's a $500 course on how to build your own online course. You can win it for free by just leaving us an Apple Podcast rating and review. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. Thanks so much for listening. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Here's a reality a lot of us don't ever think about all of life is a risk. Okay? You took a risk when you chose your career. You took a risk when you got married or met with your significant other. You took a risk when you decided to buy your house. All these are risks. You're just comfortable with them because society has told you that these are normal. These are, you know, things that everybody does. The reason why entrepreneurship is scary because not everybody does it. Not everybody takes those risks. But the more and more you become familiar with entrepreneurship, the more you have a network of other entrepreneurs that you know, friends that you know that are doing what you do. You realize this is normal. Okay? This is just like any other risk in life. I gotta calculate, you know, the worst case scenario. I gotta calculate the positives and negatives and make a decision based on that. But it does demobilize me. I have to move forward. I have to continue to grow in my business. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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