MBA2091 Are You Afraid to Start a Business?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $1 powerful business lessons you can count on every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson we're going to take a deep dive and discuss a question many of us need to ask ourselves. Are we afraid to start a business? The biggest problem with this question is that many of us will not recognize the fact that we are afraid. In fact, the more afraid we are, the more we don't recognize it. It manifests itself with things like thinking about starting a business for months, maybe even years, on and off, planning and researching and evaluating and what I call playing business day after day, month after month, year after year and never actually launching, not actually putting your business idea out there, not actually selling a product or service and having the actual opportunity to fail. Yes, I said opportunity to fail. And I'll explain why in today's lesson. We play it safe to protect ourselves. We're worried if it falls flat, we'll disappoint others, but most of all disappoint ourselves. What does that mean about us and our dreams? And one of the ways to make sure your dream never dies is is to never actually launch your thing to protect it from failure. In today's lesson, we're gonna examine this. This is one of the biggest hurdles for anybody starting a business. I'm gonna give you some mindset strategies to help you overcome this. I'm gonna give you some techniques to build your muscles, your mental muscles to fight this fear and take it head on and understand there's really actually nothing to be afraid of. But most of all, we're going to conquer this so you can actually start your journey in entrepreneurship so you can launch that business, get some wins, get some successes, and move forward. If you've been sitting on the fence with starting a business, you're going to want to listen to today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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In my family, I'm kind of the entrepreneur character, right? I'm the business guy. There are not many entrepreneurs in my family and I have a large family. My dad's one of 10 siblings and my mom is one of six. So I got 30 plus cousins. And between all my cousins and my aunts and my uncles, there's only one or two business owners. Why do I mention this? Well, I'm the guy they go to when they have a business idea, when they're thinking about starting a business. When they're tempted to dip their toe into entrepreneurship, they ask me questions like, is this a good idea? Would this work? Would you buy this? And every single time I give them the same answer. And frankly, they hate this answer. But it's the truth. And it's I'm the wrong person to ask. You need to ask the marketplace. The only way you're going to know for sure is you actually put it up for sale and you offer it to the people that is your target audience, your target market. They're going to tell you if this is a good idea. They're going to tell you if this is something they want or don't want. The market never lies. And this is what I love about business. And not one of them actually takes action. Action. They might even come back to me and say, hey, Omar, I have this new idea. I have this new thing I want to start. And I'll ask them, what happened to the other thing you mentioned? Did you get any traction? Did you launch it? And it was like, ah, no, I didn't do that one, but this one's really a good idea. And then I tell them something again that they don't want to hear. I say, how do you know this one's a good idea if you didn't even try? The other idea you presented to me. You have no evidence that the other one wouldn't succeed. You have no evidence this one will succeed. And the reason why I'm sharing this is because the whole reason they keep coming back to me, asking these questions, sharing these ideas, hoping that I'll tell them, yep, this is the winner, go ahead and go full force. It's because they're afraid. They're scared. And it's totally natural. It's normal. Let's take a look at the journey of somebody going 100% into a new business idea. Number one, if they're going to dedicate all their time, they have to let go of whatever they're doing now. That means they're going to leave their steady job, their steady paycheck that pays the mortgage, pays the rent, pays their bills, gives them the lifestyle they have right now, gives them stability, gives them comfort, all the things they kind of work towards all their life to get to this level, level of okay, I could breathe, I'm all right. An entrepreneur is being asked to leave that, to jump into a new world, somewhere they've never been before, where they have no experience, they have no connections, they have no idea what winning looks like or how to win in this area. They know in their own job, but not in the world of business. They don't know if they're going to be successful today. They don't know if they're going to be successful tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now, three years from now, or ever. They don't know if they're going to be good at it, horrible at it. They don't know if they're going to love it or hate it. There's so many unknowns. It's really a black box. Of course somebody would be afraid. This is scary stuff. I know, I went through this. You have self doubts. You start to question all your decisions leading up to that point. You start wondering if you have what it takes to be a successful business owner or entrepreneur. And all these thoughts and feelings are bottle humping in your head and it paralyzes you. And the safest thing is a status quo, is not to do anything, is not to move forward, and to just keep on thinking, planning, dreaming. So what is it going to take for someone to break out of that cycle and not be afraid? Well, I'm going to tell you what worked for me and it really changed my life. Honestly, I can't even express how much this mindset shift changed my life. It literally changed my life in an incredible way. And here it is. Stop trying to avoid being afraid. Stop it. It's scary. Just face the fact that it's scary. It's like you're going to go on a roller coaster and you're scared of roller coasters or it's very exciting. Don't pretend it's not exciting. It's going to be a hell of a ride. Embrace it. Understand that this is what you're going into and just take it on. Number two, this one was a game changer. Realize that you will fail. You must fail. Not failing is not an option. There are no entrepreneurs I have known personally or professionally, or read about in books or heard their stories on podcasts that have not failed. They all fail. They all have their own set of failures, their own learnings. And what I've learned is that failure is a rite of passage. And by the way, it doesn't end. It's not like you get a bunch of failures out of the way and then you have smooth sailing after that. You're going to continue to fail. As you grow, they become more subtle, they become a little bit different types of failures. You learn from them, you move on. The best analogy I can come up with is a baby learning how to walk. If you want to become an entrepreneur, you just need to decide, hey, I want to become an entrepreneur. Despite my fears, despite my feet, despite the things I'm worried about, despite the hurt and the failure I'm gonna have to go through, it's not an option. I will become an entrepreneur just like a baby. Or I should say, the parents think it's not an option for my baby not to walk. They're gonna learn how to walk, right? That's just how it works. So if my baby is taking a few steps and then falls on the floor, we don't just stop teaching them how to walk, right? They continue, they get up, they keep walking, they'll fall again. They might hit their head on the table. They might start crying, but it's not like, okay, that's it. No more walking for you. We encourage the baby. We tell them, keep going, we kiss the boo boo, and we move on. Right? And that's the same thing with business. That's the same thing with entrepreneurship. You want to become an entrepreneur, you want to be a business owner, you want to have success in this area. Just accept the fact that you will fall down, you will bump your head, and that's just how you learn. That's how it happens. You can't know everything before you start. If that was the case, everybody would have a winning business opportunity and a business idea from the get go. No one would fail. Every business would be incredibly successful because they just planned enough and they just, you know, did all the research and they just launched. And it's just this amazing thing. That's not how it works. That's not how life works. And the third mindset shift that really helped me is that the only failure really is not moving forward, is not starting, is not taking the next step after starting and the following step and the following step and having progress. If I have a lack of progress in my development as an entrepreneur, as a business builder, that means I'm failing, I'm stopping, I'm not developing, I'm not improving. That's my only definition of failure. Everything else is, okay. I can learn. I won't make the same mistake twice. That's what growth is all about. Not just business, but personal growth. And this is just a huge step in your personal growth. When you change careers, change lifestyles, just recognize that, yeah, this is hard, this is big. But if you want to do big things and have big results, you're going to have to take that leap. And that's the three things that really changed my mindset and made me think, okay, I need to start moving forward. I can't just play safe. I can't just keep telling myself, I'll launch next month or next year or I'll wait for the perfect idea. Let me give you some advice. When it comes to business ideas, successful businesses are not about the idea. They're about the implementation. Okay? One of the most popular and successful social media companies is Facebook. Facebook is not a novel idea. There were many competitors that were exactly like Facebook before they came out. MySpace, Friendster, they came out first, they had the idea, but Facebook just implemented the idea better. So it's not like these ideas that you have in your head are valuable in itself. I see them as multipliers, but they're worthless without the actual implementation. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Text and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available if with Met Mobile in the past 180 days have you ever seen a product on the shelf of a store or even like maybe on TV in an infomercial and thought oh I thought of that idea. I thought of that invention. Just last year I was talking to my buddy about how I had this idea about how to do this and that the difference between you and the person that actually created the product you see on TV or on the shelf is that they implemented, they actually created it. You thought about it, you shared it with your buddy, but you didn't do anything about it. So that is proof that your idea in your head doesn't really matter. The person that executed it actually capitalized on it. So execution is the key. So if you're afraid to start a business that's totally normal, accept it. Understand that it's totally part of the package, but move forward despite it. Take steps forward. I even recommend to people launch a flop product, okay? Just get it out of your system. If you have a product that's like half baked or maybe is not so good or maybe a book you're not so proud of, it's okay. Get some reps in, learn how to promote a product or sell it or market it and put it out in the world. Iterate on it, improve it. We talked about this countless times on the show how products we use today, their MVP perversion, their first version of this product or they were lousy, but they got better over time. Whether it's the iPhone in your pocket, your favorite YouTuber's channel, or even the corner pizzeria in your neighborhood, when you start, you give yourself the chance to get better. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I hope today's episode helped you. I hope it wasn't too much tough love. But my goal is to support you as an entrepreneur, as a business builder to have you move forward, have some wins, get some successes so you can have a meaningful and fulfilling life. Who doesn't want that? If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app. And the best way to show love for the show is to share it. Go ahead and share the podcast right now on social media on your favorite podcast app. There's some share icons somewhere here. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever you like. Let the people know that you listen to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I love about being an entrepreneur, about being a business owner, is that you get good at dealing with problems, dealing with crises, with overcoming the way you feel and moving forward is coming to terms, I should say, with the way you feel. This makes you a better person. This makes you resilient. It allows you to solve other problems in your life with far greater ease because you're combat trained, you're ready to go, you've become strong, you become resilient. You just become better. And it's probably the biggest gift that entrepreneurship gives you. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Free Eye Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxt and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.