By Evan Vitale
Generating a new business idea and planning to start; operate and own your own business is an exciting time.
However, there can also be a little bit of fear involved, especially when it comes to the possibility of failure.
No one ever starts a new business and plans to fail. Still, your business – and the success of your business – is your livelihood. There will be things along the way that will keep you awake at night: lack of revenue; lack of sales and new prospects; unhappy customers; payroll, taxes and other expenses. These are all common concerns with every business owner at some point or another.
But how do we overcome the fear that we might fail? How to we make sure that we don’t become a statistic and become “one of out of every three new businesses fail during the first year of business?”
While no one ever said being in business for yourself is going to be easy, here are some tips that can help you overcome your fear of failure:
- Be well financed. Having plenty of cash on hand when you start a new business seems to help calm most fears. It helps keep the pressure off while you seek and earn new business knowing that you can pay your month-to-month business expenses; payroll and taxes. A little cushion is good, but don’t get too comfortable.
- A great way to launch a new business is by having some clients already lined up before you open your doors. You may be able to earn these through family; friends or by marketing in the evening hours or on the weekends while you’re still working your current job.
- Keep your startup expenses low. Don’t buy new equipment; hire employees or rent expensive office/warehouse space until you have clients and customers. Try to do as much of the work yourself before you begin to consider hiring staff. Payroll and employee taxes will easily amount to 30% of your total expenses for the year.
Keep the enthusiasm going as you begin your business and don’t dwell on the negatives. Try to solve problems before you go home at night so you’ll be less likely to take work home with you in the evening.
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Check out Evan’s other blogs at http://evanvitale.org and http://evanvitale.net.