We’re always afraid of our first time:
Our first time driving
Our first time giving a speech
Our first time…you know…
But somehow, with all (hopefully!) of these things, we overcame our fears, and learned how to drive, speak, and…you know…
We overcame our fears because we actively learned about these things, and over time, we came to be pretty damn good at them.
But what happens if I tell you apply that same line of reasoning to entrepreneurship?
Just like you did with driving for the first time, what do you think about trying entrepreneurship, knowing you won’t be perfect at first, and aiming for long-term improvement?
Most People: “Oh no, I can’t do that! What if I really mess up? But RC that was just driving a car!”
Me: *facepalm*, walks away…
I’ve already talked about how—by the end of the day—it’s up to you to call your own bluff to stop making the excuses that keep you from embracing your inner entrepreneur and to start on your own.
But calling your own bluff is hard. We’ve spent years being taught that we should go to college and to “fear risk”, and to be “grateful for our jobs“. We’ve been indoctrinated into believing that entrepreneurship is “really risky”, and that the worry of failing is powerful enough to never try, and instead take an excruciating, soul-sucking corporate job in a kiddie-sized cubicle, complete with Windows XP and squeaky office chair with a broken back.
Can you really just call your own bluff and cast aside years of subconscious conditioning, just like that?
You can, if you think of calling your bluff in terms of specific, actionable steps, like the 3 here:
Step #1: Fight Fear with Facts
Do you fear entrepreneurship because you researched your options and considered specific paths and different strategies, and realized that your likelihood of success was small?
Or do you just fear entrepreneurship…just because it “seems” scary?
I wrote an article for the Change Blog about fighting fear with facts. The notion is simple: the more you stop whining and start actually learning about what goes into success in entrepreneurship and in your field, the less there is to fear, because you will know what to do.
For example, before even writing a single word on Decoding Startups, I spent hundreds of hours researching content creation and blog development strategies. This let me hit the ground running and gain an amazing number of awesome subscribers in record time.
My results aren’t by accident. They sure as hell weren’t by luck. Success came through fighting fear with facts, realizing that good ideas are “stolen”, and executing.
Step #2: Give yourself 3 weeks.
So how long you gonna take to fight fear with facts, champ?
Guess what: you only get 3 weeks.
You’re going to spend the next 3 weeks figuring out the basics you need to know to start as an entrepreneur. Spend Week 1 mapping out books you want to read, blogs you want to subscribe to, startup events to attend, and real-life, already-successful entrepreneurs you want to interview.
Spend Week 2 executing.
And spend Week 3 absorbing what you learned, and writing a plan for how to keep your startup efforts going.
See what happened here?
You transformed from an afraid, “maybe-entrepreneur” to a person with a specific, actionable plan to pursue startups…
…in 3 weeks.
While everyone else will be wondering “gee, I wonder how to quit my uber-sucky job”, you’ll be coming up with a specific, actionable way to do it.
Is this from Spongebob?
Step #3: Develop an awesome peer group.
Success in entrepreneurship is made easier by relationships. Why do you think I told you to go out and meet people?
Think of how easy it is for TechStars graduates to get the resources they need. The value comes from the peer group. The more people you know that can help you out, the less effort you have to put in yourself.
So cool, circa 1972.
And frankly, one of the most awesome experiences is talking and hanging out with other people who are giving a middle-finger salute to their boring 9-5 jobs, and venturing out on their own.
This is astonishingly easy to do:
- Go to Meetup.com, and search for startup events in your area.
- Attend those, and meet those people. Ask them about other startup events in your area.
-Rinse and repeat.
After 3 months, you’ll have tons of connections with kickass, hardy entrepreneurs.
2013 is the year of getting started.
And the first step in getting started is overcoming fear.