Entrepreneurship is a path chosen by more and more people. Bringing your own business idea to life and seeing it become a reality can be very satisfying and exciting. However, it's also a path that takes us out of our comfort zone, confronting us with a common fear: failure.
It's natural to feel apprehensive when starting out on a venture filled with uncertainty. However, we shouldn't be mistaken: feeling fear doesn't have to be bad; it's an emotion that has allowed us to survive throughout history. The negative aspect arises when this fear takes over, preventing us from moving forward. In other words, the problem lies in not having enough resilience and determination to overcome the obstacle that this fear of failure can pose.
This fear that things won't go as expected can lead to a decrease in self-esteem, resulting in a decrease in energy, leading to blocks, disinterest, and demotivation, emotions that are not favorable for the success of an entrepreneurial project.
At La Lonja de la Innovación, we have a team of mentors who are experts in various areas of entrepreneurship, helping our entrepreneurs to alleviate the fear they may feel when venturing into making their business idea a reality. But, so that you can also control it, in this post, we bring you some advice.
Overcoming the fear of failure
First of all, it's important to understand that thinking about failure is not bad. In fact, it can be positive because it involves analyzing all the possible scenarios that may occur when starting a venture. This allows you to organize a comprehensive and realistic plan that has assessed all possible risks and errors that may lead to failure and prevent them more easily.
Fear, in moderation, can push you to seek support, often from experts, who provide better ideas; it promotes learning and continuous training; it can help the entrepreneur find possible flaws in their project and find more than they could have found otherwise. This way, action can be taken to improve.
The problem arises when this fear holds us back and prevents us from moving forward. It's important not to feel intimidated by this fear and to be able to confront it in order to make your project a reality. To help you achieve this, we bring you some ways to overcome it:
- Think about realistic scenarios and not so pessimistic ones. Often, driven by fear, we tend to evaluate situations negatively and very pessimistically, leaving realism aside. Avoid falling into pessimism, don't think about the worst possible scenario, and visualize realistic scenarios. Creating worlds full of catastrophic possibilities will only cause you to lose your calm and be constantly worried, which will hinder your progress. When this happens, stop and try to think of more realistic scenarios.
- Learn from mistakes. All entrepreneurs, even the most famous ones, have made mistakes throughout their lives. This gives us valuable lessons to learn from. Be open to learning from others' mistakes, using their experience as knowledge.
- Minimize the level of uncertainty in your project. The fear of failure when embarking on entrepreneurship comes from uncertainty, not knowing if your project will have the success you hoped for or not. We cannot eliminate this uncertainty, but we can reduce it through the validation of your project and the development of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
- Seek help. When you need it, talk to a friend, mentors, colleagues, or whoever can give you their opinion and offer you a different perspective. Additionally, if you can find help from someone who has been in a similar situation before, it will be very beneficial for you.
- Have a good working methodology. One way to avoid failure as much as possible is to be well organized with a good methodology that allows you to ensure that you comply with everything.
- Set achievable goals. Instead of setting exaggerated goals, set realistic ones that you can achieve, some of them in the short term. This way, as you progress, you will feel successful as you achieve the small objectives you had set for yourself, motivating you to continue.
- Learn from mistakes. Don't think of mistakes as synonymous with failure or the end. Consider them as lessons and new beginnings. Each mistake is a new learning experience; you can decide to give up and not continue or to get up and keep trying. Analyze each mistake you make positively, learning what you did wrong and what you can improve for next time; this will allow you to improve your startup and gain more experience.
Now is the time to set aside those fears and embark on the adventure of entrepreneurship without fearing the possible mistakes that may be made along the way.