I want to talk about the importance of facing your fear. We all possess this human emotion. What separates us, and our businesses, is what we decide to do with that emotion. The acronym that we use for FEAR is False Expectations Appearing Real. When you think about it, the fears we focus on usually do not present any real risk to our business. Where we get onto dangerous ground is when we let our fear cause us to postpone important decisions or even worse causes us to spend time and money trying to fix a challenge that does not really exist. We must understand that the things we fear happening are usually a result of something else. Instead of focusing on the result of that fear, focus on the real issues that are causing you to feel that way. I would like to address a few common failures that fear can create in our businesses.

  • “I cannot find good people to work in my business because no one can do what I do and how I do it.” This truly a fear based statement. What’s left for you to do if someone can actually perform the work you do? This means you will have to learn something new and that makes us uncomfortable. When you decide to quit allowing yourself to be a victim of this then you will change your expectation level. A replacement will be found and it will be the first step for you to become a business owner instead of a job owner.
  • “I just need more cash flow to be able to grow my business or hire the right team.” You are right; you do need revenues in order to grow. What are you doing to increase revenues or cash flow? More specifically, what are you doing differently to reach the new cash flow goal? If you continue to do the same things and hope that your bank account is going to suddenly increase then click here and listen to my radio show archive on  business insanity.
  • “I have a plan, I am just waiting to implement it as soon as I get everything in the plan worked out.” The only perfect plan is one that gets started and gets measured. Waiting to make a decision on what to do next is based on fear.  In our society we call this procrastination. Not sure what to do next? Order a book, research the topic or get some advice from a mentor. You do not have to possess all the answers and the sooner you realize that, the faster you will get results.

You are a business owner. We must evaluate our risk with any decision we make. The next step is to invest our time on ascertaining the amount of reward to be gained with that risk. Once we quantify what that the reward is, make a plan to achieve that. We only have a certain amount of hours in each day. You can choose to focus on the risk you are taking each day and how to manage those emotions or you can focus on what you are doing to achieve your goal. Write your fears down and then intentionally decide what your next step has to be for each of them. I work with business owners each week educating and providing them with the tools that create great rewards. For many of you, facing your fears may mean that you realize it is okay to invest in a coach to provide the direction to get you on the path to wealth.  Often times, admitting we need help is the fear we must address first.