How to beat the fear of starting your own business?

I was earlier reading David Pollard’s article on his blog about ten reasons young people are afraid to start their own business:

1. Don’t Have the Skills
2. Don’t Have the Self-Confidence
3. Don’t Have the Ideas
4. Don’t Have the Money
5. The Deck’s Stacked Against Entrepreneurs
6. Couldn’t Handle the Failure
7. Don’t Know the Process
8. Don’t Have the Time
9. Couldn’t Handle the Stress
10. Couldn’t Handle the Loneliness

All of the above reasons are very valid (and most of these reasons were confirmed by my 16 year old who is a budding web designer entrepreneur himself). So how do we help these entrepreneurs?

I am sure most of you have heard about The Business Experiment. If not, then perhaps this tag line “The Wisdom of the Crowd” will surely ring a bell. My point in bring up The Business Experiment is very obvious and is as follows:

The Business Experiment (TBE) has a collection of professionals with variety of experience who are willing to give their time and go along with “The Wisdom of Crowd”, while contributing ideas of their own. Helping Young Entrepreneurs can be just a right fit for this group. Lets take each one of the reasons given above and see how they can help;

1. Don’t have the skills:The young Entrepreneurs may be good at what they do, but business management, financial aspects, legal matters is another ball game. TBE with it’s depth and breadth of cummulative experience can certainly mentor young entrepreneurs at very reasonable terms.

2. Don’t have the self-confidence:When young entrepreneurs traverse the path of business ups and downs, it is easy to lose self-confidence and/or focus. An entrepreneur must concentrate on the area where he is best suited for and other tasks must be left to the professionals, who are good at what they do. However, financial constraints always change this scenario and entrepreneur ends up doing everything himself / herself. This is where Entrepreneur’s work suffers and he/she starts losing self-confidence. A seasoned TBE member can help maintain that self-confidence by advising and mentoring the entrepreneur, taking care of tasks which fall outside of Entrepreneur’s expertise.

3. Don’t have the ideas: Ideas have a tendency to pop up at a most unlikely time, situation or place. The least we can do is to provide a stress free environment to a young entrepreneur’s mind, so that they can come up with ideas. TBE members can help by taking over some tasks like company formation, legal matters, patent research, accounting etc.

4. Don’t have the Money:This reason is the root of most of the other problems. However money can be raised. With some help from TBE members, a business plan may be created and presented to the Venture Capitalists or Angel Investors. TBE members can even suggest other financing ideas that maybe suitable for most entrepreneurs.

5. The Deck’s Stacked Against Entrepreneurs:Isn’t this always the case? There are two things to remember: Entrepreneurs are more nimble than big corporations and can take decisions faster. Secondly there are always some niche areas left available by big corporations for entrepreneurs to come and fill in these areas. The key is to find these niche areas with the help of TBE members and if entrepreneurs exploit these niche areas well, big corporations may just come and buy the entrepreneur’s company, thus giving them a chance to start second entrepreneurial journey, but with some serious cash from previous sale.

6. Couldn’t Handle the Failure:Failure is nothing but a step towards success, but handling the failure is a challenge that can sometimes break an entrepreneur. Once again TBE members can come to the rescue by analyzing and providing lessons learnt from the failure and how to utilize the knowledge to overcome the failure and convert it into a success.

7. Don’t Know the Process:Business related books and courses do teach few things but nothing can beat the real life experience of professionals. TBE members can provide this real life experience to young entrepreneurs as they come from various areas of business and know many aspects of the business.

8. Don’t Have the Time: Having 48 hours in a day or 14 days in a week is not an option for an entrpreneur. Hence efficient time management is essential. The new would-be entrepreneurs have the tendency to do everything on their own. This must be avoided and work must be delegated to the expert in that field. This single step helps an entrepreneurs to focus on their area of expertise and spend time with their families. TBE members can be assigned some of the entrepreneur’s duties to achieve optimum usage of Entrpreneur’s time.

9. Couldn’t Handle the Stress: Stress is a integral part of an entrepreneur’s life. It cannot be completely eliminated but can be reduced by better management of time and work delegation. TBE members can be approached for mentoring and work delegation and problem solving.

10. Couldn’t Handle the Loneliness:The entrepreneurs generally find themselves alone while spending long hours at work. With TBE members just a click away, loneliness can be a thing of past for the entrepreneurs. They can ask business related questions anytime and use TBE member’s expertise to get innovative solutions.

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