By Courtney Rosenfeld
5 Steps to Overcoming Your Fears Around Entrepreneurship
You’ve dreamed about running your own business one day - but you’ve never been able to work up the courage and make it happen. It’s normal to have fears around entrepreneurship, especially if you don’t have a strong professional support system. Luckily, these tips from Kimberly Bailey can help you get ready to embrace entrepreneurship.
Find a Trustworthy Mentor
Working with an experienced, caring mentor can help you gain the skills you need to thrive as an entrepreneur. They can answer your complex questions about business ownership, identify skills that you need to work on and connect you with other people in your niche so that you can begin building a solid network. To find a mentor, Foundr recommends signing up for a mentorship program, joining a local business networking group, asking a friend or relative, or using a platform like LinkedIn.
Create a Clear Business Plan
Maybe you feel nervous about diving into entrepreneurship because you haven’t worked out the nitty-gritty details of your business model yet. Writing up a detailed business plan and exploring how you would manage business operations can help you gain confidence in your idea. Your plan can cover your marketing strategy, hiring future employees, and even your preferred business structure.
Start With a Side Hustle
If you’re worried that your business won’t be profitable right off the bat, you don’t have to become a full-time entrepreneur just yet. Instead, why not start your business as a side hustle so that you have time to build up your client base? You don’t have to leave your full-time job until you’re sure that the income from your business can cover your bills. You’ll just need to make sure you can work out a schedule that allows you to manage all of your responsibilities.
Enhance Your Marketing Materials
Maybe you’re designing your company website, or you’ve gotten in touch with a graphic designer about creating marketing materials for your business. If you want to add images to your website or marketing materials in general, you might have assumed that you should just compress any JPG files you plan to use for easy email transfers. But this method can degrade the quality of images. Instead, you can use an app to convert JPG to PDF. You’ll be able to convert several JPGs into one PDF for convenience's sake - this will save you from having to email multiple image files.
Commit to Continuous Learning
Because there’s so much that goes into launching and maintaining a small business, an entrepreneur needs to work hard to stay ahead of the curve. You might be concerned that you won’t be able to keep up with changing trends or technology in your industry, or that you don’t know enough about your field to run a lucrative business. Committing to ongoing learning is the solution. When you’re an entrepreneur, you always need to be proactive about educating yourself! Businessing recommends reading for about 20 minutes to one hour on a daily basis to keep on top of new developments in your industry.
Becoming a business owner is a major undertaking. But feeling nervous doesn’t have to hold you back from chasing your dreams! By implementing a few of these tips, you’ll be able to address your fears regarding entrepreneurship.
Kimberly Bailey served as the Chief Information Officer for the City of Memphis. She is the first African American female to hold the position. In her role, she was responsible for ensuring that information technology within all city government divisions operated efficiently and safely while helping to advance the current administration’s strategic vision. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!
Photo via Pexels
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