Why am I so scared to start a business?
I need your experience and advice to help me make a #life changing decision.
Hi #steemit community,
My dream is to develop software as a service that makes someone’s day better, answering only to my users and enabling me to pay my bills and work remotely now and again. I’ve no desire to be rich, I just want to enjoy what I’m doing, be proud of the product and spend time with my family as much as I can. I want to start my own #business and I need #steemit community help.
Why am I so scared to take the plunge? How do I know if i’m ready?
About me
I am in my early thirties and work in IT project delivery in the the UK. I am responsible for delivering the company's IT projects including; web applications, mobile apps and third party system integrations.
I fell into IT project delivery having spent years web testing and PHP programming. I am passionate about agile, lean and scrum methodologies and get a lot of satisfaction improving processes and working with new technologies and delivering beneficial products for our users.
Entrepreneur?
Back in the 90’s as a teenager I lived with my parents and started a number of business ventures including building, overclocking and selling PC gaming rigs. I did OK for a kid with no overheads, but ongoing support and maintenance of sales was too much for me to worry, after all I had to worry about my AOE micro ;-)
I moved on to study A-Levels at college leaving business creation on stand still and went on to obtain a degree in Business Studies. I’ve read loads of motivational books inc. The four hour work week, The lean startup and Business model generation.
A history of entrepreneurship, a decent education and a degree in Business, this guy is guaranteed to become the next del-boy, right? Wrong. Somewhere along the line I got scared. I lost the courage to give it a go and remain a slave to the pay check.
How do I push myself to take the plunge and why have I not already?
Starting a business isn’t rocket science, right? My father did it. My siblings have done it. Why can’t I do it?
- Waiting for that perfect idea
-- I feel that my ideas are never quite good enough, they are not “the one”, “the next FaceBook” or “#steemit”. - Reliance on the pay cheque
-- I quickly got comfortable with a small but regular income. Can’t beat buying family and friends presents, drinking and eating out, even funding a car (embarrassingly it was a Yugo). - Negative feedback from family and friends
-- It will never work. Stop wasting your time. - Lack of energy to progress ideas
-- Eagerness to please my boss. I ceaselessly quested for praise at work. I wanted my boss to be proud of me. I spend a lot of my energy on this never-ending goal, leaving me less energy to progress my ideas. - Competition
-- I needed what my peers had. First a flat away from your parents, then a flashy car (although I’ve never had much of a flashy car lol), then it’s wining and dining in nice restaurants and before you know it 10 years have passed, you’ve spent thousands on pointless crap and you’re still a slave to the paycheck. - Lifestyle
-- Upsized property, good food, car, sky subscription, holidays and an eve-online subscription (oops, did I type that?). I am scared to jeopardise this. How to I crush this fear? - Savings/funding
-- With little savings I always used as an excuse not to invest in an idea. Now that I have savings, what am I waiting for? Am I scared? Might as well spend the money on replacing the kitchen, right? - Experience
-- I once lacked project delivery, business management skills and contacts to help me along the way. Having built IT delivery teams and delivered a myriad of projects over the years this is no longer the case. I am well versed in MVP to prototype an idea cheaply.
Do you really have to quit your job?
I have read many times that it’s hard to make a new business idea work unless you really need it, and you won’t need it until you quit your job. How can I quit my job with a young family and mortgage? Why can’t I start a business and hold down a full time job? Should I pay for a business coach? Why can't I validate an idea in my spare time?
What more could I want?
I work at a fantastic, forward thinking company and enjoy delivering some really cool IT projects with a group of extremely talented people. I get paid enough to pay my bills and buy the odd Indian takeaway, go on a couple of short holidays a year. I am settled down with a wonderful woman and father to a baby girl (now just over 4 months yay).
The guilt
There’s a constant nagging feeling that I am not pushing myself, that I could be more, that I could have more free time to spend with my family and not have to commute for hours per day on the expensive and unreliable UK transport system. I’ve carried this daemon with me all my life, it won’t shut up.
A snapshot of a few a few seconds of my thoughts
Can I ever be happy working for someone else? What is wrong with me? Am I scared of failure? What if I let my family down? Do I need the next one in a million idea? Can I copy another business model but execute more effectively or offer a slightly different USP? How do I know if i’d be successful, how do I pick the right business? Should I buy an existing business? Should I start something from scratch? Should I go solo or recruit a team? Should I go into business with the Mrs? Should I go into business with a friend? Is it the idea I need, or a shove in the right direction? Should I count my blessings and get on with my job and life and forget running my own business? Is the grass greener on the other side? Will I have less time for my family if I go solo? Should I try contracting as an IT Project Manager, Product Owner or Business Analyst first to ween me off the regular pay cheque, knowing that i’d have to spend even more time commuting into London?
Am I crazy?
Why #steemit? What do I want from the community?
I’ve seen some very successful #entrepreneurs posting on #steemit, I would love to gain guidance from this community. Can you help me? Am I ready to start an idea? Where should I start? What should I avoid? Has anyone out there been in my position? What did you do? Do I need a push? Help me #steemit community.
Thanks to everyone for their insightful posts, there is a great deal of quality content here and we, the community, are to thank for that. Can you help free me up of guilt and push me to be someone better?
Cheers
Jimbo
I don't know your exact position, but perhaps there is some business you can start in your spare time. Some people take up network marketing... Gary V talks about going to garage sales to find hidden treasure and use that to build up capital. Start running a website, maybe learn Internet marketing. Or start writing more on Steemit so you can be more certain of maintaining an income while you're developing your main business. You could even journal your entrepreneurial process on Steemit, to get feedback and document your progress.
Those are just some ideas; maybe some of them will be useful for you. Good luck!
Thanks for taking the time to respond @churdtzu. I have built MVP websites in the past. The last project was a scheduling application to enable companies in hospitality and catering to schedule shift workers. I managed to get about 200 sign ups but it was a hard sell and I lost passion for it after a while and never pushed the idea past "beta". I am hoping I am not destined to remain working for someone else's dream Do I have what it takes? :(
How do you feel about passing ideas for new products/services through the #steemit community? Is there a risk someone would steal the idea? Would it outweigh the benefit in getting such a powerful community behind an idea?
Edit: who is "Gary V" if you don't mind me asking?
I'm not going to claim to be an entrepreneurial guru; I've started a few businesses, and most have failed. So feel free to disregard anything I say if you don't think it serves you. Nevertheless, here are a few ideas to try on and see if they fit:
I don't know if you have what it takes. But I do know you haven't really given it everything you've got, or you wouldn't be here asking that question.
Personally, I wouldn't be scared about people stealing ideas, because it takes a lot to go along with the idea to make it a reality.
Gary V is the man. Listen to his speeches and consider what he has to say.
https://www.youtube.com/user/GaryVaynerchuk
Awesome, thanks for the insight. I'm glad to know there are others out there who who can relate :)
Is the first step to actually come up with your 'product/service' and check you have a market for it? I think it's a bit soon to be thinking about quitting your job unless you are 100% certain about what it is you will do and you've done the sums. If you were single (and mortgage free?) I'd say yeah follow your dream, but you have people depending on you (unless you can all live on 1 wage). Still follow that dream, but make sure you have a clear well thought out plan to start and you have done the calculations.
Another thought, if you are in the UK could you take some shared parental leave, spend some time with baby but also start to work on your business plan and put together a client base.
Hey @opheliafu, thanks for your comments. Your advice is sound, have you been in the same position? Do you have ambitions to do your own thing? How would you go about performing the market research, finding focus on an idea? Do you have any tools or techniques you could offer? Are my worries normal?
Hello Jimbo, my friend @churdtzu shared this article with me in hopes of also sharing my point of view and recommendations. I took the leap that you want to take. Perhaps my opinion advice might work you, perhaps it might not. But here goes:
My passion were cars, rock n' roll and discovering new places, I wanted to design, and build sports cars, i needed to study a Bachelor in Automotive Design but in my country Mexico there wasn't that career, it was only available in USA, Italy and other European countries. I really wanted this, so I decided to study International Business to grow my income by working in a successful company. A necessary evil, i thought at that time.
I invested 4 years of my life studying international business and postponing my passion. But, many things happen in 4 years, I studied a subject of entrepreneurship and everything changed. I felt the need. Unsatisfied, hopeful, and wishful.
I still needed money, so I worked as a SAP FI in a big corporation, 6 months. I just couldn't stand it... sitting everyday, doing the same stuff, like a mindless zombie, making money for someone i would never meet.
I began to develop an idea that I thought could solve a problem to someone. I began building the UX, very amateur. I worked on it while also working, validating my idea with friends, and people that I knew could be my potential customer. Then I saw it... An opportunity to "launch" my startup, an application to a competition. The price was small but i had nothing to lose. I participated and lost, but the need was quenched.... somehow.
So I took the leap, I quit my job, and asked for the support of my family and friends, I started to take courses and be a conferencist. And assembled a team. I applied to a startup accelerator, and am currently closing my first deal, and applied to startup loans to be able to buy material and my product.
Right now, I couldn't be more happy with the course of action i'm taking. My goals changed a bit, they took another form, but they are still in my gaze, and braking the routine, starting a business (that may fail), is the best I could do with what I had.
My situation is different than yours, in the sense that I have no family in my own, but... I understand your need, If you want to talk more, here I am. I hope i could help you with what I wrote here. Cheers.
Hey @quintanilla. Thanks for taking the time out of running your startup to offer me advice and thanks to @churdtzu for the referral. I'm new to the #steemit community but already marvel at how far people like yourself are going out of their way to help others and I don't think it's due to expected rewards.
Your story is fascinating and I hope will encourage myself and inspire others who are in a similar position. May I ask what your financial position was when you decided to quit your job? Did you have funds to support yourself for a number of months or did you rely on family/friends to subsidise living expenses?
How did you go about incentivising a team, did you offer the promise of equity in the company or fund their wages immediately?
How did you go about prototyping at low cost or did you acquire sufficient investment to go at it hard?
How did quitting your job make you feel? Did you become anxious/nervous/paniced, or did it free your mind and let you focus on business?
Do you still feel "the need" to push harder with your idea or would you consider going back to working for somebody else?
How did you family and friends take your decision to "break the mould"?
I hope your business is doing well, do you have a website or product to promote?
No problem @jimbo, i do really hope we can still keep talking, I'll add you to my follow list (btw you can see who you follow and more cool info on steemstats.com, not spamming haha)
There's a lot of people that just want to cash-in in steemit... for me... it's an opportunity that i've never had before... to be heard, listen and help others, without borders, or false sense of national belonging. But I digress...
Thank you for listening to my ongoing story, it's really happening all too fast. But thankfully I have a wornderful supportive family, and a Kickass co-founder. (I had to experiencie the departure of 4 co-founders until I met the one.)
Regarding your questions, i'd be glad to share my responses:
Thank you for your wishes my friend, I do have a website and a facebook page of two of my startups: the big one ( Payzi - it's on spanish because of my target market being on Mexico) and the other one is Emprendevision. I'd love to get your feedback. Also if you could drop by to my posts and tell me what you think about my content... that'd be great.
Cheers.
Wow, steamstats.com is incredible. Thanks for this and for sharing your journey, very interesting. I love the look of your site, bootstrap rocks :) It's comments like these that give me the encouragement to pursure my ambition.
hahah it's not 100% finished. But I really appreciate your feedback. We'll improve ! Keep fighting the good fight
Start from point one again.