Colleen Long, a psychologist who specializes in entrepreneurship calls it the “lemonade-stand fear.”
“It’s the feeling the entrepreneur first gets when he starts any kind of business: the feeling that he’s operating a lemonade stand, this low-budget operation that doesn’t feel real,” she says.
As a small business, especially during the startup stages, there’s very little stability and security. Unlike traditional employment, you probably don’t have an office, employees, benefits or a paycheck. And what you definitely don’t have is a boss, someone guiding you along.
“Working for yourself is both the best and worst part of being an entrepreneur,” Long says. “No one’s going to tell you what to do. The days can pass you by and you haven’t really done anything because there’s no one giving you the framework for what to do.”
“The instability is scary,” Jim Koch, a well-known entrepreneur says. “It feels very uncomfortable because you’re in a new setting that doesn’t have the order and the structure.” In the early days, The Boston Beer Company didn’t have an office, a computer, a telephone, a distributor or proper accounting.
Our experts agree that setting goals is key to conquering this fear. Whether it’s daily, weekly or more long-term, setting specific, achievable goals keeps you accountable and on track. Koch’s daily goal was to gain one new customer, even if it took him late into the night.
“Sales calls scare me,” he says. “But not having an office forced me to go out and sell.” Achieving this daily goal contributed to his two overarching goals: “to make great beer and work my butt off to sell it.”
Today, those goals still stand: Koch makes sure his beer maintains the same taste and quality as his great-grandfather’s original recipe by traveling to Bavaria each year to select the hops, and personally tasting every batch. Even with more than 700 employees, he still makes regular sales calls.
Photo by Hotshoe!.