Most of us believe that starting a business of any kind takes a certain kind of person.
That someone probably has to have an entrepreneurial mindset or has to be able to easily weather risk or else starting a small business just isn’t in the cards for them. We might even think that a small business owner means someone has to have connections, be outgoing and easily able to network.
But the truth is, all sorts of people start small businesses – from engineers to accountants to crystal healers – and extroversion is not a requirement!
Here are three other common myths that can hinder you from going after your dream of starting a small business:
1. Your Fears Are Real
For instance, instead of believing you do not have enough money to start a business, you could instead say to yourself, “I’m willing to learn ways to find start-up funds for this new venture.”
Instead of believing you lack the charisma or extroversion to make people work with you or attract clientele, try saying to yourself, “I’m open to learning new ways of engaging with people.”
None of those fears are reality.
To put it another way, changing the mindset you have from a fear-based one to a learner’s mindset has been proven to increase success.
For any aspiring entrepreneur, the fears that pop up in our minds are insecurities usually disguised as reality and they typically look like: “I don’t have enough money to start a business,” “I don’t know enough about business,” “I don’t have enough contacts,” or “I’m not charismatic enough.”
2. You Need Another Degree or Certification or Training
This is a big and hard myth to dispel in our status-driven world, but in order to start a business, you don’t need an MBA or an additional certification in marketing.
Your best form of learning for your new business will be experiential – learning on-the-go – just as it has been for the rest of your life. Besides, you’re probably thinking about starting a business in a field in which you’re already familiar.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s your current day job. This could also be a field in which you have a genuine interest and have read about extensively, gone to conferences for, attended meetings, etc.
Thus, you probably have more experience and knowledge about the business you’re trying to start than you initially might have guessed.
3. Everything Has to be Perfect Before You Can Start
One of the other biggest myths about starting a small business is that you need to have all of your ducks in a row. That looks like a thorough business plan, thriving social media accounts, a professional in-depth market analysis, goals, plans, teams of resources, etc. People believe that all of those things plus more have to be 100% lined up before they can start their business.
But behind that need to have everything lined up is usually a fear of failure. And that fear keeps many people from even starting down the path of small business ownership.
Here’s a question to ask yourself: Have other people started businesses without the requirements you’ve set for yourself?
You already know what steps you need to take
Here’s the secret to performance and success: We already know what we should be doing in order to be successful.
It’s not a lack of knowledge that holds us back, it’s the continual loop of negative thinking in our minds that does.
Coach/author Alan Fine has studied this phenomenon with thousands of sports and business clients and calls it “interference.”
Essentially, his research shows that, in order to be successful, we need to get out of our own heads and find that place of effortless joy, also called “flow,” in the work that we want to do. “Flow” is defined as that sense where time flies by and you feel enlivened and energized by the work that you’re doing.
When starting a small business, it’s important to continually seek out that place of flow in the new business that you’re building. Define what it is that you really, truly love to do and focus in on that. This helps to break to the negative feedback loop running in our minds.
Letting go of the negative thinking patterns doesn’t mean that a new business doesn’t need business plans, marketing, or clearly defined goals, but the more you can focus in on the parts of the new business that bring you joy and provide you with flow, the more you will communicate that excitement when you speak with others.
And when we get out of our own heads, then we can hone in on the answers to these forward-momentum questions:
- How will you help others in this business?
- Who will your ideal clients be?
- What type of experience will you clients walk away with?
Most importantly, what’s the one step that you can take today that will put you in alignment with your dream of starting that new business?
