Overcoming Fear as a Business Owner

Fear as a business owner comes up often, and it tends to rear its ugly head when we least expect it. It also can show up in many different ways…

Maybe it’s that you are avoiding doing something in your business because you’re scared of the outcome, or you’re scared how somebody’s going to react. Or it might be, fear of taking the jump and doing something you haven’t done before.

Fear really is something that will crop up for you time and time and again. No matter how much money you make, or how long you’ve been running your business, you can expect to experience fear around doing certain things.

Luckily, there are a few strategies you can employ to really put fear in its place, and not let it keep you from doing what you need and want to do in your business.

The next time you’re feeling some fear around something, it’s really important to just take a beat. And when you’re feeling resistance to doing something, look at that really objectively, and try to figure out is this resistance I’m feeling simply because of fear?

So if you’re really procrastinating on doing something, try to ask yourself, “is that because I’m scared?”. And once you identify that you are scared and you have that fear, you can use some really great tricks to help you put that fear in its place.

RATING YOUR FEAR

One thing that I really like to do is rate my fear. I got this idea from my amazing coach, Lacey Sites. You can rate your fear based on asking yourself these questions: how much am I feeling this fear, how big does this fear feel, and if my fear actually came true — what would be the negative impact on my business?

So you can use a rating 1–10 and you might say, “Okay, I’m really scared to increase my prices because I don’t know if my current clients will leave me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get new clients.”

My fear that I’m feeling around that is like an eight — It feels so big, it feels so scary, it feels like doing this thing could really mean the end of my business. But if you’re thinking, “Okay if I did that thing, if I raise my prices, and my current clients left me, and I was struggling to get new clients — what would be the negative impact level up for my business?” That might be a five right or a six. Give yourself the CONTEXT around what you’re feeling.

And so you can clearly see, “Okay, my fear level is higher than the actual negative impact on my business.” And then what you can also do is look at what the actual negative impact on your business is. And what can you do to prevent that thing from happening, to ensure that that negative outcome does not happen. And you can kind of play around with this a little bit because if the actual negative impact is only a one or a two — it’s putting that into perspective that your fear is feeling so much bigger than the actual potential negative outcome.

This will help you put it into perspective, so it doesn’t feel so big and you can really recognize whether or not your fear is bigger than the potential negative outcome.

But what if you’re getting into a situation where your fear is high and the potential negative impact is also pretty high?

So in this case, what do we need to do around that? Is raising my prices not the right thing? Or, what can I do to ensure that that doesn’t happen, and still have the same outcome of raising my prices? Well maybe you’ll consider stepping your prices, so maybe you’re not increasing your prices for your current clients, but all new clients are are getting a price increase. Maybe you increase your price for the next two clients you get $100 more a month. And then after that the next two get $200 more a month and you can step your increase in pricing instead.

FEAR SPIRAL

Another really great strategy that I like to use with my coaching clients around fear is to just let yourself go through that spiral. We all have experienced the fear spiral of, well, if this happens, then this is going to happen then this is going to happen and you start to get into that spiral of just freaking out and everything is going horribly wrong.

When we’re doing mindset work with my coaching clients, I help them to learn to recognize when that spiral is about to happen. This in and of itself is huge to be able to recognize this. You know your feelings are valid that’s okay, but then also learning to really set that aside and not let it affect what you’re actually doing, your actual actions. But another great thing is if you’re feeling fear, sometimes it’s really helpful to calmly go through that.

Okay, my fear of leaving my full time job to run my business full time.

What’s the worst that could happen if I did that?

I can’t get enough clients right away, and I’m not making as much money as I want to make.

If that happened, what’s the worst that could happen?

Well, I can’t pay my bills.

If I can’t pay my bills, what’s the worst that could happen?

I get evicted.

What’s the worst that could happen if you get evicted?

I become homeless.

The point of this exercise is to really push through, don’t freak out and just push through really realistically, all of those things, because then what you can do is, is you can sit down and say, “Okay, if the worst that could happen happens. What can I do to fix that? What can I do to make sure that that doesn’t happen?” and what you’re doing this is super athletes do this and performers do this, it’s literally picturing in your mind going through the process going through the steps and planning in your mind for the worst. Because if you are planning for the worst, realistically, the worst is not going to happen very often. And if it does, you feel really confident that you’re prepared ,that you know what to do to prevent the worst from happening or if the worst happens, you know what you need to do to fix it.

Now if you’re super Type A, listen up — for my people who like to be prepared, for my people who are perfectionists, who like to know every answer every step in the process — this is really helpful because you’re empowering yourself to be ready, just in case the worst is happening. Oftentimes when you’re doing this fear exercise, you might realize like, “Oh, that’s really not going to happen”… So not only does it put those things into perspective a little bit so you can get a feel for the worst that could actually happen and it can also really set you up to feel confident and prepared, just in case the worst does happen.

By doing this, it really allows you to move forward, go where you need to go, continue to focus on what you need to focus on without being scared all the time and without letting that fear stop you from doing what you want to do — from making the improvements and the strides and the growth and the scaling in your business that you really want to make.

These tools are super super helpful when you find that you are feeling fear around a thing. And that fear is stopping you or preventing you from doing what you know that you need to do to get to the next step, to achieve your goals.

The next time you find yourself feeling resistant to doing something that you know you really need to do or you really want to do — Sit down, think about “is this because I’m feeling fear around this thing?”, then go through your fear rating exercise, and then go through that what’s the worst that could happen exercise — and that’s really going to put it into perspective for you.