It’s not when the email alerts are chiming, the phones are ringing and the social media updates are flying that you start to question everything you are doing. It’s in those in-between, quiet times — when you finally collapse into bed at night or when you actually take a long enough break to hear yourself think. That’s when it happens. The little nagging voice, the one that loves to say, “I told you so” in that smug tone, starts to whisper your worst fears: F-A-I-L-U-R-E.
Being an entrepreneur is definitely one notch past completely crazy on the life-decision-o-meter. A recent article in Inc. Magazine on the Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship prompted many a seasoned entrepreneur to admit that starting a business, regardless of size or complexity, is one of the hardest things a person can do. So knowing the odds (and let’s face it, they aren’t good), how do you ignore self-doubt that echoes what you don’t want to admit, but secretly worry is true?
You don’t.
Instead of trying to ignore or push past those nagging fears, you need to disaster-proof your mindset. You need to play the entrepreneurial version of that “What-If” game where you run through all the possible disastrous scenarios in your mind and answer the questions in order to shut that voice up once and for all! Bonus is it’s a useful exercise because if you stumble across a possible (and let’s add probable) scenario that you don’t have a good mental solution for, you need to change something in your business.
How to Play the Entrepreneurial What-If Game
Run Through the Scenarios — Start by asking a simple “What if” question (or more likely, a series of questions). “What if we have no sales for the first 3 months?”, “What if our expenses are 25% more than we anticipated?”, “What if we lose our key employees?”…and so on. Try to address every facet of your business in the questions: sales and marketing, customer service, operations, finance, and human resources (even if that’s just you).
Imagine an Even Worse Scenario — Take your “What if” scenario and double it. So “What if we have no sales for the first 6 months or a year?”, “What if our expenses double?”, “What if our key employees go to work for the competition?”. Take whatever you are worried about and stretch it (because chances are, that’s a more realistic scenario so you had better plan for it).
Answer the Questions — Figure out how you would answer those questions. Would you go back to your corporate job until the business has time to catch-up? Is that even feasible from an operations perspective? How would you quickly cut those out-of-control expenses? What expenses could you shed now instead of waiting until you are in trouble? How are you going to train a new team quickly? Maybe it’s time to invest in a little bit of documentation?
Uncover the Strategy Gaps — Take a look at the questions you can’t answer easily and figure out how to make them irrelevant. If you are worried about your start-up phase outlasting your funding, now is the time to rethink your expenses. If you are worried about the sales cycle for the big projects sinking you financially, consider seeking smaller projects to keep the cash flowing while you wait on the big jobs to come in.
Plan the Protection — Start taking steps now to plan for the potential worst case scenarios. It’s likely you have a good idea which ones are the most likely to come true (if any). For example, the most common stumbling blocks are sales and expenses (the perfect storm of going out of business — too little coming in and too much going out). Imagine how you would grow the business without a penny. Now do that instead of spending all that extra money.
A final thought on fear: it’s important to recognize that there are two types of fear: protective and restrictive. The first is the warning lights that flash when we are about to get into real trouble and the second is the one that paralyzes us for no real reason. By playing the “What If” game with your fears, you should be able to uncover the real problems and put the perceived ones to rest so you can focus your energy on growing your business!
