How to Deal With the Fear of Quitting Your Job In Order to Start Your Own Business - Think Deep

How to Deal With the Fear of Quitting Your Job In Order to Start Your Own Business

It’s a story all too familiar for some people. They’ve got a good paying job and naturally start to build a lifestyle tailored around that particular income, with some tailoring it to an even higher income level and for whatever reason, the entrepreneur bug starts to itch and they want to quit their job in order to start their own business.

Maybe they hate the idea of working for someone else, maybe they want more freedom, more time with the kids, more flexibility, but whatever the reasons are, they want to quit their job but feel stuck financially as they need the job to pay for all the bills.

What’s more, their life is comfortable. They’ve got a routine. And it’s going to take a lot to get them out of it.

Obviously the biggest fear that prevents most people from making the leap from quitting their job to starting their own business is one of financial stability so how can we deal with this issue?

We can attack it in 3 ways.

The first one is very obvious and it’s to live a simple life. You know what the drill is here. Cut out all unnecessary expenses, budget, save every month, raise cash by selling what you don’t need, pay off the credit card debt, really clean all the clutter from your life and get down to the basics.

Don’t look at this process as a bad thing because it’s really a good thing as it’s training in disguise. The process teaches you self discipline and instills in you the habit of delayed gratification – two skills essential to succeeding in starting your own business.

It also acts to strip all the clutter in your life so your business can benefit from your clear and undivided attention.

You’re going to need cash to start the business so you might as well save all you can and sell what you don’t need and you’re probably going to have to live with the basics anyway in the beginning of your business so you might as well get used to that kind of lifestyle. Plus, when money is not that big of a concern on your part, you’ll have less worries and it becomes easier to concentrate on growing the business.

The second thing to do is to get knowledgeable about succeeding in business in general and the biggest mistake that employees will make in being ignorant in that aspect is the pure shock that comes with marketing and sales.

Most employees, unless they have worked directly in marketing and sales, will overlook these two factors and grossly take them for granted. Marketing and sales is the lifeblood of any business and both factors are hugely responsible for the success or failure in the beginning stages of any business.

Don’t make the mistake of diving right in without thinking of how you are going to access your market and sell to the people within it. They say you should ask yourself if there is a market for your business and of course you should ask yourself that, but the next question you better be able to ask and answer is how you can gain access to that market or attract it.

And after you have that question answered – how you can sell to the people within that market? Selling is a whole other beast. You need to craft your USP (unique service proposition), in other words, what sets you apart from other businesses, overcome potential objections, show exactly the added value your potential customers can derive from your business, etc.

The answers to all your marketing and sales questions lie within your own creativity and in the books. Read the books. Go to your local bookstore and head over to the small business and marketing and sales section. There are plenty of books there that can jumpstart your creativity and give you the ideas you need to get your business off the ground.

And it wouldn’t hurt to start learning people skills as well if you already haven’t done so. You’re going to have to start dealing directly with many people so you might as well start learning the ropes.

But above else, if you really want to succeed in marketing, sales, and dealing with people, just keep that desire of serving others burning as hot as you can. When you truly desire to serve other people, you will discover ways to find them (marketing). You will find ways to be able to convince them that you can genuinely help them to make their lives better (sales) and you will naturally deal with them in the best possible way you can (people skills).

The third thing to do in order to deal with the fear of financial instability is to actually start the business part time while you’re still working at your full time job, in other words, just get it off the ground and maybe get a few customers under your belt.

Obviously, this might be hard to do but again, just think of it as training in self discipline and time management. And if you succeed in doing this, imagine how much more business you’ll be able to drum up working full time.

The benefits of doing this are pretty obvious – you get a taste test of the whole experience so to speak, you can get a preview as to the kind of obstacles you’ll be bound to face, and you’ll get leverage too if you succeed in the sense you get a few success stories under your belt that you can use to convince other potential customers to utilize your business.

With regards to making consistent, stable income, it might be hard to see how you can make that kind of income in the very beginning, but I guarantee you that when you’re well into the later stages of working on your business, opportunities will begin to present themselves to you on how you can make more money.

In short, the reason for this is that as your business grows, you start to gain leverage.

You’ve got more satisfied clients which you can use to easily attract more potential clients.

You have an established client list with trust already built in so it becomes easier to sell new products and services to the people within it.

You can ask for referrals from your satisfied clients to find new clients in no time.

You can offer special deals that offer fantastic value to your loyal clients to get a boost of income.

You can make joint venture deals with other businesses that are non-competing which complement your business.

You can’t really see all the different ways you’ll be able to make money in the beginning because you haven’t gone through all the experiences, made all the contacts, implemented the ideas, built your client list, etc., but you will begin to see them later on in the journey.

We discussed the ways in which we can help logically dismantle the fear of financial instability so now we need to discuss how we can emotionally dismantle that fear.

Simply put, you need to value something stronger than the all the fears combined that come about from starting your own business.

You need a strong enough catalyst to take you out of your comfortable job and income to put you in that place where few people dare to go, and the catalyst needs to be strong enough to help you weather your time there.

This is why you constantly hear how important passion is when it comes to business. If you’re passionate about your business, if you love what you do, then that love will conquer the fears.

Think about it.

Fear tends to wither away in the presence of love.

Love is the ultimate antidote to fear.

If you really love what you do, you’ll never want to stop doing it and that will help overcome all your fears.

And it doesn’t really have to be love for what you do. That love can be based on other things.

For example, some people love the idea of freedom, to not have to wake up early and get stuck in traffic while commuting and it’s that love for freedom that drives them to start their own business and help overcome all their fears.

Remember, fear has a really hard time surviving in love. Love can mitigate fear like no other.

The last issue to address is the biggest elephant in the room:

How do you know you can do it?
How do you know you can succeed?
How do you know you can make the amount of money you want/need?

People tend to paint the worst case scenario when it comes to the idea of starting their own business – they think they will incur huge loan debt, fail miserably, and file for bankruptcy.

What about the scenario on the other end?

A successful business. Sustainable income. Leverage. Freedom.

Realize that you can choose between either scenario. Don’t just choose by default to the doomsday scenario.

If you can choose which scenario to plant in your mind (which you can), that will start to influence your thoughts, beliefs, actions and results, so you might as well choose the best scenario that will work in your favor.

Realize that the future is in your hands.

And you can determine as to what degree, the outcome will be.

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