How Do You Have the Courage to Start Your Own Business?

Fear, doubt, uncertainty are all very natural and very real emotions when it comes to opening your own business…especially given the fact that it's so risky and so many small businesses fail.

In fact, a recent survey by Wakefield Research found that one-third of Americans are more afraid of starting their own business than they are jumping out of plane.

Welp… given our very natural and very real fear of jumping out of planes we decided to go the “start our own business route.”

Before we jump into our “how we did it” story it’s important to know a bit of the backstory.

We were both raised in hard-working, entrepreneurial families where we learned a strong work ethic and an attitude of perseverance and persistence.

From a very early age we learned that you got up every single day, you put your heart, soul and passion into your work and the only option was to make it a success.

That strong foundation of having an entrepreneurial mindset and a “whatever it takes” attitude gave us the foundation we needed to even consider opening our business.

Next it takes confidence and a belief in yourself that you will figure it out along the way. Even if you have an MBA and loads of practical experience there is really no way to fully prepare for what it will take to be a business owner.

In our case we knew a lot about the science of fitness and personal training, but we completely lacked any business knowledge. So before we even opened our doors we leverage our resources and interviewed as many business owners as we could. We asked them loads of questions.

Things like…

• “What is your biggest stressor?”
• “What would you tell a new business owner?”

• “What do you wish you had known before you opened?”
• “What has been your biggest surprise?”
• “What do you think leads to your success?”

And the list goes on… we basically just started talking to others and learning as much as we could.

And then, shortly after opening our doors we realized that we needed more help understanding the business side of things. That’s when we sought out a mentor and invested in a business coach who helped us become more strategic and learn how to work smarter instead of harder in our business.

And here we are… almost 15 years into business ownership and we still continue to push the needle and learn something new every day.

Do we know what the future holds?

Of course not, but with an entrepreneurial mindset, confidence in our abilities to figure things out, leveraging our resources and continual learning from our mentors we are certain that we will be able to adapt to our next stage of growth and development.  

What about you? What gave you the courage to make the entrepreneurial leap?

Be Bold, Be Free, Live Empowered,