Many years ago, I was having lunch with one of my mentors, Khaled Al Damallawy, who's a prominent business owner and entrepreneur from Egypt. I was in Egypt's capital city, Cairo, on one of my frequent business trips around the middle east. The following conversation took place between me and Khaled:
Khaled: So, tell me Nuridin. What are your fears of becoming an entrepreneur?
Nuridin: I have four specific fears.
Khaled: Sure, go ahead.
Nuridin: I’ll state them all together now and I’ll see what you say about each one of them. May fears are:
1. The uncertainty of income
2. I don’t have enough capital to start my business
3. The long hours and hard work
4. The risk of failure
Khaled: Great. I have some good news and even greater news for you. The good news is that, those are natural fears. All successful entrepreneurs had the same fears before they started their businesses. The greater news is that there are answers that handle those fears and either minimize or totally remove them.
My First Fear: The Uncertainty of Income:
Khaled: Your first fear is the uncertainty of income. And this is a very valid fear, not only in the beginning of the business, but throughout its existence. The financial life paradigm of an entrepreneur is totally different from that of an employee who has a steady secure income month in and month out. But let me ask you a question. Is the employee monthly income totally secure and risk free?
Nuridin: Yes, that what I think.
Khaled: Haven’t you got laid off from your job in the Oil services company, Baker Hughes, in 2010?
Nuridin: Yes, that’s right. But before that I had a steady and stable income month in and month out.
Khaled: And having this steady income guaranteed to you that you were financially safe?
Nuridin: I used to think that way till I got laid off.
Khaled: That’s my point. There is no financial guarantee in life, whether you’re an employee who can be laid off any minute without enough preparation, or you’re an entrepreneur running your own business. If in both cases, you’re subject to the risk of financial setbacks, then why do you spend your life working on a limited ceiling salary as an employee instead of the potentially high profits of entrepreneurship?
Nuridin: Yes, I see your point.
Khaled: If you’re going to work hard anyways with the risk of falling down financially, then you better choose the options that gives you the highest return for your efforts.
Nuridin: I totally agree. Point well taken.
My second fear: Not Having Enough Capital
Khaled: Now, let’s look at your second fear: You said you might not have enough capital to start your own business.
Nuridin: That’s right. And that’s what has been keeping me from taking this step of becoming an entrepreneur.
Khaled: A big number of entrepreneurs start their own business with a very powerful paradigm. It’s called OPM or Other People’s Money. They come up with the business idea, they do the feasibility study, and they validate the importance and effectiveness of their business model then they solicit investors to invest in this idea. They tab into the power of leverage.
Nuridin: So, does this work well for them?
Khalid: Yes, it does. They raise the capital they need through either direct investment from individuals or organizations, or they use crowdfunding or join ventures. They get to run the business of their dreams and they get to generate profitable returns for the investors. There are various legal forms for this kind of partnership which I’ll talk about later. But for now, I want you to understand that as an entrepreneur, you have different options for raising the capital needed for your business.
Nuridin: I see…That’s exciting. It’s like a big burden is being taken off my shoulder.
My Third Fear: Putting Long Hours and Hard Work:
Khaled: Now, let’s move on to your third fear: The fear of putting long hours in your business and doing hard work.
Nuridin: Actually, for some reason this specific fear has been fading away as I’m listening to you Khaled.
Khaled: I expected that to happen. Can you share why has it been fading away?
Nuridin: I guess when you shared with me your thoughts on the last two fears, for some reason I came to know that I’m going to work hard and for long hours anyways. Whether I’m an entrepreneur or working for someone else. So, since it will happen anyways, why don’t I put this hard work and long hours in my own business rather than someone else’s.
Khaled: Exactly. Life is not easy and we have to work hard to succeed and grow and achieve our goals. So, yes, if you’re going to do that regardless of whether you’re an employee or entrepreneur, so why not go for the path with maximum returns on your efforts and time.
Nuridin: Yes, that makes sense.
My Fourth Fear: The Risk of Failure:
Khaled: Finally, we come to the last fear you expressed. That’s the fear of failure or the risk of failing.
Nuridin: Yes, that’s a big one.
Khaled: First, Let me tell you something you know very well: Our whole life is a serious of risky decisions. Everything you do in your professional or personal life is a choice that comes with a risk of failure. The person you get married to, the schools you choose to send your kids to, the way you deal with your friends and colleagues, the ventures you do, the job you choose, the business you start. Every one of those choices has a risk of failure. You study your options and move one with a decision and make your choice and evaluate and adjust. Why should starting your business be any different? Yes, there is a risk of failure when it comes to starting your own business, but what in life is totally safe and guaranteed with zero risk?
Nuridin: Nothing I guess.
Khaled: That’s why all entrepreneurs have this fear of failure. But they don’t let this fear stop or paralyze them. They use it as an energy to move forward and do their best to be successful. It’s important and rather essential to have this fear of failure. This will make you study your options well and be careful in taking your decisions. This fear of failure will make you use the right way of doing business and utilize the best tools.
Nuridin: Yes, I see… That’s true. If I don’t have any fears, then I might step into blind mistakes which I could have otherwise avoided them had I been more careful. That’s common sense.
Khaled: Yes. So, think of your goals and visualize attaining them and use your business as a vehicle to achieve those goals. Be courageous but be cautious. Be forthcoming but think analytically. Be decisive but study your options first. Let your strong foundation of knowledge and expertise and the collective experience of your mentors guide you and take action. That’s how you deal with such fears.
Khaled asks for the check and pays for lunch. He agrees to meet me the next day to start sharing with me his insights on how to spot entrepreneurial opportunities.
I'll be sharing that with you all on a separate post.
Picture 1 Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/491666484300476771/
Picture 2 Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-dark-side-of-being-an-Entrepreneur
Picture 3 Source: http://www.boldlist.net/top-5-reasons-why-many-businesses-fail.php
Picture 4 Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/04/04/long.work.hours.heart.attack.risk/
Picture 5 Source: https://cambridgesda.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/dont-be-scared-risk-failure/
Thanks for reading. Please Upvote, Follow and Resteem.
Thank you .
Thank u @linuxiso
This is so true sir.
All these fears or fear in general keep people from fulfilling their potential.
Well written post. Thumb up.
Thank you. I wish you the best in your entrepreneurship journey.
@originalworks Thanks for your support.
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @nuridin to be original material and upvoted it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
Thats quite an insightful and inspirational post thanks for sharing
You're very welcome @tattoodjay Thanks for reading. I hope more and more people get freed from the prison of employment to the freedom of entrepreneurship.
yes I know many are trying to break free
Resteemed by @resteembot! Good Luck!
Curious?
The @resteembot's introduction post
Get more from @resteembot with the #resteembotsentme initiative
Check out the great posts I already resteemed.
Thank you very much.
that is an excellent post @nuridin, we normally do not give 100% upvotes, but it was well deserved! :)
you've been upvoted by @arabsteem curation trail, and will be featured on our daily curation digest post.
Thank you very much @arabsteem for your kind words and generous support. :)
This post is completely brilliant because it’s so easy for brands of any size to emulate. All Starbucks did was showcase their product from an angle their employees see often, but customers rarely get to check out.
NB: for a bad reason my rank was totally down.. so please upvote to my comment to help me :) https://steemit.com/steem/@darkworld/i-m-totally-depressed-to-see-my-rank-was-totally-down
Why did your rank go down? Did you read my post?
I dont know why..
Did you read my full post?
yes I did
New write up 👍
Thank you :)
Good stuff @nuridin ! For all entrepreneurs these are concerns that will sooner or later arise in their business. I have been a full time internet marketer for going on 10 years now. As you progress through your Life as an Entrepreneur some of those Fears actually become Assets. For example 'the uncertainty of Income' : Once you get the ball rolling the uncertainty actually becomes a welcoming variable...i.e how much will I make this month. $8K or just $6k like last month. Nice how that works :)
Yes, the anticipation of the coming income has makes life exciting. That's the positive side of it and people thinking this way can overcome the uncertainty challenge. On the flip side, "If I don't make $8k this month, I won't be able to pay the bills and give my suppliers their money" - is the fear side.
Great article. Very detailed.
Thank you for reading.
This post was resteemed by @steemvote and received a 25.29% Upvote
This is an eye-opening @nuridin! Thank you for sharing it to us!
You're very welcome. I'm glad you like it.
You got a 5.09% upvote from @ipromote courtesy of @nuridin!
To support our daily curation initiative, please vote on my owner, @themarkymark, as a Steem Witness
Great information. Thank you.
You're very welcome. Glad you like it.
Wow you have a good mentor who is ready to lead you in the part of becoming great. Not all can do that expecially when they see that you want to be like them.
@seyiodus.
You're very right Seyiodus. It takes a strong character, solid values and a special kind of mission for one to be a mentor sharing his success and guiding someone to be as good as him/her/
Great post! Before I started my business I had all of these concerns. I overcame them and had a good run. Ultimately, I moved on from my business. Some would say that I failed. However, I don't look at it that way and I am very happy that I gave it a try.
Yes, you haven't failed, you've grown and learned and showed strength and commitment and then moved on to the next phase of your life. I call that success not failure.
Life is a Game, We will learn it when we are through ...
Nice Post Dear Steemian.
Shared LOVE With My Upvote. How about you Share some Love too?
Cheers and Have a Peaceful, Profitable Year .
Keep Posting
Thank you and I hope you found value in it.
The fear of failure is something I think we all have to face, in various areas of life. But, if you aren't making mistakes and taking risks, then you're probably not doing much of anything, right? Great post! Keep believing! :)
Yes, right. We do learn from our mistakes and we do go forward by taking risks. Totally agree. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts Katrina :)
nice post nuridin! its always good to have a mentor! someone you can turn to to ask for advice and enlightenment. keep on making good posts like this! :)
Thank you Andy. I appreciate your kind words. I believe in the value of mentorship and I've been involved on both sides of it throughout my life.
Cool! Maybe someday i get to experience having a mentor too! 😀
I believe you can. By the way, the mentors I had didn't just come to me...I went to them. I asked them and they accepted. That's why I suggest you look for mentors you value, appreciate and trust and ask them to mentor you...Out of 10 people, 9 would say yes.
Wow thank you for the suggestion! Appreciate it so much! 😀
Hey@nuridin! Excellent post! It was so inspiring reading the conversation you were having with your mentor. I too have had those concerns but the benefit of working hard and putting in the long hours far outweighed any fears I had to get started. I'm looking forward to more of the same. Upvoted and following. Thank you.
I'm glad you liked it. You're very welcome.
I really like your post please follow me
What did you like most about my post?
I ran across this book today, which might be of some interest.
http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Burn-the-Business-Plan/Carl-J-Schramm/9781476794358
Thanks for sharing. I'll check it out and hopefully I can get my hands on it.
Well written! My fear is like #3. What happens if I get too successful?! It is because I wedge myself between fear of failure and fear of success I become unable to move forward. I am changing that this year! I look forward to your future articles.
That's why I always recommend that you put together a system for your business where it doesn't depend on your presence or micro-management for it to grow and succeed. Most entrepreneurs are self-employed which require them to be running like crazy inside their own rat race. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.
Very well written and excellent motivation for all self employed businessman. It was real joy to read it.
Thank you for your kind words. :)
Not everyone is trained to deal with the power an entrepreneur has. You are the one who can decide when to fly (a very powerful decision) and also the entrepreneur decides when it is the right moment to jump off the cliff! Thank you for sharing, mostly I enjoyed:
Very true. It's those kind of decisions that make the difference between success and failure. And I'll keep pushing for more people to take those decisions and be trained to be successful entrepreneurs. I see you put "Academic Entrepreneur" in your tageline. Looks like you're on the same mission.
Yes indeed, I am. Austria does not have to offer any interesting employment opportunities for me, esp. when you have reached a kind of "steemd" mindset and you have a hard time to be understood as like-minded, sometimes it is better to stop pushing oneself into a ramekin and try something new, when you have nothing left to lose but so many things to win within your new world you create.
Fantastic. That's a success-driven mind-set. Out of curiosity, what's an Academic Entrepreneur? Very interesting concept. I'd like to know more about it.
Thanks! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_entrepreneur
But one has to be aware that my profession in Austria is far more different than e.g. in US. The relationship between my business endeavors and the state or funding authorities are quite odd, because you have to be innovative and horny for bureaucracy at the same time :D
I would like to share some of my experience, that confirm your statements.
I quit my pretty well-paid job 2 years ago because I started to realize, that working there I do not get smarter and my skillset is getting limited. I was not able to catch up the changes happening around me. Instead of learning new, I was always worried about the local pseudo-problems. I realized that current situation is much riskier than if I was not working at all, but catching up with the progress.
The risk of empty pockets realized, but I have already made the decision not to return to 9-to-5 and my passion to find the shortest way to the money was extremely strong. I was looking for the maximum returns on my efforts and finally have rented the cab and during five weeks without any rest worked as a private driver. Hard work returned me much more money than I expected and I knew, that current hard work will allow me to find better appliance for my time. It has also killed the fears 1, 2 and 3 that you mentioned. I felt satisfied, free and hungry for the new challenges...
One day I will write about what happened next.
...Now I just say that I am an entrepreneur and I do not do anything that I do not want to do.
Nuridin, thank you for inspiring us!
Excellent. Congratulations on taking that decision 2 years ago and sticking to it. You're a walking proof that those fear can be overcome and even used as an engine of success. Keep it up and make sure you build a system for your business which does not depend on you for its progress and success. That way you can free yourself to grow and expand instead of being locked in your own business and thus missing on the true freedom entrepreneurship provides.
Thank you for this great post @nuridin very informative agree about the fact that everything in life is a risk!
You're very welcome @photohunter. Glad you too took time to read it. And yes, since we are always living risk in all aspects of our lives, so we might as well go for the things which will bring us the highest benefits and value.
Very well written and very good points. I enjoyed this, thank you!
You're very welcome :) Glad you liked Misslasvegas