Many would-be entrepreneurs never take the plunge into business ownership.  There are plenty of roadblocks that prevent business ownership that are very real.  Some of these roadblocks are fortuitous and help us avoid disastrous consequences.  Some of these roadblocks are simply inappropriate timing or we can’t get a realistic deal for the current situation.  However many times, these roadblocks are based on our fears.  Not all fears are bad.  Healthy fears can keep us from painful consequences, but subjective fears can be debilitating and paralyzing.  There are four types of unhealthy fears that often become barriers to our success:

1. Fear of rejection
   1. When fear of what others will think about you supersedes fulfilling your own desires and dreams.
   2. You can lose your sense of who you are because you are copying others.
2. Fear of success: 
   1. Often these fears come from our childhood and youth from a critical parent who implanted ideas that we don’t deserve or want success.
      1. Success is hard work, and not worth the effort.
      2. Successful people are jerks and don’t care about their fellow man
      3. You’ll never amount to anything anyway.
      4. I don’t want to be better than my parents were.

3. Fear of failure
   1. I’m getting ready to get ready. I can’t make a baby step until everything is perfect.
   2. What if I suck at it?
   3. I don’t’ want my identity to be associated with a failure.
4. Fear of not getting the best deal in the universe
   1. Balance the fear of paying too much by calculating the probable profits over the years. Sure, no one wants to over-pay for a business, but when the worry about over-paying prevents you from acting on a probable profitable business, that fear can be very expensive and profit robbing.
   2. What could those profits mean to you and your family? Are you willing to tell them that you could have supported their college, wedding, or____*(fill in the blank) better if I had just taken that plunge long ago.

So at the end of life, if you have had the dream of business ownership, will you be more glad you didn’t take the risk, or more glad that you did?  It’s one thing for the timing or the deal of a specific business purchase not being right, it’s another thing for the timing or deal of any business purchase not being right for your entire lifetime.  Don’t let the fear of failure be a self-fulfilling prophesy. 

“Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford