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Getting Past Fear of Failure and Growing a Successful Business

Guest post by: Stacy Karacostas

Article Overview: When it comes to growing a business, every entrepreneur is bound to make mistakes along the way. It’s easy to let your emotional self get frustrated, fearful and freaked. But you can’t let a couple mistakes-no matter how painful-keep you from being successful…

Getting Past Fear of Failure and Growing a Successful Business

"Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good.

It's the thing you do that makes you good."-Malcolm Gladwell

I love outdoor "extreme" sports. I've whitewater kayaked and skied hard slopes and backcountry for more than 20 years now. A few years ago I returned to mountain biking after about a decade off.

Having done the other sports for so long it's easy for me to get impatient with my biking learning curve. I want to be as good as my hubby and the rest of the guys-but I'm just not. I don't have their years of biking experience or the skills and confidence that go with that.

While I've had some amazing days on my bike, I still regularly have bad days like the one last weekend...

I wasn't very focused on biking since I was in the middle of a brand launch and had just had my folks in town for a week. Within 15 minutes my front tire hit a big, pyramid-shaped root I should have seen and stopped dead.

My body, on the other hand, kept flying forward until I somehow managed to stuff the end of my handlebar into my thigh creating a palm-sized, immediately Technicolor bruise. Then, not 10 minutes later, I stuck my handlebar end into almost the exact same spot again (OW!).

No matter what my rational mind says in those moments (it's okay, you're learning; practice makes perfect, you've got a lot on your mind, etc.), my emotional side can get really frustrated, fearful and freaked. But I've learned I can't let a couple mistakes and bruises keep me from having fun and being "successful"-whether I'm biking or growing my business.

Believe me; I've "crashed" enough times trying to market and grow my businesses over the last 15+ years to cause more than a little emotional and pocketbook pain. Thankfully I've learned a few tricks for getting past those bad days, staying positive and creating ongoing success as an entrepreneur.

1) Practice really does make perfect. Sure, I've known how to ride a bike since I was a kid. But mountain biking requires a whole ‘nother skill set that's taken a lot of time to learn. So when I fall I just remind myself that I'm practicing not failing. Same holds true for marketing and growing a business. I might have grown up working in and running businesses, but I had to learn a whole lot more when I started my own.

2) Some days are always gonna be better than others. I can have an amazing day biking where I land jumps easily and cruise over obstacles I've never even tried before. Then, the next day I can't even ride an easy trail without crashing...And that's okay.

Just like some days I'm uber-productive and write a bazillion articles, work with multiple clients and launching a new product. Others I can barely get one task completed. Rather than beat myself up for my bad days I celebrate the good ones.

3) A little coaching goes a long way. A few years into mountain biking again I was ready to quit. I ended every ride beaten and bruised from trying to keep up when I didn't have the skills needed to succeed. I certainly wasn't having much fun.

Finally, I bit the bullet and invested in a weekend mountain biking camp at Whistler Mountain. I came back a new rider and-bad days notwithstanding- I wreck a lot less because I have the skills to truly enjoy riding now.

I do the same in my business...I regularly take classes, invest in coaching programs, attend conferences, buy products, and hire experts to teach me what I don't know. So I'm way more successful way faster, with fewer bumps and bruises along the way. And it's a heckuva lot more fun to run and grow my business since I'm not struggling blindly to keep up without really knowing what I'm doing.

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Article Tags: Business, Entrepreneur, Failure, Fear, Growing, How to, marketing, solo, stacy karacostas, Successful



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