What one thing held you back from starting a successful business more than anything else?

[MitchM]

And if you haven't yet started a profitable business, what do you feel is currently holding you back?

For me, what held me back most was continuously strategizing and coming up with a million ideas but never executing and committing. Always believing that I had to find that perfect thing.

But in truth:

"The grass isn't greener on the other side. It's greener where you water it."
(just make sure that it makes CENTS lol)

 

[minivanman]

Being ignorant of the real world. My dad always had a J O B and my parents always said the only people that owned businesses had money to begin with. I grew up in a small town where starting your own business wasn't even anything anyone ever thought about. Then I moved to a little bigger town in my mid teens but we brought the same mentality with us. If I would have had 1 ounce of help, I would have been here long before I was. I can say without a doubt, my parents would be surprised and proud of what I've done if they were still with us.

 

[GSF]

Self doubt

 

[MitchM]

Self doubt

I know the feeling.

Business is about bringing people the end results that they want, whatever that may be. I think that sometimes the end results we aspire to bring to others can make us doubt ourselves because of the scale of the impact that we want to make - at least that has happened to me.

One way I believe that people could start growing and pushing past their self doubts, instead of it making them stuck, is to look at the end result and see what kind of tiny milestones could exist inside of it.

For example, if you want to help aspiring entrepreneurs start a business - and you want that to be your business - you may feel like a fraud if you aren't successful yet (because you're helping them do something you haven't).

But instead of starting a business and charging people, if you started immediately reaching out and posting in business facebook groups with the best advice that you can give after reading a bunch of business books, etc, then you can point these people in the direction of the right information that they may need for their specific problems.

You could brain storm with them and start private conversations. You would slowly be seeing more and more recurring patterns and based on the feedback and results that the people you communicate with - you can slowly gain more confidence.

I think we trip ourselves up trying to make giant leaps without realizing that growth has a snowball effect. All that time being caught up in self doubt over a goal that we feel unworthy of could be spent building ourselves up if we look at the small things that we can do and just start taking action.

 

[Thomas Baptiste]

Getting in my own way. Once you see things for what they are and stop projecting your values onto everything around you, things start happening.

 

[scott wisniewsk]

fear of failure