The risk of not taking the first step

When entrepreneurs are beginning a business, they have one million reasons to do so. These reasons range from a challenge to a new financial opportunity. However, there are also 10 million reasons not to start a new venture. It’s very easy to find these negative reasons and we can easily build a list. I want to talk today about this eventual failure, which limits us in our decision of starting new projects.

From my perspective I believe the risk of not taking the first step or starting is much greater than the risk of creating a venture. It’s quite logic and truth that if we create a business, many things can go wrong. Among others, the business can be a failure; we can go broke and even loose money; etc, etc, etc. All these things can happen and there are many negative scenarios we can think off and the logical reason many times is to stay put as we are and avoid risk.

What we have to understand is that negative outcomes are everywhere not only in entrepreneurship. For instance, when traveling to your job so many things can go wrong: you can get into an accident, you can get mugged and much more. So it might be prudent to always stay at home. But in this case, you might get a disease for being sedentary and not getting enough fresh air and sunlight. The fact is that this is life; every situation has its pros and cons. Results are not guarantee and we have to take choices.

Since life offers us the possibility of positive and negative outcomes, we have to transcend them. Even if bad things happen, we have to understand them as an opportunity to learn something new and grow. For instance, my first major entrepreneurship project was a flop and I failed. I went broke and still owe money from this, however it was an excellent opportunity to grow and learn new things. In my next entrepreneurship project I knew I could fail again, but I could also be successful and make up for my previous errors. So I decided to focus on the later.

In this case, for me it was riskier not to take chances and try again. I had the option of staying at my paid job (al least until the got tired of me or the company went under), but this situation was also a risk. I asked myself what would happen in a couple decades if I didn’t start my new project and the risk was too high. I couldn’t admit this very high risk.

In my current entrepreneurship project I might fail again. In fact, I fail constantly but I get up again. I’m working for something that’s mine and that I really love. So this is the decision I made and for me, it was the least risky one. You have both choices, so which one do you choose?

Image taken from Flickr.com