When we think of fear, we usually imagine running from a bear or throwing ourselves off a bungee jump. But the average human being encounters that kind of fear-for-my-hide a handful of times in an entire life.
There’s another kind of fear we face a hundred times a day and pound-for-pound it’s scarier than a bear, even a bungee-jumping bear.
We’re teeth-clenching, heart-pounding, knee-knocking afraid of being WRONG. And starting a micro-business puts us directly in the path of that kind of fear every day.
I spent this week on the Hawaiian Island of Lana’i testing out the very first Micro-palooza event to be held twice yearly by Micro-business Fanatic. At the same time, I launched the Micro-business Showdown Game. As you may know, Micro-palooza is the glittering prize for those lucky enough to win the Micro-business Showdown.
Underneath all the scuba diving, mountain hiking, kayaking, beach lounging and general playing-around we did this week, I had a wicked case of the jitters.
Would the world go crazy for the Showdown Game? I have tremendous faith in that game. I consider it one of my better business ideas, but will tens of thousands of people agree with me? Will they find watching the birth throes of a new business as fascinating as I do?
If they don’t agree, if you and your friends and the rest of the world have a lukewarm response to the Showdown, what does that say about me? What does it say about my much-vaunted business acumen?
If the world just shrugs at the game, it’ll be a blindly-clear declaration that I was WRONG. (Gulp!) And, all the work, hopes, dreams, money and emotion that I’d invested in the Showdown will be wasted. Poof!
To be an entrepreneur is to swallow huge helpings of being wrong. Nobody in this world is so good that they’re right more than half the time and that’s being generous. Most of us are wrong nine-out-of-ten times when it comes to shooting out into the big blue with a high-flying business guess. And that’s the stock-in-trade of the micro-business person: big, hairy-assed guesses.
And if you get really, really honest with yourself, being wrong’s scarier to you than a bear.
Here’s the good news: if Micro-business Showdown doesn’t draw crowds of rabid fans, I won’t actually be eaten. It may feel like that, but I will live to take another fifty or hundred attempts.
That is, I will if I keep patching my ego, straightening my spine and lunging back into the game. More good news: I only have to win ONCE to win big and that one success un-writes a million failures.
Long live the game (of micro-business!)
