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In this post, I’m (Elke) talking about overcoming the fear of starting your own online business. You may be asking yourself if that’s a real fear, and let me assure you that it is. It can be really hard to envision ourselves making this change and becoming an entrepreneur.
But before we dive right in, let us introduce ourselves in case this is your first visit. Welcome to The Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur Podcast. We’re your hosts, Jen and Elke Clarke. We are a mother and daughter team that started Zazzle e-commerce businesses over 10 years ago and have sold over 15 million dollars worth and counting of products on Zazzle.
The Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur Podcast is for you, the creative. We share actionable steps that you can take to make money in your e-commerce business. In each episode, we will take you one step closer to achieving freedom with your time, location, and finances.
We believe that a profitable e-commerce business is what opens the doors for you to start living your dream life if you work smarter, not harder, use the right tools and follow the proven roadmap. We’re here to give you the tools you need to make your dream life happen. Let’s get started!
This post will help you identify those fears and allow you to realize that it won’t be as bad as you thought once you push yourself to get started. Overcoming these fears will allow you to step into your business one thousand percent.
Don’t let yourself be paralyzed by fear! Once you gain the confidence to do so, taking the plunge into your online business will be a life-changing choice in the best of ways. It’s natural to resist new things even though you know there could be great results from pursuing them. That is because you’re wired to stay in a safe place and it can take a lot to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
However, we want to ignore the part of our brain that is telling us to stay away from the new and uncomfortable thing – starting a new business. Instead, we need to follow the logic that brought us to the idea of starting a business to begin.
A lot of people use the fear inventory process for various things, and I want you to do this exercise to understand what’s keeping you from moving out of your comfort zone. Identifying your fears allows you to effectively address them and then move on from them in a productive way.
The first thing to do is to get a pen and paper. You’ll want a paper that you’ll feel comfortable ripping up. This will be a daily activity that takes ten minutes a day for a week or ideally two weeks.
List your objective that you’re looking to accomplish: starting an online business. If you want to get more specific, you can attach an additional goal like an income goal to this objective. This goes at the top of your sheet.
After that, you should write out a minimum of twenty fears that would prevent this objective from becoming a reality. Any fears that are with you surrounding reaching this goal. Treat this like a bit of a brain dump. These can be quick lines – they don’t need to be in paragraph form or even full sentences.
Then, read the fears aloud to yourself and put a checkmark beside each fear that you feel strongly about. Cross out any that you find you don’t actually feel resonate with. Then – the fun part! Rip up your piece of paper in order to destroy those fears. Repeat this process for at least a week. After the first week, journal about how you feel about these fears and do this again after the second week of this exercise.
At this point, you can revisit your journal entries and understand which fears are real that need to be addressed.
The first real fear that you may need to focus on is a fear of lack. It can be a lack of social proof, a lack of knowledge, a lack of experience, or a lack of personal proof. It could be a lack of support or a lack of confidence. All of these are very valid and common fears to be aware of.
Another prevalent fear is a fear of success. You may be scared of whether you can make your business work or if you can repeatedly make it work and attain ideal results. It revolves around you doubting your own success.
Dealing with the extra money that comes from this success is another fear that people have. Some people worry about the perception that others have around them when they attain this financial success. Some people worry about how they will change as a person if they achieve a high level of success and make more money than they’re used to.
Many individuals also fear losing their social circle. You may feel as though people will judge you for this business and career choice or that they’ll treat you differently once you make this change. But remember that you’ll be growing, and some people may not grow along with you. But you can become a part of a new community and grow a new aspect of your social circle through your online business.
After you compare your last two fear lists after the exercise and identify which are valid and still present, you need to address them. First, you’ll need to get support and training to help you overcome the lack that you’re fearing. You can do so through one of our programs or many other ways.
The next thing you can do is educate yourself on things like success and money in order to understand how you can overcome those fears with expanded knowledge. This can also help inform you on how to build good habits around money and saving. This will change the way you look at your business and wealth.
To overcome the fear of losing your social circle, you need to understand that if you lose people on the way, they’re not meant to be on your journey with you. At this point, you would need to identify that the relationship was no longer serving you and begin building boundaries as needed.
You want to surround yourself with positive support and not negative support as that is what will propel your business forward.
Once you get the courage to address your fears around starting an online business, you’ll have so much more confidence in yourself and it will be an amazing feeling. This will help you SO much in creating a business that’s successful and pushing you to take those first steps on the journey.
I hope that this post has inspired you to identify, understand, and address your fears so that you can take the bull by the horns and not delay starting your online business.
Thank you so much for reading!
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If you’re ready to take the first steps in starting and scaling your own Zazzle store, join the waitlist for The Profit by Design Academy® Coaching Program today! And while you’re at it, don’t forget to join us for the upcoming Perceivable, Passive, Profitable™ Online Event on Jan 25, 26 and 27, 2022.
See you back here next week!
Official Website: https://jenandelkeclarke.com/
Jen’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msjenclarke/
Elke’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elkeclarke/
The Creative & Ambitious Entrepreneur Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/ElkeClarkeZazzleExpert
Episode 76: https://elkeclarke.com/being-your-own-boss-76/
The Online Business Starter Pack™: https://bit.ly/OnlineBusinessStarterPack
Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/ElkeClarkeZazzleExpert
The Profit by Design Academy® Get on the Waitlist: https://elkeclarke.lpages.co/profit-by-design-academy-waitlist/
Jen and Elke Clarke are a mother-daughter duo that empowers women entrepreneurs to make money online. Through courses and coaching, Jen and Elke help women (and men) become successful creative entrepreneurs on Zazzle and e-commerce. Combined Jen and Elke have sold over 15 million dollars-worth of products, and earned over $1.5 million combined through their businesses on Zazzle. Jen and Elke have influenced and transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with their free content, paid and private coaching.
They are international, award-winning authors. Click the links to purchase their books through Amazon: Earn Around The World and Create Online and Grow Rich.
Jen and Elke Clarke have been featured in Yahoo Finance as TOP 5 e-commerce coaches.
