“You can become a hero.” – Izuku Midoriya (Deku)

Entrepreneurial Take: This simple yet powerful statement embodies the courage to start. No matter your background, you can take the leap to build something extraordinary.

My daughter is a fan of the Japanese anime My Hero Academia. In the show, which takes place in a fantasy universe, some people are born with a genetic “quirk” which is a type of superpower. Examples might be super strength or speed, or the ability to shape-shift. 

When these quirks first come online, usually in adolescence, they overpower the person. They begin by hurting others and themselves with their quirk. Anime is more than entertainment—it’s a creative resource to reframe challenges, connect with others, and inspire innovation.

Each person on the show must learn to tame their quirks and use it for the power of good rather than destruction. 

Our limbic system, meaning fear and anxiety and our fight or flight reactivity, is like such a quirk – it can easily overpower us and run the show if we don’t learn how to put it to good use. 

While this is challenging, once you can do it, it becomes the closest thing humans have to a superpower. You can learn to live free of your prehistoric programming and find new freedom in your life. 

To get physically strong, we need muscle. To increase muscle, we need to lift heavy weights. To get psychologically strong, we need courage. To increase courage, we need to face uncomfortable truths about reality and do hard and scary things. 

When we lift weights, we experience pain as the muscle tears, but it grows back stronger than it was before. When we do hard and scary things, we will experience the discomfort that our primitive limbic system produces in us, but our courage will grow as a result. 

I call my approach to cultivating courage the Iron Path.

Build your “Iron” – How to Cultivate Courage as an Entrepreneur

You should start working on your courage outside of work first. 

Commit to building what I call your “Iron” – your storehouse of courage that serves as the foundation upon which you can build future actions. You build Iron by taking personal risks. 

These could be being more assertive with a parent or spouse, being more vulnerable with a child, or by making a medical appointment you’ve been avoiding. The key here is to practice doing something that you don’t want to do, and would prefer to avoid, but you do anyway. 

Each time you succeed and go against your old programming, you earn some Iron. 

Once you’ve earned some Iron outside of work, you can bring it into the business environment and start using it there. 

• Courage can help you reach out to new potential clients, 
• have a tough conversation with a colleague without getting triggered,
• or ask a boss for a raise or new title. 

Iron can be like a superpower that will drive you to new levels of success. Yet, like all superpowers, it needs to be developed through training first.

As with muscle, courage must be developed through training and discipline. 

In My Hero Academia, characters don’t just tame their quirks, they master them through relentless training and guidance from their mentors. Entrepreneurs, too, benefit from mentorship and intentional practice as they cultivate courage. 

Surrounding yourself with others who embody bravery can inspire you to confront your own fears and embrace the growth opportunities hidden within them. By sharing experiences and strategies, you sharpen your own skills and contribute to a culture of courage that uplifts everyone around you.

Many anime feature characters solving complex problems.

By cultivating unique team dynamics and the pooling of diverse skills, survival can depend on people thinking outside the box and leveraging their individual strengths. 

At the end of the day, so many entrepreneurs face challenges, much like a hero overcoming obstacles on the path to achieving greatness. Anime often portrays characters who grow stronger by facing adversity head-on and learning from their failures.

One can also build a brand story as a “hero’s journey,” showing how you’ve overcome struggles to create your business, as well as create marketing content that inspires your target market to see themselves as heroes in their lives, utilizing your product or service as their tools for success.

“If you don’t like your destiny, don’t accept it. Instead, have the courage to change it the way you want it to be.” — “Naruto”, 2002. 

“To be strong is not just about physical abilities. It’s about having the courage to make tough decisions.” — “Fairy Tail”, 2009.

“Power is not will. It is the phenomenon of physically making things happen. But that’s not what matters. What matters is having the will to take that first step.” – Shoto Aizawa (Eraserhead)

This reminds us that courage starts with the decision to take action, even when it’s daunting.