Success Advice
How To Overcome Financial Fear In Your Life & Business
What do you fear most? Is it that you’ll never get the job of your dreams? Or that you will never get the woman/man that you have a crush on? There are many types of fears and one of the types of fear we will conquer today is financial fear.
Financial fear is pretty much the fear of taking risks in your life that can have a positive impact on your financial life. This holds true for employees as well as business owners. Your financial fear can be holding you back from making more money.
Let’s dig deeper into what financial fear is and how you can overcome it.
Fear Is A Motivator
Anyway, fear is an emotion that can often motivate us to action, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. It can also leave us paralyzed in the moment, which is rarely ever good. Fear is a motivator. But we shouldn’t let it be a negative motivator, especially when it comes to our finances.
For me, financial fear rears its ugly head in several ways. For example, as I work toward financial independence, fear of things like significant periods of inflation and economic stagnation and the resulting potential losses to my investments is concerning.
Fear can also keep you from participating in investment opportunities or cause you to become irrationally invested.
Fear Can Keep You On The Sidelines
One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t invest my money for a few years thinking a stock market crash was coming, maybe you can relate. I lived through two recessions, 2000 and 2008, which caused the stock market to plunge which put a thought in my head that another one is coming soon.
Instead of investing my money, I let fear irrationally keep me from investing in some of the best deals in a generation. If I had practiced what I preach now, doubled-down and invested heavily in that market, and dollar cost averaged my way in on the way up, I could probably already be pretty close to achieving financial independence.
Don’t let fear keep you on the sidelines.
Fear Can Tempt You to Deviate From Your Plans
Fear can also cause you to invest apart from your investment plan. When the market is way down, you might be inclined to sell, rather than to buy. Depending on your time horizon for retirement, this might make sense.
But if you’re decades away from retirement and dollar cost averaging your way to financial freedom, a falling stock market can be a great buying opportunity. Alternatively, fear of missing out (FOMO) can cause you to over-invest in appreciating market.
Long periods of run-ups in investment prices (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, you name it) can result in a type of irrational optimism called “market euphoria” where people begin to think that the market can only go up.
This results in a lack of perception of the potential risk(s) of an investment and an over-investment in the asset relative to a person’s financial goals. Don’t let fear of missing out cause you to invest apart from your investment plan.
“The greatest cause of human financial struggle is the fear of losing money.” – Robert Kiyosaki
Fear & Entrepreneurship
Another financial area I’ve seen fear play out in my own life is in the area of business ownership. It can be pretty discouraging when thinking about starting your own business to realize that around 19 out of 20 businesses fail in 10 years.
I think we need to temper the type of fear that might accompany that hard reality with both courageous and cautious optimism. Of course, we are to consider risks and count the cost before investing money and time in a business.
But, if you have an idea that could significantly improve the lives of others and maybe even your life, maybe it’s worth pursuing or at least scoping out.
Combat Fear by Mitigating Risk
Almost any action we can take has risks. When you get in your car every day, for example, there’s a risk you won’t return home. But that doesn’t keep most of us from driving. Why do you think that is?
When we take appropriate steps to mitigate risks, fear generally becomes less of a factor. For example, if I’m driving the speed limit in a mechanically sound vehicle with airbags and safety restraints in use, I feel relatively confident out there on the road.
Mitigate Investment Risks Through Diversification & Dollar Cost Averaging
So, what steps can you take to mitigate investment risks? In the investment world, there are a number of ways to mitigate the types of risks that might cause us fear. Portfolio diversification is an excellent way to reduce risk and the associated fear. Dollar-cost averaging is another great way to mitigate risks.
If a person receives a windfall of money, approximately two times out of three historically, it has been better to go ahead and invest the lump sum of the money as soon as possible. By picking some time horizon to enter the market, you’ll be buying more of the assets when prices decline and less when prices rise.
But you won’t be putting all of your money in at the highest highs (or the lowest lows).
Mitigating Business Risks With Sound Planning & Scaling
If your financial fears are related to business, like some of mine are, there are ways to mitigate those risks, too. One easy way to mitigate business risk is to develop a sound business plan.
If you can provide proof of concept that your business should be profitable, you will have both some peace of mind and a road map to potential success. Experienced business owners and organizations that support business and entrepreneurship will often help you develop and refine these plans to help you succeed.
Another practical way to mitigate business risk is to start small and scale the business up over time. That’s not feasible for every business, but it’s often possible.
The smaller your initial investment and the less of the rest of your life you give up out of the gate, the lower the stakes. The lower the stakes, the lower the risk and the resulting fear. You’d also do well to take that approach with a grain of salt, though. Low stakes often mean quitting when the going gets tough.
Fear As A Positive Motivator
Remember, fear can also be a positive motivator. For example, if you didn’t fear a large wild animal, you might not know to keep your distance. How you respond to the emotion of fear often has a whole lot more to do with the outcome than the stimulus that caused the fear itself.
For me, “keeping the wolves away” motivates me to keep working to pay the bills. Instead of fearing next month’s expenses, I use the reality that they will come as a positive motivator to keep working toward financial freedom.
Don’t let fear keep you from pursuing and achieving your financial goals. Recognize financial fear, understand it, and take practical steps to mitigate risks and overcome irrational fears.
What are some of your financial fears? What do you do to mitigate the underlying risks that accompany those fears?
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How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements
Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.
Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.
There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.
Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.
Embed the strength of AI and ML.
AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.
Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.
ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses.
In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.
Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities
Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased.
Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information.
Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place.
In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.
Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development
You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.
You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.
Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.
Developing key skills to achieve goals
Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.
Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.
Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.
Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.
Development/Coding Knowledge
Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.
Hacking proof framework
There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.
Communication Abilities/Soft Skills
Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:
Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.
Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.
Agile Implementations
It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.
- Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds.
- Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
- Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
- Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them.
- Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.
- Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
- Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
- Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.
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