Taking an Entrepreneurial Leap of Faith
This probably isn’t the pep talk you were looking for, but we regret to inform you that there is no magic moment to pursue entrepreneurship.
Our culture makes it difficult to disabuse ourselves of the notion of the “perfect time” to start a business. On one hand, the businesses we idolize today are massive successes in large part for their supposed ability to see around corners, take calculated risks, and win the race to get a desirable product to market first; they waited until the right moment and were rewarded for their prescience by becoming an overnight success. On the other hand, the American mythos of the self-made man permeates hustle culture with a “leap before you look” attitude of bootstrapping and taking daring risks; an opportunity presents itself and must be taken, consequences be damned.
Consider this: when it comes to forecasting, from economic conditions to geopolitical events, even experts are usually only as accurate as a coin toss (at best). Predicting the ‘next best thing’ is usually a matter of luck, not skill. And if a self-made man is one that does first and asks questions later, well, all we can say is that it’s no surprise men have a shorter life expectancy than women.
In other words, neither testosterone-drenched worldview has much bearing in reality. They’re a form of hindsight bias, an explanation we apply to the successes of others that we then internalize in the hopes of achieving the same results for ourselves. Worse, these cognitive distortions lead would-be entrepreneurs to torture themselves with superfluous questions–have I done enough research? Am I too old for this? Am I too young for this?–around timing and readiness.
Anyone reading this doubtless wants to ensure their own leap of faith comes off as an Olympic-caliber swan dive into tranquil waters, rather than a mess of flailing limbs straight into the piranha exhibit at the local aquarium. While the roles of luck and skill can never be overstated, there are still a few universal steps anyone can take to stop fretting over when to take the plunge when they need to start thinking about how to climb up the diving board in the first place.
The process begins with defining what “ready” means to you. Obviously, this varies drastically from person to person, which is why we prefer to think of an entrepreneurial leap of faith as a major investment in yourself. As with any investment, it requires you to have a certain amount of capital stashed away and a certain tolerance for risk: how much do you need saved up to feel secure, and how much are you willing to lose? These are questions you answer for yourself that determine when you’re ready to jump.
On the subject of financial preparedness: don’t quit your day job. Nothing says you have to pull a quarter- or mid-life crisis, light your cubicle on fire, and walk away, action hero style. If you want to start your own business but are afraid of financial repercussions–and you’re not afraid to put in a little extra work outside of business hours–then you can have the best of both worlds by continuing to enjoy the stability of a salary while building something for your future (again, just like any other major investment). With dedication, you’ll be able to put in your two weeks soon enough, without putting yourself in the hole.
Even with your finances squared away, there’s still some cognitive lifting to be done. Accept that you are going to fail at some point, in ways big or small. You have no way of knowing how big the failure will be, so embrace the unknown, and recategorize failure in your brain as a continuing education opportunity, not a colossal mistake. Entrepreneurship is learning, troubleshooting, and problem solving–continuously. We’d say it only stops when you’re asleep, but psychology tells us our brains make sense of information even during REM, so apparently you’re still going to learn in your dreams.
We chose to highlight these two roadblocks–financial concerns and fear of failure–because they tend to be the two biggest impediments to most people pursuing entrepreneurship.Two obstacles do not constitute an exhaustive list, but we’d argue that these two in particular are the factors that lead people to obsess over timing their leap of faith rather than actually taking the plunge. Trepidation in the face of starting your own business is a completely rational response, but you shouldn’t let it hold you back.
After all, if you’re waiting for the clouds to part and the angels to sing, you could just as easily miss your moment as you could jump the gun and shoot your shot without doing the necessary legwork. We all want to be the next overnight success, but more of us would achieve our goals if we focused on the slow and steady approach. And that requires being willing to take a risk, especially on yourself. Bombs away.
