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How Do I Get Rid Of Fear as a Small Business Owner?

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Seth Godin wrote a blog post How do I get rid of fear? and it inspired me to answer this same question, but from the viewpoint of a small business owner.

First a little background.  My name is Andrew Savala and I’m the CEO / Owner of RedSwimmer a small software company specializing in kiosk software.

As a small business owner I have plenty of things to be afraid of.  The following list comes to mind:

  • Fear of not having enough clients
  • Fear of not adding the “right” features to our software
  • Fear of pissing off our clients
  • Fear of getting out of my comfort zone to learn about sales, marketing and social networking
  • Fear of attention
  • Fear that someone (or everyone) will quit
  • Fear of letting everyone down
  • Fear that people will find out how unqualified I am to run a business

I think the greatest of all my fears is the fear of getting attention, which is really ironic considering I run the marketing department.

I’m a software developer by trade and not really a people person.  I only ended up in sales and marketing because we’re a company full of people just like me and we desperately needed someone to fill this void.  We’re also a small company, so we couldn’t afford to hire someone fulltime to fill this position.

So how did I overcome the fear of attention?  By walking right through it and drawing as much attention to myself as possible.  I currently spend about half of my day writing and distributing content for the sole purpose of getting noticed.

As the fear of attention has subsided I’ve also discovered that I really enjoy writing and over the past six months have become much better at communicating my ideas.  Six months to overcome a lifelong fear and discover a new passion seems worth it.

I’d encourage you to do the same and face your fears this year.  2016 will be here before you know it, so it’s time you got started.

Andrew Savala
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Author: Andrew Savala

Andrew Savala is the CEO of RedSwimmer, with a background in designing and deploying complex payment kiosk systems. Andrew offers high-value, strategic consulting services to companies looking to develop their payment kiosks.