September 29, 2024 • 11 mins
Transform the way you view fear and propel your business to new heights! In this episode of Brightside Business we discuss the the secrets to overcoming entrepreneurial fears. Joey breaks down the societal pressures, perfectionism, and learned fears that often cripple business owners and offers actionable strategies to reframe these fears, turning them from paralyzing obstacles into empowering alerts.
Join Joey as he dives into eye-opening statistics about the prevalence of fear of failure and tackles the roots of this pervasive issue. Drawing from personal experience and extensive conversations with fellow entrepreneurs, Joey provides a refreshing perspective on how to embrace imperfection and focus on what truly drives business growth. This isn't just another generic talk on motivation; it's a transformative session packed with practical insights that will help you face entrepreneurship's toughest challenges with newfound confidence. Don't miss out on this opportunity to shift your mindset and unlock your business's full potential!
Got Questions? Send them here and I'll tackle them on the show: joey@joeyhyoung.com
Follow me on Instagram, X/Twitter, and Threads for daily content on business strategy and high performance @joeyhyoung
Ready to scale your business? Book a free connection call here and let's chat!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joey Young (00:00):
Welcome to Breadside Business, where we talk to
online entrepreneurs likeyourself about how to grow to
seven figures and beyond.
My name is Joey Young.
I helped grow my family'sprofessional services business
to seven figures in under twoyears and I learned a lot of
lessons along the way.
One of them is how to deal withfear, the emotion of fear and
failure during theentrepreneurship journey.
(00:21):
There's so many things we canunpack here, but I'm just going
to help you create a newdefinition of fear today so,
when you're facing situationsthat are outside your comfort
zone and outside your capacity,you don't let those situations
dictate your business's growth,but instead have the tools to
push through them and ultimatelywin.
So what are we talking abouthere?
We're talking about one of themost powerful fears that America
(00:44):
deals with in the modern daythe fear of failure.
They did a study Lincoln Goaland YouGov of a thousand
Americans and asked them whatare they afraid of?
15% said paranormal activitywas a fear of theirs.
So seeing a ghost at the footof their bed 31% fear of failure
was something that theyactively had fears about.
Fear of failure affects morethan double the amount of people
(01:07):
who fear a ghost showing up intheir bedroom.
So I think this is somethingthat's on a lot of people's
minds and that we should tacklehere.
So let's talk about where fearcomes from.
Well, as an entrepreneur,there's many ways and
opportunities to have fear.
Obviously, a lot is on the linewith starting a business and
running a business, but societalpressure, judgment from others,
(01:27):
can be one of them.
People are afraid to start abusiness because they don't want
to be seen as a failure if itdoesn't work.
They don't want to be seenstruggling.
We don't want to be shown in alack of confidence and a lack of
success sort of light.
This can be a huge issue.
We're pressured to not onlyhave a successful business and
(01:48):
to do well from the beginning,but we feel this pressure to
make it look easy as well and tonot look like we're struggling.
You know, another source of fearcan be perfectionism.
We think things should look acertain way and really
perfectionism is rooted inunrealistic expectations that we
have of ourselves.
I talk to a lot ofentrepreneurs and I've been
through this journey myself offeeling, like you know, I need
(02:11):
to have XYZ branding andmarketing before I can launch
this business, or I need to haveXYZ staff on my team because I
don't feel confident in thisarea before I can push out and
really push this new initiative.
Sometimes it looks like feelinglike you have an expectation on
(02:32):
a certain product or serviceyou're launching or scaling that
it should have some sort oflevel of polish before it's
launched or beta tested.
These little expectations thatare seemingly innocuous can
actually be really damaging to abusiness, because if the
expectations that we don't talkabout, that we bring to our
(02:53):
business, that can be the mostdamaging to our growth.
And so we need to stop thinkingwhat should things look like
and start embracing whatactually works to grow our
business.
And part of this is just facingthe fear of perfectionism,
facing the fear that things arenot going to be perfect, facing
the fear of letting go of someof the presuppositions we have
(03:15):
about our business to be able towork on what actually works to
grow it.
You know, a third source of fearfor us as business owners is
learned fears.
So this is something that's notreally talked about.
But let's say, your parents ora family member or even a boss
you had at one point was anentrepreneur and they struggled.
It was really, really hard forthem, and so you watch that and
(03:37):
you kind of internalize thatwhen you were younger.
The fact that it just comeswith the territory.
When you own a business, you'regoing to suffer, you're going
to work long hours, you're notgoing to make much money, you're
going to have staff problems.
There's all these fears that wehave as entrepreneurs because
we've watched someone elseexperience them, even though we
didn't experience themthemselves, but even though
they're not an active problemfor us, because we've seen it we
(04:01):
feel afraid of these scenariosthat we've never experienced,
because they're learned fears.
So my proposal to you today isnot to avoid fear, but actually
to change your definition of it.
This will help you to deal withall these types of fears.
As an entrepreneur, the firstand foremost mindset we have to
shift is from fear being analarm to it being an alert.
(04:26):
In our lives, a lot of peopleview fear as an alarm.
If I feel fear, I have to run.
I have to avoid it, I have toshove it under the carpet.
I have to see it as the enemy.
Fear is a bad thing.
My proposal to you is that fearis actually more of an alert,
because here's the reality thisisn't 3000 BC and we're not
standing in front of grizzlybears every other day.
(04:47):
We actually don't have a wholelot of use for fear in the same
ways that we needed it back whenwe were facing predators on the
daily in the forest right.
So instead of responding to itlike there is actual danger, we
need to separate ourselves fromit and view it as an alert that
(05:07):
we're not necessarily in danger.
Maybe we're just steppingoutside our comfort zone and
that's a good thing.
Maybe we're not.
Actually, there's not somethingactually going wrong.
It's not an alarm.
Maybe the fear that we'refeeling in a particular moment
is simply a signal that we'restepping outside our comfort
zone, that we're doing.
Maybe the fear that we'refeeling in a particular moment
is simply a signal that we'restepping outside our comfort
zone, that we're doing somethingnew, that we're increasing our
(05:27):
capacity, that we're doingsomething outside of the realm
of normalcy and there's a littlebit of unknown with that.
So, yes, there's going to befear.
So if we can shift ourperspective, it actually helps
us to face these fears head on,instead of again thinking of
them as the enemy, something tobe avoided, something to be
(05:51):
pushed off and not really dealtwith.
So what's really cool is if weknow what the triggers of fear
are, we can understand what itis to feel fear and then reverse
engineer it back to the pointwhere we can say, okay, I know
what triggers the fear, so Iknow I'm in fear, so I can
remember to change myperspective on it.
You've probably heard a lot ofwhat the feelings of fear are
(06:11):
before.
You know the fight, flight,freeze and fawn responses to
fear.
But if we can reverse engineerthese and understand when we
have those feelings, torecognize that we are not in a
moment of danger but that we'rein a moment of growth, this will
help us to overcome a lot ofthose fears of failures that we
have learned, that we haveexperienced as business owners.
(06:34):
So what does fight look like?
Well, fight can often look likepushing back in anger in a
moment of fear.
A lot of people actually dealwith their fear as anger.
So if you're the kind of personwho has the proclivity to have
an emotional outburst, to be alittle bit aggressive when
you're feeling afraid, watch outfor that and remember okay, I'm
(06:57):
getting angry here because Ihave some fear, there's
something to deal with behindthis.
You know flight is.
You know that moment whereyou're trying to avoid something
because it makes you scared.
Flight is a response like youopen up your inbox, you see an
email with a specific headlinethat strikes fear in your chest
and you close your inbox.
That's the avoidance piece,that's the flight piece of fear
(07:18):
in the modern day.
Freezing is when you don't knowwhat to say, your mind is blank,
your heart is beating andthat's pretty much the only
thing that's going on.
You might have this moment whenyou know you receive some bad
news or they have a little bitof anxiety about an event coming
up where you have to perform ora big project you have to
launch.
You might freeze up, your brainmight shut down and this
(07:43):
dramatically decreases thequality of your decision making
when you're in this state.
So it's important to recognizewhen you're in the freeze state,
when you feel like you can'tspeak you don't really have a
lot of brain processing power atthe moment to recognize that
and then again to work your wayback and say, okay, I'm
experiencing fear right now, butthis doesn't necessarily mean
something is wrong.
(08:03):
It's not an alarm, it's just analert that I'm experiencing
fear.
Maybe this is a good thing,because that upcoming project
I'm really nervous aboutlaunching is actually pushing my
business forward in a way thatwe would have never accomplished
if I just stayed within therealm of the known and what
we've done before and what waseasy.
And then FON is an interestingresponse to fear.
(08:24):
It's placating the source offear to try to reduce harm to
ourselves.
So if you have an employee whoyou get in tussles with a lot
and all of a sudden you start tosee their engines revving and
they're getting pissed andthey're about to lash out at you
, the fawn response to fear issaying oh, listen, listen,
listen, I understand, it totally, totally would.
Listen, listen, I understandthat it totally, totally would.
(08:45):
Okay, just tell me what youwant.
Whatever you say, I'll do it.
You're right, I'm sorry, justtell me what you want in this
situation and you can have itLike that's a fawn response.
You try to reduce the damagethat you're about to experience
by placating someone who's angryat you to experience by
placating someone who's angry atyou.
(09:06):
So all these four triggers offear, these responses to fear,
rather they're ways that we canrecognize we're in the moment in
a state of fear, and then thereare triggers for us to go and
say, okay, I am experiencingthis right now, but I'm not
necessarily in danger.
I'm not necessarily in a placewhere I need to switch up what
(09:27):
I'm doing or avoid what I'mabout to do next.
There are more ways for us torecognize that we're
experiencing fear in the 21stcentury, which is, most of the
time, just us stepping outsideour comfort zone, and that's a
good thing.
So, as an entrepreneur, if youdeal with fears like
expectations from others, if youdeal with perfectionism, if you
deal with some learned fears,remember in those moments when
(09:49):
their fear responses pop up thatyou don't have to stop, you
don't have to freeze, you don'thave to flash out and fight, you
don't have to fawn.
You can just breathe and stepinto a moment of clarity, peace,
and remember that you'reprobably on the right track,
you're not doing anything wrong.
Hey, I hope this has beenhelpful for you.
If this show has helped you atall, I would love to hear your
(10:13):
specific questions aboutbusiness and productivity.
So shoot me an email with yourquestions and I will actually be
able to address them on theshow.
I'd love to hear what questionsyou have about business or
productivity.
So that's joey at joeyhyoungcomor my Instagram.
Shoot me the question in a DMthat's at joeyhyoung on
Instagram and, while you're here, you made it to the end of the
(10:36):
video.
So you probably enjoyed this atleast a little bit.
Give it a thumbs up, leave thefive-star review, hit the share
button on this.
Wherever you're hearing orlistening to this, you know, or
watching this on YouTube, and Iwould really appreciate it
because it really does help pushthe video out in the algorithms
when you use those thumbs upand those share buttons and
stuff.
So thank you again forsupporting the show in that way
(10:57):
and until next time, my friends,happy scaling.
Welcome to Breadside Business, where we talk to
online entrepreneurs likeyourself about how to grow to
seven figures and beyond.
My name is Joey Young.
I helped grow my family'sprofessional services business
to seven figures in under twoyears and I learned a lot of
lessons along the way.
One of them is how to deal withfear, the emotion of fear and
failure during theentrepreneurship journey.
(00:21):
There's so many things we canunpack here, but I'm just going
to help you create a newdefinition of fear today so,
when you're facing situationsthat are outside your comfort
zone and outside your capacity,you don't let those situations
dictate your business's growth,but instead have the tools to
push through them and ultimatelywin.
So what are we talking abouthere?
We're talking about one of themost powerful fears that America
(00:44):
deals with in the modern daythe fear of failure.
They did a study Lincoln Goaland YouGov of a thousand
Americans and asked them whatare they afraid of?
15% said paranormal activitywas a fear of theirs.
So seeing a ghost at the footof their bed 31% fear of failure
was something that theyactively had fears about.
Fear of failure affects morethan double the amount of people
(01:07):
who fear a ghost showing up intheir bedroom.
So I think this is somethingthat's on a lot of people's
minds and that we should tacklehere.
So let's talk about where fearcomes from.
Well, as an entrepreneur,there's many ways and
opportunities to have fear.
Obviously, a lot is on the linewith starting a business and
running a business, but societalpressure, judgment from others,
(01:27):
can be one of them.
People are afraid to start abusiness because they don't want
to be seen as a failure if itdoesn't work.
They don't want to be seenstruggling.
We don't want to be shown in alack of confidence and a lack of
success sort of light.
This can be a huge issue.
We're pressured to not onlyhave a successful business and
(01:48):
to do well from the beginning,but we feel this pressure to
make it look easy as well and tonot look like we're struggling.
You know, another source of fearcan be perfectionism.
We think things should look acertain way and really
perfectionism is rooted inunrealistic expectations that we
have of ourselves.
I talk to a lot ofentrepreneurs and I've been
through this journey myself offeeling, like you know, I need
(02:11):
to have XYZ branding andmarketing before I can launch
this business, or I need to haveXYZ staff on my team because I
don't feel confident in thisarea before I can push out and
really push this new initiative.
Sometimes it looks like feelinglike you have an expectation on
(02:32):
a certain product or serviceyou're launching or scaling that
it should have some sort oflevel of polish before it's
launched or beta tested.
These little expectations thatare seemingly innocuous can
actually be really damaging to abusiness, because if the
expectations that we don't talkabout, that we bring to our
(02:53):
business, that can be the mostdamaging to our growth.
And so we need to stop thinkingwhat should things look like
and start embracing whatactually works to grow our
business.
And part of this is just facingthe fear of perfectionism,
facing the fear that things arenot going to be perfect, facing
the fear of letting go of someof the presuppositions we have
(03:15):
about our business to be able towork on what actually works to
grow it.
You know, a third source of fearfor us as business owners is
learned fears.
So this is something that's notreally talked about.
But let's say, your parents ora family member or even a boss
you had at one point was anentrepreneur and they struggled.
It was really, really hard forthem, and so you watch that and
(03:37):
you kind of internalize thatwhen you were younger.
The fact that it just comeswith the territory.
When you own a business, you'regoing to suffer, you're going
to work long hours, you're notgoing to make much money, you're
going to have staff problems.
There's all these fears that wehave as entrepreneurs because
we've watched someone elseexperience them, even though we
didn't experience themthemselves, but even though
they're not an active problemfor us, because we've seen it we
(04:01):
feel afraid of these scenariosthat we've never experienced,
because they're learned fears.
So my proposal to you today isnot to avoid fear, but actually
to change your definition of it.
This will help you to deal withall these types of fears.
As an entrepreneur, the firstand foremost mindset we have to
shift is from fear being analarm to it being an alert.
(04:26):
In our lives, a lot of peopleview fear as an alarm.
If I feel fear, I have to run.
I have to avoid it, I have toshove it under the carpet.
I have to see it as the enemy.
Fear is a bad thing.
My proposal to you is that fearis actually more of an alert,
because here's the reality thisisn't 3000 BC and we're not
standing in front of grizzlybears every other day.
(04:47):
We actually don't have a wholelot of use for fear in the same
ways that we needed it back whenwe were facing predators on the
daily in the forest right.
So instead of responding to itlike there is actual danger, we
need to separate ourselves fromit and view it as an alert that
(05:07):
we're not necessarily in danger.
Maybe we're just steppingoutside our comfort zone and
that's a good thing.
Maybe we're not.
Actually, there's not somethingactually going wrong.
It's not an alarm.
Maybe the fear that we'refeeling in a particular moment
is simply a signal that we'restepping outside our comfort
zone, that we're doing.
Maybe the fear that we'refeeling in a particular moment
is simply a signal that we'restepping outside our comfort
zone, that we're doing somethingnew, that we're increasing our
(05:27):
capacity, that we're doingsomething outside of the realm
of normalcy and there's a littlebit of unknown with that.
So, yes, there's going to befear.
So if we can shift ourperspective, it actually helps
us to face these fears head on,instead of again thinking of
them as the enemy, something tobe avoided, something to be
(05:51):
pushed off and not really dealtwith.
So what's really cool is if weknow what the triggers of fear
are, we can understand what itis to feel fear and then reverse
engineer it back to the pointwhere we can say, okay, I know
what triggers the fear, so Iknow I'm in fear, so I can
remember to change myperspective on it.
You've probably heard a lot ofwhat the feelings of fear are
(06:11):
before.
You know the fight, flight,freeze and fawn responses to
fear.
But if we can reverse engineerthese and understand when we
have those feelings, torecognize that we are not in a
moment of danger but that we'rein a moment of growth, this will
help us to overcome a lot ofthose fears of failures that we
have learned, that we haveexperienced as business owners.
(06:34):
So what does fight look like?
Well, fight can often look likepushing back in anger in a
moment of fear.
A lot of people actually dealwith their fear as anger.
So if you're the kind of personwho has the proclivity to have
an emotional outburst, to be alittle bit aggressive when
you're feeling afraid, watch outfor that and remember okay, I'm
(06:57):
getting angry here because Ihave some fear, there's
something to deal with behindthis.
You know flight is.
You know that moment whereyou're trying to avoid something
because it makes you scared.
Flight is a response like youopen up your inbox, you see an
email with a specific headlinethat strikes fear in your chest
and you close your inbox.
That's the avoidance piece,that's the flight piece of fear
(07:18):
in the modern day.
Freezing is when you don't knowwhat to say, your mind is blank,
your heart is beating andthat's pretty much the only
thing that's going on.
You might have this moment whenyou know you receive some bad
news or they have a little bitof anxiety about an event coming
up where you have to perform ora big project you have to
launch.
You might freeze up, your brainmight shut down and this
(07:43):
dramatically decreases thequality of your decision making
when you're in this state.
So it's important to recognizewhen you're in the freeze state,
when you feel like you can'tspeak you don't really have a
lot of brain processing power atthe moment to recognize that
and then again to work your wayback and say, okay, I'm
experiencing fear right now, butthis doesn't necessarily mean
something is wrong.
(08:03):
It's not an alarm, it's just analert that I'm experiencing
fear.
Maybe this is a good thing,because that upcoming project
I'm really nervous aboutlaunching is actually pushing my
business forward in a way thatwe would have never accomplished
if I just stayed within therealm of the known and what
we've done before and what waseasy.
And then FON is an interestingresponse to fear.
(08:24):
It's placating the source offear to try to reduce harm to
ourselves.
So if you have an employee whoyou get in tussles with a lot
and all of a sudden you start tosee their engines revving and
they're getting pissed andthey're about to lash out at you
, the fawn response to fear issaying oh, listen, listen,
listen, I understand, it totally, totally would.
Listen, listen, I understandthat it totally, totally would.
(08:45):
Okay, just tell me what youwant.
Whatever you say, I'll do it.
You're right, I'm sorry, justtell me what you want in this
situation and you can have itLike that's a fawn response.
You try to reduce the damagethat you're about to experience
by placating someone who's angryat you to experience by
placating someone who's angry atyou.
(09:06):
So all these four triggers offear, these responses to fear,
rather they're ways that we canrecognize we're in the moment in
a state of fear, and then thereare triggers for us to go and
say, okay, I am experiencingthis right now, but I'm not
necessarily in danger.
I'm not necessarily in a placewhere I need to switch up what
(09:27):
I'm doing or avoid what I'mabout to do next.
There are more ways for us torecognize that we're
experiencing fear in the 21stcentury, which is, most of the
time, just us stepping outsideour comfort zone, and that's a
good thing.
So, as an entrepreneur, if youdeal with fears like
expectations from others, if youdeal with perfectionism, if you
deal with some learned fears,remember in those moments when
(09:49):
their fear responses pop up thatyou don't have to stop, you
don't have to freeze, you don'thave to flash out and fight, you
don't have to fawn.
You can just breathe and stepinto a moment of clarity, peace,
and remember that you'reprobably on the right track,
you're not doing anything wrong.
Hey, I hope this has beenhelpful for you.
If this show has helped you atall, I would love to hear your
(10:13):
specific questions aboutbusiness and productivity.
So shoot me an email with yourquestions and I will actually be
able to address them on theshow.
I'd love to hear what questionsyou have about business or
productivity.
So that's joey at joeyhyoungcomor my Instagram.
Shoot me the question in a DMthat's at joeyhyoung on
Instagram and, while you're here, you made it to the end of the
(10:36):
video.
So you probably enjoyed this atleast a little bit.
Give it a thumbs up, leave thefive-star review, hit the share
button on this.
Wherever you're hearing orlistening to this, you know, or
watching this on YouTube, and Iwould really appreciate it
because it really does help pushthe video out in the algorithms
when you use those thumbs upand those share buttons and
stuff.
So thank you again forsupporting the show in that way
(10:57):
and until next time, my friends,happy scaling.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com