Category: fear

business, career, entrepreneurship, fear, time

My Year of Hopefulness – Fear #5 of Entrepreneurship

Christa Avampato

“I don’t have enough time.”

Running a business, particularly as a side venture in addition to a day job, is time-consuming no question. There will be trade-offs. I’ve found that a good deal of organization and keeping initial goals small helps to temper this fear of not having enough time. Starting a business can be an overwhelming project, though breaking it down into small bite-sized action items makes the idea less daunting.

Here are some ideas to make the time management portion of your new business more manageable:

1.) Develop an action plan, a task list, and a timeline to stay on track with small goals

2.) Celebrate achievements small and large, especially at the very early stage of starting a business – developing the first draft of your business plan, meeting a contact that has the potential to be a partner, deciding on the name of your company, etc., launching your website. Every accomplishments is worth at least a little celebration.

3.) Get some help – could be an intern, a family member, a friend, or a potential business partner to give a few hours of their time. Sharing the load can take some of the pressure off.

4.) Fun organization tools abound at places like Target, Container Store, and Staples. Use them to keep you motivated in your quest for organization.

5.) Set a realistic time frame. There’s a lot of pressure in the world to move as fast as possible all the time. Running a business is a long-term commitment and slow, managed growth wins the race.

6.) Remember that the time will pass any way, regardless of how you spend it so why not invest in an idea that you have and see if you can make a go of it? The worst that can happen is that you’ll still have your day job, you will learn a lot about yourself and what you want out of your life, and you can always switch gears and work on a different idea if the first one doesn’t work out.

When I was in college, I was feeling overwhelmed by some paper or exam. One of my roommates gave me a very small two inch picture frame. To this day, it still sits on my desk to remind me that all I have to do at this very moment is enough work to fill that two inch frame. And once I finish with that first small task, I can move on to another. That two inch frame doesn’t reduce the amount of work I have – it just gives me a perspective that’s a little bit easier to deal with.

business, entrepreneurship, fear, friendship, ideation, intellectual property

My Year of Hopefulness – Fear #4 of Entrepreneurship

Christa Avampato

“Someone will steal my idea.”

Last night I went out with my friend, Steve, who is one of the greatest inspirations in my life. He’s one of the hardest working, most courageous business people I know. He’s my go-to guy when I have a new business idea and need advice. For a long time, he’s been encouraging me to start my own business. I was telling him about my business idea and asked him how he decided to communicate his business plan while also protecting his idea.

“Chances are, Christa, no one is going to think your idea is worth quitting their own job over. The idea that starts a business is 10% of the work and executing it is the other 90%. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to do that 90% alone.”

With that kind of perspective, the fear of someone stealing my idea seems completely irrational. In addition, consider that Apple was not the first MP3 maker, Zappo’ not the first on-line e-tailer to sell shoes, Google not the first search or email service. These companies redefined their playing field, largely by banking on delightful execution and maniacal focus on customers and employees. Their ideas were around long before they were ever created. They brought their own special mark to an idea; that special mark brought them success and is something that cannot be stolen.

business, career, children, entrepreneurship, fear, rejection

My Year of Hopefulness – Fear #2 of entrepreneurship

Christa Avampato

“No one will want the product or service my business produces.”

This is the #2 fear of entrepreneurship for me, the second in a series that I’m doing after being inspired by Gary Novosel, Founder of The Food Medic. In our interview, he gave a piece of advice that really resonated with me: if you’re afraid of starting your business, write all your fears down, and then put them aside. So here we go, fear #2 – no one will want what I’m trying to sell.

Isn’t that the age old story of rejection – people won’t like me, I won’t be good enough, or, the worst – I won’t be relevant. What I say and think and do will not matter and no one will care. Ouch – painful ideas and thoughts that we work very hard to suppress, and yet at least at one moment of weakness in our lives, we’ve all felt them.

One of the fun things of starting a business and making a product or service is continuous improvement. The enemy of good is perfection – so don’t wait perfection to get the idea out the door. If you do, that product will never see the light of day. You’ll tweak and tweak and tweak, until someone else beats you to the punch and puts together a similar idea.

And what’s the very worst that can happen? People won’t by what we make, we’ll get feedback, change the product, and try again. Not so bad, right? Or maybe it’s just not reaching the right audience, or a wide enough audience. Or maybe it’s an idea that just needs time in order to b adopted by the market.

I was thinking about this fear all day today, wondering how I’d write this post and put it in perspective. As I rounded the corner toward my apartment this evening, a bunch of little kids ran up to me to drag me to their lemonade / cookie stand. For $0.10 I could get my choice of a cookie or a glass of lemonade, or for $0.20 I could get both. These kids did not have one bit of fear telling me about their business and the cost of the goods they were selling. I envied them.

I walked toward my apartment, happily eating my chocolate chip cookie, and honestly, it was the best cookie I’ve ever had. Entrepreneurship is alive and well among kids, so couldn’t we just model our own behavior after their fearlessness? It’s at least worth a try.

business, career, entrepreneurship, fear, money

My Year of Hopefulness – Putting fears aside

Christa Avampato

In yesterday’s post, Gary Novosel of The Food Medic gave the advice that all entrepreneurs should write down all the fears about starting their own business, and then put them aside. I really took his advice to heart as I have a lot of fears about starting my own business. As I reviewed my list I realized that it’s longer than I thought it was and that there are probably a lot of people who share the same fears.

To overcome fears we have to look our fears in the face and not blink. I really want to start my own venture, and the best way to answer these fears is to write them out and then write a remedy for each of them. Since these thoughts may be helpful to readers who are also interested in starting their own businesses, I wanted to write them as a series on this blog with the hope that I can replace fear with hope:

Fear #1: “I won’t make enough money.”

Start small and grow slowly. Whenever we begin something, we naturally wish for success in a big way. What seems more sustainable to me, and will likely generate more happiness, is a steady flame rather than a flash in the pan.

If we can keep a steady job while starting our own business on the side with our free time, that releases some financial fears. The trick is to be present at a job when we’re there, and present working on our business in our own time. I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs that they are frustrated that they can’t spend all their time on their business because they have to keep a day job. Finding a few nuggets of our job that inform our own business idea eases that frustration.

My friend, Dave, is interested in a portfolio approach to his career – a lot of different ventures that each earn a small amount of money and keep him interested and engaged. Entrepreneurs place a lot of pressure on themselves to earn all their income from a single business idea. That might work, or we might find that we’re happy earning a portion of our total income from a business venture, at least in the beginning.

Concern about earning enough money from my business laid to rest. Fear #2 for tomorrow: “No one will want the product or service my business produces.”

career, fear, hope, theatre, work

My Year of Hopefulness – Stage Fright

Christa Avampato

Today, the theatre group joined, Temporary Shakespeare Company, had its first performance. We did a reading of Comedy of Errors for corporate employees at my company. All morning, I was reminded of how it felt to be on stage and why I didn’t pursue that avenue. I have horrible, horrible stage fright. Always. Without fail. 


Today, the stakes were even higher because I played a sorceress in front of people I work with, obviously in a very different capacity. Somehow, standing on that stage with all these other people taking the same risk made my stage fright dissipate. I didn’t shake, I didn’t feel sick to my stomach. We jumped off the cliff together. And the audience, our co-workers, caught us. 

And maybe that’s all it takes to make us let go of our fear, whether on stage or off: a group of people willing to let go of their fear, too.
fear, kayak, travel

Riding Atop the Water

Christa Avampato
On a recent kayak trip in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I went out with some friends on one of those perfect days. Days that make you happy you’re alive, breathing fresh air and able to enjoy just being a part of the surroundings. All my friends had kayaks that had them seated low in the water. This allowed them to maneuver easily, though they had a fair possibility of tipping once out of the protection of the sound.

My kayak was an ocean kayak. It sits higher in the water making it a bit harder to paddle, though providing it with superior balance and a significantly smaller likelihood of tipping when the water gets rough. Since I just learned to swim this past year, choppy water makes me a little more than nervous. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that making a boat sit higher in the water made it less likely to tip even though I was having to use all the arm strength I could muster to paddle around.

In a testament to my bravery, I tried to follow my friends out of the sound. I may have had a safer kayak, though they were all better swimmers. My seasickness and general fear of death by drowning sent me back to the sound, alone, after only a few minutes out on the open water.

So I made my way, albeit slowly, down a few channels among the cattails and mangroves. I was overwhelmed by the stillness when I let my paddle lay across my lap. I could only hear the whisper of the wind in the tall grasses around me. And I felt the water lift me up.

Riding atop the water, living above the fray, takes work. Hard work – we have to paddle with all our might, with everything we have within us. We feel every bump beneath us. We sway back and forth with the water, with life, roiling underneath us. And we have to keep going. Put the paddle in the water, put our hearts on the line, and move forward with courage and confidence. There is no guarantee of preventing a tip into the water, not in a kayak, and not in life. To be sure, traveling on a higher plane is more difficult: it takes patience, time, and an understanding of the forces all around us. The prize is knowing that when the waves really kicks up, we are much more likely to keep moving ahead, toward our goal, than those sitting low in the water who are being consumed by the chaos of the seas.
experience, fear, swim

Dear Terrified Adults

Christa Avampato

Dear Terrified Adults

My Uncle Tom always tells me if I’m not in debt and not afraid at least 50% of the time then I’m not doing enough with my life. Whether or not that’s true, it’s been a great comfort to me since I’ve been in debt for over a decade now, and have spent far more than 50% of that time afraid of all sorts of things.

Often what I fear and what I believe I fear are different things. I always thought I was afraid of swimming because I was afraid I’d lose control somehow and drown. I like to splash around (as long as my feet can touch the bottom) and I like being near the ocean, a lake, or a river. I’m not afraid of swimming; I’m afraid of being incapable of swimming; I’m afraid of uncertainty.

Think of all the things I can’t do because I can’t swim! 75% of the world’s surface is under water. If I never learn to swim, and never learn to scuba dive, I’ll miss out on exploring ¾ of the world. If I don’t learn to swim, I’ll never be able to do a triathlon. I’ll never learn how to surf. I’ll never get to be a trainer for a day at Sea World. In August, I decided I had to get out there and conquer this fear.

When I signed up for a beginning swimming class, I expected to meet an Olympic look-alike swim instructor who wouldn’t understand my lack of natural swimming ability. Instead, I met Karla, a woman who’s at once scrappy and incredibly supportive. She’s been teaching swimming for 50 years and proudly boasts, “I haven’t had a student fail yet.” My mother always said I was one-of-a-kind; let’s hope I don’t ruin Karla’s record. “I teach the terrified adult class, levels 1 and 2,” Karla said to me at registration. “How do I know which level I’m in?” I ask. “That all depends. How terrified are you?” “I get a little nervous in water more than 5 feet deep,” I say. “Yep, you’re a terrified adult, level 1. But don’t worry, I can fix that,” says Karla with her smiley, grandmotherly eyes. I’m to report to the AFC pool the following Wednesday, goggles and personal injury waiver in hand. “And don’t be late.”

On Wednesday, there’s a giant sign on the locker room door that reads: “Dear TERRIFIED ADULT swimmers (to be) – DO NOT SHOWER, we start swimming on dry land!?%#$!?? See you in the classroom by the pool. Karla”

I arrive at the classroom, and watch the swimmers intently. My heart’s racing. Karla’s right – I AM a terrified adult. Look at all these people, paddling along as if they were born to do this. It looks so easy for them. Why isn’t it easy for me? Why am I so scared?

At that time I didn’t realize that I had already done the scariest part of this process and I hadn’t even touched the water yet. I signed up to do something that I may very well fail at, all under the watchful eyes of dozens of other people enjoying the pool. I was risking public humiliation, failing to learn to do something that a five year old does without even thinking about it. I realized that ‘fessing up to fear is a lot harder than conquering the fear itself.

I’ve been working with Karla and six other terrified adult classmates for a few weeks now, and this past Wednesday for the first time in my life I swam properly, breast stroke, frog kick, with my head under water. I’ve graduated to what Karla calls the “moderately terrified adult class”, level 2. I took the sign off the locker room door from that first night of class and taped it up at home near my desk to remind me to face up to fear more often.

Our finest hour often comes out of moments of fear and disappointment. We’re conditioned to think that success, and doing things we’re naturally good at, brings out our best self. I disagree. Our best self comes shining through when we are most alive, and we are most alive when we have much to lose and yet we forge ahead anyway – head on into that fear and uncertainty. We emerge from the other side stronger, healthier people for having faced up to what frightens us. In the spirit of continuous (self) improvement, I’m making a pact to do things more often that scare the hell out of me.