Do you work with small business owners? Are you a small business owner yourself? What scares you? What worries your customers? Call them pain points. Call them potential obstacles. Call them blind spots. Once you identify them, you can remedy them. Read on to find out what small business owners fear.
Earlier this year I attended a workshop of 22 wannabe entrepreneurs. A variety of business startups were represented, including video producer, gluten-free snack bar chef, t-shirt designer, essential oil distiller, clothing purveyor, trainer, webmaster, accessories maven, and me, of course, the market researcher.
We sat nervously around a conference room table, waiting for the local marketing guru slash host to expound on brand-building. Everyone was silent: no networking going on here. Finally the guru got his video camera working. He turned to us. “What is a brand?” he asked. We dove in.
First we talked about how a brand is a collection of multiple factors. Perhaps the most visible part of a business, the logo, is just one element of a brand. Character and personality, reputation and identity… all combine to create the recognizable brand that people talk about—or ignore, in many cases. I thought to myself, if character and personality are considered, then I already have a brand, and felt a bit smug. “Perception is reality,” he told us.
At one point, he stopped talking and just stood quietly, looking around the table at us. What is he doing? We quivered under his gaze. Feeling a lot less smug now, I kept my head down, intent on my notes, in case he was about to ask for volunteers for some diabolical role-play demonstration. Worse. He pinned us with his eyes and said, “Everyone has fears when they first start a business. What scares you? Take a minute and write down your top two fears.”
A few people giggled apprehensively. Then there was a fraught silence. It wasn’t long before we put our pens down.
“Tell the group your fears,” he intoned, pointing to the first person on his left. We went around the table and shared our top two fears. I documented the responses in my journal, as best I could, in real time. Later I typed the list and organized it into two main categories, personal and business. Within these two main categories, I identified several themes. In case you are wondering, I removed my top two fears from the list, in the interest of research integrity. However, I’ll share them with you sometime, perhaps in a future blog post.
Here is the list of fears from 22 entrepreneurs in Portland, Oregon. Feel free to add some of your own.
Personal Concerns
Physical/Health/Social/Spiritual Concerns
- Find a product, rather than be the product
- Personal change
- Desire to donate and volunteer
- How to help the world through business
- Maintain balance: don’t want it to take over my life
- “Sacred art” versus “sales”
- Personal growth
- Not enough fun
- Prefer to work one to one
- Too much work
- Attention deficit
- Focus on health
- Time commitment required to grow
Fear of Failure
- Fear of losing money
- Fear of not being “followed”
- Fear of not capturing attention
- Go big or go home
- Invest passion, but not be recognized
- Tendency to over deliver
Fear of Loss of Integrity
- Finding balance between delivery and profitability
- Maintaining integrity while making money
- Picking clients and projects just for the money
- To become impersonal
Fear of Growth
- Fear of reaching a larger audience
- Fear that it will grow
- Resistant to set appropriate price
Business Concerns
Marketing
- Differentiation
- Growing a base of clients
- How to bring personalization into a web-based business
- How to educate people
- Losing people from website (due to messaging problem)
- Might not be marketable
- Need more “evangelists”
- Pivoting from one audience to another
- Producing stuff that doesn’t sell
- Selecting a defined product
- Understanding trends
- What do clients want?
Financial
- Cost of doing business
- How to be professional with minimal financial investment
- Inventory management
- Inventory turnover
- Making an investment in inventory
- Not producing means no income
- Setting appropriate price to cover labor
- To get best return on investment
Branding
- Brand buzz
- Creating a personal brand
- Creating the brand
Technology
- Technology
- Using technology to reach a broader audience
Management
- Hiring the young
- Knowing all parts of the business in order to oversee the business
Starting a small business is a process, and for some of us, it can be scary. Many of our fears are unfounded. Many come from internal confusion and spiritual questing. Once you identify your (or your customers’) fears, you can begin to remedy them.
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