Learn from event mentorship program expert May Yeo Silvers how entrepreneurs can confidently and wisely take business risks.
We recently did a poll inside our Facebook group Events4Anyone:A-Z guide to start and grow your event planning business asking our members if they are fearful or fearless when it comes to their event planning business.
We have a lot of fearful eventrepreneurs and also a great number of fearless eventrepreneurs, which is encouraging!
There is no right or wrong answer to this question. It’s not good to be fearful and it’s not good to be fearless either. I will explain why at the end of this blog.
If You Are Fearful
If you belong to the fearful camp, I want you to ask yourself these 3 questions:
Did your fear arise from a past experience? If yes, why are you allowing your past to dictate your future?
Is your fear even real? Evaluate your present environment and opportunity. Is there data or evidence that supports whatever you are fearing is going to happen?
Are you in control of your fear? If no, why not?
I want to invite you to join me in this mental visualization exercise. For the fearful eventrepreneurs, I want you to imagine your fear (aka your inner voice, that devil that sits on your left shoulder) as a big bully. Put a face to that bully, someone that you couldn’t care less about and have negative feelings towards. I want you to put a face to that big bully.
Then, I want you to visualize that bully kicking you and hurting you really bad each time you decide to implement something for your business, be it raising your fee, trying a new marketing strategy or trying to close a potential client.
Each time you want to attempt something for your business, this big bad bully is kicking you at every angle, hurting you so bad that you could hardly stand up so all you could do is curl up like a ball and let that bully kick you, berate you, tell you that you are worthless, that you are good for nothing, and there is no way you can succeed in anything you try to do.
How does that make you feel? Did you feel anything when I asked you to visualize that scenario? Can you literally feel the pain that the big bully is inflicting on you physically, mentally, and emotionally?
If you felt nothing, that means you are so immune to the pain that your inner voice, that devil on your shoulder, (that imaginary big bully) has been inflicting on you that you have just accepted it as part of life.
Ask yourself, if, in real life, someone is abusing you like how the imaginary bully is abusing you, will you accept it as part of life? If your answer is no, then why would you allow your inner voice, aka the bully, to abuse you and cause you to make the wrong decision for your business?
If you did feel something when you played out the whole scenario, then I want you to ask yourself if you have ever done anything to fight that bully back. If your answer is yes, did you win? If your answer is no, you didn’t win, then ask yourself if you got stronger each time you tried to fight it. The key here is you TRIED to fight it. Because the more you try, the stronger you become.
It is NOT normal to accept that type of emotional abuse that you allow your inner voice to inflict onto yourself.
How To Overcome Fear
I did a YouTube tutorial on how to overcome fear. Watch this video to learn the strategies and kick fear to the curb.
Are You Fearless?
If you belong to the fearless camp, I want you to ask yourself this question:
When you decide to try on a new marketing strategy for your business, do you do your background work to find out if this new strategy is suitable for your business and your target audience or do you just dive in blindly?
Now, let’s try another mental exercise. This time, I want you to imagine yourself as this fearless warrior going to fight a war. You are fearless, so you went out charging towards the enemy line without any plan of attack, armour, and no backup.
What do you think will happen to you? The answer is obvious. You will get hit, injured, and probably get killed! A warrior who is not prepared before going to war is not fearless, he is plain foolish and reckless.
Apply that to your event planning business. I applaud you for taking imperfect actions, but every imperfect action has some form of behind-the-scenes prep work so your imperfect actions can yield some results.
Do Your Research
If you decide to try new strategies to grow your business but you didn’t do any groundwork to get the necessary information to decide if these strategies are aligned with your brand, the services you want to offer, or appeal to your target audience, then you will be “killed” when you go to market.
You get “killed” because you just wasted your hard-earned money and wasted precious time and resources without getting all your facts right. It’s great to take risks for your business, but it has to be a calculated risk.
Moving forward, I want you to turn fear into fascination. Fear is basically the “unknown”. If you allow yourself to be fascinated by the unknown instead of being paralyzed by fear, then you will open yourself up to possibilities of knowing how to conquer the unknown. You will start to look for resources to “arm” yourself, so you are ready to fight that big bully and go to the fight prepared as a fearless warrior.
Conclusion
Mindset is one of the pillars we teach inside our Unstoppable Eventrepreneurs Mentorship Program® that helps event planners start and grow their event planning company into a 6-figure profit business.
Want to hop on a call to see if you are a good fit for our mentorship program? Click the link here, let’s chat!
Standing By You
May Yeo Silvers
