Tom Bandy knows all about the fear of the entrepreneur. Having built two companies from the ground up, he has experienced the fear of spending investors’ money and the fear of making payroll. Fear can be helpful, even necessary. Fear is the mind’s way of telling us that danger. Fear can wreak havoc on the entrepreneurial life, it can make every obstacle seem insurmountable. Consider the German proverb; “Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.” The trick is learning to overcome our fear so that we see he wolf as, well, just a wolf. It’s not easy. Fear has been etched into our DNA since the first cave man got too close to his campfire.
Bandy founded his software consulting and web design firm, BandyWorks, in 2005in Petersburg, Va. He’d been there before, back in the 1980s, fresh out of the University of Virginia, he started a company that developed database performance tools. After 16 years, an internal debate over the firm’s direction resulted in a struggle for control, a struggle that Bandy lost. “One of my fears is I’ll grow weary of overcoming obstacles. That really is the definition of entrepreneur. I know what it’s like to fail and lose something after you’ve worked really hard on it” he said.
Fear can be one helluva teacher. Bandy made some institutional changes when he founded BandyWorks, which today employs 32 persons. Perhaps most significant, he decided against soliciting money from outside investors. He and his wife came up with $35,000 in startup capital, Bandy says and have invested about $500,000 from proceed back into the company. “I’ve been through a lot, and I don’t have much fear about anything except making sure I don’t screw up the process, Bandy says. “I am more afraid of looking stupid to my friends on my advisory board than I am of losing money”
However, Bandy still worries, though these days his fears are not always rooted in the workplace. He doesn’t fear failure, and he’s had enough success that he doesn’t worry about going hungry. Instead, he’s more likely to worry about whether he’s spending enough time tossing a baseball with his son. “I still wake up on the middle of the night, but I go back to sleep more quickly now. So I think I’ve made a little progress”
SCARY BUSINESS
1. Change how you think: Undertake an action you’ve been thinking about taking, without regard for the result.
2. Change how you speak: use positive rather tha1n negative language.
3. Change how you act: when you’re not sure, fake it.
4. Change how you use your body