The “Unexpected Benefits” Of Business Risktaking

Today I’m writing live from Vancouver, Canada with my friend and associate Katya. The topic you’ll be learning about in this article is fear. In particular, fear as it relates to business risktaking. I want to show you through tangible, real-life examples in the experiences of Katya, myself, and other people I’ve encountered in entrepreneurship that most of your fear when starting your own business, believe it or not, is not justified.

The Absurdity of Fear In Business Risktaking

A lot of the people who are current or potential clients in my mastermind first start off with a heavy dose of fear connected to their future in successful entrepreneurship. This is one of the first things that I endeavor to remove when I begin working with them towards their goals for business.

To begin, let’s start with some good news. Many of you reading this (myself included), live in relatively safe and wealthy countries with an abundance of opportunities to be taken advantage of. Many of the perceived problems you may be thinking about are not real problems. Tons of potential victories in business are right here under our noses.

What stops most people from making the best use of this fact is generally fear. What’s funny about this is that it’s not the fear for little unimportant things that come and go with day-to-day existence holding you back… it’s fear for massive life-changing events which are usually out of your ultimate control.

Real Life Examples of Taking The Risk

Let’s look at this in action. My friend Katya here just came to Victoria, Canada about a year ago from Crimea.  She’s 18 years old on the other side of the world in an environment about remotely different as you can get from Crimea… and yet she’s pursuing both modeling and pursuing a full-time college education in art history.

Think about that. I hear excuses from people all of the time about their age (“I’m only 17 or 18 and I’m too afraid to move away… I don’t have what it takes”), but Katya is a living, breathing example that you can successfully pull off a life in a completely foreign environment to what you’re used to. Unjustified fear, as we said.

Now, to add further irony to this, I’m from the exact same part of the world as Katya. I’m Russian and used to live in Ukraine for a while. When I was six years old, my parents just packed everything we owned in a bag and moved to yet another country with me. If anything, I had it easier than Katya because I did it with my parents and yet she, at 18, is doing it alone.

My friends have done it too. After talking briefly about a plan to get them out to travel with me, they simply packed their bags and traveled around the world to come meet me and we’re out here living the dream. It’s not as crazy as your unjustified fear is telling you. Figure it out.

Take A Leap of Faith And Then Figure It Out

You can always go back. I have no idea why you would want to, but even that fail-safe is at your disposal. So where does the fear come from?

If anything, you’ll usually find that you’re able to adapt to almost any situation if you put yourself in that position. You’ll have to figure it out, and based on the experiences of myself and many people I know… you will figure it out.

Now, let’s not get carried away and say that I’m telling you that you have to move to the other side of the world. But if I can figure it out, if Katya can figure it out, if my own parents can figure it out… you can too. In most cases, your fear is unjustified.

There’s Little Downside

In Katya’s own words, “You just have to try… when I first came here… the culture’s absolutely different… when I came here, I didn’t know English at all… but it’s better”.

In the case of business, you have to really think… what is the worst that can happen? Most likely, you’ll just go out of business… maybe. Big deal, there’s a whole culture of people who originally failed businesses, regrouped and reworked their plan, and are now wildly successful.

The risks are really, really minimal right now. If you don’t take advantage soon, you’re seriously missing out. If I talk to almost anyone in business right now, they’re saying there’s SO many opportunities out there currently it’s ridiculous. If you actually step back at look at the marketplace, it’s just crazy how many advantages you have at your disposal in the 21st century.

Everyone reading this article, in my opinion, should be taking advantage right of this moment in history to get into business and get some of the opportunities that people like Katya and I have taken.

Business Risktaking – The Proof Is In The Pudding

Another example of overcoming fear in my own life came in 2011. I packed all my bags and collected what little savings I had left and moved to a completely new city – Barcelona, Spain. When I got there, I essentially locked myself in a room and decided I’m going to create an online business that really makes an impact on the world.

It worked. In fact, it had to work. I was forced to. There was no safety net, no backup plan, it was all or nothing. I guess I could’ve gone back home and live in my parent’s basement, but essentially I was screwed if I didn’t make it work.

Since then, I’ve traveled to 30+ countries and succeeded in business in a relatively big way compared to before. You’ll find similar situations for people who moved to different countries and threw themselves out into the open. They forced themselves to implement and forced themselves to make it happen, and trust me… it did happen.

The last point I’ll make is that this is of course not for everyone. Don’t message me a year from now and say, “I tried it and it didn’t work”, becaus esome will try this and fail in the short run, but it’s not a big deal. Failure is simply not a huge deal. It goes without saying that you shouldn’t TRY for failure, you shouldn’t aim for the bottom,  BUT if you give it everything you’ve got, then that’s fine, and no big deal. Dust yourself off and get on with it.

 

Aleksander Vitkin

Aleksander Vitkin has helped over 700 people with a sincere interest in entrepreneurship and contribution, to start profitable businesses and quit their jobs.

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