I will openly admit that I have a huge fear of failure. Now this isn’t a healthy thing to have. It will keep me awake at night. It will leave me ‘detached’ sometimes from being present. It can cloud my judgement and decision making.

But what is it and can it be channelled in the right way to raise productivity?

Everyone’s different. My fears will be different to your fears, but there will be common solutions in how to successfully manage it.

Mine seems to have got worse as I have got older.

When I was in my 20’s I honestly thought that I was invincible. I was so cocky (almost arrogant) and was extremely good at what I did – personal financial planning.  I remember saying to friends at age 23 that I would be driving a BMW by the time I was 25. Sure enough I was. My success and my earnings just kept rising as each year went by.

I was getting head-hunted by competitors, but in 2004 aged 28 I decided to buy the company I was working for with 4 of my colleagues. We paid over £1m for that company, borrowing most of the money from various sources. Still no fear at that point.

Then in 2008, the year of the infamous ‘credit crunch’ my company was in serious trouble. We had over 30 staff and had to start laying people off as we couldn’t afford to pay their wages. It was horrible and was my first taste of failure.

The company then folded in the May of 2008, and lots of people were left with no job – I was one of them.  (PERCEIVED FAILURE NO.1)

I thought I would try my luck overseas and took a self employed role in Dubai. I hand’t researched the role properly though and it involved high pressure selling to wealthy expats – if you’ve seen Wolf Of Wall Street then you will understand the type of environment I was working within – it didn’t sit right with me so I moved back home in the November.  (PERCEIVED FAILURE NO.2)

I didn’t realise it at the time, but these 2 ‘failures’ were paving the way for my FEAR to rise it’s ugly head and start to manifest into what it is today.

I then started trying to get a job with various companies but was knocked back by every single company I approached. I looked further afield. Looked at the possibility of commuting to London but still no one was prepared to take me on – one of the downsides of being self employed for so long is that you start to become unemployable.  (PERCEIVED FAILURE NO.3)

Each ‘knock back’ was starting to dent my confidence. I was living with my wife’s Mum and Dad with our 2 kids with no job, no money and no car!! I felt like my whole World had come crashing down and was feeling like a real failure.

There was only one thing for it. I had to set up another company and work for myself again. I set up an office in the Winter of 2009 out of my in laws garage. I would go out there with a thick coat on, a portable radiator, laptop and mobile phone and start making cold calls to potential clients. It was grim and cold but I had to do something to start bringing money in.

The hard work started to pay off and I was getting in front of people and earning money. I had to borrow my in laws car at first, but it was me starting again from what I felt was ‘rock bottom’. What I didn’t realise was that there was worse yet to come.

I got a couple of months commission under my belt and then approached one of my old business partners to come in with me with the new business. We moved into a new office and shared responsibilities. We said that when we earned £15,000 in commissions we would take on an assistant. We did that after 7 weeks.

Up and running again. After about 12 months though I realised that I hated what I was doing. I hated Financial Services. It was suffocating me. Too much red tape and compliance. Too much admin. I felt trapped and wanted to get out but there wasn’t a way that I could see at that time.

We kept growing the business and took on another administrator as well as 2 more sales guys. We had to move to another larger office.

The biggest mistake though that I had made though was that I had taken commissions without factoring in people cancelling their policies within 2-4 years. If people did this then I would have to pay that original commission back. This was working out at around £1500 per month.

Even if I left the industry I would still have to find this money each month.

It was horrible. I hated what I was doing and couldn’t afford to leave. Once again I thought that I had failed and let everyone down. (PERCEIVED FAILURE NO.4)

My wife asked me, if you left the industry what would you really want to do?

Great question and I thought about it for a couple of weeks. As personal fitness was something that I had always loved myself and had a genuine interest in, I thought I would get my Personal Trainer qualifications. I decided to do this on the side while I was still doing my Financial Services stuff. 

It got unbearable with my business partner and he agreed to buy my share of the business for a nominal amount as long as I took my monthly ongoing debts with me. I didn’t know  how I was going to make it work but I decided it was the only option. 

There was a moment when I was in a local park with 5 clients doing a bootcamp session thinking “what the heck have I done?”, but failure has not been an option for me. 

Since starting my training business there haven’t been any ‘perceived failures’. 

This isn’t because I haven’t been taking any risks though. I have. In fact in May of 2013 I had a big decision to make. I had around 40-50 group training members and wanted to get my own premises. I needed around 80-100 members to make this profitable. I negotiated a staggered rent agreement so that the rent increased each month as my membership levels increased. If membership didn’t increase enough then I would not only lose my business but my house and everything else. I would have been bankrupt. 

It scared the life out of me at the time, but sometimes you have to take these sort of calculated risks in order to grow.

I knew that the only way that I would be able to grow at this fast rate was if I became an absolute master at Facebook advertising. I immersed myself in mastery. I literally maxed out my credit cards and invested in mentors and courses in order to do this – and it has worked. 

I now have nearly 200 members (October 2014) made up of one to one, semi private and group training in our own 2,500 square foot unit.

Now those ‘perceived failures’ should be looked at as experiences that have carved the way for me to be who I am today. More rounded and a much better person for it. 

….but I know that they have also left a bit of emotional scarring. 

I still get knots in my stomach when things don’t go to plan or if I have a bad month. That fear is still there. 

If you let this feeling overpower you then it will paralyse you. Procrastination sets in and at best you stand still but most likely you will start to move backwards.

Our past experiences shape the way we are today. They pave the way for a belief system that we each trust as being real. It’s not though. Let’s say you have spent money on a ‘mentor’ or a ‘course’ in the past and it hasn’t delivered as promised. It makes you more cautious in the future. But it doesn’t mean that all other courses or mentors are rubbish – even though you will believe this to be true.

It’s the same with our very own clients and leads that we have. If they have used a PT in the past and didn’t get great results then is it fair for them to judge you to be the same as that other PT?

The same with ‘perceived failures’. Just because certain things haven’t worked in the past does that mean that things that you try in the future won’t work? – of course not!

I would be lying if I told you now that my fear has completely gone away. It is very much alive on a daily basis. But I have leant to recognise it’s there and then push through anyway. I use it as a signal that I am about to do something that will potentially move my business forward or as a signal that I need to take some other sort of action.

My advice to anyone else that feels fear in growing their business, investing in themselves, taking on more clients, taking on staff or moving to larger premises is this:

• Admit to  yourself that there is a fear.
• Try and cast your mind back to previous experiences and identify what may have caused this ‘perceived fear’
• What is it that you worried about regarding taking action now
• What is the worst thing that can happen by the action you take now (normally not as bad as you initially think)
• Move forward and do what you have to do – make a decision and commit to it 100%. 

There is a great book on this sort of stuff by Susan Jeffreys called ‘Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway’. You can buy it on amazon. 

Don’t let this horrible little creature stop you from doing what you have been put here to do.

Ricky