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Like many people who entertain the notion of leaving secure jobs to start their own businesses, Clive Rousseau remembers exactly when, in late 2003, those thoughts began to surface. For more than three years, he had been working at BuffSpa, a nail salon, where his pedicures had helped him amass a devoted clientele.
“I got stuck,” said Rousseau, who has a state licence in nail technology and has since expanded his skills by learning about medical pedicures and reflexology. Either I could stay here and repeat everything, or leave.” He considered a horizontal move to another salon nearby, but what was really “screaming in my head” was to be his own boss. “I was scared,” he said. “And the scariest part was the fact no one was going to hand me a cheque.”
The turmoil that generally accompanies the decision to give up a salary to go solo is a bit like the refrain of the Clash song, “Should I Stay or Should I Go? If I go there will be trouble, an’ if I stay it will be double.” And it is a clash, with potential financial repercussions to consider. “To be your own boss means now you have to create your money,” Rousseau said. “You have to make it happen.”
When it comes to starting a business, sometimes people are not nearly afraid enough, said Michael Hecht, an assistant commissioner in Small Business Services, a mayoral agency in New York. “Clive’s fear is healthy and warranted,” he said. “Clive is taking on a lot more responsibility.”
Hecht ? who is a Stanford MBA and has two restaurants in San Francisco ? has seen mainly three types of fear emerge. The first is not knowing what steps to take first. “They say: ‘What do I actually have to do to get my business up and running?’” he said. The second concern is not knowing where to find the money to start their businesses . Fear No. 3 often emerges six to 18 months after the business is started. “They come to us and say, ‘I’m not sleeping at night. What have I done?’ Said Hecht, describing these cries for help. “They say, ‘I’m afraid that I lost what I love. I don’t spend my time thinking about my clients. I think about how to make rent and how I’m going to pay my employees?’”
Hecht said that one of the foremost reasons for fear ? whether before, during or after the new enterprise is started ? is not considering the magnitude of the emotional investment. “You have to make sure you have the emotional fortitude to ride it out,” he said.
Patricia Farrell, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, who also moderates the anxiety and panic message forum at WebMD.com, a medical education website, said it is healthy for people to have concerns about jumping ship. “Anxiety, if it’s not out of control, is a motivator,” she said. “You have to be unhappy to feel a level of anxiety that will push you.” Anxiety, she said, can also serve an educational purpose, encouraging people to examine and learn about factors like finances.
She conceded that younger people, who tend to be willing to take more chances, more easily surmount their fears. “You have more life ahead of you to make mistakes,” she said.
What paralyses most people on the road to entrepreneurship is their insistence that they cannot afford to fail, says Jake Steinfeld, an entrepreneur who transformed his fitness company into the multimillion-dollar business called Body by Jake Global. Steinfeld discusses topics related to starting a business in his book I’ve Seen a Lot of Famous People Naked, and They’ve Got Nothing on You (Amacom, 2005). “Failure is not death. You’ve got to be able to know that even if you fail, you’re going to wake up tomorrow morning. Worse than not getting started is waking up when you’re 50, 60 or 70, looking in the mirror and hating yourself because you didn’t take a chance. That’s what kills you,’ he opined.
It took Rousseau about four months from that initial dissatisfaction to open the doors of his new business. Was there ever a time when he thought he should have gone out on his own sooner? “Every day,” he said. “But I have no regrets. Everything is for a reason. You have to be in it to win it.”
?NYTNS