Fear of taking risks
I'm afraid to start a business: what do I do?
Fear is normal: more than half of Brazilians feel it. Don't try to eliminate it. Shrink the size of the risk: test small, with a deadline and a loss limit.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
Being afraid to start a business is not a sign that you're not cut out for it. It's a sign that you understand something is at stake. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2024, conducted in Brazil with Sebrae, 51.8% of Brazilian adults say fear of failure would stop them from starting a business. You're in the majority.
Fear doesn't disappear with a motivational quote. It shrinks when the risk is the size you can afford to lose.
The practical path
- Name the fear. "Fear of starting a business" is too vague to face. Write down exactly what scares you: losing your savings, your family not approving, embarrassing yourself, being without a salary, not knowing how to sell. Each one has a different remedy.
- Calculate the maximum acceptable loss. Decide, before you start, how much money and time you're willing to lose on the test. That number has to fit into your life without putting housing, food and basic bills at risk. Your emergency fund stays out of it.
- Start smaller than you'd like. Sell before opening a shop. Serve five customers before renting an office. Build a simple version at night or on weekends, if you still have a job. Sebrae offers free courses and its "Sebrae Aqui" service for those just starting out.
- Put a deadline on the test. Fear without a deadline becomes paralysis. Decide: "in 90 days, with up to so many reais, I'll see whether at least X people pay." At the end of the deadline, you decide with data, not with anxiety.
- Formalize the simple way. For many activities, the MEI (individual microentrepreneur, Complementary Law 128/2008) lets you start with a CNPJ, issue invoices and contribute to social security (INSS) at a low monthly cost. Check on the Entrepreneur Portal (gov.br) whether your activity is allowed.
- Have someone to talk to. A mentor, a group of entrepreneurs, a friend who has tried. Fear grows in isolation.
Watch out for people selling "courage" in the form of expensive courses with promises of revenue. Courage can't be bought: it is built, one small step at a time.
How Bairo went through it
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez knows this fear up close. He says he came to Brazil in 2002, from Colombia, with an education company. When he decided to follow his own path and leave it, he found himself without documents in hand, far from home and afraid. He lived through hard years, with no network.
The first business he opened was small and close to home: a salon, with his partner, when their daughter was born. It didn't work out as well as they wanted, but from inside it came a hair-treatment course. He didn't wait for the fear to pass before starting. He started at the size he could manage.
Bairo sums up what he learned in one sentence: every no is the ground of a yes. Fear is a "no" that comes from inside, and it can be ground too.
The Method step
This is the territory of step 1 of the Seventh Attempt Method: say the dream out loud. Write in one sentence what you want to build, for whom and why, and say it to three people. A dream said out loud stops being a lonely fear and becomes a project that can receive help. Then move on to step 3, the 14/20 rule: 20 conversations in 14 days before spending.
Discover the Seventh Attempt Method