Missed Opportunities: Top 4 Reasons Why People Don’t Start Their Own Business

At some point when you were in grade school, everyone had a teacher that asked their students “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

When teachers would ask that, you’d hear all kinds of responses… “I want to be an astronaut,” “a princess,” “I want to be a fireman!” Did you ever recall hearing any of your classmates Holler out “I want to be an entrepreneur!” or “I want to own my own business!” You probably didn’t. That’s because entrepreneurship wasn’t as widely understood as it is now.

In today’s world, if you can buy yourself a website, you have the potential to become an entrepreneur in an instant. Before the invention of the internet, the process of owning your own business was much more expensive, much more tedious, and much more time-consuming… so much so that people just didn’t want to do it; it was just too daunting for a lot of people.

That was the excuse for people back then, so what’s people’s excuse for today? There are so many people in the world with great ideas, and they’re not just great ideas… they’re ideas that could change the world or make life easier for people, yet they do nothing to turn their ideas into a reality. According to a study by Gallup, 25% of American adults have dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and starting their own business but can’t seem to take that plunge. So why would someone not want to live out their dreams when their opportunity to do so is just a click, tap, or swipe away?

Everyone’s reasonings are different but nonetheless, their reasons still keep them from living out their dream of owning their own business. Let’s take a closer look at the biggest reasons why people fail to start their own businesses.

1. Fear of Failure

Fear of failure is a commonality among many entrepreneurs but what aspiring entrepreneurs fail to realize is that failure is a huge part of the entrepreneurial journey. Some of the biggest entrepreneurs we know today would not have reached the level of success they have right now had they not failed a few times. So failure is something that shouldn’t stop you from starting your own business but it’s understandable that it does.

Some people have a fear of failure due to their own personal feelings of inadequacy, whereas others don’t want to be embarrassed or have experienced failure in their past and can’t bear to experience that same feeling again.

2. Not Having Enough Funds To Start and Maintain Their Business

They say it takes money to make money, and that statement is especially true when wanting to start your own business. Lots of people with great ideas to start their own business often find themselves facing the issue of not having enough money to get their business off the ground. They either don’t have any savings, they have bad credit to where they won’t get approved for any type of bank or personal loans, or they don’t have any friends or family to borrow from.

David O’Brien, business analyst and business start-up expert and owner of Best LLC Services, argues that to understand whether it is worth starting something new or and how much it will come out at cost, you need to use the financial model. In fact, this is a simple table where the main business indicators and starting figures of expenses and revenues are recorded. Even with minimal initial data, it will show how much money it takes to launch and when the business begins to pay off.

Not only do you need to have enough money to start your business, but you also need to have enough money to maintain your business as well. From continuously marketing your business to insuring your business, starting and maintaining a business is no easy task.

3. Not Knowing What Their Passion Is

There are lots of people out here working jobs that they’re not happy with. They don’t care for their bosses, they don’t care for their coworkers, and they don’t care about the job itself. They would love to start their own business but they don’t have a clue what their passion is… one thing they do know is what they’re not passionate about and that’s their current job.

It’s perfectly normal to not know what your passion is, you just have to figure out how to unlock your passion. There are several techniques you can do to unlock your passion but the real question is what will you do when you’ve unlocked your passion? Will you leave your current job and build a business on your passion or will you just sit on your passion?

4. Not Wanting To Give Up Their Steady Income

Many people think that they can still work their full-time job and still have their own business on the side… Well, this might be feasible in the beginning stages of starting your own business but if your side business starts to grow, you’re going to have to make a decision on which position you want to continue on with full-time because you’re just not going to be able to do both.

In having to make a decision like that, people will forego entrepreneurship to be able to keep their steady income and health insurance benefits (even though you have the potential to make significantly more money with your own business as it grows than you ever could with your steady income job). There’s nothing wrong with that because only you know what financial situation you’re in but this definitely something that people go back and forth in their mind about.