Fear of Success

"I Have this Fear of Success"

At one of our annual plan workshops recently, I asked people what got in the way of making their goals? Sometimes dogging them for year after year.

Art, this guy who owns a photo studio, stood up and said, “I want to grow bigger, but I guess I have this fear of success.”

Fear of success? I’ve heard people say this before, but I’ve never understood what it meant. Why would anyone be afraid of success? So I asked him.

He thought for a minute, then answered, “If I grow bigger and get more successful, it means I probably have to work much harder. I’d have to hire more people and spend more of my time managing them, rather than doing the work I love. I would also attract the attention of bigger competitors who currently leave me alone. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” He went on and on like this.

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No wonder he was afraid of success! He was unconsciously defining success as a cascade of undesirable consequences.

I summed up: “So, you’d like to grow because right now you have to work all the time. But if you do grow, you run into all these undesirable things.”

What should I advise him to do? “Many businesses do grow successfully. What do they do differently? Do you know any business owners who are growing?”

“Yeah,” responded Art after a pause. “My brother-in-law Harry has a print shop. He has ten employees and he just took a three-week vacation. I’m really envious.”

“So, what’s he doing that you’re not doing?”

He thought for a minute. “First of all, he has a really good manager who he can trust to run things when he’s not there. But I’ve had terrible luck hiring people.

“Secondly, I envy his point-of-sale and inventory systems. I have this jumble of procedures that have built up over the years, that only I can handle. So I’m stuck doing it.

“Third, he has more space. My studio is so cramped, it is hard for me to bring in other people to help me.”

“And his management style! His motto is, ‘Do good work; do it fast and with a smile.’ But I’m such a perfectionist, it’s hard for me to let anything go. So we’re often late with customer orders.”

I asked Art if his brother-in-law was worried about his competition.

“No. His customers love him because he gives much better service than the big chain printers.”

Here’s what I told Art: “I see some things you can learn from your brother in-law:

• Hire a top-quality person to back you up—preferably one who can help upgrade your systems. Get someone you can trust, then let them do the job. And hire a good interviewer to help you select a top quality person.

• You may need to move to a larger space.

• The hardest part may be working on your own management style so that you are no longer the bottleneck that keeps your people from completing customer work on schedule.
“These things aren’t easy. But do they seem fearful to you?”

Art: “Well, no. Not the way you state them.”

MVH: “Okay. So you see it is possible to have a positive image of success. This is something you can plan for. And that’s what we’re here for today. You don’t have to stay stuck in your fear.

“And now you have a positive model of success you can work toward. You’re not there yet but you can at least head in the right direction.”

Here are a few key lessons from this for all of us:

1. Good help. Good systems. The right space and equipment. The right management style. These are the basics of growth, and the route to overcome your seemingly intractable barriers to growth.

2. You must tackle the negatives to reach the positive. Your beliefs and attitudes about how you run your business are often a major obstacle. Your plan must include a way to tackle these negative beliefs.

3. A workable vision of success requires practical steps to get there. Our annual plan workshops include a “key challenge plan” to tackle the management habits and attitudes that get in your way.

4. You deal with these management habits and attitudes by making small, concrete changes—and looking for good role models. That’s why we emphasize our business owner peer advisory groups, so that you can harness the power of the group.

5. Work on Yourself. Dealing with your barriers to growth, profitability, and ease is the theme of my book, “How to Grow Your Business without Driving Yourself Crazy” and also many of our e-books.

Want to talk over your growth barriers? Sign up for our free tele-discussion. Call or email to sign up.

Mike Van Horn

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