How to Find The Courage to Start Your Own Business

Hey Friend!

Are you scared to start your own business? Do you need the courage to start? While it sounds so simple, whether you want to start a business, a podcast, a course, or an offer, finding the courage to start is hard. The fears, limiting beliefs, and confusion that come in are debilitating. There are so many pieces to push through so you can just start. Today I’ve put together four steps to help you get the courage you need to start taking action. You don’t have to do this alone. Join me today as we create your own courage plan.

Your 4-Step Courage Plan – Find the Courage to Start Your Own Business

There is no perfect time to start your own business

Firstly, I’d like to disclaim these four steps by saying there is no perfect time to start. Often the call to start your own business will come at the most inconvenient time. It’s never going to make sense when God says, let’s do this thing. When we get the prompting, we can keep pushing Him off and making excuses, BUT God’s will is the way! 

And His timing will feel uncomfortable almost 100% of the time. Your life will probably be busy, you will probably be going through some stuff, and it won’t be convenient financially. This is constantly my story when God says start or go. There’s no perfect time! The best thing you can ever do is literally just go because, if you keep putting it out due to timing, it will never happen.

Secondly, you will not have absolute clarity. You will have a direction, especially if you’ve taken my Clarity Workshop or Clarify Your Calling. You’re going to have direction, but you’re not going to have the outcome. You can’t. That’s not how God works. He’s not like, here’s your perfectly positioned outcome of knowing exactly what will happen in one year, three, and five years. Yes, we can have dreams and a vision, but we don’t know what God’s going to do. We’re not supposed to know; that’s the point. We’re supposed to trust Him! We can’t trust God if we know the outcome. And that’s the whole purpose of everything – we’ve got to trust Him. 

Lean into getting uncomfortable

So this outcome will be a little scary because you don’t know what it is. You don’t know if this thing is going to work. You don’t know if it’s going to be worth your time. You’re not sure if people will laugh or judge you or listen. And that is precisely where you are supposed to be. You’re not supposed to know, and it’s not supposed to be the perfect timing. 

So now we have that out of the way; welcome to the club of being uncomfortable. This is the discomfort club, and everything beautiful, great, God-centered, glorious, and fruitful came from discomfort. Your comfort zone doesn’t create beautiful, incredible things. We have to learn to lean into getting uncomfortable. We have to get comfortable with it if we are going to make traction and do big, scary things. And guess what?! You can do hard things, friend. Everything is hard until it’s not.

Your courage plan – the four steps to finding the courage to start your own business

To start your courage plan, get out a sheet of paper so you can write it down as you go. 

1. Get clear on steps 1-3

To have the courage to start, the first thing you have to do is to get clear on steps 1-3. That is all. So often I see the people around me thinking they need steps 1-500 planned out before they can start. 

But that doesn’t work because something has already changed by the time you get to step four. Things constantly change and evolve, and there’s never going to be a plan that executes A-Z perfectly every time. By the time you get to step one, you’ve learned and grown. Now it’s step two and you decide you’re going to pivot this little piece or model after this other thing, this software is a better fit for me. 

Don’t put all this stake in building this big audacious plan before you start. Sure, invest in the course, the coach, or read the book. That’s great, we want to know the way, but it’s just one step to invest in the course. You don’t need to know what platform you’re going to use for the rest of your life, which software is best, or 24 months of cash flow predictions which you have no idea how you’re going to make it or who your future tax advisor’s going to be when you make over $200,000 and need to become an S-corp. Like, stop! Just get clear on steps 1, 2, and 3.

How do you find your first three steps?

You can find your first three steps for when you start your own business right inside my Facebook group. Just ask, and my team and I are more than willing to help you and tell you what your first three steps should be. Another option is to listen to my podcast; I have over 560 episodes telling you exactly what to do if you want to start a business, a podcast, a course, or coaching. There’s so much content that will give you steps 1, 2, and 3, head to our podcast catalog (which you can find in the guides section of my Facebook group) and search for the topic you need. 

Or you can ask someone who’s gone before you, a friend or mentor, and say, “Hey, I just need the first three steps.”

Examples of your first three steps to start your online business:

Step 1: Get clear on what your business will be. How do you do this? (Never create an elusive and fuzzy step because it won’t help you.) You might decide to get clarity on your business by watching the free Clarity Workshop or by investing in Clarify Your Calling. You might also have a different person you’d like to invest in, or you might not need to invest at all if you already know what your business will be and move on to the next step. 

Step 2: Start building an audience/ creating long-form content. How? By starting a podcast. Build an audience and create long-form content using podcasting. 

You might also want to go more micro than this. The first three steps that you can decide are: Decide on the niche for your business, choose a business name, and decide who your business will be for.   

You can go as micro or as macro as you want, depending on how you like to operate. But I think baby steps are best when you’re getting started. And that’s all you need to do, just got three steps at a time until you’ve started.

2. Have it out with your inner critic

The second thing that will help you have the courage to start your own business is to have it out with your inner critic. Let’s have a fight with ourselves because you are not feeling courageous because of something that’s inside of you! Very few of you are hearing from someone else: “don’t do that; it’s going to be awful, you’re going to do a bad job, nobody will ever listen, and no one will ever buy from you.” Most of us here are actually saying these things to ourselves. 

So either on your paper where you wrote down your steps or on a new sheet of paper, I want you to write down what I call God Says statements. These are in Clarify Your Calling as part of my signature thing that helps transform your mindset, but essentially it’s to write down all these things that you believe to be true about yourself that are lies or the lies that you know are lies but still tell yourself anyway. 

These might be things like:

• I don’t have time
• No one will listen 
• I have nothing good to say
• I say umm too much, and everyone will hate me
• I’m not creative enough to come up with content

Now you’ve written down all these lies, excuses, fears, and limiting beliefs, whatever the inner critic is screaming and claiming over you. I want you to google bible verses for ____. And the blank is the opposite of whatever the lie is. 

So, for example, if you believe you’re not creative enough, type in bible verses for creativity. There are so many bible verses that will come up. Just find one that speaks to you, such as Genesis 1:1 and 1:27. 

 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1 “So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God, He created them.” – Genesis 1:27  

What are these verses telling me right now? It’s saying God is so creative that He came up with this incredible heaven and earth and every single thing in it, right down to the tiny detail of how our bodies and brains work, God is so creative! And God created me in that same image, in the image of God, He created me.

Who God says you are

On your paper, write down God’s truth over this limiting belief, and you’re going to stand by that truth, and you’re going to have it out with your inner critic. You’re going to tell your inner critic the reality of what you are and who you are, and you are going to write that down and read it every single day, you’re going to speak it out, and you’re going to claim it over your life.

This might look like, I am created in the image of God. I am creatively made just like Him. When God created the heavens and the earth, His creativity was exponential. I have it inside of me and I can come up with incredible content to bless people the same way God blessed me. 

Do that for every one of those limiting beliefs and inner critic lies you’ve allowed to come into your heart. There is no room for that here. If we are going to lean into courage, we don’t have room for these thoughts.

3. Tell someone who believes in you

The third way to get more courage to start your own business is to tell someone who believes in you. I hope and pray we all have one person in our corner who believes in us. Who is that for you? It’s that one friend you can call no matter what’s going on in your life, and they are an encourager. Maybe it’s your spouse, and no matter what’s going on in your life, your spouse is there for you. They see you and uplift you, and they speak life over you. Maybe it’s one of your parents, your child, or even someone you’ve met online. It could also be a coach or a mentor of yours.  

Next, I want you to tell them, “Hey, I want to do this thing, I really want to, but I’m so scared to start. Can you speak so life into me right now? And then, can you hold me accountable?” 

If you do that, this person will hold up a mirror and tell you what they see. Have you ever asked someone the question, how do you see me? You won’t believe what someone who sees and loves you says about you.  

I’ve done this a couple of times with different courses/mastermind exercises, and it’s blown me away. People don’t see me how I see me, and you don’t see you how other people see you. And sometimes, we just need to hear it. It’s such a boost of confidence, and it amplifies your courage to know that somebody else sees so much value in who I am and what I have to offer, and I think that I can do this.

4. Lean into faith over fear

Lastly, lean into faith over fear. Proverbs 29:25 says, “The one who trusts in the Lord is protected.” So if you trust in the Lord and His plan, and you start, you’re protected. God’s going to protect you when you start your own business. It doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, and it doesn’t mean there won’t be small failures or hiccups along the way as you start your business. Of course, there will be. You are refined by the fire. But it doesn’t matter because we’re doing this all for the glory of God anyway, right? Life is so short; why wouldn’t you start? Why wouldn’t you start today? Right now, even?  

Who knows what can happen tomorrow? I don’t want it to be that I didn’t start. I don’t want the biggest regret to be that I worried about it or was concerned that someone might laugh at me, or I wasn’t 100% sure of the outcome. No, I want that to be my biggest testimony and yours to be that I started even though. Even though faith like Habakkuk had in scripture in Habakkuk chapter 3, go and pour into that amazing chapter!

Start even though you feel afraid to start your own business

I started even though I was afraid and took action even though it wasn’t perfect. Even though I only had the first three steps, even though everything inside me said sit down; you’re unworthy, no one will listen, who are you? I pushed through all of that because God said, who I was. Faith over fear. Proverbs 29:25 says, The fear of man brings a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted. The one who trusts in the Lord is protected; he is exalted. 

We are trusting in God. He has got a way for this thing. He has got us, we are protected, and we are also called. If we are called to do big and incredible things, the very first thing we have to do is say yes. And then, we have to actually put one foot in front of the other, and we have to go. We have to start. 

I hope this has given you the courage to start. You don’t have to walk this journey alone as you start your own business. There is so much support and encouragement available for you. All you have to do is reach out. Trust what God is going to do in your life, and get ready to begin.

I pray this blesses you!

Xo,

Stef

P.S. Also, listen to podcast episode 567 for the full training on Find The Courage to START Your Own Business or Podcast in 4 Steps.

APPLE PODCAST | SPOTIFY | GOOGLE PODCAST

Before you go, be sure to watch the free workshop!

This free workshop is for you if you want to grow an online business in less time.

It will teach you how to explode your audience without the social media hustle, make consistent sales using a podcast, and plan, record, and launch a podcast with ease!

RELATED EPISODES:

Have a New Online Business Idea, but Afraid to Start? How to Start Before You’re Ready

5 Things You Must Do Before You Start Your Online Business

The First 5 Things You Must Do When You Start a New Business as a Christian Entrepreneur 

Feel like God’s Calling You? 5 Biblical Truths to Encourage You

6 Bible Verses for Giving Your Worries to God and Overcoming Your Fears as a Christian Business Owner

Join our Facebook Community!

Online Business for Christian Women with Stefanie Gass