Using Systems to Conquer Fear

We all face periods of intense fear, whether you are new to business or growing to the next level. Outsiders may believe that all entrepreneurs are fearless, but in truth this is often a lonely business that breeds self doubt and, yes, fears.

Dealing with your fears can be much easier when you have the proper systems for a few reasons:

Use Systems to Handle Insecurity

When it comes to trying a new business tactic, whether in marketing, hiring or sales, the fear comes from our insecurity of not knowing if this is the right move. Systems resolve some of that fear by giving a proven path to take. Now, mine nor anyone else’s systems are foolproof, so there’s an important part to this process.

By tracking what you’re actually doing, it’s a hundred times easier to look back and see what worked. Instead of guessing how often your ezine went out or wondering if your ad campaign is working, metrics tracking and measuring results can assuage that fear and give you real answers.

Sometimes we know that this action or that tactic is the “right” move – everyone says it is. But in our short sightedness it doesn’t seem like it’s paying off. There’s maybe some insecurity that everyone is wrong and it’s just not worth it. Maybe for your business, that’s social media or lead follow up. Maybe it’s video blogging or traveling to conferences that don’t result in clients.

Use Your Systems to Conquer Doubt

By creating systems (aka writing down what you’re doing and following that plan), it’s easier to tackle those fears and make tweaks. Again, advice isn’t foolproof – what works for some businesses may not work for yours and, depending on your industry, you may need a much different approach than your competitors to stay fresh and relevant to the market.

Using systems allows you to look at the whole picture and then tweak things. Let’s say your sales page isn’t converting as well as you’d like. Instead of scrapping the whole product or program, you can test out different solutions. Re-record a video, add more testimonials, change the pricing options and run a split test.

Systems Inspire Creativity

In many ways having systems allows you to be more creative and have fun testing the process – just like an artist who can’t put down the paint but keeps adding brush strokes to a painting. The payoff is the creative exploration and discovering what works and – with a good system in place – writing it down so you can do it again next time.

You already know that I love working with systems, in part because the data has no motive. Knowing these systems are in place to helps me deal with the unknown, and keeping moving forward in my business gives me so much confidence to try new things.

With systems in place you can look at the business objectively and the fears that come with insecurity and the unknown.