What kills beginning companies in Mexico? I think fear of failure… let me explain.

Failing in life hurts and it hurt bad, you have a little voice inside your head constantly pretending to protect you. It’s called Ego. Now Ego will protect you against failure by telling you not to do anything that hurts you, it will feed you with fear by showing you vivid images in your dream about how your family and friends will laugh at you when you fail. If it wins you will never leave the house and protect yourself from all that is new. That house, school, city or circle of friends are called the comfort zone.

You made a big jump you became an entrepreneur! You left the nest, you entered the learning zone

If this is how your first time entrepreneur this is how your next 12 months will look like, yes I use sarcasm here.

Let me explain this in a time-frame of 12 months:

• Tell Mom. The idea is born, tell mom because she is the perfect market validation for all your ideas.
• Logo. Obviously your logo and brand is the most important thing of you new business. Your reputation depends on it and needs at least 3 months of your attention. It just needs to be perfect!
• Tell Dad. Mmm that is always hard he is harder to convince, but give him a beer and compliment his this Sunday on making the barbecue fire will do wonders. Your startup is almost ready to rule the world.
• Business Cards. Besides your logo you of course need business card and a new smartphone. Your new company is a reflection of you so you must look good. Lets spend another 3 weeks on this, just to make sure the colors and paper selection are good.
• Find clients. That is obviously the easy part. Your ideas are awesome, since your mom and dad both confirmed this, with your new business cards and smartphone you look shiny.

The fact is that clients are more important than anything and most companies fail because they spend too little time developing relationships with people that will be their clients. Procrastination is killing your startup, you are afraid to do the most difficult things first. Your ego is not protecting you, it will keep you in the comfort-zone and will stop you from doing the most fearful thing first. Fear can be different for everyone, but you need to start first with finding clients and validate your product.

Smart Failing your best time investment as startup

Imagine you had 8x more time as startup entrepreneur before your time, money or energy ran out? It’s possible, start with the most difficult part of your business idea. Tackle the most difficult parts of your idea first, fill the moments that you’re “down” with the fun stuff like, logo, website, branding and other fun but useless stuff for startups like business cards.

Below is how your startup life-cycle will probably look like if you do this the lean startup way. Success will be yours, trust me…. not your ego.