You’ve taken the entrepreneurial leap. 

You’ve started your own business. 

Or maybe you’re on the brink of making that decision, wondering whether the time is right to embrace your dreams and passion.

It’s scary, huh? Being on your own, in charge of making all the decisions? Taking the risk you’ll fail?

Certainly there are risks associated with starting and sustaining a business. Often it’s the financial risks that take center stage in our brains.

But the risks I want to talk about are much more personal. After all, starting a business is personal. Your business is an extension of you. 

In order to start and run a successful business, you have to put yourself out there.   Let yourself be known.   Let people know who you are and what you have to offer.

 When you put yourself out there, you risk disappointment, rejection, and even failure.   

The most powerful personal characteristic needed to meet these risks is courage.

Where there is no risk, no courage is needed.

Wikipedia describes courage as the choice and willingness to confront pain, danger, uncertainty and intimidation. Yes, it is within your power to choose courage.

In the story of the Wizard of Oz, the “cowardly” lion is making the journey to Emerald City to ask the wizard to give him the courage he believes he is lacking.  In the end, the lion and his traveling companions realize they always had within their power the things they thought they needed.

To step successfully into the role of entrepreneur, you will choose courage again and again.

I have compiled some famous quotes to en-courage you (yes, pun intended!) on your entrepreneurial journey: 

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“Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually it implies some risk -- especially in new undertakings.  Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering and adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.”
              -Walt Disney (attributed), The Disney Way Fieldbook
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“Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.”
              -Aster & Richter Abend, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
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“My courage...exists to catch the future! I'll take my future into my own hands.That's what I wish for! For the courage to keep going forward!”
              -Mahou Sentai Magiranger, Kai Ozu (2005)
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“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
              -Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
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Yes, you will encounter risks and face fears when starting, growing and sustaining a business. I invite you to adopt one of these quotes -- or another that is meaningful to you – and let it become your mantra when courage is needed.

And remember:

“Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts.”
                                                                                   -Coach John Wooden