Negating Negativity ...

One of the most difficult things to overcome during the early stages of a startup is to fight off overwhelming negativity. Negativity can be detrimental to the moral of a startup and must be kept away as best as possible. This is not to say we should ignore reality, there is that fine line between keeping reality in check and blatent, useless negativity. As entreprenurs we must be able to identify the difference so we can filter out what we dont need and take only what is important. Negativity can come from all sorts of directions, some originating from within (your own doubts and fears) and others from external factors.

Personally i found that negativity from an external factor is alot easier to ignore. Many forms of negativity from external factors take the form of quotes from individuals who may be envious that your willing to take a risk, they may say things such as (hey, 1 in every 2 business fail did you know that ...) or (wow thats alot of (money/time) to invest for something so risky , why not buy a house or buy stocks/oil/currency instead, its much less risky you know). Some maybe so blunt as to say "your wasting time and money, get back to reality why dont you" !? When faced with this kind of negativity its actually quite easy to understand why many people will tell you this. Most people in this world are not entreprenurial and dont understand this state of mind hence looking at someone *wasting* weekends and weeknights hacking away and building a product doesnt make sense. Currently the system teaches us that a stable career within a large organisation is the best way to succeed, to climb the corporate ladder and to become a highly paid executive. Visualing success achieved in otherways is not the norm and hence isnt easily understood by the majority. The best way negate this kind of negativity is to take comfort in the fact that one day the same people who dish out these comments will also be the ones who will find your product useful.

The other form of negativity that you must combat is that which comes from within. Sometimes this kind of negativity comes in the form of fear and doubt, either towards your own abilities, the merit of the product you are building, whether you have enough capital (expecially the case for a bootstrapped startup) or of the big bad unknown of where this will all end up. There arent any silver bullets for this and the only way to combat these feelings is to constantly reassure yourself, your team and all the people involved that success is there for the taking. At times it seems like you must start with a white lie which is told for the greater good then eventually work your way up to the point that it is nolonger a white lie but within your grasp. You need to keep the positive energy up and you can do that by reading success stories of past entrepreuners, you can do this by visualising where you want to go, how your product will help the world and how, with your success you can help the world. I guess the ability to fight negativity is built into almost all enterupreners, it simply comes with the territory, this and the ability to keep going when things get tough ...

So as a final note, keep focusing on the goals you have and keep the positive spirit strong ... positive thinking is more powerful then you know ...