Dominate The Fear or it will dominate you

My aim by this time next year is to have a business which is known for being the leader in its field, which offers genuine value to its customers and which is innovative and pioneering in its approach. A business I can be proud of.

I firmly believe there is nothing more difficult than sticking your livelihood, reputation and employability on the line and starting your own business. Which is why it appeals. I have an appetite for risk and I like things to be really hard - if you're not challenged, you're not alive. I fully recognise that this makes me either a) an incredibly naive idiot or b) a sadist of some sort.

Today was Day 1 in this challenge (I left my day job on Friday). Today I learnt:

Don't panic. Remember the incredibly nauseous feeling you had during revision for your finals where it became apparant that it wasn't going to be possible to read Marx really quickly after all and that, you'd be having to blag it?.. We called it The Fear at Cambridge. The realisation that the task was insurmountable and that everything you had worked for at school was about to be decided by 1 exam which you hadn't read properly for. And that you may not get a job if the exam went badly enough. And that then you would be a disgrace to your family, yourself and the subject of sneering pity from the nastier elements at your college (you get the idea...).

The key was not to let The Fear dominate you. Do that and all is lost. You had to break it down into little pieces to make it manageable. That's what I need to do with my business so that my time is managed properly instead of jumping from one thing to another. Damn the internet for all its distractions.

By the end of this week I will have a plan. A proper one with deadlines.