OpEd
Fear of Failure: The Thief of Your Business Dreams and the Entrepreneur You Were Born to Be
Do you fear failure? Let’s begin with a cold truth served with warm truth: if fear of failure were a product, it would outsell Rolex watches in Kampala traffic. Many of us polish our CVs with MBA degrees, follow motivational pages on TED talks, Instagram, and dream of million-dollar startups… then proceed to do absolutely nothing about it. Why? Because failure comes fast, unpredictably, and you just don’t want it to crash your reputation.
You know deep inside that you were meant to build that agro-processing plant, launch that fintech app, or finally turn your “side hustle” of baking into a full-fledged business. But each time you imagine leaping, your brain hits you with a Netflix-quality thriller titled “What If I Fail?” Spoiler alert: many successful entrepreneurs have watched that same movie, and still went ahead to produce their own blockbuster.
Let’s be real. Failure isn’t pretty. No one dreams of being the person who borrowed UGX 30 million from the SACCO, only to sell mandazi that nobody buys. But guess what’s uglier? Regret. The type that shows up at your 60th birthday, uninvited, saying, “You could’ve been great. But you feared looking foolish.”
I have failed many times, hehehe! The irony is that fearing failure is the most guaranteed way to fail. At least when you try and flop, you gain battle scars, experience, and maybe even an entertaining TEDx story. When you never try at all? You’re stuck watching others do what you know you could’ve done better, if only you’d started.
Business and entrepreneurship are not perfect science experiments. They are messy, unpredictable, sometimes embarrassing, but also wildly fulfilling. Uganda’s economy is full of chaotic opportunity: the Glovo bike guy is already a logistics company, your cousin’s piggery is going international, and yet you’re still there, conducting feasibility studies for a juice company you’ve been thinking about for 5 years.
Fear of failure often disguises itself as “being responsible.” You say, “Let me first build capital,” or “I’ll wait until the kids are older.” Respectfully, those are fear’s cousins, dressed in suits. Of course, timing matters, but if you’re always waiting for the stars to align, you’ll miss the entire solar system.
Consider this: every major innovation, from the bulb to WhatsApp, was once just a terrifying, risky idea. Do you think Elon Musk didn’t fear people laughing when he said he’d send rockets to Mars? Imagine if MTN feared launching in Uganda in the 1990s because “what if it fails?” They’d still be a PowerPoint presentation.
Consider this: failing isn’t the opposite of success. It’s part of success. Entrepreneurs don’t avoid failure, they manage it, learn from it, and keep going. You only need to be right once. Even the cockroach that got into your restaurant survived 10 near-deaths before landing in the beans. That’s resilience.
And no, you don’t need to quit your job today and start selling goat milk. Start small. Test. Fail fast. Learn faster. If your chapati burns, find out if customers prefer it crispy or no oil. If your app crashes, ask your developer to fix it, Hello and get users involved in testing. Use failure as data, not doom.
The truth is, fear will always be there. It doesn’t go away; you just get louder than it. Every time you say, “But what if it fails?” remind yourself, “Yes, but what if it works?” Because one day it might. And that might feed your family, create jobs, and even build a legacy.
You don’t need perfection to start. You need courage. You need foolish bravery, the kind that registers a business even before the product is ready. The kind that starts a YouTube channel using a borrowed phone. That kind of “madness” is how entrepreneurs are made.
Uganda, and the world, doesn’t need more spectators with brilliant ideas. It needs builders. People who stop over-researching and start over-delivering. People who are more interested in growing than looking smart. Because looking smart is for conferences. Doing the work is for entrepreneurs.
The richest place in Uganda is not Kololo. It’s the graveyard. That’s where all the “businesses I wanted to start” are buried. Don’t let your passion join that quiet cemetery of lost dreams. You don’t need to be reckless, but you need to act.
So, dear aspiring entrepreneur: embrace fear. Befriend failure. Dance with risk. You’ll get bruised, yes, but you’ll also become the kind of person who wakes up excited, not just employed. Who sees opportunities, not obstacles. Who builds, not just dreams.
In a nutshell, the biggest failure is not starting. We were not born to spectate. We were born to create, disrupt, and dare. So go ahead, launch, stumble, rise, pivot, and build. Your passion is not lying to you. Fear is failure indeed.
The writer, Michael Jjingo, is the General Manager of Commercial Banking at Centenary Bank
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