fear of success: a matter of scale

In dialoguing with a colleague in an online forum, she noted her fear of success. With some trepidation (another form of fear!), I offered my thoughts and asked if they made sense. She said they did make sense and added "It's totally the kind of 'authorization' I needed." It was a good reminder for myself. Perhaps you would appreciate it, too:

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A few years ago I attended some workshops about music business, and one presenter (Steve Bell) told the audience, "We encourage artists to stay out of the music industry." He explained that his company encourages artists to make the world more beautiful and to understand the place of their work in the world: is it personal? local? regional? national? international? Where does it fit?

He also advises artists think of their work as a "sustainable" business rather than trying to make it big. Not everyone needs to have big international or national success, but they can have important local or regional impact and still make a living.

So perhaps part of your decision will be scale: How big do you really want or need to be? I know it's really popular to talk about abundance in business — to dream big. I'm one of the biggest dreamers I know! But I'm starting to appreciate the importance of being realistic about the limitations of our lives: health, mental illness, family commitments, etc. So we need to define our bottom line: How much is "enough"? How much is "too much"? Can I sustain this? By what means will I sustain this?

Perhaps you will need at least two more things:

•developing enough material/products in advance with a delivery system that can manage itself when you have a difficult season
•gathering supporters who can help manage your business when you have difficult seasons (e.g. bookkeeper, virtual assistant, distributor, etc.)

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Does this make sense to you? What scale do you envision for your enterprise? How will you sustain it?