Nate Feltman: Moving outside your comfort zone

Take a minute to think of some of your most memorable moments in life, whether it’s an adventure vacation, taking a leap and changing careers, asking for a promotion or even starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur. In each case, you most likely had to push yourself outside your comfort zone, through the initial nervousness and skittishness. By its very nature, change and doing something outside the norm creates a sense of excitement but simultaneously a sense of anxiety and uneasiness.

Life often rewards those who decide to take a leap of faith rather than the more predictable path. Often, moving outside your comfort zone entails taking on more risk, whether that is scaling Mount Kilimanjaro or following your passion and starting a business. Betting on yourself, whether against the elements or against a sea of competitors, takes fortitude, drive, perseverance and passion.

Indiana as a state needs more people who are willing to bet on themselves—entrepreneurs. The majority of new jobs in America are created by small businesses. If we want to be highly ranked not only as a place to start a company (Forbes, No. 2), but also for number of startups (U.S. News, No. 46), we must have more Hoosiers embracing risk and moving beyond their comfort zone.

There are many reasons that cities such as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Boston lead the nation in new-company formations. For one, they have risk-taking cultures. These cities have a history of attracting immigrants who have taken the ultimate risk of leaving their homeland and starting a new life in America. Starting a business when you come here with nearly nothing after leaving your family and friends doesn’t seem all that risky.

Just ask local entrepreneurs Ersal Ozdemir or Albert Chen which was scarier and took more courage—moving to America and leaving behind family and friends or starting their business. I’m confident that you will hear from them that starting a business paled in comparison to taking a leap of faith on a new life in a new country. Those of us who have moved to a new city in search of new opportunities can relate just a little.

Young people are often driven less by money and more by finding meaning and passion in their work, whether that is curing some ill in the world or developing a product or service that could change the world. Some of these young people will become “accidental entrepreneurs,” meaning they didn’t go to business school with the intention of starting a business. Instead, they identified their passion and a problem in society, then, with assistance from others, turned their passion into a business.

As education, government and civic leaders think about how to create a more dynamic and vibrant Indiana economy, it is imperative that we think about new ideas for encouraging Hoosiers to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Taking risks means embracing the fear of failure and understanding that it is only when we try new things and begin to feel uncomfortable that breakthroughs are possible.

States such as Indiana that have historically grown slower than coastal states that lead in new-business starts must be more creative at exposing our residents to the idea of starting their own company or not-for-profit. Indiana must better support accidental entrepreneurs (e.g., Peter Dunn, Your Money Line), must become world-class at taking research from the lab to commercialization (e.g., Carmel-based MBX Biosciences Inc.) and must convince budding entrepreneurs (especially those graduating from our great universities) that Indiana is the right place to start their next venture (e.g., Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget).•

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Feltman is publisher of IBJ and CEO of IBJ Media. Send comments to nfeltman@ibj.com.