-Do you need a little bit more confidence as a new entrepreneur?
Good news, we’re gonna talk about that here today on the Journey.
So as an entrepreneur, confidence is everything, and sometimes it doesn’t come natural for all of us, which whenever I think about entrepreneurs, I would automatically think, hey, you’re confident.
You’re going out there to start your own venture, but the good news is if it doesn’t happen just naturally, there’s a lot you can do to get to that place of high level confidence. Confident leaders are typically a lot better with persuading clients, partners, and they’re also seen as more authoritative and trustworthy.
So that’s why it’s so important to make sure that you’re exuding that confidence. And when you are more confident, you’re more assertive in your negotiations and you’re more confident in your decision-making. But if you’ve never run a business before, it’s natural that you might feel a little bit uneasy, a little anxious about everything, and you don’t necessarily have that confidence to go forward.
Some confidence-building exercises
So step one, one of my favorites, fake it til you make it, and there’s a lot of truth behind this and psychology. I know when you smile, it automatically triggers more confidence in your brain. It also makes other people feel better.
So if you are having one of those days where you’re feeling down and not confident, fake it til you make it. Put on a smile. Maybe stand up a little bit more straight. Yeah, one piece of advice from my manager that was a really cool perspective was whenever you’re calling someone, even if you’re at home on the couch or if you’re downstairs at a desk in your garage or basement, pretend like you are in a corner office, you’ve got downtown views of the city, your assistant just patched that phone call through to you, they want to talk to you, and you’re super important.
All of a sudden, you feel like you matter, what you say has to matter, and you’re feeling a lot more confident because you’re someone that is important. Yeah, and I can totally relate to that. I do a lot of webinars for GoDaddy, and while the attendees do not see me, they hear me, and it’s really important that I come off as actually an expert in what we do.
So there’s certain ways I dress that day or start my day and even how I am presenting myself, while they can’t see me but it’s that nonverbal, the mannerisms that are triggering the brain to think, hey, I am an expert, and therefore I do feel confident about this information I’m relaying to you.
So the next tip to help you with confidence, admit your failures and let go. Don’t dwell on it, don’t let it fester, and I know just avoiding blame is a waste of time. Take ownership of this, be accountable of this, and relate to other entrepreneurs that also have failures and mistakes. We’re human, after all.
One of my favorite quotes, Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Yeah, I mean, look at Michael Jordan. He didn’t even make varsity at first. He had to be stuck on JV, and look at him now.
Another great tip to boost confidence, celebrate your wins.
We do this in my marketing meetings every Monday. It’s a great way, one, to start the week, but also just to reflect on, hey, within our team, what are some of your individual wins that week? And it not only gets us more pumped, but it just feels good to share, which is a little bit what we talked about earlier, just the actual like body mannerisms or getting your headspace into a good, positive spot, that positive thinking.
Celebrate your wins.
Yeah, and it can feel really uncomfortable at first. Like you don’t want to seem like you’re bragging, But who cares about that?
Do it.
Own up to all of your successes. I know I’ll go and get a cookie if I had a really good day at work. I’m like, I deserve this. Yeah, I definitely do that too. I like to have these, if I reach this goal at this time in the week, I’m gonna treat myself to this little nugget of joy, and that helps motivate me for sure.
Celebrate your wins.
Another way to boost confidence, seek ongoing education. This is a great tip. I know one way I do it for webinars is I follow a few different marketing blogs, and this allows me to not only stay an expert in my field, but it also gives me more confidence because, believe it or not, you talk about something like Instagram every week, you do feel like you know it all, but when the platform like Instagram that changes all the time, it’s easy for an attendee to pop in and ask you a question and you’re like, oh, didn’t know they might get rid of the like button.
So in order to prevent that from happening, I was like, I need to start educating myself across more than one blog and consistently. Yeah, that’s a really great way to combat that impostor syndrome.
We all have it sometimes. You feel like you don’t know what you’re doing at all, but once you start to really increase your education, you know a lot more, you’re gonna feel more confident because you actually do know what you’re talking about.
– Next tip, create and master your elevator pitch.
Can’t stress this enough, and it gets its origin from, well, an elevator ride. 30 seconds, how can you share what you do in 30 seconds in the most powerful way?
One way I mastered this, and I also saw this work for local businesses, chamber events. You go, you network, and you are doing the elevator pitches the whole time.
So it’s a great way to find out, one, if you need to fine-tune yours, but also practice. How can I put what makes me interesting, what am I passionate about, how do I go about doing that, what are my goals into a 30-second little pitch?
– Yeah, and we’ve actually done an entire video on how to create an elevator pitch, and you can click on that right up here. Our next way to build confidence is to find a supportive mentor, like a hype man. That’s who is gonna help you connect you with supportive resources, they’re gonna be able to give you advice and help guide you along the way.
– That actually brings me to a little memory I had where I used to spend a lot of time as I said, the chambers of commerce, but also SCORE, and SCORE was super rad because they had a bunch of entrepreneurs that had already had successful careers, many years of being confident, and they’re retired now, but what they did is they’d come in and have office hours for you to go and receive their mentorship, and some of these programs were free.
So for these new entrepreneurs that are getting out there, what a great resource to sit down with someone at SCORE who can be a mentor and tell you like, yeah, you know, had that same failure, or, yeah, this is definitely a hurdle I experienced, and that mentor can really help you boost that confidence for the day and for years to come in your business.
– Yeah, and keep in mind, you get what you give. So if you feel like you have a lot of advice to give along to other people, maybe you should become a mentor, and I know sometimes even helping others can help you feel more confident in yourself.
– And one of my favorite things to remind new entrepreneurs, don’t forget to have fun, and I know it can be tough because there’s a lot going on to make sure your business stays afloat, but it’s really important to pick up a hobby, and that way you don’t get burnout on what you do. Maybe do an intramural sport with your family.
– Yeah, there’s a ton of things you can do. I know on my way to work every single day, I like to turn on a pump up playlist. Whatever’s gonna get you hyped and ready for the day, whether that’s Lizzo, some Eminem, whatever.
– I knew you were gonna say that. Exactly, it’s anything it takes to really boost that confidence and get you ready to go.
– And while I love that routine, I do want to remind the new entrepreneurs to get out of your comfort zone as well. Routine can sometimes lead to that lack of confidence, also what we talked about earlier, getting burned out. So make sure that you’re mixing it up.
– The next thing you can do is seek feedback. You don’t want to completely obsess over the opinion of others, but it is really important to get that honest feedback from other people ’cause it helps put things into perspective for you.
– Absolutely, so don’t be afraid of what the outcome of that feedback will be. Use it in a constructive way to help you grow and also gain more confidence and you might not like this, but get used to rejection.
It’s going to help you to grow and also feedback that you receive can be constructive. I actually talked about this a lot with Yelp reviews. While some business owners hate reading them, it could be the feedback you need to actually improve at your business.
– One of my favorite quotes is, every no gets you closer to a yes. So just keep that in mind. Our last strategy is make sure you’re using current and updated technology and professional tools. If you don’t feel confident in your equipment, then you’re not gonna feel confident in yourself.
– I know, I had this experience recently. I’ve been working on a 2015 Mac, which it’s still alive, shout out to Apple, but there have been times where my technology failed me, and I lacked confidence in my next event, and therefore the people on the other end, the attendees, lacked confidence in me.
So I needed to, and I am in the process of doing this, updating my software and my technology. It’s important to note that, look, this isn’t gonna happen overnight. Confidence doesn’t just
happen in 24 hours. So it’s gonna take some time, and you do need to give it that time to nurture and grow, but hopefully, with these steps and strategies in mind, we’ll get you there as a confident new entrepreneur.
That’s a wrap. Be sure to like our video, comment below with your favorite strategy, and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel and ring that bell so that you’re the first to know whenever we upload more new videos.
This is the Journey, we’ll see you next time.