How to Build a Business When You Have No Confidence in Yourself
Is fear, self-doubt, and lack of confidence keeping you from starting a business?
Does your inner critic have you stuck in the limbo of “What if this doesn’t work out?”
Are you afraid to give your all and put everything into a business only to have it fail a few years later?
Join the club.
Most entrepreneurs begin their journey feeling the fear, self-doubt, and lack of confidence that comes with pursuing something new.
And here’s the issue: the entrepreneurs who are successful are successful because they don’t wait for confidence to take action.
In this way, the need for ‘confidence’ is an excuse that can end a business before it even starts.
The realities of building a business are simple:
- You WON’T have confidence when you’re pursuing a dream you’ve never pursued before
- Confidence is NOT a pre-requisite to feeling ‘qualified’ to start a business
- There is NOTHING you can do to build confidence BEFORE you start the business; confidence is earned along the way
- There’s a HUGE difference between confidence and conviction; when starting a business, you need conviction before, confidence during and humility after
- When you use ‘not enough confidence’ as an excuse to NOT build your business, you’re not only stealing abundance, joy and fulfillment from yourself but you’re also stealing it from your family, friends and all of the people you were meant to serve, who need your services now and who are floundering because you aren’t willing to get out of your comfort zone and rise to the calling on your life
Before starting a business, you need 200% conviction in your calling to build this business.
What is conviction? A firmly held belief or opinion.
When starting a business, you need 200% conviction in the following:
- I CAN and MUST start this business
- I have EVERY ability to figure out how to make this business successful
- When failure hits, I WILL learn from it, grow from it and leverage it to create success
- I have a tribe that I’m meant to serve. They’re for me and I’m for them and they won’t be served fully unless I get out of my comfort zone and build this business
- This business is the key to my family’s financial future. It is my obligation to create financial freedom and long lasting security for the people I love
Notice that NONE of the above beliefs have anything to do with whether you have confidence or not. Far too often, when we get caught in the ‘no confidence’ trap, we’re operating from a very self-centered place. Everything is about us- what we’re not, what we can’t accomplish, what we’ll lose if we try and on and on and on…
That is NOT the place from which to build a business.
You building a business has more to do with what your tribe needs than who you think you are or are not. When you move from self-centered to service driven, your entire perspective on building a business changes. From a service driven place, you’re entire focus is on the tribe you were born to serve.
You ask yourself questions like:
- What does my tribe need?
- Where is my tribe struggling?
- What information can I share with them?
- How can I help improve their lives today?
- What else can I do to serve and support my tribe?
None of the above questions focus on you or your insecurities… and they shouldn’t. This business is not about you; it’s about the people who needed you years ago, who’ve waited for you for decades, who are ready to dive into the products and services you offer so they can solve their problems and live their best lives.
And you might be saying to yourself, “That’s all fine and dandy but if I don’t feel confident enough to put my work out in the world, how am I ever going to reach those people?”
Great question!
And here’s the simple answer:
Imperfect, uncertain and, yet, willing to share and give are the BEST attributes of the most successful entrepreneurs… and you now have those in spades!
You need to shift your focus from a business that is about you feeling ‘good enough’ to creating a business that MUST meet the needs of your tribe, whether you feel good enough or not.
How do you make that shift?
3 steps:
Step 1- Accept that feeling ‘confident enough’ is a myth.
Accept the fact that you won’t ever feel confident enough to fully serve your tribe. You’re a human being, a work in progress and you will make major mistakes. Get good with that so you can give up the quest for perfection and focus on taking daily massive action that creates progress.
Step 2- Focus on the pain that your target market is going through.
On a daily basis, get REAL with the pain that your target market is going through. Get clear on how much your tribe is losing with every passing day that you don’t share your talents and gifts with the world. What is your lack of initiative costing your tribe? What are they losing? In what ways are they suffering? Get clear on their pain so you can get out of your own way.
Step 3- Identify the top 3 skills you need to develop to build a successful business and educate yourself.
There are certain skills you’ll need when building a business that don’t matter when it comes to working for someone else. Here are a few that come to mind:
- sales
- marketing
- copywriting
As an aspiring entrepreneur, there’s a lot that you won’t know how to do. Your goal isn’t to spend years acquiring proficiency in every area. Your initial goal is to determine what your top 3 skill deficiencies are, find the mentors, courses, and training that will get you up to speed on those things, and dive into the learning and development of those skills so, as you fail, you can learn, pivot and leverage failure to grow even more.
At the end of the day, if you’re using ‘no confidence’ as the excuse that explains why you aren’t building the business you know you were born to build, you are telling a victim story that will keep you stuck, your family’s financial future unstable and your tribe’s ability to succeed locked in place.
You have a right, a responsibility and the privilege to do better than that. Confidence is not the pre-requisite to starting your business; courage is.
And courage says: “I don’t know how but I do know why and, whatever it takes, I’ll make this happen. I was born to do this…”
That… is a powerful way to live.
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