Congratulations on deciding to turn a profit from your passion! It’s an exciting time! But it’s also a time when confidence can be quite shaky.
And you know what? That’s normal and expected. I’ll tell you why in the beginning of this article.
We stop feeling guilty or shaming ourselves for doubting ourselves when we know why our confidence is shaken when we start the entrepreneurial journey.
Then we’ll talk about the 7 ways to increase your confidence as a new entrepreneur! In the end, I’ll tell you which way has made the biggest difference for me!
Table of Contents
Why is our confidence shaken when we start trying to turn a profit from our passion?
All our life we have been guided down a carefully laid path towards the 9-5 life.
Think about it. From the time we enter school at the age of 4 or 5, we have been told what to do, when, and how to do it well if we want to get stars or A’s or praise from the adults in our lives.
If you were like me, you learned how to excel at this really quickly.
Related articles:
- The Key Mindset Shift for a Profitable Business
- Should I Pursue My Dream? An Incredible Exercise For The Answer
- 7 Ways to Overcome Perfectionism – and why you should
Being a straight-A student decreases our confidence as an entrepreneur
I was a straight-A student, which looking back I realize means that I learned how to follow instructions really, REALLY well.
That skillset is great for the 9-5 world. For the most part, we are following instructions.
But what about entrepreneurship? What happens when we decide to turn a profit from our passion so that we can ultimately leave the 9-5?
All of the sudden, there is no one giving us instructions anymore. There is no longer a clear path to the result we want.
This can feel really unsettling.
I know it did for me.
I felt unbalanced, confused, and unsure of heading down any direction in case it turn out to be the wrong direction (link to fear of failure post).
This shook my confidence to the core.
What if I did the wrong thing? How do I even know what the right thing is? Am I crazy to do this?
What was worse is that I felt weak for thinking this.
I thought, “I’m sure so-and-so didn’t feel like this when they were starting their business!”
The secret to entrepreneurship
But let me let you in on a little secret that I’ve learned over the years… most people who are just starting down the entrepreneurial path do not feel confident in the beginning.
Why? Because remember that we’ve all had the same educational experience that has taught us to follow instructions.
Sadly, those of us who were straight-A students learned this more and so experience a greater shock to our confidence when we start trying to turn a profit from our passion.
C-students didn’t learn this as well and so actually don’t experience this much of a shock to their confidence when they start their entrepreneurial journey. The first time I recognized this, I regretted not being a C-student in school!
So point being:
If you have your confidence shaken, it’s normal, expected, and nothing to feel guilty about, especially since there are 7 ways to increase your confidence as a new entrepreneur!
7 ways to increase your confidence as a new entrepreneur
1. Visualization of the person you want to become
Did you know our mind can’t tell the difference between reality and imagination?
Because of this, when we exercise only in our imagination, our muscles actually increase in size almost as much as if we were actually working out. Pretty crazy! This experiment has been repeated and proven over and over.
So much so that professional athletes like Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps, Allyson Felix, Ronaldinho and Lindsey Vonn use visualization regularly to improve their game.
Other professionals that also use visualization are Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, and Jim Carrey.
So by doing visualization, you’re in good company!
What’s happening when we do visualization is that we are training our brain with new neural pathways of behaving.
You may not be able to go out and be confident on a live Instagram training every day, but you can visualize a live Instagram training 7 times a day.
That’s 7 times more experiences every day of being confident.
And since our brain can’t tell the difference between reality and imagination, the next time you do a live Instagram training in real life, your brain will run that confident script.
Happy visualizing Goddess!
2. Reading books by people you look up to see that they didn’t have it all easy-peasy either
Maybe you don’t have a lot of people in your life to look up to as you’re starting this journey.
I didn’t have any business people in my life when I was starting to make a profit from my passion. So I didn’t have any references for how I was supposed to act or think. I didn’t know if my doubts or fears were normal.
Reading books about people like Winston Churchill, Cleopatra, Jen Sincero, Elizabeth Gilbert, Robin Sharma, was a great way for me to have this inspiration and guidance in my life.
3. Invest in a coach to fast-track your success and give you that support and accountability
Investing in a coach has been the greatest investment of my life. It’s been what has given me to the personal and business growth that I have today.
Looking back, I’m not sure I would have gotten to where I am today if I hadn’t invested in coaching.
Business was just too far removed from anything I’ve ever done before. I didn’t have the business skills yet and I certainly, and more importantly, didn’t have the personal and mindset skills yet.
Coaching provides both of this!
On top, it provides support, motivation, and accountability which is so important when we are going through that difficult phase in the beginning of starting our business! If you’d like to learn how we could coach you to make a profit from your passion so you could leave your 9-5, find a time for us to chat without any obligations.
4. Take bold action even, and especially, when it’s scary – you’ll see how much you’re capable of
Do you remember the first time you hit a home run? Or if you weren’t sporty, do you remember the first time you made dinner?
Remember how proud you felt? How you stood a little taller and thought, “Wow I did that! Yay me!”
That’s what I’m talking about here.
When we take action, even before we’re ready, we feel proud. We realize how much we’re capable of and our confidence grows.
5. Cut out or decrease the people in your life who make you feel insecure.
The environment we place ourselves in is really important when we are starting our entrepreneurial journey.
Why? Look at it like this: It’s pretty hard to increase our confidence if we have downers and doubters in our life.
If we have people in our life who are constantly questioning what we are doing and expressing their doubts whether we’ll ever make it work, it can be pretty hard to change.
Some people are able to use these doubters as fuel and think, “I’ll show you!” I’m not such a person. If that’s you, amazing! Regardless, I recommend monitoring how much time you spend with these people.
Entrepreneurship will test you enough that between being pulled in so many directions, you may not have the strength to push back against these doubters all the time.
Take power poses in front of the mirror – think Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) in the last season of Ted Lasso
Power poses are fun and can really help, especially when we do them right before we take an action.
Power poses work because they increase our testosterone and decrease our cortisol (stress hormone). This means that when then do that task, we feel more powerful and less stressed. A great combination for a confident goddess!
Celebrate your wins
This reminds you of all the successes you’ve been having.
This one was huge for me in the beginning. As a perfectionist, I thought I was never doing enough. This kind of attitude was actually affecting my performance and my results.
My first coach actually recommended that I start writing down three wins every day. I noticed how much I actually am doing, especially things that scared me. Within a short period of time, my confidence grew because I learned how to recognize and think, “Wow look at me go! Look at all the things I’m doing now that were so scary or unimaginable just a month ago!”
No one has time to do all of these every day. We wouldn’t have time to actually grow our new business if we did all of these every day!
So instead, see which ones work best for you and stick to those for at least 30 days. When those 30 days are up, you’ll be surprised by how much more confident you are in yourself and your ability to take action to make a profit from your passion!
By the way, can you guess which one is my favourite?
It’s visualization!
While I do all the other ones every now and then, I try to visualize every day.
It’s made the biggest difference to my life and has given me the confidence to take massive action in making my passion into profit!
The most important thing to remember:
Remember, no one is born with confidence. It’s created.
Go out there and create it!
