Confidence in communicating and interacting with others is a key ingredient to success when starting your own business. It helps you achieve your goals, overcome fears and make decisions. Your confidence in yourself and your business is communicated through your behaviour and speech to your clients and customers. So what can you do if self confidence is a weakness?
Establish the facts
You will go through this process when you write your business plan, but restating the basics is helpful in getting yourself in to the mindset of a business owner. In short these are the details that define your business and set the ground rules for running it.
What are my company’s core values?
What are our goals?
What are our competitors doing and why should you trust and buy from us?
Set yourself realistic goals
Don’t expect too much too fast or you’ll just be setting yourself up to fail. If building confidence is your aim you need to set yourself milestones towards a realistic end goal. And when you get there, acknowledge it. You could take a break, go for a coffee or crack open a bottle of champaign depending on the achievement.
Listen to positive affirmations
Positive affirmations can be very helpful in building confidence. When we hear positive statements over and over again, it can help us to feel better about ourselves. It can also help us to believe that we can achieve our goals.
These might be statements such as:
- I am a strong business leader
- I enjoy interacting with other business people
- What I say is relevant, important and worth listening to
Find others who have the same goals as you
You can do this through discussion forums, social media, networking events, or simply talking to people you meet. Building relationships can help you overcome your fears that affect your confidence to help you achieve your goals.
Practice
It may seem like a silly idea, but you could practice your skills in a safe environment, such as with your family and friends. For instance, when someone comes in to the room you would stand to shake their hand. Think about how you present yourself in relation to the person you are talking to. If you remain seated when someone else stands, this is a subordinate position.
Try pitching your business to a family friend. You may not be trying to sell anything but just convince them of the value of your product or service. If you can come across as genuine and convincing you know you have the tone right. If you sound desperate or make you friend feel unconfortable you know you have something to work on.
Its okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. Confidence comes from what you think and what you do. By practicing you are proving your capabilities.
Take action!
Confidence is built through a combination of positive self-talk, constructive feedback from others and taking action. Positive self-talk or self affirmation consists of telling yourself positive things about yourself, such as your abilities and strengths. Constructive feedback from others helps you learn and improve and taking action is the process of doing something with the goal of achieving a result.
By taking action you build your confidence by proving that you are capable of completing tasks. You also learn from your mistakes and improve as a result. Starting a new business presents a learning curve for most of us so don’t expect to get everything right first time.
In order to be confident in any situation, it is important to take action and build confidence gradually over time.
And finally…
Self confidence is essential for any entrepreneur. You need to believe in your product and service and make others believe in you. People in senior positions in companies tend to be confident people who relate and communicate easily with others. If this doesn’t come naturally, you are not alone. You don’t need to become someone you are not. You just need to be willing to embrace techniques that will lead to you improving your confidence so you are able to communicate your or your product’s value convincingly to others.