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If there’s one thing that will help you to start a business and run it more efficiently, it’s confidence. Confidence isn’t something that comes naturally to everybody, but it’s definitely something you can teach yourself and build along the way.
Here, we have some tricks and ideas that will help you to develop more confidence, and eventually, start your home business. If you don’t start taking steps towards where you want to be now, you might never do it. Let’s get started!
Fake It Until You Make It
Start by faking it until you make it. This doesn’t mean pretending to be something you’re not, but your mindset is absolutely everything, especially when taking a big step or making a big change like starting a business. If you start acting like you’re a confident business owner, eventually, you’ll actually feel like one. So, how can you start faking it until you make it? Think of a confident person you know, whether that’s in person or somebody on TV. How do they walk? How do they react to situations? How do they talk about themselves? How do they treat others? Start implementing these changes in your life. You may find yourself slipping from time to time, but all you have to do is get yourself back into the zone. Change your inner monologue to reflect that of a confident person. Don’t let negative thoughts take over. You may notice a negative thought, but that doesn’t mean you have to entertain it or ruminate on it.
Do this as often as you can. Affirm that you are confident, that you are a successful business owner, and choose other affirmations that suit you.
Spend Time With Confident People
We become most like the people we spend the most time with. It makes sense, then, that we should spend time with confident people! If you have negative people in your life, try to limit the time you spend with them – or at least get good at not letting them and their attitude affect you in any way. Spend time with people who have similar goals to you, or have businesses of their own if you can. Spend time with the people you want to be like, and study those people too.
Never Stop Learning
You should never stop learning. Many people stop learning when they leave school, and wonder why they are unhappy or why they struggle to reach their goals. It’s never too late to do something new! Pick up a book. Watch a YouTube video. You can even find courses online with universities, such as the Aston University MBA. Then there are even free courses you can do, although they won’t be as in depth and you may not get a certification at the end of them. You must be passionate about self improvement and your learning if you’re going to develop the confidence to get to where you want to be.
Have A Clear Vision Of Who And Where You Want To Be
Set some time aside to be quiet and visualize. Visualization is a tool that many successful people, such as athletes and business owners, use to get a clear picture of who they want to be, and where they want to be. If you’re unsure, or you only have a vague picture in your head, you might end up with vague results. Try to picture yourself in great detail. What do you do every day? Who do you spend time with? What do you spend your free time doing? What do you do in your business? How successful is your business? Do you expand and hire a team? Make sure you add details every day, sitting down to visualize for around 5 minutes at a time. Even visualizing for one minute in the morning is better than not doing it at all, and it’ll help you to keep that momentum up so you’re consistently making progress towards where you want to be.
You could even go as far as making a vision board and putting that somewhere you can see it every day so that your vision is always in the back of your mind.
Start Taking More Risks
If you want real confidence, you need to prove to yourself that you’re capable of doing things that you may never have thought possible. This means you should start taking more risks. Do something that scares you everyday, even if it’s only something small. Get comfortable with being outside of that comfort zone. It’ll do you the world of good and each time you do something scary, you’ll realize you are more capable and powerful than you ever thought possible!
Plan Your Business
Now you’ve done some work on yourself and you’re feeling a bit more confident, it’s time to plan your business. Sit down with a pen and pad and do a rough sketch of what you want your business to be about. This can be your blueprint, and you can create a better, more official business plan later on when you have the finer details ironed out. Doing this simply shows you that you can create something from scratch, and that your idea can well be viable. Try to work out the following:
- Your business name
- Your logo
- Other elements of branding, such as brand voice, colors used, etc
- Your tagline
- How you’ll build your website
- How you’ll tackle social media
- How much it’ll cost you to start
- How you’ll keep track of everything
- Who your customers are – create consumer profiles
Write out a little every day if you prefer. If you’re not 100% sure yet, start by brainstorming ideas. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to come up with some viable business ideas:
- What are you good at?
- What do you enjoy doing?
- What would you do for free?
- How can you help people?
- What problems do you or people you know face every day?
Get A Mentor Or A Coach
A mentor or coach can help you to look at things objectively and enable you to overcome bumps in the road. They are worth the investment!
With these tips, you’ll be on your way to building the confidence you need to start your home business. Do you have any other confidence-building tips to share?
Great tips! I just realized that I have done these things for the past years and my confidence in myself became so stable that I don’t feel nervous anymore when facing a lot of people. I am not a businesswoman but I market myself and my skills in training people and these things that I’ve done from the past like faking I’m not nervous until I make it and the thought of always learning something new each day would make me a better person really helped me to be successful.