A lot of the reasons entrepreneurs struggle, frankly, I think, are mental.
I myself have given up in the past because I stopped believing in myself and my idea. Or maybe to be more accurate, I never really quite believed in myself to begin with.
And I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one.
Being a successful entrepreneur is largely about being a successful salesperson. People think about the sales aspect of starting a business when it comes to pitching — pitching to investors, pitch competitions. For sure selling is really important then, but selling permeates all aspects of starting and building a business.
You need to sell when you’re asking friends and fun friends and family for a money or a loan. You need to sell to your bank if you need a bank loan.
You need to sell to service providers, especially if you’re hoping to barter services early on when funds are tight or totally non-existent.
You need to sell to those first employees to take a chance on the opportunity to be part of your growing idea before it really takes off. Because for them there’s a risk they may not end up getting paid or have to look for a new job if your business craters.
Listen to my interview with Melissa Kehl, the CEO of Rieke Interiors. She talks about how she had a huge cashflow problem at one point. Her business was seriously in need of money. And she owed a lot of money to her suppliers. And instead, she sold to them a package where they would all reduce the amount owed and accept payment from her over time. Now that I think requires some serious selling!
And of course, there’s the big one: you need to convince your customers that they need your products or your services. And that your offer is definitely worth paying for when there are usually lots of alternatives, some of which might even be less expensive than yours or better known.
It said that to be a great salesperson, you need three things: 1) you need a great product or service; 2) you need a great company that sells it; and 3) you need to believe in yourself.
And as a startup entrepreneur, you may have a great product or service. Or maybe it’s just a great light bulb idea.
But ultimately, at the very beginning, you have only one of those things: yourself. Just you. No one knows your product, yet they don’t know your company. So you have only you and your belief in yourself. And that’s doubly true, I think, for companies offering a service.
And that’s why it’s so sad that a lot of businesses fail. Ultimately, the founder /owner ends up losing faith in himself or herself.
So what do you do if you find yourself doubting yourself and your abilities?
There are lots of frameworks out there. There’s lots of self help books, inspirational TED talks. You’ll find plenty of them if you go looking for them.
I personally love the framework set out by an organization called SoulSalt. And I’m unabashedly lifting some things from a framework that they have out there on their website. And I would encourage any of you who struggle with self doubt to visit the site & check out some of their tools & resources.
Their framework has five steps to improve our belief in ourselves.
- Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Make a list of what your strengths are. Most of us already know what some of those are. But it helps to write them down so you can see them in black and white (or even better, in an energizing color!).
But if you’re not sure, there are tools for that, too. There’s the StrengthsFinder 2.0 quiz. It’s kind of fun to do.
Or, try making a list of things people have told us over the years that we’re good at. Make a list of your past accomplishments that have made you proudest or brought you the most satisfaction. I bet you’ll start to see patterns.
Then work on those strengths. Identify what you’re not as good at that needs doing in your business, and brainstorm about ways to help find with those. It could be a partner or a mentor, an outsourced service provider, an intern, or a virtual assistant, or a MeetUp group.
2. Be your own coach. To do that, you have to first stop being judgmental with yourself (easier said than done for many of us, especially we women, I think).
Then write out the things about your business that you’re not very happy with at the moment, or are not satisfied with. Try to come up with little plans to improve each of those aspects.
3. Embrace who you are. Stop trying to be someone who’s not you. Look at whether or not you’re trying to meet other people’s expectations. Focus on your core values. Write down a list of things that are really important to you.
Then start to be more observant of your own thoughts and emotions, try journaling. Start noticing where there is a conflict or stress between how you feel and spend your time versus what’s really important to you on that list of core values.
4. Continually tell yourself you can do it. Yes, I know this sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish. Be your own cheerleader, that sort of thing. But the fact of the matter is, it’s not just wishful thinking. Because if you believe, you can do it. You tell yourself you can do it.
Doing this changes the way you see the world and yourself. A lot of us — not just we entrepreneurs — subtly sabotage ourselves by listening to and even ruminating on that downward cycle of thinking. That reinforces that self-doubt and those negative thoughts. You need to stop feeding those thoughts! Do not feed that troll!
You can either see endless possibilities or insurmountable obstacles. And it’s up to you to choose which way you want to frame the issues.
5. Get Comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is the last step in SoulSalt’s framework, and it’s my favorite one.
I think a lot of first time entrepreneurs get stuck here as well. It’s awfully easy for us human beings who don’t like change all that much to do the same things you did yesterday or last week. You tell yourself that you’ll get to that thing, or that big, hairy goal tomorrow, or next week, or the week after. And somehow a month or more slips away.
Another my past guests said it in another way: If you’re comfortable, you are not taking enough risks. I think that’s true of entrepreneurs. I think that’s true, frankly, of all of us who want personal growth. So you need to keep experimenting and trying things.
One idea that of my own that I didn’t see this on the SoulSalt site is to list of all the things that you see other companies doing to promote their products or grow their business.
And that can be all kinds of things. Just start looking around, reading the news, watching the LinkedIn and Twitter and YouTube feeds.
Maybe it’s making a video promotion, or doing live Instagram, or YouTube events, posting goofy stuff on social media, holding contests, partnering with other businesses, or doing press releases. There’s so many different things that businesses do.
So make a list of them. And ask yourself if any of these just might possibly help your business? Which ones of those are do-able for you? And if so, how would you go about doing that?
As entrepreneurs you know, we love brainstorming with others about ideas, but we often suddenly shoot down and sabotage our own thoughts. But why? Why do we do that? The world is truly full of endless possibilities.
It’s said that entrepreneurship is a journey, it’s not a destination, and I firmly believe it.
So embrace that journey. Have fun with it, try goofy things, try weird things, go out on a limb.
Give yourself permission every day to do the virtual equivalent of skydiving. You know, jump out without a safety net. As one of my guests said recently, “Unleash yourself!”
For more ideas on how to restore your faith in yourself — or maybe build it if you never truly had it in the first place — I really do recommend checking out SoulSalt – they have lots of great, practical suggestions.
What have you found helpful? I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!