Self- help tips on how to break barriers and enter new grounds.
It is true that the entrepreneurship journey is a long and lonely road. It is also true that this same long and lonely road can be the most rewarding, depending on your mindset.
There are days when my emotions are all over the place and I just feel like giving up. And there are also days when I’m thankful that I chose this path because it gives me room to reinvent myself and balance my work with family life.
But let me be honest, the dark days are long and frustrating. When clients reject ideas or delay payments, you just might begin to question your skill and doubt the viability of the business. So I pieced together 6 ways you can build healthy confidence as an entrepreneur. Come with me!
1. The first thing I’ll say is to get to know other entrepreneurs and build a network with them. That way you can listen to their experiences, successes and failures and take full advantage of their strengths while learning from their weaknesses. I recently met Chichi Yakubu of Nyonyo Essentials and another entrepreneur friend of hers. Chichi shared so many entrepreneurial tips with me that got me to rethink my way of doing things. As an extrovert, her ‘can-do’ spirit and ‘never take no for an answer’ mentality really inspired me to look beyond my introverted nature and push through even when declined an opportunity. In Chichi’s words, “Your network is your currency.”
2. The next way to build healthy confidence as an entrepreneur is to celebrate your successes and take inventory of them. It’s easy to feel like a failure when your business is not going well. You even tend to forget your past achievements. To avoid this, develop a reservoir of confidence by celebrating your accomplishments. Keep records of your business activities and rejoice over the little wins. That will help you to stay focused and to never sell yourself short.
3. Again, read about great entrepreneurs and their successes to inspire your own journey and erase all self-doubt. Even though a lot of what you need to know about entrepreneurship cannot really be taught, you can learn a thing or two from the stories of others and join them to your own experiences.
4. Most importantly, accept that entrepreneurship is a lonely road and be ready to travel on it alone and be self-sufficient. There’s a small exception; you cannot always micromanage, so know when to hit the pause button and delegate to make your work easier.
5. Oh, and you need to believe in yourself a thousand times more, that indeed your business, is a compelling solution to a real problem.
6. Finally, you need to learn to manage risks. True entrepreneurs work extremely hard to take as little risk as possible and that helps them to gain a healthy confidence in their abilities.
