Photo by Michael Burrows
If there’s one job role that can be intimidating and empowering in equal measure, it’s being an entrepreneur. So many people are opting to start their own business these days, and therefore, it becomes not just about setting up a company but about ensuring you have what it takes in your mind, body, and soul.
Confidence is one of those things that we can easily lack in business. With constant competition and conflict, it’s so simple to bleed the “confidence well” dry, which means that when we start to feel those sensations of being overwhelmed, it can take its toll in the long run. Therefore, it’s about understanding the right tools that can directly or indirectly give us confidence. Here are a few things that we can all benefit from and why they will work for our mental fortitude.
Tools that Make Processes Simpler
Many people starting out in the world of business think about a process and don’t change it. The big problem with this, especially among entrepreneurs who have relatively little skill in the world of industry, is that they don’t make changes to these processes. It’s easy to see why because decision fatigue is a very real thing among people starting businesses, however, we’ve got to learn to work smart instead of working hard.
For example, contractors in the HVAC industry can benefit from using HVAC invoicing software, as it can automatically generate invoices and templates. Templates are invaluable, not just for the sake of doing things quicker, but when we choose the right template for either a document or a working process, our productivity can shoot through the roof. For the sake of productivity, you need to start working with the 80/20 Rule. This is also known as the Pareto principle, a concept that states roughly 80% of the outcomes stem from 20% of the cause. Using this to prioritise tasks can optimise your efforts and, therefore, make every process simpler.
Online Courses (and the Real-world Approach)
If there’s one approach that we can all benefit from to improve our confidence, it’s our relationship to a subject matter. Entrepreneurs need the opportunity to grow by gaining insights, enhancing their expertise, and challenging themselves to grow and adapt in their various fields. However, there’s a wide variety of educational resources out there that we need to ensure we find the right ones. Some of the best online resources include:
- Coursera, which provides a wide range of courses from top universities and educational institutions.
- edX, which offers access to courses from leading institutions like Harvard and MIT.
- MasterClass, providing high-quality, in-depth courses taught by renowned professionals.
We need to have an understanding of the best resources. Of course, it’s not just about online education, but you can expand into other approaches, for example, getting a mentor. This can also give you a far better understanding of how you relate to the concept of business.
We can easily become bound by processes and practices and think that if we obtained a certain qualification or understanding, it would completely reinvigorate our business. The reality is that sometimes we are the person standing in the way of our development. A mentor can provide a fantastic understanding of oneself, as long as you choose the right one.
Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
A tool, but not as we know it. Stepping out of our comfort zone is something everybody needs to become accustomed to in business and life. This means switching off our abilities to negatively react to stressful situations. Resilience is such an important tool, which we touch upon later, but if you are consumed by self-doubt, stepping out of your comfort zone can build your confidence.
Every entrepreneur, and indeed, every person will experience self-doubt at certain points in their journey. Doubt is a peculiar thing because we can choose to believe what we’re thinking, but when we experience this, it doesn’t mean that it is actually true. Doubt has the uncanny ability to cloud our minds, and this prevents us from standing outside of our comfort zone. You can look at a child who has no fear and look at it as a negative thing. However, when a child is jumping off something in the playground, the parent is there to help them understand the level of risk involved.
We should always have an understanding of the risks versus the rewards in anything we do, and this will give us greater confidence to approach any given situation. However, we need to turn this into an automatic process in our minds. Learning to understand, analyse, and mitigate potential hazards as part of a risk management matrix can help to build a far better understanding of any situation.
Setting Goals in Life (Not Just Business)
Being a confident entrepreneur is not just about what you do during business hours, but about the practices outside of your working hours. We must remember that while many people believe they need to switch off from work mode at the end of the day, there are benefits to being a confident individual in every aspect of life, especially if it doesn’t come naturally to you.
This is why setting goals in life will give you a more well-rounded personality that helps you deal with the tough aspects of running a business, but also deal with life’s problems. This is where things like exercise can be invaluable because it can be very humbling and help you develop natural mental fortitude, which enables you to deal with tough things.
There’s a reason why many entrepreneurs practise Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It’s become a very popular martial art, and for good reason, because it builds in a natural problem-solving ability and forces you to rely on instincts rather than to think about problems. We can easily become overwhelmed with the thought process rather than the solution, especially when we lack confidence.
Additionally, there are other business and leadership lessons from the Brazilian jiu-jitsu community, for example, camaraderie and leadership, but also the ability to let go of a bad day and become engrossed in something that you cannot approach half-heartedly. This is why setting goals in life can have a positive knock-on effect on how you run your business. Whether this is through performing martial arts, learning a language, or learning how to build relationships with people, every single thing is always relevant.
Building the Right Level of Resilience
Resilience is a multifaceted ability because you learn it through life problems but also through the relationships you build. It’s essential to have a resilient mindset, and as already mentioned, if we feel knocked back constantly by defeats, we might believe this slowly wears us down, so we may benefit from slowly learning to question everything in the right way. Tools such as Learn to Discern (L2D) can help people become more questioning, but in a constructive way.
Entrepreneurs can easily find themselves becoming enamoured with their own voice, which is certainly a sign of confidence but can easily develop into bloody-mindedness or even arrogance, which is something we all need to be aware of. While confidence is something we all need, many entrepreneurs let this govern their approach to leadership with a “do as I say” attitude to motivating employees.
Confidence is about having the bravery to be wrong and to deal with things with humility. This is something that no amount of project management software can help you with, but when we’re talking about tools that offer confidence, there are as many real-world tools as there are software-based ones. They are all relevant.
