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DaZTL
09-02-2014, 03:58 PM
Hi guys

I am fairly new to the forum and have just written my first blog post, which I would really appreciate some feedback on:

What really is confidence?
Self-confidence is one of the driving factors to starting a business. However, research shows that all too often this initial spurt of confidence fades away, so that when it’s most needed to help grow the business, it’s almost non-existent. Whilst it is natural for some things to ebb and flow over time, what is it that really eats away at our self-confidence? To get to the bottom of this, I wanted to first find out what confidence actually is.

Recently I spoke with a friend of mine about how he started up his business. The initial energy, enthusiasm and confidence he had, really helped to make things happen at the beginning. Now that the business has been up and running for a while, he wants to grow things but seems to be facing a real loss of self-confidence. Despite having built quite a successful company, somehow he is now convinced he is not a ‘real’ businessman as he now lacks the self-confidence he believes he should have. It turns out that there were a number of things associated with growing his business that he really knows nothing about and so he feels very out of place. It appears the lack of knowledge has killed the self-confidence he initially had, though this has also helped me with my search for what confidence really is.

He had imposter syndrome!
Two of the main reasons my friend was able to start his business were:

• He had an expert level of skill in his field
• He had researched and practiced what was needed

Now that he wants to grow his business, he is confronted by a number of things associated with this (e.g. marketing, web-design etc.) that are completely unknown to him, which gives rise to his feelings of ‘imposter syndrome’ and therefore affects his levels of self-confidence. I now see that his previous confidence came from not only having the skill to do something, but also the knowledge of how to apply that skill. I deduce from this that confidence is not really/actually/genuinely a skill in itself, but it comes from having repeatedly applied the knowledge of how to use a skill.

Realising your limits makes you limitless!
Once you understand that confidence is just knowing you can perform a task easily because you have performed it many times before, it lessens the ‘imposter syndrome’ feeling which allows you to focus on what is needed to either become knowledgeable yourself or find someone else who is knowledgeable.
Realising where your own strengths and weaknesses lie within your business and outsourcing the areas that you are less comfortable with, will empower you and help regain your self-confidence so you can grow your business in the best way possible.

What things have lowered your self-confidence to move forward with business growth?

Many thanks

Daz

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2014, 04:02 PM
Hi Daz. We don't really post or review blog posts here.
I'll move this to copy writing and maybe you'll get some feedback on that, otherwise it's not really done. Most of us have blogs. Can you imagine how out of control it would be if we all posted our latest blog post for review?

If you want a review on the actual website where you are blogging, that's a different story. That's what our review section is for.
http://www.small-business-forum.net/website-reviews/

Work1099
11-14-2014, 05:57 PM
It's worth spending more time on writing your headline. How to write an effective headline is quite a broad topic; one worth hours of study due to the results you'll secure. As a short-cut though, ask yourself the following:

If I took this headline and put a phone number after it and ran that as an ad in a newspaper, would I still get responses even without anything else in the ad?

If the headline doesn't pull that much attention-getting power, you may want to rewrite it.