To build your small business confidence is important to maintain your competitive edge. Here are 5 areas that will slowly sap your confidence, unless you strengthen them.
Build your small business confidence – 5 things to remember
1. Your family.
Problems at home will affect your performance. I know people say leave your problems at home. But really, how many of us can? We aren’t robots, or vulcans from a Star Trek universe. One reason we struggle with family connections is business owners are looking to the future. And most of our family members are not.
You may understand the purpose of long work days, but children just understand that dad or mom are not around – thus purveying that work is more important than they are. After awhile even our spouse’s may come to believe that our business and not our marriage is more important . Just ask a divorced business owner to confirm my point. To ensure your confidence level is up at work, its important to spend the time necessary to make sure your family is confident that they are equally, if not more important.
2. Yourself.
As small business owners working yourself ragged may be great for your clients and your bank account. Yet eventually it will catch up to you. Like the saying goes – The young spend all their health to gain wealth, and the old spend all their wealth to regain health. It’s also hard to believe in your abilities, if you’re not confident that your tired old body will make it through the day. Investing in professional development can help you work smarter not harder. Investing in a health club can help relieve stress and increase endurance. Eating right and sleeping enough will help you continue for the long run.
3. Underestimating the value of current customers.
As a small business owner we typically want to get bigger, and this requires increasing our client/customer base. It’s easy to overlook current customers in search of new ones. I have found servicing current customers properly is the best way to expand, because happy people tell others. This is where confidence works in reverse. If our customers start to loose confidence in our product or service they will stop using us. Then if not stopped, we will start losing confidence in ourselves. It’s definitely a vicious cycle.
If you can’t do what needs to be done, your competitors will be happy to take your place.
4. Don’t let competitors dictate your actions.
To build your small business confidence try setting yourself apart as the best alternative for your customers. It’s definitely a great way to beat your competitors. You must be the ones they want to copy, not vice versa. If you copy them, you become like the status quo. And the status quo is not always better. If you’re known for giving great presentations, people will more likely come to your events and invite you to theirs. So don’t worry if your competitors are doing something else, you just stick to the thing that sets you and your company apart.
5. Using money to make more money.
When your business starts to make money, It’s very tempting to spend your prophet buying more stuff like – high-end cars, fancy jewelry, expensive vacations, or the latest high end gadget.. Yet often ‘nice things’ cost a lot of money to maintain and keep going, and thus become liabilities.
Small business ownership is often a time of feast or famine. So make sure you invest money wisely in things that increase in value or pay a dividend outside of your business or industry. Your ability to make money in your current company can change at any time, and you may need that money you invested wisely over the years to survive tougher times. It’s easier to be confident when we have something saved for a rainy day.