One of the secret keys to running a business successfully is confidence.
But if you feel you're lacking in that department,
you're part of the 85 percent of people who struggle with low self-esteem.
This is problematic for business
owners since having the confidence to make important decisions to effectively run your
business and sell your products is so important.
So are there any ways to find our confidence to be more effective business owners?
There absolutely are.
So stay tuned to the end of this video to learn about four ways.
how you can build up your own confidence.
Hi, my name is Mei Pak and I help makers, artists,
and designers create a full-time living selling their handmade products online.
In today's video, I want to talk about something that really hits home for me.
It's about how self esteem and confidence.
play a really huge role in either making or breaking your business.
I know finding your confidence, maintaining it and building up
your self-esteem is something that inflicts a lot of creative people.
We tend to let our imposter syndrome limit,
our full potential, and let the fears formed by our low self-esteem
hold us back. I know many of you will be able to relate to this
because the majority of us have trouble with our confidence to some degree.
I've certainly met very confident people in my life and they're awesome.
And I love them. My husband is one of those kinds of people, but for the most part,
the people that I meet and work with at Creative Hive are people
who at some level struggle with confidence.
Hey, I was that same way and I still am today but it's just a lot more in check today.
In fact, I remember my own self-esteem
definitely got in the way of my Tiny Hands business.
I remember a specific time when this was such a big problem and how it hindered
the growth of my business. I was getting in my own way
and preventing myself from achieving the success
I was working so hard to get.
And it was then that I realized I had a problem and I needed to address it.
So that specific moment was many years ago with Tiny Hands, my jewelry business.
So I was emailed by a really big online retailer.
It was really cool store that, at the time,
I didn't particularly aspire to sell on,
but when I got the email from them, I was definitely very excited.
So they emailed me to say they were interested in selling some of my products on their website
and they want it to buy some of my stuff wholesale. Exciting.
They asked me a bunch of questions. Like, if I had testing certificates for my products,
if I had safety standard labels for my jewelry,
And so many other questions that I had,
honestly, no idea how to answer at the time.
I was making my products because I loved making things,
and I loved showing them and sharing them with people.
I didn't ever really expect Tiny Hands to get the attention of big retailer like that.
So I never gave those things a single thought.
I was like a wide-eyed deer caught in the headlights.
I didn't know what they were talking about.
But I was also too scared to ask for clarifications on what those things meant.
Can you imagine just how dramatically my confidence fell in that moment
I was so afraid that they would judge me
or think that I was small potatoes
and I was afraid they wouldn't take me seriously and not to do business with me.
If I asked them questions, that make me sound dumb.
I was afraid of sounding unprofessional.
So I avoid it responding to that email for about a week.
That is such a big No-No because in this day and age,
everyone is connected to their email. People expect you to have a less than 24 hour turnaround time,
and I didn't respond for more than seven days.
So, at that point, it started eating at
me, and it felt horrible thinking that I had probably already lost the deal at the time.
I was meeting up with a mastermind group that I was a part of locally,
so I brought it up to my girlfriends in this group and I asked what to do,
and if they had any idea how to do safety testing on products.
They didn't have answers for me,
but what they did have was a more objective perspective on
what was going on, and thank goodness for that.
Because what they did see was that my problem wasn't that I didn't
know anything about safety testing procedures.
It was more of the fact that I was so afraid of what they would think.
if I were to write back asking questions.
Tt had less to do with my knowledge of the
subject, and everything to do with my own confidence or better said the lack of it.
So they recommended that I see a therapist, which required me to get out of my comfort zone,
since there is the stigma that people who get therapy are cray-cray,
especially in the culture I grew up in, and for a while,
I thought maybe I was broken, maybe I was actually crazy and that someone needed to fix me.
And I'm glad that I eventually learned that that wasn't the case.
I wasn't crazy or broken. I'm just human.
I just needed some guidance.
So I did see a therapist for about two years
and we worked on my self-esteem and confidence issues and she has helped me so much, and without her,
I don't think I would have gotten to this point.
So over the course of two years, we broke down
so many internal barriers a lot of its childhood stuff
and demons and shaped me into a better person.
So don't be shy. If you have the option to see a therapist,
please do. It is one of the best ways to get back your confidence.
But okay, what if seeing a therapist isn't a possible for you right now?
Don't worry, because I do want to share with you four other ways to build up your confidence.
In addition to talking to my therapist,
these four ways also worked wonders
for me, at helping me break down some of my own barriers.
So hopefully, it'll help you with yours as well.
Number one: confidence comes from doing
I didn't come up with this myself. It was actually a thing from
a really great article by Mindy Kaling.
You may recognize her from The Office. There's really no way around building confidence,
besides doing, practicing.
It is the same as if you’re trying to learn how to cook
or to learn any new skill that you have never tried before.
You don't feel confident doing something if you don't know what you're doing,
but the more you try and the more mistakes you make,
the more you'll know what's going on. And that confidence will build up over time.
This also reminds me of Nike's logo,
just do it. It's so true. If you second-guess yourself all the time,
you'll never actually end up doing the things you need to do to become more knowledgeable
and to gain that confidence.
Number two: if you believe in the work that you do and believe it can help people in
some way, no matter how tiny, you can fake it until you make it.
If nobody has bought your products yet, that doesn't mean they aren't great.
Okay, but you have to market your business knowing that it's great and that it's a big deal.
Trust me when I say that people will feel that energy and catch on.
This was a big struggle. When I started Creative Hive in 2014.
You would think that having built such a big audience already with my jewelry business
Tiny Hands since 2006,
but I already had a big audience of people that I could just tell, “Come check out my new business”,
but it really doesn't work that way, because they’re separate businesses with very different audiences.
So I had to start from scratch, like, I would share blog post on social media,
but nobody would see it or click on my links or just give me any time of day.
That's just how it is when you get started,
but it doesn't mean that it will be that way forever, or that
what you have isn't good. You need to keep believing that
what you're doing is good work and that will help you gain traction over time.
Number three: if you are selling anything and you struggle from low self-esteem.
do this: price low in the beginning.
Now. I know a lot of other teachers are going to hate me for saying this,
because everyone out there says you should price higher,
you should price what you're worth, and yes, I agree
I think lots of people are under-charging,
but here's the thing: confidence comes from doing. That was point
number one. If you haven't sold anything yet,
you are going to feel like your products aren't any good.
You might even feel like an impostor. So in order to start building that confidence,
you need to make it easy for people to buy your stuff.
Make your prices a little bit lower in the beginning,
so more people can afford it. Imagine yourself as the customer:
Would you be more likely to buy a product from someone who has zero reviews,
zero social proof, yet their item is priced the same
as products that do have great reviews, and it's a similar product?
Probably not. You'd end up buying the one with all the great reviews for the same price.
Once you know a lot of people love your products,
raise your prices. And when you keep making more sales and you're overwhelmed with all of the orders,
then raise your prices again, and keep doing that until you reach the price point.
That you ultimately want to be at. Number 4: stop worrying about what people think.
Now, I know this is easier said than done.
But one thing I have learned over being online
for a long time and experiencing a lot of pushback from other people,
is that when people judge you and think that you're doing something the wrong way,
it's almost always because of their own issues or floss that they have.
Someone can have a very bad day completely unrelated to you, and they might take it out on you.
Just know that it's almost always not your problem,
okay, but it's other people projecting their life and their problems onto you. And let's face it:
no matter what we do or how hard we try,
it is truly impossible for every single human being to like us
or agree with what we're doing, or to see the vision that we have.
Think about it. Probably not everyone liked Mother Teresa.
So keep doing you, and don't worry about other people's opinions.
If you want to expand on this conversation or have any questions,
let me know down in the comments below,
I hope this was helpful to you, or, please share it with someone who needs to hear this right now.