Hi there. It's Sue. And thanks for joining me for tips and talk day. These are bite-sized topics that I pull from community questions and things that I'm observing in the world of handmade small business. If you'd like to submit a topic, DME, over on Instagram at gift biz unwrapped, how's your confidence ranking. I'm recently back from Phoenix, where I attended the gifted designer conference kicking off that event.
Lisa Payden from the personal gift basket did a presentation on creating a confident you and I heard what she had to say. I thought, ah, ha, this could be a tips and talk conversation where I can add my personal spin to the things that she's talking about. This whole idea of confidence is so important because it literally can make or break your business.
As I work with people who are just starting out, I'll tell you some people don't even take the very first step because they're concerned about themselves and whether they can actually do it. And this plays right into a portion of Lisa's presentation, where she stated five traits of low confidence. I titled this, what's your confidence ranking, and I'm not doing a numbers thing where you have to add up your points and figure out where you are on a scale.
But I want you to mentally just think to yourself, well, how am I ranking on each of these five points of low confidence? The first one is doubting your abilities. Where do you rank in terms of whether you think you have the ability to succeed in your business? Many have a dream that they'd like to pursue, but they're afraid that it's not going to be able to work for them because why they don't have any business experience never in their past.
Have they ever been really working to do something themselves? They've always been working for someone and being told what they should do or what their job is. And now it would be all on them. So they're worried about if they actually have the experience and the ability to run their own business. I'll also see people being concerned about marketing and sales. I've never done that before. I'm not outgoing secretly an inter divert all of those types of things.
When you're thinking that way, you're mentally getting in your head, that you don't have the ability. Let me share with you the real truth. You can have as much book smarts as you want. And I'll see people who have a lot of experience, they have that degree and they're no better than somebody who's just starting out without having had the experience.
So I want you to stop thinking about, do I have the ability, especially with all the access that we have these days to all different resources, information, it's so much she's your now than ever before. You don't need coding. You don't need tons of technical ability. You need your skill. You need what you bring to the product that you create. And from there you can learn everything else. So this first one, again, doubting your abilities. This decreases your level of confidence.
The same second one that Lisa talked about was feeling isolated, feeling like you're in this all by yourself. So how are you ever going to learn everything? Because you're all alone. I think the reason why we feel less than confident with this particular one is that we're afraid to reach out for help. We're afraid to ask other people or even admit that maybe we don't know something. When in truth, there are so many people available to help you at the conference that I've been referencing here.
They're all people with similar types of businesses and what are we doing? We're in a room supporting each other because we're each in certain areas of the country. We each have different audiences. So don't feel like you have to either keep your product so close to you and not let other people know about it because you're afraid they're going to steal your idea or all those other things.
If you're feeling like your, just all by yourself, reach out to business groups like chamber of commerce or small business association, and start rubbing shoulders with other people who are doing a similar thing to you, because there is no reason you should feel isolated, nor is that the best way to achieve success. You want to be surrounded with other people who are doing something very similar to you. Point number three of traits.
When you have low confidence is running from challenges, not taking risks at all. Anyone you talk to who's had a successful business will tell you that you take more risks and you see that things don't necessarily work out the way you want many, many, many times before you actually land what works. This is just part of the gig. This is part of what you buy into. When you decide you're going to build your own business, you're going to try something. It's not going to work.
You're going to tweak it a little bit. You'll try something else. It might not work. You'll hear about something that someone else is doing. You try that. Maybe it works a little bit for you. And then finally you land on something that is the golden gem that really works for you. But it's by taking all of these little individual steps that you get to the point where something actually truly works. You need to be a risk taker. Yeah, it's going to be uncomfortable.
But when you think of these things as experiments and you take these risks, that's when see success. And if you run from everything, if you just want to do it, the easy, safe way, you'll never get anywhere. Point number four, comparing yourself to others. When you compare yourself to authors, obviously you get intimidated and your confidence drops way down. All right? Comparisonitis we all have it. No matter how successful you are.
If you start looking at what other people are doing, it starts to intimidate you and make you feel maybe a little bit less than, and maybe someone else's doing something better than you. It's natural to feel that way. I found the best thing is look at other people who are doing something similar and use it to your advantage versus it totally tanking your confidence. What are they doing that you could add to what you're
doing? And honestly, not everything that other businesses do is something that would integrate well within your own company. Even if you're selling the same product, because you have different audiences, yours spin off your business in terms of the messaging that you bring might be different.
So you always want to look at what other people are doing in your industry, and then judge for yourself of whether it applies to your business or not, not judging that they're doing something that you're not doing. And for whatever reason, then they're better. That's when the comparison itis comes in. The other thing to keep yourself in check. When you're looking at other people is remind yourself of how long they've been in business.
If you've started only a year or two ago, and you're comparing yourself against somebody who's been in business for 10 or 15, nine years, obviously you're going to see things a little more buttoned down. They've been doing this way longer than you have. So don't use them as a marker in the sand of what you have or haven't achieved yet. There are also people I will say that start their business and right away just catapult and move forward very quickly.
Well, that's great, but they might have hired coaches. They might have started with more funding than you. I mean, everyone starts at a different place. So you really need to think of your business as your own journey. Listen, there are lots of different reasons why people will start their business. Some of it is the empowerment that you feel the excitement of building something for yourself, getting out of being committed to somebody else for the nine to five and all of their goals.
You want to work towards your goals. There are lots of different reasons. And you know, none of what I just said was only to make money, right? Because there are psychological reasons why you start your business. There are more concrete, financial reasons why you would start your business, et cetera. And when we're talking about confidence, all of that sits in psychological zone, doesn't it? Okay. Rounding this out. Point number five on Lisa's chart. No self grace.
Why are we so hard on ourselves all the time? You know, when we trip just the littlest bit, we say such mean things to ourselves and we just put ourselves down in this little hole, like I knew you couldn't do this. Who were you thinking that you would be able to create your own business from scratch?
No, no, no, no, no enough of that kind of thinking, give yourself some grace, especially if you're doing something for the very first time you're learning, you're going to improve and you're going to get better each and every time. And just think about something that maybe you've done in your life. That the first time you weren't so good at, but now that you've perfected your systems or your ways you've trained yourself, now you're a pro at it.
So again, the five traits of lower self-confidence are doubting our abilities, feeling isolated. And I'm going to say feeling isolated versus needing to be isolated. You aren't three running from challenges. So not being a risk taker because that we have to do. If we're going to see any level of success, comparing ourselves to others, I know we do it. It feels so yucky, doesn't it.
But if you put it into a different position in your mind about what you're actually looking at, when you look at others versus saying, they're better than me, just look at examples of things that they do, that you could potentially integrate in to up your game. And finally, this whole idea of self grace being nicer to yourself and allowing yourself to learn. A lot of us are moms here.
If you're a little toddlers learning to walk and they fall down and skin, their knee do yell at them and tell them they're bad. And they'll never be a good Walker. Of course not. You know, you lift them up and you tell them it's okay. It's okay. And then you guide them a little bit. You know, you give them some stability. They strengthen their legs. And my guess is they learn how to walk. We need to do the same thing for ourselves. Okay? Have a little grace and caring and comfort for yourself.
When you upgrade your whole support system and the ideas under this confidence factor, you'll see an impact on your sales because you're going to show up stronger. And just by being more confident, you're going to attract more business and more sales to you. We all know when you're talking with other people and they're like, oh yeah. Oh wait, you want to know how much that cost? Well, let me go back and look on my sheet, you know, versus someone who says, oh yes, those are three for $15.
And the great thing this product is that whatever you're going to say, you're much more likely to buy from someone who's interacting with you confidently. And if you're interested in purchasing guides, you along the path to the sale, Michelle James from uniquely made for more provided a great comment on this topic. She says, as humans, we're imperfect prone to fail and make mistakes. We need to accept our humanity, laugh at ourselves, brush it off and keep moving right on Michelle.
And thanks, Lisa, for the inspiration for the topic today. Now let's all go out and face the world with confidence. That's a wrap. I'm a get to the point kind of girl. And this is what you can expect from these quick midweek sessions. Now it's your turn go out and fulfill that dream of yours. Share your handmade products with us. We want them and they bring us both so much happiness..