Retail can be tough. It is easy to lose your mojo, to lose your confidence. Here are things we have found nurture confidence. We share these here not as mental health experts but as business colleagues, talking with friends …
- Know your business. This starts with knowing your business data, respecting it and basing decisions on the data. This provides a foundation for changes that are right in and for your business.
- Take small steps. Sometimes, confidence fades or can be a challenge when the task ahead or the changes to be made appear too big. Break them down. Focus on the next step. Take that one step. Cheer the result. Next, take the next step.
- Know you are not alone. No matter what change or challenge you face, there are people who can and will help. Put your hand up. There is no shame in this.
- Focus on the destination. Where do you want to be as a result of a change in your business, new products or a new marketing initiative. Focus on the destination and ignore the barriers you create in your head. Often, the barriers are only there because you allowed yourself to see them.
- Facts encourage confidence. Facts such as evidence of success of others and evidence of success in your own business underpin confidence. The key is to look at the facts, to focus on them and not the possible barriers you can create.
- Hire confident people.
- Let go of people who are not confident, who talk change down, who are negative at their core.
- Play confident music in your office and in the shop.
- Dress with confidence.
- Know that a failure is always a success. Every change you make in your business is a success because you either make more money, enjoy your business more or learn what not to do next time because it did not go as planned. There is only upside from change.
A lack of confidence is not easily overcome. We understand that and do not seek here to be glib about it. Lack of confidence in anything is a serious challenge, yet one to overcome for the future of the business, personal achievement and the benefit of all who rely on the business.
Rather than investing time in the fog of a lack of confidence, our advice is to look out beyond the fog, to take small steps … forward.
