How To Find Your Voice As A Small Business Owner
How to find your voice as a small business owner When you start to build your business it can be so difficult to find your voice, even when you know what you want to offer. There is so much noise on the internet these days. It’s very easy to get lost, follow ”trends” start comparing yourself to others. Whenever you are about to show up as an expert and provide value an annoying voice in your head will say some things like it was said 1000 times before, the industry is oversaturated, I have nothing to say, why people would listen to me, I’m not a world expert yet, I cannot do as well as that business owner, I don’t feel like showing up. After these thoughts appear in your head you have several choices: listen and accept them as truth that will later define your reality or notice them, don’t resist. But at the same time continue doing the work that will eventually bring you the results. Remember that only your actions will be able to bring you the results. If there is no action, there is no result. It’s very natural to experience these thoughts especially when you do creative work when you do something completely different from what other people are doing when there is no path that you can follow. It’s hard! It’s hard to wake up every day and do the work when nobody is standing behind your back when there is no roadmap to follow, and it’s up to you to figure everything out. There is so much noise these days about how you need to be positive all the time. The worst thing that you can do is to ignore your feelings, avoid feeling sad, force yourself to be positive, and repeat positive affirmations you don’t believe in. But we all know that it’s not possible. We all have bad days, we can feel down and it’s completely okay! What if you can just allow yourself to feel whatever comes out, notice it, see how it feels in your body and doesn’t resist? Of course, you need to believe in yourself, be gentle with yourself, don’t push too hard. But at the same time, you need to accept the fact that there will be many hard days, the days you don’t feel like doing anything, the days when you don’t feel motivated. It’s natural, there is no need to guilt yourself and blame others. Doing creative work, or building a business is hard. And most likely a lot of fears and limiting beliefs will come and it will be up to you to find ways to deal with them or let them rule you. There can be several reasons why are you struggling to find confidence, show up consistently, and find your unique way of expressing yourself. Take time to learn about yourself Don’t underestimate the importance of understanding yourself before you decide to show up. Of course, you can figure everything out on your way, but it will take much more time and can create a lot of anxiety. Take your time to dig deeper and ask yourself hard questions. Be honest with yourself. What do you enjoy doing and why? Because what happens very often you decide to follow the trends or want to do what is profitable and what most people are doing. But it’s not the best motivation. You’re motivated by external things. Your motivation should come from inside. For me it was huge. I have always thought that I can only teach languages because I had a degree and some experience in it. I didn’t ask myself whether I enjoy it. And it turned out I don’t. But by limiting myself to one single fiend, I prevented myself from seeing other possibilities. To explore and try different fields to find what I love doing. No wonder I didn’t want to show up, I couldn’t stay consistent. It felt fake like I was pretending to enjoy something that I actually didn’t. When you’re not in love with the everyday work, with the process you cannot become a master in your field and create remarkable things. Always question your old beliefs. Learn to listen to your inner voice. Allow it to lead you. What are your strengths? What are your values? What are your weaknesses? What kind of a person are you? Be honest about it! The more you discover your true core, the more confident your voice will become. Don’t be afraid to try and to fail I believe that every time you have an idea you should try to implement it right away. The idea appeared in your head for a reason. It’s important to give it a try and do something about it. Don’t let your fear of failure prevent you from trying. Even if you fail, you will learn something every single time. Only by trying and doing different things you will be able to find what you really enjoy and what you want to do. If you never try new things you will never know what you enjoy and why do you enjoy it. And it’s not possible to find your voice when you speak about something you don’t care about, something that doesn’t light you up inside. If you want to make people care, you should care about the subject you speak about in the first place. It’s very easy to see when people don’t care when they don’t love the process of their work. But they so desperately want other people to care about their business or their project. You want to be perfect and don’t accept your true self Let’s be honest, nobody is perfect and yet we keep trying to pretend as if we’re when we show up as business owners. Sometimes we search for proof of the perfect life of other people to make us feel miserable and to find proof of why we should be perfect. From my
Why You Need To Create An Online Community For Your Small Business
How to build a community of like-minded people for your small business “People don’t believe what you tell them.They rarely believe what you show them.They often believe what their friends tell them.They always believe what they tell themselves.What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about the change.” ― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us When I first started my business, I didn’t quite realize why I even need to bother to create a community of like-minded people. What does it even mean? How it will help to grow my business? Can’t I just show up and start selling my services directly? Well, it’s exactly what I tried to do in the beginning. I was sharing the content that I thought people wanted to read. I was afraid of being too generous and sharing too much valuable information. Because if I do, who on earth will want to buy my products and services afterwards? I didn’t know who I was as a person and what I was standing for. I was afraid of showing up who I was, I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I tried to create some generic, mediocre services that will appeal to everybody. I wanted to be accepted and liked by everybody. I thought the more followers I will have, the better. As you can guess It leads nowhere. I was always anxious, looking behind my back at other people in my industry. I didn’t understand what made me different, and why people will even consider buying from me. But the answer was inside of me all this time. I just didn’t want to look at it. I preferred to look outside to find it. You don’t need to be ideal, you don’t need to be liked by everybody, you don’t need everything to be perfect before you decide to show up, you don’t need to do what is trendy, but doesn’t feel like you, you don’t need to hide. You can stay yourself, own it, share your story, be generous, care enough about the difference you want to make in the world, and show up consistently for your tribe and lead it with your thoughts, ideas, and your personality. “Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be but to find out who we already are and become it.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War Of Art Why people buy today There are still many businesses and brands that want to appeal to everybody, and be liked by everybody. The more the better considered to be the best strategy for a very long time. And it worked in the past. Many companies were able to make a fortune because many people bought their generic, mediocre products or services. But does this strategy still work today? Creating a very generic product or service for everybody means creating something mediocre, not remarkable. People are tired of mediocrity. And a desperate desire to be liked by everybody will never lead you anywhere. You will be obliged to pretend to be somebody else, to pretend to like things you actually don’t and lose yourself. Will you really care about making an impact, creating a change, and serving generously your community when you act from this place? I don’t think so! Today we see everything changing. Pushy selling and invasive advertisements irritate most people very much. They lose trust when they experience things like that. People hate when somebody tries to be invasive and sell things without their permission. Sell the things that they don’t actually need. Today people buy when they trust when they believe that you have authority and expertise. People buy when they can relate when they feel that you can understand them and make their life easier. People buy when you can solve a problem for them. People buy when they see a real person behind the business and brand, not an idealized image. Why BUILDING AN ONLINE COMMUNITY IS SO IMPORTANT There are many advantages of building a real community of people around your business, your ideas, or you as a person. At first, it can be difficult, and not easy to make the first step, to challenge a status quo, to find the courage to speak your voice and share your ideas. It’s natural to feel uncomfortable and feel fear at first. “It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle. When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.” ― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us With time I noticed and accepted the fact that real changes, transformation, and growth can never be comfortable. It doesn’t mean that it’s bad and that you should seek comfort. In fact, for me personally the more discomfort I feel about something is an indicator that I’m moving in the right direction. And that I should do it and don’t overthink it. I need to believe that I will be able to figure everything out on my way, even if I don’t know at the moment what I’m doing. There is no way to plan everything, to feel comfortable or ready before you do something scary. I believe that it’s possible to feel all kinds of negative emotions but still do the work. Don’t let these negative emotions rule your life and make you inactive. Because when you know that you should be doing something, but you don’t, you will get zero results. If you want to be a professional, you need to do the work, be consistent and sometimes do things that you do not feel like doing. I also believe that charisma and confidence come when you take action and do uncomfortable things. Nobody is born with it. When you take your time and have conversations with
Why Authenticity Is Essential For Growing Your Business
Why authenticity is essential for growing your business “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” ― Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection People are tired of seeing perfect people and perfect business owners all the time. Everybody knows that it’s not possible to be perfect. Even the most successful people have many struggles that they should overcome every single day. But it’s their fears, pain, struggles, insecurities, and anxieties that make them special and their journey unique and beautiful. And by trying to suppress these feelings and by trying to show up as perfect you create a huge barrier between you and your audience. Real authenticity is all about imperfections, it’s the ability to embrace all those imperfections, be open about them, and be able to be a peace with them. This attracts people and makes them fall in love with you and what you do. It’s exactly what will make people relate to you, and choose you because they can relate to your story, your struggles or beliefs. Be yourself, and be willing to become uncomfortable sometimes As a small business or a creative, it’s very easy to start comparing yourself to other successful people in your industry. Especially when you just starting. You go on the internet and search for people to get inspired, to find some new idea. But several hours later you’re still researching, and want you it or not, you start comparing your business and yourself to others. It’s how our brain works. And it makes you feel miserable and hopeless and you don’t take any action in your own business. Then you have another idea to copy and do the same thing as other ”successful people” in your niche. There is nothing wrong with getting inspired or make research on what is working today. But there can be a problem in finding the balance between a business strategy, trends, and what feels like an authentic self. Because when you don’t find your way to express your ideas, and values, it’s getting hard to enjoy the work. From my own experience I can say that you need to do much deeper work on your values, find out who you’re, what are you standing for, what matters to you, what you enjoy doing and how do you want to communicate all that with your audience. This deep, personal work will help to uncover your authenticity, communicate it in the right way, and attract the right people to work with. You need to be willing to get uncomfortable, to dig very deep into yourself to discover your true essence and authenticity. You may learn a lot of new things about yourself. When I first started my language mentoring business, I had really hard times with all this. I didn’t know how I wanted to show up, I didn’t want to be vulnerable, I didn’t want people to know about my origin, and the language I teach isn’t my native language. But it’s a part of my story, it’s who I’m – a Ukrainian who lives in France. I overcame so many struggles to finally be comfortable and speak English and French. So why hide it, and don’t just embrace, and share my struggles with others? At the end of the day, we all are human beings and have the same struggles. Because of all that I tried to copy other language mentors, and use their strategies, but It has never felt like me, and I had so much struggle to show up, create content, and stay consistent. My content was generic and impersonal. I wanted to appeal and please everybody. Only when I made a deeply personal work, decided to show what I enjoyed, and even discovered some other passions like business, social media, and web design, did the content creation become fun. It’s so important to enjoy the process! So how can you apply this to your business and what benefits you can have? People are tired of seeing perfect people and perfect business owners all the time. Everybody knows that it’s not possible to be perfect. Even the most successful people have many struggles that they should overcome every single day. But it’s their fears, pain, struggles, insecurities, and anxieties that make them special and their journey unique and beautiful. And by trying to suppress these feelings and by trying to show up as perfect you create a huge barrier between you and your audience. Real authenticity is all about imperfections, it’s the ability to embrace all those imperfections, be open about them, and be able to be a peace with them. This attracts people and makes them fall in love with you and what you do. It’s exactly what will make people relate to you, and choose you because they can relate to your story, your struggles or beliefs. By trying to be somebody else you will attract the wrong people When you’re trying to be perfect, to show up as somebody you’re not you will attract the wrong people to work with. People who are basically not your ideal client. And I can guarantee that you won’t enjoy working with these people, even if you make a lot of money. It’s okay not to be liked by everybody, even to be disliked by somebody. We cannot appeal to everyone, it’s just not possible. And when you stop concentrating on attracting everybody and appealing to everybody, you release the energy to speak about things that matter to you, be yourself, share your story and be vulnerable. And this way you can attract people who will care, and fall in love with your personality, with values. And they will be more than happy to work with you and vice versa. Your authenticity will set you apart from everybody else You probably heard that all