Believe in Yourself

And the power of your blog

Or no one else will

That sounds pretty doom and gloom right? But why are you blogging if you don’t believe that there is a value in what you are doing? If you really take some time to think about what you are doing, you will find the value and maybe if you think about it long enough, you’ll believe in that value.  What am I talking about?

There is an important theme that keeps coming up in running my own business and when I’m speaking to other female entrepreneurs about running their’s.  I’m not being sexist and leaving the guys out – Right now I’m just speaking to a lot of #bossladies.  Guys can definitely be self conscious or doubting as well.

Maybe the reason is that we are making a leap.  Maybe it’s because we’re used to having a brand to hide behind, rather than being the brand ourselves.  Maybe it’s that what we’re doing is daunting.  We are after all are being audacious enough to believe that we know enough of what we are talking about to hammer and nail together our own little soap boxes where we can shout to the world about marketing, or gardening, or whatever it is we are passionate about.

That’s It – What we are doing is scary.

Being an entrepreneur takes guts.  It’s taking a risk, a big risk.  We’re leaving the security that working for an established company affords and investing in our own futures.  We’re banking on the hope that people will find what we have to say important or beneficial enough to invest in us.  So yea, it’s tough to believe that you have what it takes to provide people a return on their hard earned money – enough to fork it over to you.  But it’s oh so important my dears.

Believe in yourself so that others can too

Think back to your school days…remember a time when you were expecting to spend another day slaving away for your teacher when in walks a substitute…They’re young, probably right out of school and you can smell the fear.  All of a sudden you have zero confidence that you are going to have to get anything serious done today.  Well, starting a blog is a lot like being that brand new substitute teacher.  If you don’t have the confidence to tell others that they should stop their tweeting, open up your blog to page whatever it might be, and sit quietly reading what it is you want them to learn…they’re not going to.

On the contrary, if you confidently climb up onto your soap box and proclaim that you have something of value for us to learn, we might actually stop and listen to you.  So believe that you have this value within you and shout it to the world on your blog or website.  Believe in yourself and we will too.  It’s easy to spot when you see someone who is brand new to blogging.  And I’m not talking about the number of blogs that they have published.  You could have 200 blogs on a topic but if you haven’t learned the skills to have confidence in yourself and strongly and artfully proclaim that to us readers, it’s going to show in your writing.  You will look like that brand new substitute teacher meekly trying to ask the class for their attention.