“With confidence, you have won before you have started.”
- Marcus Garvey
Confidence requires a person to love themselves, accept their flaws, trust their instincts, and believe in themselves. Confidence can’t be taught, but you can improve your self-trust and subsequently grow your confidence. It is vital if you truly want to thrive in business.
Confidence is a trait that everyone struggles with at some point, but it can be developed by believing in oneself and trusting in one's abilities. Self-confidence allows you to move, act, and create an impact, and to pursue your dreams and passion without doubting yourself. It increases your strength and desire to do things that would normally frighten or intimidate you.
In this episode, Nikki Rogers introduces the three C’s - confidence, courage, and curiosity, required to unlock your CEO mindset and talks in-depth about confidence and why this is the key to success. She shares the definition and core elements of confidence, how confidence attracts like-minded people to support you, and other tips to help you along your entrepreneurial journey.
Confidence is a trait that develops from the inside out – it's your inner voice and a representation of how you see yourself. If you need a reminder to trust yourself and your abilities, listen to this episode and learn what it takes to attune your beliefs, thoughts, and actions toward success.
Thriving Points:
- The CEO mindset is vital for you to thrive in business.
- Confidence is about believing that you will be successful and not being surprised by the success.
- Confidence stays ready.
- Confidence leans into the idea that there's always going to be an opportunity on the horizon.
- Confidence lets you take that next step without knowing exactly how it was going to play out.
- Confidence is unapologetic about who you are, and it doesn't require you to dim your light in the face of anyone.
- Believe in yourself. Trust that you are going to make things happen.
- Confidence sees the greatness in you, even when you do not.
About the Show:
Women Thriving in Business features candid unscripted conversations with entrepreneurs, business experts, authors, and academics aimed at contributing to business success. This weekly show provides interviews with business leaders who have built, grown, and are thriving in business. Nikki A. Rogers, host of the show, also discusses achievements, lessons learned, and advice for aspiring business owners to develop the mindset, strategies, and connections necessary to thrive in business. Whether you are just starting or you have been in business for decades, WTiB offers inspiration, strategies, and resources to help you THRIVE in business.
About the Host:
Nikki is a strategist and transformation coach who believes life is too short not to do what you love. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs build sustainable companies and supports business leaders in developing the mindset, strategy, and connections to create thriving businesses and build legacy wealth.
Nikki is the CEO of The Bladen Group and an alumna of North Carolina A&T State University and UNC-Chapel Hill.
Connect with Nikki:
Nikki Rogers: Your business is an asset that can support a thriving life. I believe this, and I'm committed to making this a reality for every entrepreneur and business owner who listens to this podcast. The Women Thriving in Business Podcast was created with you in mind, whether you were thinking about entrepreneurship or you're a business veteran, this podcast has inspiration, information and advice you can use to thrive in business.
Women Thriving in Business features candid, unscripted conversations with entrepreneurs, business experts, authors, and academics who will contribute to your business success. I seek out and talk with business leaders who have built, grown, and thrive in business. My name is Nikki Rogers, transformation coach, author, and the host of Women Thriving in Business Podcast. I work with women entrepreneurs to develop the mindset, strategies and connections necessary to thrive in business. Join me and your fellow Thrivers each week on this journey of discovery and success.
Hello, Thrivers and welcome to this week's episode of the Women Thriving in Business Podcast. I'm your host, Nikki Rogers, the CEO of the Bladen group, and this week's episode is a solo one. This is a great episode because I am talking about confidence, and the fact that confidence really just means that you trust yourself to be successful.
So if you're struggling with confidence and need a dose or boost of confidence as you move about your entrepreneurial journey, or just life in general, listen in to this episode and learn what being confident is really about. Let's go.
Hello, Thrivers and welcome to this week's episode. Today, we have a solo episode and I want to talk to you about one of the three C's that I feel are important as you seek to activate and unlock your CEO mindset.
I believe the CEO mindset is vital and important to you in thriving in business. My three C's are confidence, courage and curiosity. Today, I want to talk to you about confidence. I believe confidence is about believing that you will be successful and not being surprised by success. It has everything to do with trust in yourself.
When you trust yourself, you will have confidence that you're going to succeed. As a matter of fact, the definition of confidence is the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something. The state of feeling certain about the truth of something, and a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities.
Those are the dictionary definitions, but like I said, I boil that down to trusting yourself. When you trust yourself, when you believe in your abilities then you will be confident. Now I think confidence has a number of elements that support it. The first element is that confidence is prepared, and this showed up for me as I was transitioning from my corporate job to starting my own business.
One of the questions that showed up as I was working on the transition was whether or not we would be able to maintain our family's lifestyle. I was very confident that we would be able to maintain our lifestyle, even though I had no idea how much revenue I was going to be generating over the next year.
But what I did have was a plan, and I had saved money to provide basically a cushion while I got the business off the ground because one of the things that I learned from a previous coach was, that I did not want to be out chasing each and every client in order to just generate some revenue. I wanted to be very thoughtful about the clients that I took on and the type of work I was doing as I was building my business.
I was confident that I was going to be able to maintain our lifestyle because I was prepared. I had a plan in place. One is to be very thoughtful and strategic about the types of clients I was going to pursue, but also I had financial reserves in order to support this business-building plan. So I was prepared.
I like to say confidence stays ready, so you don't have to get ready. Confidence really leans into the idea that there's always going to be an opportunity on the horizon. You want to be ready to take advantage of those opportunities when they arise, so I would say don't sit around waiting. If there are more strategic pieces of your business, like start building them now and then when the opportunity arises, you're going to be ready. The other piece about confidence is that confidence believes that you have all the resources that you need. They're available to you and they're at your disposal. That doesn't mean that you know everything, that you have everything. That's not what it means.
It means that you will have access to the resources you need as you continue to grow. Again, this is about believing that you're going to be successful and knowing that you're going to be successful, and then when you need something, when you identify a gap or identify a need that you actually have those resources available to you, either through your networks or through your skills, it is through your networks, is through your financial resources. It's believing that you're going to make a way with what you have available to you. I like to point out to people that you've spent a lifetime building a network. So pretty much, probably anything you need is probably within one or two contacts away.
You'd be surprised at what you can borrow or leverage by just reaching out to your contacts and asking questions and saying, "Hey, who knows how to do public speaking, creating graphics?" Those are just some of the things that come to mind, or who knows how to create a financial model, asking some of those questions within your network.
You'd be surprised at what you can glean from that. The other part is just asking about who knows who, so say you want to have a meeting with a decision-maker. Again, leaning into your network and figuring out who knows who and who can connect you and make that a warm introduction versus cold-calling someone. You'd be surprised at how extensive, diverse and valuable your network is. So I really believe that anything you need is one or two contacts away. Confidence really lets you take that next step without knowing exactly how it was going to play out because you know that you can figure things out as you go along based on the resources you have available to you.
The other thing about preparation is it could be rehearsing. It could be something as simple as practicing your elevator pitch. It could be listening to your speeches over and over again, listening to your presentations, if you're creating a course, listening to the course, and always improving on things, if you can.
So again, it's that preparation piece. Confidence is when you know what you know, and not only that you belong in any room, but that you actually deserve a seat at the table. Confidence is unapologetic about who you are, and it doesn't require you to dim your light in the face of anyone. Confidence believes in you, so you should prove it right.
I know lots of us to have folks who are rooting for us and think we are the smartest, the greatest, the most wonderful person who does what you do and you feel like proving people right. There are a lot of people rooting for you, root for yourself. Believe in yourself, trust that you are going to make things happen.
An incidence of this for me was when I attended a chamber of commerce event, and I set the intention of making two strategic contacts. During that event, I went to the event alone. I Didn't know anyone there or didn't think I would know anyone there. So I went to the event alone. I had set that intention to make two strategic contacts, so that really helped me move differently.
As I walked Into that room and allowed me to be very open to having conversations, because I'm normally an introvert and very shy, I like to stick with people I know, and so it really helped me navigate that event a bit differently. Funny enough I ended up meeting someone that I already knew through other channels and in the process of that connecting with several other people.
One of those connections has gone on to be a great business partner. We've done lots of work together and lots of fabulous work together and part of that was in that particular event, just being very upfront and honest about the work that I was doing and what I was interested in. Now it wasn't just a work discussion. But again, because I had set this intention about having strategic connections, it was just the type of conversation we were having and the questions that I was asking of the person, and I think that really led us to make a really strong and authentic connection that has led to us doing work together.
So again, I think that's where the confidence came in because I stepped into that room as myself and it paid off. So it was a great experience and it has continued to reap the rewards of just making that first step, not knowing what was going to happen as a result of attending the event, but great things did occur.
I think the other thing about confidence is it's not that you're going to do things perfectly, but it is believing that you operate in excellence, and then that is going to be more than sufficient to help you succeed. The other big thing is that confidence will attract a posse of like-minded folks. I like to call this confidence posse.
I call it a confidence posse, but it could be a confidence circle, in some cases, this could be your accountability group, could be your mastermind group. These are the group of people who are going to be immersed in this entrepreneurial journey. These are the people who you can call up to celebrate with, cry and ask questions both when things are going well and when they're not going so well. These are the people who are going to give you the pep talks, provide you with information, professional advice, and sometimes those late-night therapy sessions. All the things that you need as you go through this entrepreneurial journey, they're going to push you to go out and get professional advisors.
They're going to share their contacts with you. They're going to say, "Hey, this person's a great lawyer, or this person's a great accountant or this person's a great therapist." Whatever you may need as you're going through this journey, they're going to be those folks who are going to share that information and those resources for you.
These are also the people who are going to help you level up. They're going to say, "Yes, you can. And yes, you will." Whenever you maybe have a doubt about the way to go or what action that you want to take, or when you are starting to think about growing your business, expanding into a new area, or just taking on that new opportunity that may provide more visibility for you and your business. They're going to say, "Yes, you can. And yes, you will do this" because this is an alignment with your goals, your hopes, your dreams, and your values. These are also the people who are going to help you navigate challenges and help you identify clients, business partners.
It could be suppliers or vendors that are not supporting the goals of your business. I think a lot of times it's challenging for us as entrepreneurs to break up with clients. In particular, but I think partly because of this group of people that you're going to be surrounding yourself with, and that are going to be attracted to the confidence that you exude that's going to help you make those tough decisions, because you know that there's going to be other opportunities that come to you, when you clear space and make space by shedding folks who no longer fit the business that you're building. Whether that be business partners, clients, vendors, maybe employees. I think this confidence allows you to realize that something better is going to come when you create space. I think one of the biggest things is that confidence sees the greatness in you, even when you do not.
Again, I say confidence allows you to walk in any room as yourself unapologetically. Confidence knows that you are enough to be in the spaces that you are to pursue your dreams, and it allows you to just inhabit that feeling of success. So confidence starts with your beliefs, trickles and then flows into your thoughts, flows into your actions. So it moves all the way from that belief system to actually moving and taking the steps in order to be successful.
I want you to really think about how and where you can showcase confidence, and trust in yourself and your ability to succeed and thrive in business over this next week. And then share with me. I'd love to hear from you. You can connect with me on IG @nikkirogersofficial, or leave a comment or review wherever you're listening to this podcast. In any case, have a great week and keep thriving.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Women Thriving in Business Podcasts. If you like this episode, share it with a friend. You can also join us on social media to share your feedback and comments. We'd love to hear from you. Be sure to like, review and subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode. Until next week, keep thriving.