I Have a Theory About Confidence in Business
I have some really close friendships with other entrepreneurs, and a lot of those friendships happen through Voxer. We talk about everything going on in our businesses, including the stuff we probably wouldn't share publicly while we're in the middle of it.
Over the years, I've started noticing a pattern in those conversations.
When someone starts pulling back from their business, stops getting into conversations, and isn't showing up consistently online, something starts to shift in the way they think about themselves and their business.
That silence quickly turns into stories (lies) your brain made up. Things like:
“I don't have anything important to say.”
“I can't come up with any good ideas.”
“No one really wants to hear from me anyway.”
I've done this myself, and I've watched people I care about do it too. The longer you stay in that place, the easier it becomes to believe those thoughts are true. And that brings me to a theory I've had about confidence in business:
I don't think you need confidence before you start showing up. I think showing up is how you find it.
Sharing your opinions, talking about your offers, and marketing your business might feel cringe, but doing it anyway is part of how you get better at it and start trusting yourself more. And I think understanding that can completely change the way you look at consistency in your marketing.
Why Showing Up and Confidence Go Hand in Hand
What Happens to Your Confidence When You Go Quiet
I've gone through seasons where I've pulled back from marketing my own business, and when I’ve done that, thoughts start flooding my mind like, “people probably don’t want to learn from me anyways.” or “there’s other people out there that do this better than me.”
That's what makes this cycle so hard to recognize when you're in it. You don't think, “I've stopped showing up, and now I'm getting in my own head.” You start questioning whether your ideas are good enough, whether your messaging makes sense, and whether what you're doing is even worth it. It feels like you're looking at your business and being realistic, but really, you've spent too much time listening to yourself and not enough time getting outside input.
Spending too much time alone in your own head as a business owner is a dangerous place to be.
Entrepreneurship has a funny way of bringing things to the surface that you didn't even realize were there. Running a business can uncover limiting beliefs, old struggles, and fears you thought you were past.
Nobody really prepares you for how much entrepreneurship is a mental game, and when you stop putting yourself and your work out into the world, it becomes much easier to listen to every little doubt your brain comes up with instead.
The Cycle That Keeps So Many Business Owners Stuck
Here's the thing about confidence and consistency: it works exactly like running.
If you want to get faster, you have to run. Not once in a while, not when inspiration strikes, but regularly and repeatedly. And if you are not running, you already know why your speed is not improving. Your brain does not spin a story about it. The evidence is right there.
But showing up online is different.
A business owner posts a few times, gets little engagement, gets no leads from it, and then stops. And instead of recognizing that they haven't been doing it consistently long enough to know whether it's working, their brain goes somewhere else entirely.
“I'm bad at this.”
“I suck at content.”
“Nobody wants to buy from me.”
“So why would I keep going?”
That is one of the most damaging places you can end up as a business owner because the story you're telling yourself makes you do even less of the thing that could change it.
You stop posting because you don't feel confident. Then you feel less confident because you're not posting. You’re not getting into conversations with potential clients, so you have fewer opportunities to hear what they're struggling with. You start losing touch with the language they use, which makes it harder to know what to say when you finally decide you should post something.
And that's how you end up making the problem even harder to fix.
Small business owners don't have endless ways to get in front of new people. For a lot of us, social media is a huge part of how people discover our businesses. If social media is part of how you generate leads, creating content consistently isn't optional.
The problem is that too many business owners treat content like a test they're either passing or failing. They post for a little while, decide it isn't working fast enough, and quit before they've given consistency enough time to do its job.
Meanwhile, every week you ghost your audience, the longer those stories in their head have a little more room to grow.
Showing Up Gives You Confidence, Not the Other Way Around
Most people want to wait until they feel confident to start showing up again.
They want a list of great content ideas first. They want to feel comfortable talking on camera. They want their messaging figured out, their opinions perfectly worded, and something important enough to say before they hit publish.
But confidence doesn't come before the action. It comes FROM the action.
You have to post when it feels a little cringe. You have to talk to the camera when you still feel awkward watching yourself back. You have to share the idea even when you're not completely sure anyone is going to care.
I've watched this happen with people I'm close to. When they finally start showing up again, their voice starts coming back. The ideas they couldn't seem to find while they were sitting around thinking about content start coming more easily. They get clearer about what they believe, what they want to say, and who they actually want to work with.
Nothing magical happened…They started taking action again.
And I think another part of your online presence plays into this more than people realize: your website is part of how you show up, too.
If you've outgrown your website, your business has changed, or the person someone sees on Instagram feels completely different from the person they find when they land on your site, it creates a disconnect.
It's hard to confidently send people to a business website you're embarrassed by. If you hesitate every time you think about putting your URL in a post because you know the site doesn't represent the business you've built anymore, you're probably going to stop sending people there.
Good website design isn't just about having something pretty online. A professional website design should make you feel confident sending people there because it accurately represents who you are and the business you're building.
When your online presence feels like you and the business you've built, it's a whole lot easier to put yourself out there.
You Don't Have to Wait Until You Feel Ready
If you've been reading this thinking, “Okay, this is me,” I don't want you to walk away believing you need to somehow fix your confidence before you can fix your marketing.
You need new evidence.
Get back into conversations. Share something you know will help your ideal client. Talk about the opinion you've been sitting on because you're worried someone won't agree. Put yourself and your work back in front of people, even if it feels uncomfortable at first.
The confidence you're waiting for gets built while you're doing those things, not while you're thinking about doing them.
But I also know that “just be consistent” isn't very helpful when you're already overwhelmed and don't know what to say or where to start. Consistency gets a whole lot easier when there is a strategy and some structure behind what you're doing.
That's a big part of why I'm creating Seen & Paid. It's for business owners who are ready to stop disappearing from their own marketing and start showing up with more clarity, consistency, and purpose.
You don't need to become the loudest person online or suddenly love creating content. You need a way to keep showing up long enough to remember that you actually do have something worth saying.
