Have a little confidence!

I have won an amazing prize for my business. It’s worth over £5,000.00. Some of the best people you could work with are going to be working with me over the coming months in terms of business coaching, business planning, sales training, and branding, social media and VAT training.

And whilst I am incredibly excited and proud I am also a tad pensive.  They are going to ask me lots of questions that I am not sure I have the answers for.  Where do you want your business to go, what do you want to achieve.  It’s a bit like being introduced on a training course and having to introduce yourself, or those training courses where you have to analyse yourself.

Confidence is wonderful, but often it’s a mask we use. Are we really as confident as we portray. When it comes down to it, wouldn’t we rather curl up and hide in a corner than analyse ourselves or our business.

This type of training, coaching and support won’t guarantee my business will be a success, but it will help support it and give it that extra chance. 

Like most people I am pretty proud of my brand identity, a lot of thought went into it. I did the best I could on a limited budget and I personally like my logo and my website.  How will I react to someone coming along and commenting on them? Or the content of my website, I sweated blood writing that content!  Do I want someone to come along and possibly change it all?  Criticism is hard to take, but there are different types of criticism, there is the jealous type, where someone is jealous of what you have achieved and just puts you down to make themselves feel better, but then there is the constructive criticism.  This is where someone who knows what they are talking about comes along and offers their unbiased feedback.  They make suggestions or comments that will help your business move forward.  Even though you know that what they are saying is right, it can sometimes still be hard to listen to.

The way for any business to grow is to seek out these coaching opportunities, to embrace new ideas. Don’t lose who you are as part of that process, quite often, especially with sole traders, who you are is key to what your business is, but be open to change and new ideas.

I had a trial session with The Efficiency Coach last month and it was amazing how a simple conversation suddenly made one small problem I was having disappear. 

I guess this prize is really making me feel like I will be a business now, rather than just working at something I enjoy, there is a huge difference.

So huge thanks to Romany Thresher(Direct Assist Online), Richard White (The Accidental Salesman), Heather Townsend (The Efficiency Coach) , Mariéme Jamme, Ces Loftus (Creatively Minded Design), Robert Killington (VATark), and  Robert Zarywacz ( Zarywacz) for providing these fabulous prizes.

Now whilst I am on a winning streak anyone know where I can win that netbook I am after...