Confident about growing your business?

Confidence is based upon what can reasonably rely upon.  So, what is the foundation of realistic confidence?  What and who can you believe in?  Confidence here is about grounded, facts-based, realistic sources not “faux” confidence.  Real confidence often only grows through facing  uncomfortable truths about yourself, your staff, your suppliers, your customers and your competition.  Doing that, whilst sometimes a pain, will build a secure base.

If you’re a start up, having an excellent and experienced coach can make a difference in building up your faith about your idea, your decision making and your resilience to see the project through.  This is especially important if you have not run a successful start up before.  Otherwise, just ask yourself what it is that your belief is really based upon?

For more established businesses that have got beyond the initial start up phase, the challenges are different.  Confidence here needs to be based primarily on a really thorough understanding of the competitive forces that operate within your market and this needs to be coupled with realistic assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of your current operation. PEST and PESTLE analyses looking forward into the future to discern new trends and developments can build confidence about what is going to happen in the future.  Risk assessments and in particular looking at the possible downsides of initiatives and projects can ground and improve your plans.  Although Richard Branson encourages us to have a go, I think I’m right in saying that he also nudges us to manage and be aware of what can go wrong as well as what can go well.

Accepting that we need to change to be able to run a larger and potentially more complex operation is a good source of confidence building.  Bolstering things like people management skills and delegation enable you to take a more realistic approach to the business you are building.

Accurate market data about your competition, about suppliers, about customer needs and how they are evolving are also good sources for a well-founded business. You are more likely to avoid competing in a bloody and crowded red ocean with a sound grasp of the dynamics of competition.

So, if you’re in the process of growing your business what and who are you relying upon?  Have you tested your assumptions?  How aware are you of the downside?  What facts are you relying upon?  What tests can you make to build your confidence up?  Who are you relying upon and has that been tested in a safe environment?  Is your motivation well-founded or is it just self belief?  Real confidence is very infectious and people pick up on it quickly so the better grounded it is, the further it will take you and your team.