How to Bleed Confidence

I've been around quite a number of businesses that have both succeeded and failed.  In fact, I've been an executive of a company that fell into that latter group of failed companies.  There's never one thing that makes a company go under.  It's always a number of details, both large and small, that you just don't see in time to redress the situation.  I wanted to dedicate a blog to sharing my knowledge and experience in going through the process of starting and running a company.  A lot of what I will talk about in the coming entries will be my personal experiences in an effort to help others not make the same mistakes I made.

One of the things I like to tell people is to go in guns blazing.  Of course I don't mean that in the literal sense!  I'm referring to not being timid, insecure or lazy about your idea.  Don't be afraid that it's not good enough or that there's a chance you will fail.  If you let that doubt get into your head, it can spread like a disease.  Eventually it's going to creep up and overtake everything.  You have to be prepared to give it your all.

A solid idea doesn't just speak for itself.  Everyone around you needs to know how great the idea is, so they can tell everyone around them about it.  But that trickle down won't occur if they don't believe YOU believe it's the next big thing.  No one will ever be as passionate about your idea as you will, so don't expect anything else (I'll go into this more at a later date).  Your goal is to infuse your enthusiasm and confidence in your idea into everyone around you--they should at least get the sense that whatever they're about to be involved in will be huge.

It's amazing how self-confidence can correlate so well to entrepreneurship.  For those interested, here's an article I read titled "How to Be Confident" (http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Confident).  Just replace the references to "yourself" with "your product" and you'll see what I mean.  Ok, it doesn't work 100% of the time!  So I decided to come up with my own variation of those 11 steps that I think each entrepreneur should master as a first step to moving towards success.

1) Make a list of the unique qualities of your idea and emphasize what it does exceptionally well.

2) Be passionate about your idea.  Others should be able to sense how much it means to you just by having a quick 5 minute chat.

3) Choose a role model.  Find someone or another company that has had success, understand why they were successful, and use them as a guide on what to do right.

4) Don't focus negatively on or ignore your competition.  Find ways to use them to your advantage.  This could be by highlighting the differences and the gaps in offerings, or collaborating and partnering to be part of something bigger.

5) Accept comments about your idea gracefully, even if they are critical.  Constructive criticism is at times more important than supportive feedback.  You can use this to improve the idea in ways only others may have seen.

6) Know the importance of your idea to yourself and others.  Speak firm, clearly and confident about it and why it is so special.

7) Mold your idea.  It takes time to come up with a strong concept.  You won't have everything figured out in the beginning, but continue the refinement process until you get exactly what you want.

8) Stick up for your idea.  If someone is bent on making a fool of you or your idea, be prepared to defend it.  In order to do this, be truthful with yourself and find potential weaknesses.  Be aware of these pitfalls so you can potentially turn those weaknesses into strengths.

9) Celebrate your idea's individuality.  Don't try to make it into what someone else is doing.  Be special, unique and memorable.

10) Solidify your idea.  Don't be hazy on what it is or does.  Fine tune the concept as much as you can possibly think of so that when you are discussing it with others they understand what it is.

11) Take action.  Success isn't going to fall into your lap.  It takes a lot of confidence to put yourself out there, but you can't succeed without doing it.

Let me know what your tips are for exuding confidence in your idea.  I'd love to hear what you guys think.