Do you believe in what you sell?

I was talking to Dave, our MD, today, and we were talking about backing yourself and in a quite different way. We were talking about how important it is to believe in yourself and believe in your product, because that confidence, that conviction kind of comes through in your marketing. And it really got me thinking about how sometimes we can be very timid about what we do.

And if we believe we've got something that will help other people, if we truly believe we can make a difference, why are we so coy about it? I get people are afraid to be salesy. They don't want to be salesy. They don't want to be seen that way, and that's totally fine. But if you look at all of the people who've achieved incredible success, they believed in themselves, believed in their product or service, and also been prepared to be misconstrued or misinterpreted.

If you think you've truly got something great that can impact lives or transform businesses, if you think you've got that, the only people who will criticize you are people who are basically wanting to be like you but don't have the guts to do it.

One of my competitors, a bit of a smaller business than me, but I love the person's energy. I think their energy, the way they do things, their energy is just brilliant. And I can appreciate that even though they're a competitor. And I think the people who will put you down, the people who will look for problems, are the people who should not matter. They're irrelevant to you. And I say this because I've met so many people who are being coy about their business and how great it is and the difference they can make. They're being coy about it for fear of those people who actually don't matter attacking them or criticizing them, people who will never buy from them anyway.

And it's crazy that we do this, because I do it sometimes as well, that I will tone down what I want to say, temper the way I do it for fear of upsetting people who will never buy from me. And my competitor, even though they're a competitor in one sense and not a competitor in another, they're a solopreneur. I've got an international business, but they do very similar things. They don't give a rip, and that energy is infectious. And people hang around them more because their energy, because their confidence, because the certainty, because they're uplifting, because they're being themselves.

LinkedIn is this professional platform, and sometimes we can feel like maybe we should be better behaved or do something like that. I can tell you now, the biggest lesson I've learned, and it's harder to do, like all of these things, it's harder to do than talk about. You have to position yourself for the customers you want, not position yourself so you look respectable in the market.

Just position yourself for the customers you want, the clients you want. So if you want clients who are not going to grumble about paying $15k, change what you talk about, change the way you talk about it. If you want people who are going to pick at everything you do, focus on what are the things.

I struggled with this for a long time because it seems a bit woo-woo. Your vibe attracts your tribe. How you show up, your energy, the way you present yourself, the way you talk about what you do. If you don't believe in yourself, you won't get the people coming to you who believe in you either. And likewise, if you want those clients who are going to drop $15k with you and literally be the most engaged clients, you need to talk to and set yourself up for them. So these people who complain because you charge $15k and thought it would be $500, or the people who come to you and say, "Well, can we do it on success?" You eliminate them. That your presence, the way you do things, the way you talk of things is not just to attract the people you want, it filters out the people you don't want.

I started this talking about backing yourself, believing in yourself. You also have to believe that people will show up when you start being yourself and start believing in yourself. In fact, more people will start showing up when you start believing in yourself because that not wanting to look like you've got an ego or trying to not look arrogant, to some people could show up as a lack of confidence. And you really don't want people building the perception of you really know your stuff, but you don't believe in yourself.

That's my thought for today.