How to build your confidence as a business owner
Alysha Bradley is a beauty business coach, who is currently working with 1,300+ members. She founded The Beauty Growth Academy in 2020 and has been helping hair and beauty business owners earn more money and feel more confident.
In the September 2023 issue of Professional Beauty, we asked Bradley for her advice on building confidence as a business owner.
Bradley says: There are two areas I recommend you focus on. Firstly, build confidence within your skill set.
This means spending lots of time practising the treatments you offer and getting comfortable with the equipment you are going to use.
The more time you spend practising the treatment and techniques, the more confident you’ll feel when it comes to performing treatments on real life clients.
Get your tools in your hands and practise as much as you can, whether that be on friends, mannequins or even yourself.
Dedicate time on a regular basis to deepening your knowledge by practising and spending time learning more about the theory side of your treatments; the more knowledgeable you are about the treatments you offer, the more confident you'll feel when it comes to speaking about it to clients, plus it’ll have you sounding like the go-to expert in your field.
I highly recommend that you watch lots of tutorials online and even invest in educational masterclasses so you can learn from people who are more experienced than you are right now.
Whether you’ve just started out or if you’ve been in the industry for a while, it’s always a good time to invest in your education and reignite your passion.
Secondly, build your self-confidence. Many beauty business owners experience strong feelings of imposter syndrome at some point during their beauty journey.
This can have them questioning themselves, making them anxious about making mistakes and worried things aren't going to work out for them.
Working on your self-development alongside your skill set can have a huge, positive impact on your business in the long term because it will help you feel more confident in yourself.
Over the last three years, I’ve coached thousands of beauty business owners and the biggest transformations have always come from those who took their personal development and growth seriously.
Working on yourself and focusing on personal development can help you to overcome things like negative beliefs, limiting beliefs, destructive thought patterns and even low self-esteem.
The truth is, most beauty business owners experience these types of thoughts and feelings at some point but if this is ignored, it can lead to overwhelm, stress and even burnout.
Learning how to become more confident, think positively and have an optimistic approach to your business can make the journey so much easier for you and can help you to achieve more success.
Some things that you can do to include this type of self-development work into your routine include reading self-development books, listen to inspiring, motivational and educational podcasts, positive affirmations, setting goals for yourself, and investing in a coach or mentor.
I suggest that you dedicate a small amount of time each day to include one of these activities into your routine.
The beauty of technology now is that most of these activities can be done while you’re on the move, using apps.