Am I Good Enough?

As a founder you very quickly find yourself out of your comfort zone, in fact you’re out of your comfort zone from day 1. You suddenly find yourself doing things that you have probably never done before. You’re pitching, selling, marketing, making difficult product decisions, hiring and the list goes on. Most days, you get knocked back and you hear the word ‘No’ and other days you just sit at your desk and think ‘what do I do?’.

Taking it personally

Everyone says you shouldn’t take it personally, but of course, you do. This product or service is yours, its your baby, its an embodiment of the thoughts in your head and your creative process. When someone says no, when someone doesn’t email back, when someone leaves, when you’ve made no revenue, when you have no users and when you don’t feel like you’re achieving anything. It hurts.

For many, this leads to self-doubt. ‘Am I good enough?’ The mind wanders back to how easy life would be at your old job. You question if you are the right person to take the business forward and you question whether you are wasting yours and other people’s time.

Retreat

One reaction is to hide, to curl up, to retreat, to go back to your desk and make up stuff to do and avoid the important stuff. You don’t make that difficult sales call, you don’t fire that useless employee, you don’t ask that investor why they said no. You are scared.

That is what a lot of founders do when things get hard, and things always get harder.

Attack

The second reaction is that of the formidable founder. The formidable founder doesn’t hide under their desk or behind their keyboard. They make the tough phonecall, they reach out to a mentor and say ‘I don’t know what to do’, they ask for help and they answer the important questions.

Self doubt is not a bad thing, it means you are out of your comfort zone and it means that you are challenging yourself. It also probably means that you are humble and that you care, a lot.

Accept that you aren’t good enough and believe that you can be.

If you have no self-doubt and everything is just fine then you’re probably the next Zuckerberg, or like most, you’re not challenging yourself and you’re avoiding what’s important.