Confidence can play a big part in the success of running a business. So here’s how to find confidence in yourself and your business!

Have you struggled with finding confidence in yourself? Or are you struggling with finding confidence in yourself in your business? Are you struggling with your identity as an entrepreneur or your decision-making in your leadership for your business? In today’s post, we’re going to cover all it entails to what confidence looks like in your business and life with Taylor Torres.

About Taylor Torres

Taylor Torres is 26 years old and lives in Houston, Texas with her two kids and partner. She’s the owner of Chanel & Lee Studios, a systems and operations studio where she does system consulting for online business owners, everything from education to speaking. 

She is also a brand photographer in Houston and the host of a podcast called Ironically Serious. She’s been doing photography for 11 years. She started in 2012; she was 16-17 years old when she started and she went to school for photography. When she first started her business with Chanel & Lee, she was first a VA and served a lot of the photography communities. Now she just does shoots for brands here and there but that’s not her main business anymore. 

Journey to building and gaining confidence

Taylor has had an interesting decade even though she’s only 26. She’s had a lot of different versions of herself from photographer to art school. She was married and then divorced, and then started this business four years ago and now it has evolved. 

These are all different branches of who she is but a lot of that confidence has just come from experiences. She’s always felt confident growing up and even into her adult life. One thing that helped the most in starting all of these projects and passion projects is having life experiences and learning how to go through setbacks and go through failures.

Experiencing hard stuff helps build your character and your mental toughness so you can carry that into anything you do. Because it’s not easy showing up online, in your business every day. It can be exhausting! 

Having these experiences that have tested Taylor a little bit in life, whether those were business experiences or just life circumstances has built up that confidence for her to show up her best and serve people.

Does being a multi-passionate entrepreneur help your confidence?

One thing Taylor learned in entrepreneurship, regardless if you’re multi-passionate or not, is that you want to become your very best at something. You try to do something quickly so you can kind of scale or succeed and sometimes you don’t become the best at it. 

We are kind of in a fast-paced culture and everyone wants to try new things. Everyone wants to do this and that and it takes time to build up skills. And to become successful and hit certain goals in your business or your career or your projects.

 It’s a great thing to be multi-passionate because you get to try things and that’s a blessing to figure out what you want to do. If you try something you don’t like, then you can move on to the next thing. 

But there’s an importance to sticking with something if you truly love it and becoming the best at it. Take the time to learn, and go through that humble phase of not knowing all the answers yet. You’re learning and you make mistakes.

 Keep moving forward because those are the people in any industry that you look up to. People who have been doing something for years. Put time into becoming great at something and that’s where your confidence builds. 

You lack confidence when you think you’re not the best at it. That’s when the imposter syndrome starts to creep in, like why should you be confident in yourself when you’re doing something you don’t know?

So as a multi-passionate person just live through and go through the humble phase of enjoying the process too. You can’t fast-track confidence, the same way you can’t fast-track expertise, you have to be willing to be in it. 

Seasons where you don’t feel confident in showing up

If you’re using social media as a marketing tool, you have to show up. Maybe you’re not going to be connecting or networking, it’s all a learning process. Taylor learned that it’s almost like a muscle thing you have to just work on it. Just like you would if you’re an artist and you have a skill that you work on every day or as a photographer you’re practicing your craft. Showing up in your confidence and your uniqueness is something you just have to practice to do.

There will be days when you don’t want to show up online, not feeling very confident about yourself or you’ve had a rough time. It’s still part of showing up, but also showing up in being true to you. Do not put up a front because that inauthenticity shows up online. 

Building your personal brand as well over the years helps you become honest with your audience and they appreciate that, they connect with you better and conversations happen. Believe that you can show up as yourself and people will respond. 

In the online space what sets people apart is the fact that you have people from all walks of life and backgrounds and skills, who are doing similar things. They each bring something different to the table. And those unique personality traits are what attract them to these brands. 

Figure out what you’re really good at whether it’s a skill or trait or even something unique about you that people may connect with. Then step into that and let yourself be confident in that. You can infuse that into your business too. Look within yourself first and don’t try to get inspiration outward. 

Find inspiration inwards rather than outwards

Taylor was about a year into her VA business and she wanted to level up. She didn’t want to be a VA anymore but was feeling conflicted about what she wanted to do next. It was time-consuming as she was looking at all these business owners, doing this and that, what their branding looked like, how they would show up, etc. and this reflected on her brand.

It was confusing, it wasn’t aligning. People weren’t buying because she wasn’t showing up as true to herself. She was looking at inspiration outwards and applying them.

Once that was figured out, which took some soul digging and working with a copywriter and some journaling and figuring out what to do, ever since that point everything aligned.  Now people are attracted to her branding and they sometimes don’t know why, but that’s because she now knows her secret sauce. 

You’re going to look at your competitors and do market research but there is a benefit of putting on the blinders when you first get started. Just focusing on yourself and what’s working for you, and what’s not working, you know what feels right intuitively and what doesn’t feel right. 

A lot of business owners when they first started don’t realize that entrepreneurship is just a journey of trial and error. It happens throughout your whole career. You’re going to be trying some things out, sometimes you fail, you try something else, you get tired and that’s okay. It’s okay to experiment with what feels right for you and your business.

Advice for business owners

Set goals for your business and keep track of them. Go the extra step of writing down your goals and then breaking them down. Ask yourself what you’re going to do to make that happen this month, this week, or today to make that goal happen. 

That helps your confidence a lot. Because you know where you want to go and what action plan to take. You’re more confident in the tasks you’re doing to reach that goal. 

As a business owner, start showing up online. If you’re an online business owner, you have to start showing up on social media. Build your audience, it’s not about the numbers. It’s about who connects with you; the network and connections you’re building. 

Make connections, and see social media as a networking tool versus just a selling tool. That shift helps you collaborate with businesses too. Finally, always remember to show up as your unique authentic self. Allow your personality to shine through your business and make yourself stand out.

Confidence in leadership

Confidence looks a lot different when it’s in your business than when you’re assuming a leadership role. A leadership skill that’s not talked about often is being a listener. Leaders are supposed to listen and not talk all the time, because you can be one of those leaders that are bossy and they feel like they’re not listening or understanding people’s needs and guiding them to where they need to go. Especially in the online space, because you feel like you’re in a leadership position or authority position.

You start coaching and educating. You believe you’re at the top of the tier but in reality, you’re hiding others from their end goal, or best self. 

Being confident isn’t being the boss or being the center of attention. You can just listen and still be a leader. Let people make moves, help them when they make mistakes and need help. You’re supportive. 

Being confident in leadership isn’t always the stereotypical kind of masculine position leadership. It’s more of a softer approach. That helps you to be more relatable. 

What she learned about starting a podcast

Taylor has been running her business for years and she’s always wanted to start a podcast but was scared because of the level of education she had to learn the right things. It’s like a whole new path, going from photo or creative to an audio or scary video format. 

She was feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome. Even though the content she was bringing was important in conversations. She felt like people would think it sucks, so what helped her through that time was educating herself instead. 

So she gave herself seven months, which sounds like a long time, to learn not only a new skill but to build the brand of that thing and create value. She gave herself the room she needed to do it and that way she wouldn’t feel pressured to finish. She gave herself room to experiment a little bit without putting it out there. 

Now she feels confident in the thing she created because she gave herself the route needed to put it into action versus trying to rush it or giving herself a timeline or all the things. This is something she loves to share because people can all relate to it when it comes to creating a new idea in the entrepreneurship journey.

Find a happy place in your business

Taylor loves working out, fitness is her therapy, which sounds cliche. She started working out in 2020 right after she had her baby, which was right after she launched her business. 

She started working out and found that it was her happy place because it was where she could decompress and think of a lot of ideas which she writes down once she takes a pause. That’s one happy thing that helps her with her business because it gives her time to take a breather and push herself in different ways.

Find a happy place for you and use this to your advantage in your business and this can help build your confidence even more!

You can find Taylor Torres on her business Instagram page at @chanelandlee, her personal Instagram page at @taytorres, and her podcast page at @ironicallyseriouspod. You can also find her on her websites  www.chanelandlee.com and www.taylortorres.com. She would love to connect!