Low on confidence? Try this.

How to Buy Confidence When You Aren’t Really Feeling It

Oh man, I am so glad February is over. Total wash!

I was hoping to take August off like last year, and it feels like I used up my annual month off lying on the couch coughing up green stuff and complaining about problems that weren’t even real problems. 

However…

Trying not to jinx it, but it kind of feels like I’m back? I’m feeling like my old, more-confident-than-she-has-any-right-to-be self. 

Me and my son Mo taking one of our famous working-sick days

People ask me a lot where I get my confidence.

I was recently interviewed for Becca Tracey’s Fly On The Wall series. We planned to talk about something different, but we ended up talking about confidence. 

“I always equate your name with the utmost level of confidence,” she said. “Confidence never seemed like an issue for you. You were a rock star from the beginning.” 

True, I’m naturally confident. 

Don’t tell anyone, but my internet password is IAMTHEGREATEST.

Some of my confidence comes from holding a lot of dominant identities. I’m white, skinny and pretty, and grew up consuming movies and magazines about fabulous people who share those identities. That gave me a head start. 

Part of it is that I’m a perpetual youngest child who thinks she deserves just a little bit more than her share. 

But in case you weren’t spoon-fed confidence from birth, all is not lost. There are lots of ways to show up online more confidently than you feel. Internet confidence can be bought, and it can also be earned. 

5 Ways To Show Up Confident Before You Feel Confident

Make yourself look good with professional design. Having a beautiful brand and a website you feel proud of increases confidence. Beautiful, professionally shot and styled brand photos signal a working professional who knows what they’re doing—even if it’s just one good headshot.

I invested in professional design in year two of my business. Amber Seacrest created my first brand and is working with us right now on retainer. (Check out her packages.) Experience has shown me that painfully few people are successful online with bad design. The rest of us have to spend money keeping up appearances. (This guy makes me look good in photos.)

Build confidence into your brand voice. I’m always making grandiose statements about myself and my business. My LinkedIn profile calls me “the world’s #1 expert in consent-based email marketing,” which is true even if it’s a category of one. Find your category of one and own your dominance.

Also, notice I didn’t say earlier, “I’m a light-skinned person who wears a size 8 (or 10 after eating fettucini) and I look nice on camera as long as I brush my hair.” That’s fine (love those details!), but directness sounds more confident. Say what you mean. People who are confident don’t beat around the bush. Edit out the extra words. 

Charge the rates of a confident person. This one’s a little weird, I know. You need confidence to charge confident rates! But what I’ve seen is that people with too-low prices still struggle to sell their offers and services. 

The price isn’t why you struggle, it’s more likely that you’re not articulating the value of your offers clearly. Maybe you don’t understand it yourself. Fix that first, then price yourself according to something you can actually live on. 

Train yourself to receive feedback without falling apart. That’s a skill you can cultivate. Sandra and I have been practicing on each other for nine years. It’s taken years of therapy and coaching to understand why feedback triggers me, and rewire my automated response which is to hide and shut down. 

Confident business owners aren’t magically immune to critical feedback. On the contrary. We seek it out, ask questions about and try to understand. We also get bummed out, hurt and frustrated like everyone else. 

Find your hype squad. Maybe it’s your coach, a mastermind, or a therapist. From day one in business, I’ve always always always had people I could lean on when I needed to borrow someone else’s belief in me. Sometimes these were my friends, but most of the time I paid these people. Find yours. Talk to these people often, daily if you can. Lay down money to get in the room with people you want on your squad. (This mastermind is amazing, btw. And it’s opening in April.)

Confidence is both an inside job and an outside job. 

I can’t help you with the inside stuff because I am not a therapist and I have complicated feelings about mindset work even though I know it’s important. The line between mindset work and spiritual bypassing can be pretty thin sometimes. Try to find someone who understands the difference. 

The ultimate confidence hack is to be born a man.* 

(You’re welcome!)

Of course I didn’t say any of this on Becca’s Fly On The Wall series because I’m better in print. Feel free to listen in anyway. I said other smart things about confidence. 

She also asked to hear my name change story which, if you haven’t heard it, is kinda fun. 

I hope you found this newsletter helpful. Truth be told, I’ve been feeling a bit insecure about my newsletter the last few weeks, probably because I’m still recovering from my prolonged existential crisis. 

Feel free to send me compliments.   

Or better yet leave a review on Google so other people know about how good my emails are. 

Till next week,

Tarzan “Confusingly Insecure Confident Person” Kay

Tarzan Kalryzian [she/they]
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*Obviously men struggle with confidence, too! If you’re one of the four men who subscribe to this newsletter, feel free to hit reply and get mad at me for that joke. I can take it.

Gratuitous Picture of My Hair

I wrote half an email on this topic but wasn’t able to turn it into business advice. Should I try harder? Hit “reply” and simply say, “DO IT, TARZAN.”