Don't sell yourself short

Don’t sell yourself short.

Recently I was speaking to a friend who has her own business and we were talking about businesses making big strides in little time, having crazy success or getting big orders for their product.  I mentioned she contact a company about ordering her products to be part of their inventory.  She said to me, “I don’t know if they would want my product – they look like high end products that they purchase.”  I immediately said, “Don’t sell yourself short  – you make beautiful products and I think they would be very interested in your products.”  She said, “Yea, I guess you don’t know unless you try!”

We all get stuck, nervous or have that nagging little voice in our heads that tell us we may not be good enough, or our products or services not high caliber enough.  I get it, but those little voices may not actually be your own – but what maybe your not so supportive or doubtful friends and family have said to you.  I say hogwash!  Yes people hogwash; you have to believe in yourself if you’re going to be a continued success in your business or with your rescue group.

Don’t let that voice creep up and doubt yourself.  (Your voice is different than listening to your gut, by the way. Lol).  I know it can be tough if you work from home, alone…(Hello!?!), believe me, I know.  But if you don’t make that scary call or send that scary email to the person or company that you want to work with – what the heck are you doing?  (And I don’t care if you just started out in your business or are well established making that call can be nerve-racking at any level!)

The best thing to do is to Go For IT!  Hit ‘Send,’ and then celebrate when they get back to you.  Does every single email/phone call get you where you want? No, maybe not, but it gets you closer to the next one.  Right?  As the saying goes you have to kiss a lot of frogs to get to the prince. Ribbit.

Recently I reached out to a company I wanted to work with for the past couple of years on an event that they do, and that little voice was saying ‘nah they won’t go for it.’  But I hit send and was nervous it wouldn’t work out. And I heard nothing for a few days. Shoot! Damn it.

So I called the person I emailed, who was super nice and she was very helpful, passed along the info to her colleague – and said they would get back to me.

Two days pass.  Nothing. Shoot!

Then the next day the email I was waiting for, and YES they want to work with me! Wooohooo desk dance celebration (that’s cheering at my desk people)!  So so so stoked!  But if I listened to people who don’t have that entrepreneurial spirit, drive or understanding, if I listened to that little voice in my head, (who can sometimes be a biatch), and not my GUT (which I listened to), I would not be having that celebration.

Bottom-line, is go for it.  As my friend said, you never know unless you try.  And if the first attempt doesn’t work, you must persevere and be realistic at the same time.

Hard work and growing your business takes time, yea there are some over night successes, but in all reality most successful businesses have been working at it for 5 to 10 years! 🙂

I have been reading Pet Age Magazine for I couldn’t tell you how many years – over a decade for sure, and this month in February, I have a column in there! How cool is that! (Yea baby!) Perseverance!

Keep up the amazing work my pet pro friends – you can do it!

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