It can be crushing being entrepreneurial or self employed right?

There’s no boss or line manager involved so YOU have the task of whipping yourself into shape and making sure that business and work tasks get done.

Apart from this, responsibility for the paycheck now rests squarely on your shoulders.

When all these factors seem to militate against you, remember that you might be focusing too much on business for self validation.

Self validation is the idea of how you see yourself and grant yourself worth.

As a business owner you should be focusing on market validation.

It’s much easier to track and sometimes can give a clear hint about where next you could go with the business.

Market validation is the idea of feedback you get from your customers and stakeholders about which products and services are working and which ones fall flat.

Market validation, no matter how small shows you that SOMETHING is working and provides a hint of where you need to double down on to make things grow faster.

So if you make wedding videos and lease stage equipment, don’t get all flustered and feel insignificant or undervalued by the market because you didn’t get the number of bookings you planned for.

Take stock of the little sales you have made so far. You might realize that not only have you done MORE equipment rentals this year, but that it’s also less tasking than shooting wedding videos.

If you run the numbers and you see that equipment rentals has greater margins, take this as a sign from the market about where to double down your efforts.

Don’t feel bad that you’re under appreciated.

Look at whatever market validation you have, and use that data to creatively plough forward.

That’s where you gain the confidence to muscle on and keep selling.

See what works, and keep doing it!