On receiving the award from Theo Paphitis, she sent me a message:
“I visualised myself winning so many times and it’s finally happened”
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The ‘Small Business Sunday’ Award (#SBS) is the most recent of a long string of business awards that she has won and arguably this is the most prestigious of them all.
Every award has built her confidence and self-belief and has created much needed and positive exposure on social media and other outlets.
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Exhibiting Her Products Was Important.
Charlotte Kleban creates and sells a large portfolio of products from Teapots and tea-sets to socks and greeting cards and exhibiting her products to potential customers and talking to these people was a major part of marketing her business.
I remember her texting me just before exhibiting as a trader at The Manchester Youth Market, saying she was a bit nervous.
I texted her back and said:
“visualise yourself talking to your potential customers and visualise them loving your products and buying them”
… she succeeded in winning a Highly Commended Trader Award at the event.
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Now her business is going from strength to strength with a strong demand for her products and she is in a ‘good place’. As I write this article, she messaged me to say that she had just enjoyed her best week of sales, ever.
I am sure Visualisation has worked its part in her success.
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When I First Started, I Doubted Myself
When I first started in business, I doubted my ability to grow a business successfully and I used visualisation to boost my self-belief and self-confidence.
I wanted to own and run my own public house, but I am a naturally shy person and knew I had to be able to talk to people.
And, that was difficult for me.
I repeatedly visualised myself talking to my customers, serving them with beer and them loving my public house.
It was tough at times, but I achieved it and the White Hart was a great success, with the business growing to include a total of five public houses and a brewery, building to an annual turnover of £5 million.
Much of this was down to my use of visualisation to boost my self-belief.
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Many In Business Suffer From Self-Doubts
Many business owners can suffer from self-doubt and the lack of belief in their ability to grow their businesses into a success.
If you have the same self-doubt, you are not an exception.
Importantly, though, you can do the same as Charlotte and myself did - and it could be easier than you think.
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Visualise Your Goals
Create yourself a goal or a visual image and keep thinking about it and keep visualising it in your mind.
It could be:
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Selling to customers
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Talking to happy customers
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Receiving a business award
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Seeing orders flooding into your ecommerce site
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Receiving good customer testimonials
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Seeing a bank statement with a large cash balance
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Buying a nice car, you have bought from the profits of your business.
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The process works by visualising any positive situation, positive thought or positive image that you can picture in your mind; it must relate to a good, positive goal being achieved or a good successful stage within your business being attained.
It could be something you have achieved in the past or something that you wish to achieve in the future.
By thinking about something you have achieved in the past, it can give you the confidence to know that you can achieve good things, especially at times when your self-belief is minimal. By thinking about something in the future, it gives you a goal or target to reach for in the future, in the same way that Charlotte visualised winning the award from Theo Paphitis.
Importantly, visualisation can be used to create development in yourself and in your business, thus driving yourself and your business forward.
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You Must Keep Visualising Repeatedly
It is important that you continually visualise your positive image or positive thought (past, present and future) literally many times a day. By doing this, your sub conscious mind will gradually accept it and it will make it easier to use the image or thought for your benefit.
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Our Subconscious Minds Are There To Protect Us
Our subconscious minds are very powerful and are there to protect us.
Going back thousands of years to when we were in the jungle, our subconscious minds worked to protect us from dangers such as wild beasts and our tribal enemies, etc.. When confronted with a ‘dangerous’ situation, our subconscious minds would automatically kick in to move us away from the danger, without us consciously thinking about taking action.
These days, it can work differently to protect us; it can, for instance, work automatically and spontaneously to keep us inside our comfort zones and away from difficult situations, without us thinking consciously.
If confronted by a situation that makes us feel uncomfortable, our subconscious mind will stop us getting into that situation.
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We Can Override Our Subconscious Minds
It is possible, however to override our subconscious minds; by repeatedly thinking about and visualising a situation, thought or image that takes us outside our comfort zones, we can program our subconscious minds to accept that we want to experience an uncomfortable situation.
Eventually it will allow us to do this.
For me, it worked by allowing me to enter a bar full of customers and to talk to them. For Charlotte, it allowed her to talk to people at her exhibitions and it allowed her to have the courage to put herself and her business forward for business awards.
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Visualisation Helps Focus
Repeated visualisation also allows us to maintain focus on our goals and our business journey.
When the goals involve personal self-development and growing our businesses, the continual visualisation ensures we are continually focused on moving forward; then continual progress forward is achieved.
Focus is really important, if business success is to be attained.
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Visualisation Can Cancel Out Negativity
Very often, doubts can manifest themselves when negative comments are recieved or a negative situation arises.
Mentally, it can only take one negative comment to cancel out the positive feelings created by a large number of good comments or one negative situation can cancel out the effect of many positive situations achieved previously.
By using visualisation, you can cancel out a negative comment or a negative situation.
When a negative comment is received or a negative situation arises, for instance, you must first deal with it, then you must visualise the many good comments and good situations that have occurred in your business, previously.
This then should divert the focus from the negativity to the positivity.
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Here Is An Example
At The White Hart, complaints were very rare.
I remember one situation on a Saturday evening when we received one complaint about a meal after serving 300 meals - the staff were feeling a little dejected because they were focusing on the ONE complaint.
We had been showered with compliments that night from the other happy customers and I said to my staff:
“Please focus on the 299 happy customers NOT the one unhappy customer”
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That comment changed their mood, completely, as they visualised the happy customers, that they had served, and forgot about the one unhappy one.
It is very easy to focus on the negative – we can all do it.
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Try Visualisation Today, Yourself
If you do lack self-belief or self-confidence, you can use visualisation, yourself, to bolster your self-belief by setting and achieving goals.
Use this method:
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Make a short list of your main goals
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Choose the one or two most important goals
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Break each of the chosen goals down into the steps, need to achieve each goal
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Write down each goal and the steps required
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Visualise each goal and its steps in your mind
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List the challenges on the way and visualise you combatting these
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Visualise the benefits that you will derive from achieving each goal
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Write notes to remind yourself of these goals (and steps) and leave them in strategic places in your home and office – even the loo!
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Breaking your goals down into steps will allow you to see how your goal can be achieved and this process should give you some confidence to think that the goal can be achieved, eventually. There will be difficulties and challenges along the way and you should visualise yourself combatting these.
Each goal should be big enough to create ‘benefits’ for yourself or your business and you should visualise the benefit that will come from achieving each goal.
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Use ‘Post-Its’
‘Post its’ are a good way to remind yourself of your goals and the steps - try leaving them anywhere that will prompt you, several times a day.
Gradually your subconscious mind will accept your thoughts and goals and it will allow you to act out the steps to achieve your goals.
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Visualise The Benefits
Visualising the benefits can be very powerful.
If, for instance, your business is making a trading loss, this situation could creat worry and stress for you – can be a ‘horrible’ feeling.
You could set a goal to gain a certain number of new customers to stop the losses and to create a profit. Here the real benefit would be greater sales from the extra customers and hopefully the creation of a profit.
You could imagine the ‘nice’ feeling of making a profit replacing the ‘horrible’ feeling of worrying about having a trading loss.
I hope you can see how visualisation can work.
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Go Back To Your List Of Goals
When you have achieved your first goal or goals, then go back to your original list of goals and choose more and repeat the process.
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Give Visualisation A Go
I hope you can give Visualisation a go to move yourself and your business forward - whatever your situation, I am certain it could make a difference.
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This is a very short explanation, but if you wish to talk more about visualisation, please contact me below or email me: robert@prestigebusinesscoaching.co.uk.
