Have you experienced self-doubt when you are trying to succeed at growing your Zazzle business? Do you feel like you’re not good enough? Are you worried that people will call you a fraud if you call yourself a designer? Or maybe one of your designs is flying off the virtual shelves like hotcakes and a little voice in your head is telling you that you don’t deserve this success. That’s self-doubt. You’re not alone. Negative feelings come to all of us, but the good news is there are ways to overcome self-doubt and increase your confidence and that’s what we’re going to share with you in this article. Are you ready to feel more confident as a Zazzle designer and banish self-doubt? Then keep reading!
“If we had let our self-doubts beat us, we wouldn’t each have gone on to build million dollar businesses on Zazzle..”
But before we dive right in, let us introduce ourselves in case this is your first visit. Welcome to The Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur blog. We’re Jen and Elke Clarke. We are a mother and daughter team that started Zazzle e-commerce businesses over 10 years ago and have sold over 15 million dollars-worth and counting of products on Zazzle.
The Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur blog is for you if you want to have a long term, passive, online business. We share actionable steps that you can take to make money through your Zazzle store. In each article, we will take you one step closer to achieving freedom with your time, location, and finances.
We believe that you can live your dream life if you have a passive, long term, profitable e-commerce online business. We will show you what to do to work smarter, not harder, the right tools to use and what proven roadmap to follow to make your dream life happen. Let’s get started!
Self-doubt is defined as a lack of confidence in yourself and your abilities. It’s a fear and it can keep us safe if we find ourselves in a perilous situation. As with all fears it can also hold us back from what we deserve to achieve in life.
When you worry that you’re not good enough, you’re not talented enough, you’re not experienced enough, you become over-cautious and this stops you from taking the actions you need to take to serve your customers and be a successful designer.
We, Jen and Elke, have experienced self-doubt as Zazzle designers. We didn’t go to design school or have formal business training. Who were we to think we could design products that customers would spend their hard earned money on? We are normal people, what right do we have to be successful creative entrepreneurs? It was these types of thoughts that created the self-doubt, that we had to overcome in order to be successful on Zazzle.
Imposter syndrome and perfectionism also go hand in hand with self-doubt. When you don’t celebrate your successes because you feel like you could have done better you hold yourself back.
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Self-doubt is a form of primal preservation. It is not something that we can stop. We can however recognise when it holds us back and take steps to overcome it.
If we had let our self-doubts beat us we wouldn’t each have gone on to build million dollar businesses on Zazzle.
Here are three ways we used – and no you can use too – to overcome your self-doubt and put yourself on the path to achieve your dream goals.
Use one or all of these to help you on your journey to Zazzle success. Keep reading below to find out more one how you can use these three ways to overcome self-doubt.
Do you know the one person in the world who you communicate with most often? It’s you. All day long we experience “self-talk” and simple statements like “I don’t know how to do this.” or “I don’t have any training so I can’t call myself a designer.” can dramatically affect our ability to be confident and successful as creative entrepreneurs.
Think about the person you love most in the world. You wouldn’t go through the day saying negative things to them over and over would you? Somehow though we think it’s acceptable to talk to ourselves in that way.
From today onward, take a stand and make a change to eliminate negative self-talk. You are worthy and deserve to be talked to in a positive way. In reality this isn’t something you can change overnight, it will take practice, but you can be more aware of your self-talk.
An easy way to start is to notice when you hear yourself think something negative and acknowledge that you noticed this. Then consciously take those words you thought or said to yourself and reframe them into a positive statement.
Instead of: My designs aren’t as good as “insert other designer’s name here”.
Try: I am right where I need to be – and I will put in the time and effort it takes to improve my design skills.
Instead of: It was just luck that someone bought the design I made.
Try: I create designs that serve my customers well.
Instead of: I’m a fraud.
Try: I am a designer. I need to be myself, show up and do the best that I can.
William Shakespeare once wrote: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.“
Feelings of self-doubt result in negative self-talk and if we tell ourselves we can’t do something often enough our brain believes that to be true.
When you rephrase the negative words into positive ones you take the first step to overcoming self-doubt. The next step is to make positive affirmations a part of our daily routine. These affirmations are short and powerful phrases that help us to reverse that negative impact.
When we say positive affirmations repeatedly and out loud, we start to affect our conscious mind. This in turn affects our subconscious mind and from there we see changes in our behavior and our habits.
The key to success with positive affirmations is that you need to repeat them over and over again so that they become a mantra.
Use these positive affirmations to help you overcome your self-doubt:
Use these daily or make up your own that resonate with you. Make your affirmations part of your daily morning and evening routines. Say them out loud 10 times in the morning to start your day on a positive note. Then say them again, out loud, 10 times before you go to bed so that they enter your subconscious while you sleep.
A great way to overcome your self-doubt is to remind yourself how awesome you actually are!
It can be tricky to remember all the awesome things you’ve achieved when you’re deep in the quagmire that is self-doubt, so you need to write those things down. Treat yourself to a brand new notebook or journal. Then post in our BizBrags FB thread our private Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur FB group for Zazzle designers so we can cheer you on.
You can record:
Over time you will build a compelling list of evidence to prove to yourself that you are good enough to be a successful Zazzle designer!
Don’t forget to post in The Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur Facebook group in the BizBrags thread to share your successes from the week so we and other designers in the group can congratulate you, and honor and celebrate you.
Does it feel good to know that you’re not alone and that you can do something to beat those negative thoughts?
You now have three tools that you can use to overcome those self-doubts and improve your confidence as a Zazzle designer:
Let’s finish up with a bonus tip: Be part of a community.
As online entrepreneurs we can feel isolated and it’s difficult to talk about the challenges you might face in your Zazzle business if your friends and family don’t understand it. This can fuel our self-doubt and negative thoughts.
Christine is one of our most successful students and she finds it uplifting to be part of a group of people who are on the same journey and can be a form of support.
We understand that community is important for support and accountability as we build our successful Zazzle businesses, which is why we introduced The Profitable Membership™.
Each month we share new business strategies and mindset practices to help you grow as an entrepreneur. Members offer each other support and celebrate each other’s successes.
The Profitable Membership™ is open to all Profit by Design Academy™ students so if you are ready to take your business to the next level surrounded by a supportive network of people who are on the same journey as you, we’d love for you to come and join us.
They say you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Let us be in your inner circle of influence to help you become the successful e-commerce online entrepreneur you want to be. Follow us on Instagram @msjenclarke @elkeclarke Let’s DM and chat on IG.
Love to learn on the go?
Check out The Creative & Ambitious Entrepreneur Podcast
In this post, we are talking about how to earn $1,000 a month on Zazzle. People ask us this all the time, because initially what everyone says is, “I just want to earn a certain amount on Zazzle,” but eventually they want to turn it into something consistent…
In this post, we have a very special guest, one of our own clients. Her name is Wendy. She’s going to be talking to us about her journey through Zazzle…
Jen and Elke Clarke are a mother-daughter duo that empowers women entrepreneurs to make money online. Through courses and coaching, Jen and Elke help women (and men) become successful creative entrepreneurs on Zazzle and e-commerce. Combined Jen and Elke have earned over $1.5 million combined through their businesses on Zazzle. Jen and Elke have influenced and transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with their free content, paid and private coaching.
They are international, award-winning authors. Click the links to purchase their books through Amazon: Earn Around The World and Create Online and Grow Rich.
Jen and Elke Clarke have been featured in Yahoo Finance as TOP 5 e-commerce coaches in 2020 (June 2020).
