July 6, 2021 2 min read

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Many founders (if not all founders) experience self-doubt. So how do you keep going when the voices around you (and sometimes in your head) are telling you that you’re on a fast track to failure?

Nicole Walters, founder and CEO of Inherit Learning Company and star of USA Network’s She’s The Boss, recently spoke with Nicole Gibbons, CEO and founder of Clare, about how to prevent negativity from shutting you down.

“I’ve spent more than 15 years in the home industry,” says Gibbons, “so I have a lot of confidence in the knowledge I’ve gained over the years. But there tends to be a lot of noise around us — investors or other people telling you what they think you should do. You need to have conviction about everything you know to be true. You need to trust your own intuition and your gut. The knowledge you’ve gained is generally much more powerful than any outside noise.”

Gibbons says that, occasionally, she needs to return to that line of thinking: No one will know your business as well as you. “You are ultimately the one who is steering the ship and even during those moments of self-doubt, just circle back to what you know to be true and the reason why you’ve built this company, the problem you are solving. That will keep you motivated.”