Welcome back to She Wears the Pants — the place where high-growth women come to build companies that match their calling.
I’m your host, Ashley Deland.
Today we’re going to talk about something that every founder experiences at some point in her journey.
It wavers.
Sometimes it feels strong.
Sometimes it feels distant.
And sometimes you find yourself searching for more of it.
And that is confidence.
Because if you spend any meaningful amount of time in entrepreneurship, there will be seasons where things are working beautifully.
Sales are flowing.
Opportunities are landing.
Momentum feels natural.
You feel like you're in rhythm with the business.
And then there are other seasons.
Seasons where things feel uncertain.
You can’t raise the capital.
The launch doesn’t land the way you expected.
The marketing strategy that once worked suddenly stops working.
And that is the moment where many entrepreneurs turn the lens inward and start questioning themselves.
They wonder…
“Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
“Maybe I’ve lost my edge.”
“Maybe I’m not as capable as I thought.”
But here’s the thing.
Confidence is never built when you're winning.
Confidence is revealed when you're not.
And one of the biggest lies many women were taught about confidence is this idea that it comes from results.
When you win, you feel confident.
When you succeed, you feel validated.
When you achieve, you feel powerful.
But if your confidence is tied to outcomes, then every setback — and there will be many — turns into an identity crisis.
This is where so many brilliant founders get stuck.
Because entrepreneurship guarantees one thing.
You will miss sometimes.
You will miss the target on a launch.
A partnership you believed in will collapse.
A strategy that once worked will stop working.
That’s the nature of building something real.
And if your confidence depends on those outcomes, your leadership becomes unstable and your trajectory becomes reactive.
So the real question becomes:
Where does real confidence actually come from?
The women who lead at the highest levels understand something very clearly.
Their confidence comes from process.
From preparation.
From discipline.
From mastering the fundamentals of what they do.
They understand that when you trust the way you work, you can move through almost any outcome.
When something doesn’t land the way you hoped, you don’t collapse into self-doubt.
Instead, you get curious.
You examine what happened, extract the lesson, refine the approach - and then you keep moving.
Because leadership and life is never about avoiding difficulty.
It’s about developing the capacity, strength, resilience and mindset to move through it.
One of my favorite mindset hacks is what I call - the next play mentality.
Meaning this.
You don’t sit inside the last mistake.
You don’t replay the loss over and over again in your mind, trying to rewrite something that has already happened.
You take the lesson.
You take the information.
And then you move forward into the next play that’s in front of you.
Because entrepreneurship isn't about never failing …
It’s about how quickly you can reset, realign, and keep moving.
Because behind that quick recovery is actually the development of emotional regulation.
The ability to stay steady even when the environment around you shifts.
Because there’s another layer to confidence that people rarely talk about.
And that is mastery.
The women who build extraordinary companies don’t skip the fundamentals.
They study them.
They refine them.
They deepen them.
Over and over again.
The things we thought we mastered at the beginning like;
Brand clarity.
Communication.
Offer design.
These things may not always feel glamorous, but they are the things that create real authority and success.
You trust your ability to figure it out.
And that trust becomes a quiet, steady form of confidence.
And to be clear here…
Confidence and self-worth are two very different things.
Confidence can rise and fall depending on the situation.
You may feel confident in one area of business and uncertain in another.
But self-worth is deeper.
Self-worth is the understanding that your value is not determined by any single outcome.
When those two things begin to align — confidence in your skills and certainty in who you are — something powerful happens.
You stop performing for approval.
And you start leading from identity - from a deep knowing and trust in yourself.
So if you are in a season where things feel uncertain…
Where the results are slower than you hoped.
Where the path forward feels a little less clear.
I want you to remember something.
Confidence is not built by winning.
It is built by continuing.
By refining your craft.
By strengthening your process.
By staying connected to the calling that made you begin in the first place.
Because the women who build extraordinary companies are not the ones who avoid failure.
They are the ones who keep showing up for the work.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until the business, the leadership, and the woman behind it all evolve into something stronger than they were before.
Until next time —keep rising into the woman your calling requires.
