Selling yourself short is something that we will all be guilty of at some point in our lives (if we haven't already done it). Selling yourself short can be anything from accepting a job salary that is well beneath what your credentials and experience dictate to becoming involved in a relationship with someone because you think that that is as good as it will get for you. Obviously, there is a very strong tie-in to selling yourself short and having little confidence. The two almost always intermingle with one another.

So, what does selling yourself short have to do with business sense? A lot actually. While we're not all salespeople, in order to garner clientèle, we have to at least believe in what it is we're selling to the public. Most potential customers are like small children; they can smell fear and they most certainly can see right through a person who doesn't really believe in what it is they're trying to pitch. In other words, if all you care about is your bottom line but not so much about how you're going to get the bottom line sold, they you've got a real problem that may very well end up with your business failing.

If you are of the entrepreneurial spirit and are gung ho about starting your own company, make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons. Don't simply start a company on the basis that you really, really want to make a lot of money and are sick of working for your current employer. It's ok for these types of feelings to arise, but if you base your business model around it, you will be destined to fail. Instead, spend some time figuring out what it is you're passionate about. After you've figured out what it is you really like to do, sit down and spend some time investigating whether or not the market conditions are right or will be right in the future in order for your business to succeed. For example, you may be really passionate about building stick figures, but the market may dictate that at the end of the day, most people really don't care to buy stick figures. So, while you may have what you think is a “great idea,” you cannot build a successful business based on your own interpretation of a business item.

Be smart about how you present yourself to others. Any successful business person will tell you that they most certainly did not reach the heights of success on their own. It takes a lot of help from many different people to get where you want to go. And for this reason, it is even more important to make sure that you've got it together. If your personal/home life is suffering or if you are experiencing dire financial problems, you may want to save your business venture for another, more stable period in your life. Part of selling yourself to others is being able to present others with an image or an example of someone who is confident and knows how to clearly and succinctly explain their business goals as well as how they plan on achieving those goals. For customers, customers want to be reassured that the product or service that they are receiving is a) valuable b) guaranteed and c) worth their time and money.