How To Develop
Level-10 Confidence
As A Business Owner

Jim Rohn said you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Whether this is technically precise, I don't know. What I do know is that the premise is 100% correct.

If you surround yourself with negative, pessimistic, defeatist, unhappy, fearful people every day — their traits will rub off on you. No matter how much personal development work you do, negative people will drag you down to their level. It's the single biggest obstacle to building confidence.

A few years ago I experienced this dilemma firsthand when I was living in Jacksonville, Florida. Two of my best friends at the time came to stay. But I quickly realized they were no longer the right people for me at that stage in my life — they were content with $35,000 a year and wanted to spend every day at the beach, with constant drama on nights out.

I sat them down and told them we were no longer going in the same direction. I knew if I continued hanging out with them, they'd hold me and my business back. I won't lie — this sucked. I'd feared that conversation for weeks. But the moment they left, I felt a weight off my shoulders. The negativity went with them, and a new level of energy came in. Business boomed.

The two most direct ways to surround yourself with the right people: go to mastermind events, and hire a business coach or mentor. The moment you pull the trigger on coaching is the moment you put someone further along the road than you into your life — someone with an outside perspective, clarity, and accountability. Two key ingredients of level-10 confidence.

You might assume confident people are the ones who say yes to everything — yes to people, yes to opportunities, yes to life. The reality is the opposite. Confident, successful people say NO to most things. They reject a lot of people, opportunities, and situations, because they understand that every yes costs a no somewhere else.

Most people say yes not because it's the right decision, but because they're afraid to say no. Afraid they won't be liked. Afraid they'll let someone down. Afraid the money will dry up. This is living in scarcity — and you need to escape it.

Saying NO is how you cultivate an abundance mindset. It signals to yourself that you believe something bigger and better is coming. You don't know it — you believe it. That belief is where confidence begins, and it compounds the more you practice it.

Make your default response to most people and situations no — and watch your confidence levels rise.

As humans, we're wired to stay comfortable. You love the idea of progress and growth — but you also hate failure, risk, and pain. As a business owner, you cannot operate purely on comfort. You need to take risks. You need to fail. You need to do what most people won't.

But there's no point leaping out of your comfort zone all at once — that just overwhelms you. Instead, edge out gradually. Conquer small fears. Tackle daily resistance.

Noah Kagan, founder of Sumo.me and one of Facebook's early employees, tells people to go to a coffee shop and ask for a 10% discount — with no reason, no story. Just: "Can I have 10% off?" The point isn't the discount. It's the practice of conquering small fears. Like any skill, confidence needs repetition.

For business owners, the fear of failure is extremely common. You're not only afraid to fail the task — you're worried about what people think. Your family and friends see a success story. Your peers do too. The thought of letting them down, and having them see you differently, is a fear in itself.

But failure is unavoidable when you take the risks that growth and scale require. Every time you fail, it can spiral into self-doubt if you let it:

I know this because I've experienced it. We once launched a program called "Six Months to Six-Figures" with expectations of making at least $400,000. We came out the other side having made $180,000 — and at the time, it felt like a massive failure.

We thought about scrapping the idea and refunding everyone. But we dug deep, committed to helping those who'd signed up, and produced some of our best success stories ever. The program became better than we'd imagined and went into an evergreen funnel that produced outstanding results for years.

Nothing in business is a one-time thing. You can turn an initial failure into success. You can transform a poor launch into great. But only if you commit to it — not run from it.

Failure doesn't define you. Believing this — truly, deeply believing it — does wonders for your confidence.

When we work with a new client at 2X, one of the first things we ask them to do is identify their strengths and weaknesses. No matter who they are or how much success they've had, they're a human being — with certain things they're great at, and many they're not.

Here's the thing: your weaknesses aren't something to fix. They're something to delegate and outsource. At best, you'll turn something mediocre into good — and successful business owners don't build empires on the back of "good."

Your strengths, however, represent a real opportunity. You're already good at them. If you focus there, you can turn good into great quickly. That's where the leverage is.

Take Richard Branson. He's dyslexic and struggled academically. There are people at Virgin with far more impressive CVs. Yet he's a billionaire who built a global business empire — not by fixing his weaknesses, but by going all in on his greatness and delegating everything else.

Wake up each day committed to what you're great at, nothing else. Your confidence follows naturally from doing things you're genuinely good at, receiving genuine progress and recognition, and feeling genuine flow in your work.

Bill Gates once said: "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years." This is one of the biggest confidence killers I see in entrepreneurs.

They set an impossibly large annual goal, fall short, feel like a failure, and the big-picture vision starts to feel out of reach. Their confidence tanks — not because of what they failed to achieve, but because they set themselves up to feel like they failed.

The fix is micro goals. Dial back from the big vision to what's achievable in the next 12 months — then dial it back further to the next 90 days. Ask yourself: what can I achieve today? What action can I take this week? What should my main focus be right now?

At 2X, we have big annual goals and a bold long-term vision — but it's not what we focus on daily. We focus on our 90-day goals and ask: did we do what we needed to do today? Every day we do is a success, because these consistent actions and habits stack up into something significant over time.

On every flight, the cabin crew says: "In the event of an emergency, please put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others." I used to find this counterintuitive. Surely you should take care of others first?

I no longer think that. Because you can't help others if you're not in a position to help them. You have to be selfish before you can be selfless.

Your business needs you at your best. You can only give that if you invest time in looking after yourself — your health, your sleep, your mind, your energy. If you're burnt out and running on fumes, you're no help to anybody, no matter how ambitious your vision is.

Not long ago, I stressed about money and whether I was good enough. I was so focused on worrying about others that I neglected myself. Then I reached a point where I said: I have to sort me out first. So I focused on myself, said no to others, cut things and people out of my life, and invested in my habits, routines, mindset, and health. Before long, I made money, regained freedom, built real success, and felt happy and fulfilled. In that order.

Accountability is the most important word in a business owner's vocabulary. It doesn't matter who you are or how successful you've been — everyone needs to hold themselves accountable every single day. The positive habits from tip 7 and the micro goals from tip 6 only happen when you build in accountability.

This is the biggest outcome we offer at 2X. Our guidance and coaching matters — but accountability is the foundation everything else is built on. Most programs focus on information delivery. But most business owners don't need more information. They need help and consistent accountability to actually execute on what they already know.

At 2X, we only give clients access for 90 days, and we only give them the information they actually need — because less is more. We build a select, intimate community rather than a massive one. And we center everything around hands-on coaching, real results, and above all: accountability.

One of our clients, Ryan and Erik, increased their revenue by more than $1 million month-on-month because we helped them set specific goals and kept them accountable every single day. Perry increased his revenue 5.7X within 90 days through accountability and focus. Alex tripled his business in 42 days by optimizing his operations and business model while staying accountable throughout.

Accountability leads to results. Results breed momentum. And momentum is where confidence lives.

You live in a results business. It doesn't matter what industry you're in — results matter. Results create momentum, and the moment you build momentum is the moment your confidence goes through the roof.

One win leads to two. Positive results today lead to more tomorrow. It all adds up. But most business owners create the conditions for struggle instead of success — they don't surround themselves with the right people, they overcommit to the year and underestimate the decade, they get caught in the hamster wheel, and they forget to celebrate today's wins while chasing tomorrow's goals.

Developing level-10 confidence is a skill. Like any skill, you can improve it by following these 9 steps consistently. It won't happen overnight — but it may surprise you how quickly it does when you're intentional about it.

Your confidence affects everything you do. If you're anything like our clients, developing it will have a big impact on your business and your life.