One of the worst things we can tell ourselves about accomplishments and success is that we don’t deserve it – and then feel guilty about it. These feelings may have been plaguing you since childhood and kept you from the success you’re very capable of.

Rather than celebrating and touting your success, you may feel unworthy or afraid that you’ll come across as bragging. But when you’re an entrepreneur and in the business of helping others, your accomplishments should be touted.

If your potential customers don’t see you as a success, they won’t have much of a reason to follow your advice. You may even take your feelings of guilt so far as to give away your advice and information – great for the freebie seekers, but bad for your business.

That doesn’t mean that everything has to have a price on it. Successful entrepreneurs usually go the extra mile and provide more solutions and guidance for their customers than necessary. But it should be your choice, not a result from feeling guilty.

Feeling Guilty Doesn’t Serve Your Customers’ Best Interests

When guilt about your success or how much money you make overwhelms you, it may cause you to abandon your career pursuit of helping others. That leaves your customer base that you worked so hard to build without a leader they can depend upon.

If guilt and unworthy feelings are something you contend with, it’s time to nip it in the bud before it grows into an obstacle you can’t overcome. Think about why you feel guilt. Did someone – a customer or loved one – make you feel guilty or berate you for wanting to better your life?

Or could these feelings come from childhood experiences? Unless you find a way to bury the guilt and remove it from your thought process entirely, you won’t be able to fully help your customers succeed – and you will fail, too.

You must have done a number of things right to be at the place you are now. Others are seeking your advice and experience because you’ve obviously accomplished enough to be considered worthy of offering solutions for their problems.

They view you as a person to look up to and emulate. If you let your customers down by becoming indecisive and letting them down, you will lose the business that could eventually make you a success.

First, know that no one has the right to make you feel unworthy of success. Don’t let others beat you down and make you feel that you just got lucky with your success – that it wasn’t a matter of your knowledge, drive and past experiences that led you to triumphs.

And even if you did luck out in some areas, you had the good fortune to know when to take advantage of a situation. As an entrepreneur, you have to tout your own successes.

This doesn’t mean you’re bragging, but that you’re stating the facts. You are good at what you do and you do have the knowledge and experience to help others gain their own success.

Sometimes it’s difficult to fend off criticism from others – especially those close to you. But you have a choice on how to respond. You can either sink deeper in guilty feelings and apologize for the success you’ve had or celebrate what you have and do what makes you happy.

Remember: “Your value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~ Unknown.

Everybody Has Hardships

It’s normal to feel empathy or sympathy for those who are struggling financially. Luckily, with the career you’ve chosen of providing useful information, you can help those people succeed.

You’ll feel good about yourself and the ones you help will be lifelong customers. You’ll both benefit from the help you give. As an entrepreneur who is in the business of helping others achieve success in whatever niche you’re leading, you should go above and beyond.

That doesn’t mean giving away all of your knowledge and secrets for free, but the products you do offer should have meat in the content and go beyond a simple freebie that you secured from the Internet.

You can use much of the free information you research on the ‘net to help others. There’s so much data on just about any topic you can imagine that you can share it with others and they’ll be grateful for it.

When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re considered a leader – and leaders can be assured of their continued success by helping others. One of the best ways to be a leader is to share the knowledge and experience you already have.

Your customers are looking for something of value, so you have to be able to discern what they consider valuable. It’s a waste of time to try helping them with something they don’t need or want help with.

Well thought-out blog posts, an easy-to-maneuver website and periodic specials where you offer past information products at a premium price is a good way to share your resources and make your customers aware of unique products and opportunities.

Another way to help others struggling for success is to offer feedback. The criticism should be constructive and transparent, helping improve what they’ve already accomplished rather than destructive criticism that can shatter their dreams.

Introducing your customers to other entrepreneurs and websites or blogs is also a great way to help others. If you know of another entrepreneur or guru who specializes in or offers something your client may feel is important, make sure the client knows about it.

When a client has overcome a particular obstacle or has come up with a new way of doing something, recognize him by mentioning him in a blog post, inviting him to a podcast presentation or any other method that will extol what he’s accomplished.

It’s not always easy to help others who are experiencing hardships. You’ll have freebie seekers who will test your patience. But the connections with those willing to work hard toward their goals and pay a fair amount for the guidance are the foundation of your success and it makes sense to cultivate those relationships.

Beware of Chronic Freebie Seekers

Just as there are unethical entrepreneurs, there are also unethical customers who constantly want something for nothing. You have to realize that you’re worthy of getting paid for the solutions and guidance you offer and find a way to help them see that – or send them away.

The true freebie seeker has no intention of paying for anything. It seems that their goal in life is to waste your time until you give them something of value just to get rid of them. When you offer a product online, you do it as a way to accrue clients for future products and to create interest in your product from paying customers.

But there are always a few freebie seekers who show up, looking to grab anything free you might offer – plus the products you expect payment for. You can try to convert these freebie seekers into paying customers by helping them see the value of your product and how it’s going to help them succeed, or attempt to protect your business from wasting time and effort on them.

A free offer can be one of your best marketing tools. But you should know that the word free will attract those who never intend to pay for anything you offer. It’s a mindset most of us don’t understand and it can truly damage your business efforts if you don’t protect yourself from it.

First, you should know how the freebie seekers operate. You’ll see them as repeat responders to free offers, but can drag your conversion rates to lower levels than they truly are.

Free offers that are only targeted to your paying list of customers (through a newsletter or blog post) reduce the amount of freebie seekers you may receive. But when you post free offers on social media, you can expect the percentage of freebie seekers to increase considerably.

When you post a free offer that’s contingent on a subscription to your newsletter, be prepared for the freebie seekers to immediately unsubscribe as soon as they download the free offer.

Research methods that other successful entrepreneurs use to stop freebie seekers from wasting their time and effort. For example, check out alternatives to free offers when trying to attract clients. By reducing your percentage of freebie seekers, you’ll be taking a big step in helping your business grow and prosper.

To Alleviate Guilt, Serve Your Audience Well

As an entrepreneur, there are many tried and true ways that you can serve your audience and help grow your own business as well. You don’t have to feel guilty about your own success when you know your clients are prospering from your efforts.

One way you can know that your audience is benefiting from your efforts is to define a particular group rather than attempting to appeal to everyone. It’s like shooting an arrow haphazardly without really aiming. You’ll surely miss the target and hit something you didn’t mean to.

But when you have a target audience, you’ll know exactly what to offer that they will like and enjoy. It’s the best way to invest your time, money and efforts and accurately promote your own business, too.

Having empathy for your audience is another way to alleviate guilt. When you show empathy, you’ll build a group of customers who clearly appreciate what you’ve done and what you’re doing for them.

When you do everything you can to help others in the business, you’re likely going to alleviate any guilt you may have for your own successes and be able to focus on improving your own goals for success and happiness.

Defining your target audience helps you know exactly what to offer them. You won’t be wasting your time and effort going down the wrong path of research and development, but will accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.

The relationships you strive to build within your targeted audience also help alleviate any guilt you may feel for your current success. Watching others’ businesses grow with help from the information you offered is the surest way to boost your confidence and take your business to the next level.

Serving your audience as well as you can also means that you can better identify opportunities for yourself and for them. You’ll be able to gradually build your business to the level you want and achieve goals on the way up. There’s no guilt involved when you learn how to serve your audience well.

Were You Raised with An Entrepreneurial Spirit?

If you can’t seem to get ahead or make progress with your business because you lack an entrepreneurial spirit of giving, it may be time to assess your upbringing. Many parents raise their children to be giving while others are intent on having their children focus on earning money.

The reality is – you need a balance of both. Children who were raised to give with a free spirit may have difficulty grasping the importance of receiving money for what they do – especially those who offer advice and guidance.

When you have an entrepreneurial mindset, you strive to change yours and others’ lives for the better. You seek change, rather than sitting back waiting for things to happen. Giving is an important part of the entrepreneurial spirit, but it should also enhance the growth of the entrepreneur rather than just the person being helped.

Entrepreneurs can never think of what they do with a negative mindset. Positivity and enthusiasm is key to having others look up to you as a leader and advisor. Entrepreneurs are empowered and are capable of teaching others to become empowered.

A sense of being worthy of success is also important to the entrepreneurial spirit. Giving away all of your advice and guidance information for free doesn’t enhance an entrepreneur’s path to success at all – in fact, it may hinder progress.

If you don’t think your advice is worthy of payment, no one else will. This attitude can’t be taught, but may be developed over time. By fostering passion and enthusiasm for what you do, the entrepreneurial spirit will grow and you will prosper as a result.

Potential customers sense the passion and enthusiasm in your voice and in the helpful information that you offer. Even if a person comes into their relationship with you skeptical at first, they sense your conviction and will react by becoming a loyal customer.

And while some people accept things as they are, entrepreneurial spirits are researching how it can be done better. They’re usually on the forefront of all great innovations – because they care.

Entrepreneurs are naturally optimistic and tend to enjoy life to the fullest. They take risks and push past the lines where others have stopped. Even though you may not feel you’ve developed a true entrepreneurial spirit over time, you can begin now to turn the tables and eventually consider yourself worthy of all good things that come your way.