Confidence is not something you find.

People often talk about confidence as though it's something you're either born with or you aren't.

For a long time, I believed that too. I looked at women who spoke with confidence, walked into meetings with ease or put themselves forward for opportunities and assumed they simply had something I didn't.

The more people I've met, the more I've realised how wrong that assumption was.

Some of the most accomplished women I've met still experience self-doubt. They still get nervous before presentations. They still wonder whether they're making the right decision. The difference isn't that they never feel those things. It's that they don't allow those feelings to make the decision for them.

That lesson has changed the way I approach my career, my business and most things in life.

There have been plenty of moments where I haven't felt ready. Starting Elzandi was one of them. I had never launched a footwear brand before. There were people with more experience, bigger audiences and much larger budgets. It would have been very easy to convince myself that I should wait until I knew more or had everything figured out.

If I'd waited until I felt confident, I would probably still be waiting.

Confidence wasn't what came first. Taking the first step came first. Confidence followed.

That mindset has carried through every part of my career. Every promotion, every presentation, every difficult conversation and every opportunity that stretched me happened before I felt completely prepared. Looking back, I'm grateful I didn't wait for confidence to arrive before I acted.

That thinking also shaped why I created Elzandi.

The goal was never to create a pair of heels that somehow gives women confidence. Shoes don't have that kind of power.

What they can do is remove one distraction. When your feet aren't aching halfway through the day, you're free to focus on the meeting, the conversation or the opportunity in front of you instead of counting down the minutes until you can take your shoes off.

Sometimes that's all we need. One less thing standing in our way.

Confidence isn't about feeling fearless. It's about choosing not to let fear make the decision for you.

I think that's a lesson worth remembering, whether you're starting a business, applying for a promotion or simply taking the next step towards something that matters.