Let’s look at personal self-doubt first. Here are the high-level findings that emerged:

(1) Every climate entrepreneur experienced self-doubt

Every single person had some kind of self-doubt: early concept-stage founders, serial founders on their third company, or CEOs of large organizations. The more experienced they were in entrepreneurship, the more they'd grown to expect this as a rite of passage.

• “I’m on my third company right now. When I launched my first company, I felt like a dwarf on the shoulder of a giant. There was so much to improve and so little network… And now that it's the second and third time doing this, I realized it's part of the deal.”

• “You have this inner voice that asks, well, who are you to talk about this? And to even try and educate others about this? What are you basing your expertise on? And it’s a process to push these thoughts away a little bit and say: No, I have something to contribute, and I can join this conversation. And it's about me, just like this is about everyone else. And caring is enough.”

• “Self-doubt for me is about always doubting myself and the capacities that I have. Doubt about the future of my project, and doubt if I have the capacity to grow it.”

Not everyone felt like they fitted into the entrepreneurial stereotype. When that was the case, it made their self-doubt worse.

Seemingly, there’s something here around our cultural perceptions of entrepreneurship — the ‘cult’ of the individual entrepreneur — and whether this is helpful. (Steve Jobs actually came up in about 25% of my interviews.)

• “I think for me self-doubt is a general question, you know: am I the right person to do this? Or have I got what it takes to be an entrepreneur? It’s this kind of thing about never stopping, no matter how many bumps you get along the way; this idea of someone’s invincible character. And you know, there are some things that make me think, yes, I do; and a lot of other aspects that make me think, no. It depends on the day.”

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(2) Their self-doubt was only matched by their tenacity

This was one of my main takeaways from the whole study. Numerous people shared how they were wired to keep on trying to find solutions, even when it got hard. They embraced challenges. They didn’t give up easily. Often, they expressed it as simply not knowing another way of being.

They brought that same problem-solving to their experience of self-doubt.

• “I tend to think that there are probably more positive things coming from my self-doubt. Because you deal with the things you struggle with. I think I'm very solution-oriented in life.”

In other words, they weren’t always pursuing a life where self-doubt had vanished, because they knew that some self-doubt — and even failure — made them better leaders. The key was not to let it stop them in their tracks.

• “I know that you have to fail. That’s part of the entrepreneur’s journey: you learn from it. You know, I’ve done one or two accelerators and they’ve been very educational and very, very worthwhile. And the knocks that I received during that process have shaped me.”

• “I think self-doubt can impact in a positive and negative way. I think it's healthy because it keeps you on your toes. It’s good in terms of always questioning, like: is this good enough, trying to make things better.”

You might think that these people felt the least-self doubt out of all my interviewees. But that’s not how they identified. In fact, the people who experienced the most self-doubt were often the most tenacious.

• “I have self-doubt in spades. I’ve tried to manage it all my life and I’m now in my late fifties. It's probably stopped me in my own career development. But I've never not pushed through it. And it's literally pushing through. It's not necessarily nice. Sometimes it’s kind of the panic attack zone, where you'd be kind of overwhelmed. But you've no choice, you have to just go through it. My self-reliance feels bigger than my self-doubt. It’s got me through a lot. Self-doubt is there, alright, but I know how to handle it now.”

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(3) Self-doubt was exacerbated by loneliness

But the lonelier the entrepreneur, the harder it was for them to build tenacity and resilience. In other words, self-doubt experienced in isolation was much harder to navigate and reframe.

• “When I’m doubting myself, I really benefit from having a sounding board — you know, people to be reflecting back and challenging what I’m working on. But it can be hard when I'm on my own. Which is where I am at the moment.”

• “In those first few years with my first company, they weren’t bad experiences. But man, did I make mistakes? Thousands. What’s helped me is also learning to share it with others. I work together with my co-founder and am part of a network, so I don't feel alone anymore.”

• “I'm a massive collaborator. So that’s probably why on my own, the self-doubt is amplified because I haven't got people around me. I don't think I need people to pat me on the back. But there's a little bit of that positive endorsement that we can give each other. It’s validating.”

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(Side note: A subtext to loneliness is the pattern mentioned by a few people: the different nuances of self-doubt when it comes to gender and/or ethnic group. For example: a Turkish female entrepreneur, working in Northern Europe, told me that people often expect her to be an older white man. And another woman told me how her self-doubt has been exacerbated by a culture that expects her not to have strong opinions, let alone voice them. This would be interesting to look into more in-depth, i.e., the experience of minority groups who are climate entrepreneurs.)

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Note: the role that isolation and support play in climate entrepreneurship is so critical that we’ll be revisiting it later on.

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(4) Self-doubt led to 9 telltale behaviours …

Connecting beliefs to behaviours helps us pinpoint the real costs of self-doubt to the entrepreneurs’ life and business.

I’ve summarised these for readability, rather than provided quotes for each.

The most common behaviours that self-doubt led to were:

• Perfectionism

• Procrastination

• Over-consumption of knowledge, especially climate science

• A feeling of ‘looping’, being frozen and paralyzed

• Overthinking

• Prioritising busywork over strategic/creative work

• Acting inauthentically (saying/doing things that didn’t resonate)

• Retreating from other people

• Analysing a decision from all angles, without ever making the decision