How much of your business rely’s on your mindset. I would guess more than your think.
Selling out courses, offers, products, anything really, is a balance of mindset and strategy. Now you know I am ALL about good strategy. Sustainable strategy, something that makes you LOVE your business. But if you can’t LOVE yourself during the process then it doesn’t matter what strategy you have.
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When going on the journey of starting a business, we all have an idea of what it will be like. I can safely say that 90% of small business owners are not prepared for what comes after the first rush of excitement is done. And that rush can be for a few weeks, a few months, even a year. But once it ends, this is where the real work starts.
Mindset in business
While strategy and numbers are important – and we will talk about them in a moment. I really wanted to touch on mindset first. the saying from Henry Ford “If you think you can or can’t, you are right.” comes to mind. In the world of sales, clients will be drawn to confidence. And when you believe in your product, service, and self, you will be more likely to sell out.
So how do you build belief?
I strongly believe that action builds confidence which builds belief. Once you do something once, you have the ability to reflect, course correct if needed, and get a better result each time. Yet most small business owners are very indecisive. And not through a fault of their own. We have been raised to be lead, from parents to teachers, to employers, even the media, politics, and social standards.
Everything around us pushes for us looking to someone else to make the decision. But when you are the business owner, that is not possible. Because you are the decision maker. And your action give you a direct result to success. If you know what action to take.
Building a strong mindset
I always tell me clients that their are 3 things that will help you build a strong mindset. They are journaling, getting to know yourself better, noticing who you surround yourself with.
Each of these elements have so much power. When you journal it is a way to open up to the subconscious piece of ourselves. This place where we have a story that we tell ourselves about the “type of person” we are or should be. This narrative is extremely powerful in the journey of your mindset. We spend a lot of time listening to ourselves and honestly ask yourself – Are you nice to yourself?
Getting to know yourself better will steam from journaling, but you can use other activities to achieve this too. I love meditation and visualisations to explore who I am, who do I want to be, and who I am not letting myself be. These are all powerful questions to dive deeper into know yourself. So other areas to explore are:
- What do I do to keep other people happy?
- How do I look after myself and make myself happy?
- What trauma impacts the way I live my life now?
This will all help you start to get to know yourself on a deeper level, helping you change patterns and get better results in the future.
Lastly make a list of who your surround yourself with, in your home life, work-life, friend circles. And really start to explore how many of your beliefs or fears are driven by these people in your life? As a small business owner, you might be surrounded by people that have never run or owned a business. But they will all be willing to give you their opinion on how to do it. This is the nature of people. So think about if you are surrounded with negative or positive, drama or solution, happiness or fear. And explore what that means for your mindset.
Building a strategy
Once your mindset is being developed we can turn our attention to your strategy. The two key elements are are to keep to simple and keep it sustainable for you to run.
I see too many new business owners that are looking at how other people run their business, or what they feel is expected of them in their industry. Both of these are the wrong way to build strategy.
A simple and sustainable strategy means one thing – It has to work around the life you want to live. Start by thinking about what you need to earn, vs want to earn. When you build your very first strategy it is about testing, and taking bold action. Once you build your first strategy you can then refine the process, figure out what works for your clients, your life and business, then rinse and repeat.
Then think about what life you want to live, so are you working from home, or in a office? Are you working set hours or flexible? Are you working 3 days a week, or doing 2 months on, one month off? What does ideal look like? Then build a business that over time can support that way of living.
I have watched to many business owners get 3 years into their business and then have to break the business model because it isn’t giving them the life they want. Always start with the life you want to life, then the money you want to earn, then how to achieve them.
Remember to sign up for my daily strategy sprint starting on 14 June – click here to join in. This will be an email dropped into your inbox Monday to Friday each week to ensure you have a short, sweet but practical idea to focus on each day to move your business forward.