In business, mindset is everything. Though what type of thinking is the best way to grow your business? There isn’t a day that goes by without someone asking me how to grow their business. My answer is always the same. If you want to grow your business, you need a ‘growth’ mindset not a ‘start-up’ mindset.
If a business from start-up takes off, then you know your thinking is perfect. The thought patterns you will need to grow it further, is not the same thinking required for a start-up. As a coach and mentor, I see a lack of transitional thinking as the root of most business owners frustrations.
A start-up mindset might be creative or structural, while a business growth mindset is more promotional and strategic. If you think of your business mindset right now; what is it? Because your mindset determines where you will focus your energy and where your focus goes, energy flows.
For some, they’ve succeeded in starting their business, but have been stagnant for so long, sitting around the same turnover year after year, after year. They have no idea how to increase it and in the old rules of business – Grow Or Die (G.O.D.), they’re dying. Here is a most simple key. Shift your mindset from ‘taker’ to ‘giver.’ What does that mean exactly?
To develop the mindset that will meet a growth vision, the business owner must do just that – they need to ‘GROW’ their mindset. Most new business owners have typically come from a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) and still have an ’employee’ mentality. My job is to help them to develop a business owner mentality or for those more established enterprises, they need to adopt a business operator mindset.
Here are a couple of ‘taker’ and ‘giver’ distinctions for you to make this perfectly clear:
Employees typically have learned to think in ways that match their annual income. They do what is expected of them for the income they negotiated in the first instance, and seldom more. Some will put in greater efforts to ensure that they get to keep that income and some do more still to be considered for a higher paying role. Though, they have a ‘taker’ thought patterns. All their actions are based upon their expected or desired return and no more. I’m sorry, but this mindset just won’t cut it in the entrepreneurial world and certainly not fitting with what is required for a start-up. Start-ups need rocket fuel and lots of it. They have to almost bend over backwards to get a new client or a new sale – particularly these days in such a price sensitive and service hungry market.
Business operators eclipse the ’employee mindset’ by a mile.
They will go that extra mile because they know as a start-up, they have to stand out, make an impact and get business or sales in the door or they don’t get to eat. They have a ‘giver’ mindset and give it everything they’ve got. Typically they will give more of everything. They add value; work longer hours; think about business on the weekend; and are always considering how to do things better, faster and cheaper. They think in ways that a ‘taker’ mindset just won’t.
In my first multi-million dollar business, I worked well into the night while my employees enjoyed dinner at home with their families. While employees might read weekend newspapers to relax, I read them to seek out business opportunities. At social gatherings, employees talked about stuff, Business owners talk about business. If you’re thinking like an employee, you might be reading this and assume that our lives are boring? Though far from it. Eventually we get to live the lives that most don’t because we did what most won’t.
So if you want more, change your mindset and give more.
