Tag Archives for " small business success "

5 Simple Mindset Shifts Every Business Owner Should Make

Business owners have a lot of responsibilities and a lot riding on their day-to-day decision-making. Unfortunately, one of the things that can often get in the way of a business person’s progress is their own mindset. Attitude plays such an important role in small business success and not taking your business seriously enough or treating it with enough priority can quickly lead to failure.

Here are five mindsets you need to ensure you have ingrained in order to ensure you don’t become your own worst enemy in business.

1. Stop Waiting for Everything to be Perfect

In business, as in life, things are never perfect. You will always have employee issues, money issues and other specific things that keep work challenging. Remember, if it was easy, anyone could do it. Deal with each problem as it comes, like a leader.

These imperfections, and the way you handle them are what can set your business apart. Whereas waiting until everything is just right before taking action can seriously hold you back.

2. You Are Not An Employee or Hobbyist

This is your full time job and everything is your responsibility. When there are failures, these are on you. The sooner you realise that you have to take responsibility for the failure or success of your business, the more successful you can become.

It’s important to learn as much as you can about how to manage your business and then continue learning. When you shift your mindset to that of a business owner, you will behave differently, and you will become more of a leader.

3. Don’t Let Time Manage You

There are likely a lot of things on your plate, and there are also likely a lot of unexpected issues that crop up each day. It’s important to take charge of your time.

Prioritise to ensure that your “must dos” get done each day. Take a look at your tasks, and determine those you can delegate. Once you have your tasks narrowed down for the day, be sure to focus and give yourself uninterrupted time to complete each of them. Use your calendar to schedule tasks for yourself, as well as appointments, to help keep you on track.

It’s amazing how quickly time can pass when you choose to “just spend a few minutes on Facebook” (or browsing the ‘net). You can always allocate time for these sorts of tasks, but don’t let them creep in to your productive time.

4. Be Responsible

As a business owner, you cannot play the blame game. Take responsibility for the successes and the failures of your business. When you begin to feel truly responsible, you will begin to proactively work to change the things that hold back your business.

5. Associate with Positive People

There will always be people who see things negatively and who want to convince you that you can’t do what you’ve set out to do. Sometimes it’s out of jealousy, but often it’s out of concern. They’re scared you may make a mistake and are trying to protect you.Along the way, you will also find people who are more interested in whining than in working.

Stay away from these people where possible and, instead, spend more time with people who are positive.

Whether you want to admit it or not, the company you keep affects your mindset.

Spending your time around positive people will help you to keep a positive outlook on your business.

If one of the nay-sayers in your life is someone you are very close to, such as your spouse, it’s important to address this problem head on. Talk to the person about how their negativity affects you, and ask them to make it a point to keep it to themselves. Make sure they understand that their support is important to you.

Being a business owner is an exciting and challenging career, and can be especially rewarding. Take charge of your business by taking charge of your mindset, and watch your success explode!

Will Smith Shares His Secrets For Success

This video is an interview with Will Smith, where he shares his beliefs in why he is so successful. It’s only goes for a few minutes but I recommend you watch it if you’re keen to learn how to be the best you can be … a leader in your field.

Interestingly, in this interview, Will mentions that his favourite book is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. This is also one of my favourite books and one I highly recommend reading.

Success – All In Your Mind

Those who know me well or have been reading my blog posts for some time know that I firmly believe success is all in your mindset … your attitude.

Of course, there’s more to becoming successful than just thinking about it, but it’s important to first have the right attitude to help you know what to do and then focus on doing it.

One of the first things you must do in order to be successful is to define what ‘success‘ means to you. Does it mean having a lot of money? Being well-known and recognized within your industry? Being adored and loved or respected by others? Just being happy?

For me, success is achieving my goals … achieving something worthwhile in my life, whether that’s something to do with my family, friends, business, finances, community or even just reaching a personal goal and growing as an individual. In fact, failing at something but still being able to stand up tall and keep moving forward is a sign of success to me.

It’s also important to know what you want your ideal life to be like … how do you want to be living each day? Who do you spend time with? Where do you live? Once you know these things you can plan out how you’re going to achieve these goals and start moving towards them.

When you know what you want and how you can achieve it, this is the part where I believe your mindset really comes into play. To be able to follow the plan you’ve set and achieve your goals for success – your dreams – you need to be able to:

• focus
• avoid distractions and remain on track
• remain positive – even if things get a little off-track, as they’re bound to do from time to time
• be able to pick yourself up when you fail
• have patience, especially if things take a little longer than first planned
• avoid listening to people who tell you your goals are silly or you’ll never be able do such-and-such – we ALL have people like that around us, and often they’re just saying these things to protect us from what they see as possible failure
• overcome procrastination
• accept that what you want will change over time … and that’s okay
• face fears and overcome weaknesses that may be holding you back
• have total belief that you CAN achieve your goals

Take a few moments to look back and think about some of your past successes. No doubt you’ll find that the things that helped you to achieve these successes where somehow related to your mindset.