Entrepreneurship 101: Building the Mindset
Think like a boss
1. Failure is part of the process
It is easy to be plagued by self-doubt as you start on the entrepreneurial journey. You might think “you’re not cut out for this”, or, “I don’t know if I was meant to do this.” You have to commit fully. If you start to question yourself, remind yourself:
- What is it deep down about making this change that excites you?
- What are the opportunities that lie in front of you?
- Always remember: This is something you were meant to do.
If you’re anything like me you might have grown up in a household where you were trained to try to be as perfect as possible. If I scored 96 % on a maths test, the next question would be “what happened to the other 6 %?”. I was often congratulated, but I felt like the focus was on what I had missed and not the rest that I had gotten right.
Nonetheless, you might be the best in your class, best in University, be the best in your job — and you can still be let go.
Sadly, this is common. We live in a day and age where we are expected to be perfect.
Instead of focusing on whether something is perfect, you should instead focus on the process of learning. We’re too focused on perfection rather than good enough, even though good enough is often good enough! The need to be perfect, to avoid failure, can actually come into conflict with what it actually takes to be successful. If you’re worried about perfection all the time, you’re never going to get anything done. The quest for perfection is going to delay you from doing what you need to do to actually run a business.
The faster you fail, the better you can learn.
The more you fail, the faster you can validate your business idea. Seeking out conversations in which people point out the flaws in your business is highly beneficial. Pre-sell your items so that when you don’t sell anything, you can go back to the people who said they were interested but didn’t buy to learn what you need to do differently. There are no overnight successes, you will have to fail a lot before you succeed. If you let failures stop you, you’re going to let a lot of people down, including yourself and the people you could be serving.
2. Learn Entrepreneurial Math
100 people online or 100 people in person?
The answer is neither — they are both just as valuable. However, it is easy to treat the numbers of people online (e.g. subscriber count, email lists) different from those in person. It is important to remember that these are real people and as such, they should be treated in the same way — they are all people who can learn from you.
1 negative comment outweighs 1000 positive comments
As an entrepreneur, you are inviting people into your life who will have both positive and negative opinions about you. It is important to remember that the negative comment does not carry more weight than the positive ones. The more time you waste thinking about that negative comment, the more you distract from the positive value you could be adding to people who enjoy your content.
You need to make 1 million dollars
The entrepreneurial community has become obsessed with this figure. Instead of wanting to reach the millionaire milestone, think about how much you need to make to achieve the lifestyle you want. Once you have this exact figure, try and work backwards to see how you could realistically achieve this goal.
Vanity numbers make a successful business
It is important to track your subscriber count and measure how your audience is growing. However, the number of people who follow you is not a measure of how well your business is doing. Your business is dependent on how much income you can generate as a result of that subscriber base.
Trading time for money
We’re used to doing work for an hour and getting paid for that hour. However, as an entrepreneur, you have to put a lot of work up-front. You have to be patient whilst you grow your business, and hopefully, an exponential increase in money will follow.
3. It’s never too late to begin
The age-old saying goes “age is just a number”. We often wish we had done things earlier. Whether that is investing in stocks earlier, starting that YouTube channel earlier or writing blog posts. It’s easy to get caught up in this — However, you need to flip the narrative. Being late to the party is your unfair advantage.
Sure there may be a lot of competition out there, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This shows there’s a viable market, you can find holes in your competitors business model, and find what your competitors are not doing well — this all helps you carve out your own unique positioning. Also when you are a small business, you can create more personal connections with your customers, which is something that’s harder for larger companies to do.
