In your planning, you may even consider all the reasons you’ve been told that most businesses fail — the lack of proper planning, insufficient funding, poor location, the owners not understanding their customers, or a whole litany of reasons. The one reason you never hear mentioned is that many businesses fail because so many entrepreneurs never bother to do the proper work building the right mindset.
According to SCORE, cashflow (or lack thereof) is the #1 reason businesses fail, but I don’t believe that. I believe that a lack of the right mindset is actually the#1 reason businesses fail, but a failed business owner wouldn’t say, “I didn’t have the right mindset for business”. Most don’t even know they don’t.
The right mindset is as important to the success of your business as your business plan, your financing, your products, your marketing, your sales, your customer service, and anything else. In fact, it may be more important than anything else.
Remember the formula that I told you all winners follow to achieve success?
Mindset + Preparation + Work = Reward (Success)
To reach success, the very first element that must be present is a winner’s mindset. Let’s review what that means.
A winner’s mindset is one that embraces failure as part of success and is relentlessly determined to keep going anyway. A winner also believes that they are capable of achieving their greatest dreams and their most lofty goals. They push through fear, procrastination and complacency to take action and make things happen.
But how do they do that?
The thing is, we’re not born winners. When we’re born, our minds are clean slates. As we grow into adults, things happen that build up our limiting beliefs and break down our ability to dream freely and act without fear. Some of us have more limiting beliefs than others, and some of us are better able to work through those limiting beliefs and get things done anyway.
Most of us have years and years worth of limiting beliefs built up in our minds, blocking us from achieving our dreams. When this happens, we must retrain our brains by identifying our limiting beliefs, breaking them down, and building up confidence in our own abilities. This frees us from self doubt and fear, and in turn, eliminates our desire to avoid or procrastinate.
As a Life Coach, I help people through this process. It requires meaningful and thoughtful consideration of how your experiences have affected your beliefs. It takes time and work, but in the end, you are equipped with the ability to build up your confidence by applying a new set of beliefs.
Your newfound set of beliefs makes you better able to take action, deal with the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur, and hold yourself accountable — all the qualities of a winner’s mindset. So as you build your business, remember that the first element to your success is a winner’s mindset. Do the work to build the right mindset and it will be much easier to reap the reward.