No matter what industry you’re in, chances are you have a goal to grow your business in 2023. You may have a strategy and already be implementing the tactics that will take you to the top. If you are, congratulations. This can help you get there even faster. If you don’t have a plan or strategy yet, good news: Working on your mindset will help you get there!
While mindset is a popular buzzword, you might be unclear on the value of working on your mindset or what it involves. Mindset work can be described as developing the skill of looking at life situations in a way that empowers you to find the best solution. The way you choose to look at things determines how you feel about them. How you feel about a situation drives your actions and can affect the results. Working on your mindset so that you can view situations as happening “for” you instead of “to” you can make a big difference in how you view the world and accelerate the growth of your business.
How are people who work on developing their mindset different?
1) They don’t rush to “can’t”
For every great idea, there are five people who quickly say you can’t do it. Mindset work encourages you to focus on what you want, not what you don’t want, because you get what you focus on. Race car drivers focus on the area of the track they want to be on, instead of looking at the wall they don’t want to hit, because the car goes in the direction of their eyes based on imperceptible shifts of their hands following their focus. The same is true for your thinking and actions. When you focus on a problem or why you can’t solve it, you move closer to what you don’t want. In contrast, someone who works on mindset will naturally look for the solution and how to accomplish it. They’re able to deal with challenges and come up with creative solutions in a way others can’t. Because that’s what they’re focused on.
2) They embrace learning
Whether you’re selling franchises into a new territory, adding to the number of franchises you own, or simply keeping up with new technology, you encounter opportunities to learn new things all the time. How do you approach them? Someone who’s stuck in a fixed mindset cares more about looking smart than developing new skills. Someone who’s working on their mindset embraces challenges—even if that means looking silly or making mistakes through the process of learning. The benefit is expanding your knowledge, while modeling to your employees the value of developing new skills. That modeling pays off because it influences their performance far more than what you say. Whether they’re learning client preferences or the latest way to do things, people who embrace learning create organizations that grow and evolve.
3) They destigmatize failure by reframing
Many times, people shy away from learning new things because they’re afraid to fail. It’s a common fear and can hold people back from trying different ideas and innovating. People who work on their mindset destigmatize failure by reframing it as learning. Since there is something to learn in every failure, you can see yourself and your company as winning or learning. When you do that, you empower yourself to take risks. If you share both failures and wins with your team in equal measure, you take the sting out of failure and demonstrate to them the benefit of taking calculated risks as well. The ability to fail and the confidence to take risks gives you the freedom and space to try new things to wow customers, add a new line of business, or create a new solution to an old problem. This mindset allows you to grow revenue, employee engagement, and client satisfaction.
Working on your mindset is the first step to building a foundation of possibility for yourself and your business. It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to foster an environment of growth in any company.
April Shprintz is business accelerator, mindset expert, and author who helps business leaders and entrepreneurs double their profits and their time with the principles of The Generosity Culture. After more than 20 years in multiple industries solving problems, driving growth, and accelerating companies, she left Corporate America to form her own firm, Driven Outcomes, and expand her impact. To learn more, visit her website, email her at april@drivenoutcomes.com, or call 844-211-4663.