How To Develop A Business Mindset (9 Step Guide)

In order to be a successful business owner, it is crucial to have a solid business mindset first. This solid business mindset can only grow because of the powerful essentials that you can build on to multiply your success and resilience in the face of adversity.

Not only can you apply this for your business, you will find it transforming in your personal life as well. It will make you curious about many more ways to influence your mindset for good.

In this guide I will cover the 9 steps on how to develop a business mindset:

Step 1. Define your why.
Step 2. Identify your blind spots.
Step 3. Get rid of limiting beliefs.
Step 4. Setting goals.
Step 5. Cultivate patience, consistency & persistence.
Step 6. Become visual.
Step 7. Working in your business → Working on your business.
Step 8. Become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Step 9. Think like a business owner – Become an entrepreneur.

What Is A Business Mindset?

There is no one definition of a business mindset. It depends on the niche or brand you are in and what personal meaning you put into it, but in every process of building a business mindset, there’s fundamentals involved. I’ll gladly spoil a few key points: purpose, discipline, vision and ownership.

How To Develop A Business Mindset?

I won’t have you waiting any longer. Let’s go.

Step 1. Define Your Why

Take the time for this. If you don’t invest enough of your effort into this, it will be impossible to set clear goals. Not moving forward is useless, so close yourself off from the environment, have no distraction and go into the depths of why you want to have a successful business.

Questions that help you:

What do I see myself doing?
What are the benefits for me?
What are the benefits for others or my audience?
What problem(s) will be solved?
How would it feel when I do?
What is my influence?
What values do I want to add?

Step 2. Identify Your Blind Spots

Overlooking your blind spots will inevitably happen, but remember that it’s the awareness that’s the most important. Once you’re aware of them influencing you negatively, you will catch them and take action.

Blind spots to look for:

Perfectionism.
Being completely new to learning a certain skill.
Procrastination.
Self-sabotage.
Self-doubt.
Caring too much about other people’s opinions.

Step 3. Get Rid Of Limiting Beliefs

With the blind spots identified, you will want to get rid of them and other beliefs you have. And don’t just want to get rid of them, but let them be the urgency drivers to actually step up.

It’s important to understand that limiting beliefs stem from things you learned in the past. Experiences together form an attitude, attitudes together form a belief and eventually, a belief turns into an unconscious/subconscious perception. This happens when you feed it enough by affirming your belief. You then create an ongoing pattern that doesn’t allow you to move forward.

In order to break out of that unconscious/subconscious belief is to become aware of it. Not just once, because a change of mindset is just like muscle building: it needs rehearsal.

How to do this & establish self improvement:

1. Become aware: Listen to self-talk and inner speech.
2. Ask yourself: Does it serve me?
3. Confront yourself: What if I keep on believing this?
4. Empower yourself: What if I get rid of this belief?
5. Transform yourself: I don’t identify with my limiting beliefs.

Step 4. Setting Goals

A business owner’s mindset is innovative and purpose driven, they feel the thrill of the ride as they are working towards a goal in their business plan. Don’t be afraid to aim high or to be unrealistic, because that activates your creative thinking.

Setting goals sets you into motion and it creates discipline to keep on moving forward. And with your why defined, your discipline will have an intention and meaning: you know what you’re doing it for, so you won’t quit the game. You run your race.

How to set a goal:

Think about time framing.
Be specific about the end result.
Don’t aim for average or less – especially with your limiting beliefs out of the way.
Go for quality, intention and meaning, not perfection – perfectionism only delays you.
Include how you would feel when you have achieved your goal.

Step 5. Cultivate Patience, Consistency & Persistence

Let me break this down for you. A lack of patience puts you at risk of quitting, and maybe right before you achieve your goal and financial success or even financial freedom. Cultivate trust in the process and observe not only the big steps, but don’t miss the significance of the smaller steps.

With consistency, you build a constant pattern of effort. You don’t want to focus on intensity in the beginning, as you will run out of energy very soon. Consistency is a winning indicator.

Work on consistency first and when you can persist in being consistently invested in your mindset and goals, that’s when you can experiment with higher intensities.

Step 6. Become Visual

Business owners have a vivid imagination. If you want to be great, you have to think and imagine greater. The biggest mistake most people make in life is not aiming high enough (it’s why you need limiting beliefs out of the way), they think inside the box.

Outlive this and think outside the box. Think in the big picture. What is it that you want to achieve?

Goals, imagination and a vision is not 1 and 1 and 1 equaling 3, it’s 1 and 1 and 1 equaling 111. Use your imagination with every goal and lean into that end vision. Assume that which you want, has already happened.

How to successfully visualise:

Create a vision board.
Find inspiration in other people, images or videos.
Meditate.
Have no distraction.
Listen to powerful music.
Visualise right before falling asleep, you’re then the least suggestible to overthinking.
Mentally rehearse until it gets all tones of reality: repeat, repeat, repeat.
Add meaning and emotion: How would it feel when you achieved your goal?

Step 7. Working In Your Business → Working On Your Business

This is a crucial, entrepreneurial mindset change for entrepreneurial success. Get this right.

Working in your business means managing the business as it is today, it’s the day-to-day activities that someone else could easily do.

When you make the shift to working on your business, and you should, you constantly invest time and effort to give your business a better tomorrow. It’s the specific business operations that are based on the future and its survival.

Working on your business is about:

Growth strategies.
Planning for the future.
Goal setting.
Process automation.
Learning and education.
Mentorships.

Step 8. Become Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable

Every successful entrepreneur applies this principle. Simply said, if you stay in your comfort zone of familiarity, not pushing yourself to explore and learn new things, you will stay put where you are and so will your business. Case closed.

Why this shift is so important:

Tolerance of discomfort: It pushes you to try new things.
Acceptance: It lets you move past fear. Otherwise, you may fall into the pit of walking away and quitting.
Willingly taking risks: When calculated and considered confidently you know they will pay off.
Less pressure to interact with new people: You are open to learn about new perspectives and skills and you increase your network of potential connections or followers.

Now, how can you make yourself more comfortable with discomfort?

Here are some strategies:

Understand & embrace the power of being uncomfortable: It keeps you moving.
Engage with people: Remind yourself you’re not alone and that you can take important insights from these experiences.
Mental coping strategies: Use affirmations, meditate to stay present, connect with your visualisations, and reframe unhelpful thoughts to thoughts that empower you.
The mental shift working sustainably: Start in minor situations and scale up your input and efforts.
Actively lean into excitement: Grow excitement towards the new possibilities, try-outs and how you evolve as an entrepreneur.

Step 9. Think Like A Business Owner – Become An Entrepreneur

Don’t fall for the false belief when you’re just starting or learning something new, that you can’t claim ownership. It’s time to move into identifying yourself as the entrepreneur, the owner of your business.

The business is your property, the mindset behind it carries the viability. When you think and feel as a business owner, your whole state of being shifts into you identifying as the entrepreneur, the leading one running the race.

Don’t just think about it, but become it.

Why Is Mindset Important In Business?

In order to face risk, adversity and cultivate resilience, a business mindset that is growth driven is crucial. Growth comes with both victory and failure.

Therefore, entrepreneurs have to be able to have an objective perspective on failure, so they can understand that failures and making mistakes are not the end of the world, causing them to walk away and quit the game.

Adversities are lessons to push you to conquer setbacks, move on and improve the craft of a business strategy and therefore business opportunities.

The Endnote.

Your mindset is what keeps the business alive and thriving. When you develop a resilient, purpose driven, growth focused, failure and discomfort embracing mindset, you will set yourself up to lead and win.

Aspiring entrepreneurs with a success mindset can create business success.

Until the next, and remember to never give up when things get difficult.

Thriving with you,

Anne