5 Costly Mindset Traps That Hold Entrepreneurs Back
You might not even know you’re stuck in them, let alone their impact on your business
Entrepreneurs lead an interesting life, guided by a unique state of mind. They’re happy to walk on bumpy roads, follow a lonely path and keep moving forward. They understand that defeats are inevitable, but staying undefeated is the goal. Entrepreneurs know what they’ve signed up for and ironically, are prepared for the unpredictable twists and turns on this journey. They see what’s invisible to others and can hear a whisper of opportunity from a million miles away.
Our mindset is everything. It’s like a mental frame responsible for how we interpret the world around us, which then influences how we think, feel and act in different life situations. This is exactly the same for an entrepreneur — when it comes to running a business.
“The way you do anything is the way you do everything” — Tom Waits
Many things in life are binary: The good and the bad, the right and the wrong or even the positive and the negative. Similarly, the mindset of an entrepreneur is like a two edged sword. On the one hand, it can be a great asset; on the other hand, it can be the main reason for struggles or even failure.
There are some mindsets that could make an already difficult job of an entrepreneur even more difficult. What makes this more concerning for me is that many entrepreneurs are not even aware they have them, let alone understand the consequences on their business and personal life.
So today, I want to share with you five costly mindset traps an entrepreneur serious about success should escape immediately.
1. Thinking you can do it all alone
It’s often said that if you want something done properly, you do it yourself. However, that can be counterproductive when it comes to running and growing a business. As an entrepreneur, you already have a lot on your plate and should know when to let other people help you achieve your business goals.
Quite often, doing this turns out to be faster, cheaper and the quality of work better, because the work is being done by pros who specialise in the service they offer. This frees you up to prioritise two key areas of your business: Providing great value to your customers and generating revenue. You also reduce the stress and overwhelm that come with trying to do it all by yourself.
Just imagine Evan Williams — the founder of Medium, trying to write 20,000 articles every day! By the way, that’s the number of articles generated on Medium per day, according to a 2018 article on Business Insider.
Note that you don’t have to employ people full-time to do this; you can hire freelancers whenever you need them — on Fiverr, Upwork and other similar platforms. This lets you create systems for consistent inputs and predictable outcomes. You also give yourself the opportunity to scale your business, as you can now leverage other people’s time, just like Medium and its many writers.
A great way to implement this strategy is to review your processes and identify the key activities that are outside your expertise, those that slow you down or the things you just don’t like doing. Outsource them and start building your own empire.
2. Not setting boundaries
One challenge you’ll face as an entrepreneur is managing business and non-business relationships. This can be especially tough when making the transition from being an employee to running your own business. Your schedule changes, so does your availability. This will likely affect your relationship with your friends and family, and if you can’t find a healthy balance, then nobody wins.
In other words, if you always say yes to the people in your life, your business suffers badly. If you choose your business and completely ignore everyone around you, you could damage very important relationships and will probably have no one to celebrate your business successes with.
The key here is communicating as clearly as possible with the parties involved, while maintaining strict boundaries between work and non-work activities. No family and friends interrupting your work and no client calls gatecrashing family time. In a nutshell, your time will become even more precious and managing it effectively will be crucial.
There are no ways around this, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you need to set clear boundaries and schedule quality time for your business and the relationships that are important to you.
3. Not taking responsibility
No business exists in isolation. There’ll always be external factors that’ll impact the performance of your business. However, not taking responsibility for your actions and outcomes is a highly costly mindset to have, as an entrepreneur. When you blame others for the bad performance of your business, you’re also telling yourself and the world that you’re helpless and can’t fix the problem — in your own business.
By the way, it’s interesting how we’re quick to take the glory for the successes in our lives, but when things go wrong, we tend to look for someone or something to blame.
If you’re serious about success, you have to accept that everything that happens in your business is your responsibility. Internalising this will influence the way you run your business and being resourceful will become more natural to you. We’ve seen companies founded during financial crises that didn’t just survive, but thrived. You can check out the story of Airbnb and Disney.
Customers are only interested in a solution that will solve their problem and if your offer is not fit for purpose, they’ll go elsewhere. Essentially, no amount of excuse of how much effort, time and money you invested in creating the ‘undesirable solution’ will change their mind.
So, be accountable and understand that when it comes to your business, even if the circumstances are not your fault, they’re certainly your responsibility.
4. Comparison and unrealistic expectations
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having big goals. However, this becomes problematic when these goals are unrealistic and based on other people’s achievements. All it takes are few setbacks and before you know it, you’ll feel stuck, frustrated and desperate.
Social media has made this even worse, as most people only talk about their successes. They tell you how they earn multiple figures a year and how being an entrepreneur has helped them create a life of luxury. Their failures don’t get the same coverage, neither does their unfair advantage.
Like I often say:
“Even if it seems we’re running the same race, we never start from the same place.”
As you can imagine, comparing yourself to others as an entrepreneur is a dangerous mindset to have, especially when this drives big decisions like quitting your job to start your own business.
Like I hinted earlier, there’s nothing wrong in being ambitious and this is not the same as trying to meet industry performance standards. This is about expecting to achieve the same level of success in the same amount of time as someone else.
So, always remember that your entrepreneurial journey is personal and unique.
5. Sprinting through without rest
A quick way to get burnt-out as an entrepreneur is firing on all cylinders at all times without rest. From morning to night and sometimes midnight, it’s go…go…go… and no breather. Thinking this is the way to run a business is one of the costliest mindset traps of all.
To be frank with you, you can’t escape working hard when building something big. However, part of your responsibility as an entrepreneur is knowing when to do nothing. Running a business is a marathon and not a sprint. There’s a reason why the world record speeds for both are not the same. In case you’re curious about the numbers, the world record speeds for a marathon and a 100 meter race are 10.44m/s and 5.8m/s respectively.
So you can go the long haul, pace yourself as necessary and stay healthy. Remember, the greatest asset in your business is you.
Final thoughts
Our mindset is powerful. Like I said earlier, it’s at the centre of our response to daily life situations. This can become so habitual that we respond to these events on autopilot. If there’s one thing we know about habits, it’s that they can be very difficult to break.
That’s why it’s important to spend quality time reflecting on our daily habits and the repeated patterns in our lives, to make sure they’re leading us towards our desired reality.
If you’re an entrepreneur, your business is a reflection of who you are. So, to realise your entrepreneurial goals, you need to first become the person who can achieve those goals.
Like Tom Waits said: “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”
