The universe compels me to write this article. Over the past few weeks more than a few of my discussions centered around the owner mindset. Plenty of evidence exists that directly supports the fact that an owner’s mindset directly influences the success of a small business.
My mantra of “think like an owner” if you want business success has been at the heart of everything I do with small business owners for decades. Then last night, I stumbled upon an article by Michael Gerber, author of the e-Myth, The Fatal Assumption Every Startup Needs to Avoid. It was the universe again telling me, “more people need to hear this message!”
What Makes an Owner Mindset Different
A few years back, I wrote an article call 3 Reasons You Get Stuck Growing Your Business. One of the 3 reasons is owners work their business like an employee because they retained their employee mindset from before they start the business.
An owner mindset differs from an employee mindset, because there are so many different things required to run a business. An employee just needs to know how to do their assigned jobs.
Here’s another way to think about it. Look at an employee job descriptions in your business, then look at the owner’s job description (if you don’t have job descriptions, then it’s a good indicator you have an employee mentality and we need to talk!). Do they look the same? Of course not. So, if your doing the same things after becoming an owner that you did before you became an owner and don’t have a transition plan to stop, then there’s a good chance you’re applying an employee mentality to growing your business. IT WON’T WORK!
Why Mindset Matter
Your brain is a powerful search engine. When you ask it a question, it searches for an answer, but that search criteria is directly influenced by your frame of reference. So if you think like an employee, your search results tend to look employee-like. That is, tactical and operational in nature, specific to doing the job at hand.
An owner mindset search is much broader in nature. These results consider strategic impact of these actions on all the business functions such as sales, marketing, collection, administration, and finance. If this looks familiar it should, it’s the revenue engine. Tuning Your Revenue Engine is at the core of nearly everything I publish, because it teaches you to think with an owner mindset!
Why an Owner Mindset Drives Entrepreneurial Success
Just because you own a business doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. In fact, I am very clear in the difference on our Business Growth Simplified website where I state a business owner views the business like a job instead of an asset.
Successful entrepreneurs solve problems for the masses; thus, solutions need to be scalable. If you can’t scale what you currently call your business, then it’s a job – NOT BUSINESS.
This doesn’t mean that your idea is wrong, or that your business cannot work!!! It only means you need to change your employee mindset and begin approaching your business with an owner mindset. The answers your brain gives you will begin to change, as will your business as a result. Before you know it, you’ll be walking the path toward building a self-sustaining business. And a self-sustaining business is a scalable one, which gives you the best chance for successful entrepreneurship!
So, do you have an owner mindset or an employee one? If you’d like to discuss your situation with a fractional COO, find a time for a FREE 30 call using the form below.
