4 Mindset Shifts Entrepreneurs Must Make to Achieve Success

[00:00:00] Pursuing the path of the entrepreneur requires a special kind of person, a person with a special kind of mindset. And though I do believe it's possible that some folks are just born with more of their entrepreneurial mindset ducks in a row, most of us have to work consistently to put ourselves in the right head space to do this kind of work.

[00:00:30] And this mindset work isn't just a one-and-done scenario. Your mind requires constant attention to keep your mindset shifts in place. You will need to constantly improve yourself to continue taking yourself, your skillset, your endeavors, to higher and higher levels. Welcome to Being Boss, a podcast for creatives, business owners and entrepreneurs who want to take control of their work and live life on their own terms.

[00:00:55] I'm your host, Emily Thompson. And today I'm talking mindset shifts that you need to make to achieve success. And by you, I mean you boss business owners who are carving your own path and making money, doing the work that you want to do because your negative mindsets are special. The positions we put ourselves in as breadwinners, as decision-makers, as creatives and community leaders, as change makers can be a breeding ground for some interesting mindset junk.

[00:01:26] So in this episode, I'm breaking down four common not boss mindsets that I see all too often, both in myself, but also in bosses like you, along with those shifts that you need to make to embody a successful entrepreneur. There's a good chance that you, as a podcast, listener are aware of how much the podcast industry has grown with literally millions of podcasts available.

[00:01:52] It can be hard to find truly great content that's worth your precious time. But podcast networks make that easier in particular, I'm talking HubSpot as they aim to provide more value and educational materials to customers, prospects and fans by expanding their audio offerings with top business podcasts, like Being Boss, the HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

[00:02:22] Each podcast offers expertise related to one build, marketing, sales, service, operations, yet together, this collection covers the scope and mastery every company needs to find success. Listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

[00:02:47] Yeah boss, you heard that right? The HubSpot Podcast Network. Before I dive into the meat of today's episode, I want to take a moment to address this big shift in opportunity at Being Boss with all of you, because it's big news and I am sincerely excited about this. When I launched this podcast with Kathleen in 2015, as many of you know, we just wanted to share our business bestie conversations and honestly use this platform to market our individual companies.

[00:03:17] We did not anticipate that it would quickly turn into a business of its own opening up opportunity after opportunity to work with brand partners, to travel with all of you and to get paid, to share our model of Being Boss through this podcast or in the Being Boss book or on stages and everything in between.

[00:03:36] We didn't anticipate it, but I was here for it. And even though the ride did get bumpy as Kathleen and I decided to part business partner ways in 2020, I knew that this brand, this message, this platform has so much more to offer. I wasn't done yet, Being Boss wasn't done yet. And though I had no idea what would happen next designed to buy Kathleen out was absolutely a leap of faith.

[00:04:01] It was an entrepreneurial leap in case I need to loop this back into what we're talking about today. It was scary. I was scared and I didn't know if I was making the right choice, but I did 100% know that I would figure it out along the way. Because that is the being boss way. And boy, am I glad that I did now when it does come to podcast networks, I'll tell you that I love them and I've been known to hate them.

[00:04:31] I hate them because I've been pitched some pretty shitty ones in my day. I've had several conversations through the years of the folks who wanted to Being Boss to join their network, and the terms were always ridiculous. They wanted to take over production or wanted at least some bit of creative control.

[00:04:46] That was an easy, no. Like so many things in the podcasting world, quote, unquote pros walk up in here and try to put someone else's really only partially working model into this new field. And not only do I see how it's not going to work, but I also can't even feed into how these things shift this industry that I love so much.

[00:05:10] But also y'all I love them. I love podcast networks because I've always seen the value in doing them right. If we can just figure out what that looks like. You likely don't know this, but I've actually flirted with starting a podcast network in the past. Networked podcast, see more success than non networked podcasts.

[00:05:31] When we can pull together and aligned network, we offer our audience so much more value. I've had conversations with producers and lawyers to begin the process for myself, but ultimately did decide that it wasn't my path to begin a network, at least not at this point in my career so I put it to bed and then HubSpot came knocking.

[00:05:53] And because I've gone through so much around podcasts, know that I didn't make this decision blindly. And even with all of that, this was one of the easiest yeses I've ever made in my career as a podcaster, HubSpot gets it and I'm honored and excited to begin my tenure as a podcast and the HubSpot Podcast Network.

[00:06:15] with this episode. I'm ready to take this message further. I want to business owners and entrepreneurs everywhere to discover what it looks and feels like to build their businesses and create impact in a way that is aligned and truly fulfilling to lead themselves in building the life and work of their dreams and to bring those opportunities to others.

[00:06:36] And I'm happy to be able to share more of this networks podcast with you. I eagerly invite you to check out the other podcasts in this network. They currently include Business Infrastructure,  Entrepreneurs On Fire,  MarTech Podcast, My First Million and The Salesman Podcast. I'll be sure to make sure there are links to all of those shows in the show notes of this episode at beingboss.club.

[00:07:03] And I'm excited to introduce you to some of them here. I'm especially excited to have Alicia Butler Pierre from the business infrastructure podcast here in a couple of weeks to talk business operations. And I want you to know that being a part of this network only means that what we do here at being boss gets to be better.

[00:07:21] I'm maintaining complete creative control and Being Boss is totally still my company, but you will be hearing more about the HubSpot podcast network and HubSpot services in the same way that you hear about our other brand sponsors as well. The relationships that allow us to create this content totally free for you.

[00:07:40] And so I give way to this episode, which I do feel very much. So is the first page. And the next chapter of being boss, my entrepreneurial leap has landed passion, dedication, and doing the work totally pays off and leads to more excitement as to what lies ahead.

[00:08:07] [00:08:00] All right, if I'm being very honest with you, I think probably more than four mindset shifts are going to be coming out of this episode today. What I am focusing on is four, not boss mindsets, and then offering probably a number of shifts along the way that you can apply to each of these. Now I will say too, that there are tons of negative mindsets that come up for bosses.

[00:08:33] I have simply chosen for that I see the most often, so let's dive in. The first one is both the most common and also probably not the most obvious. And that is the not boss mindset belief that you are a fraud. Now in my experience, this one is the most complex because it's usually not the exact words. I am a fraud that who's zooming through your mind.

[00:09:03] Instead, it often sounds something like this. I'm not blank enough. I'm not educated enough. Qualified enough, experienced enough young enough, old enough, fast enough, organized enough to do this thing, whatever this thing for you is. Around here we call these fraudy feelings. They're also often called at the imposter complex or imposter syndrome and these negative mindsets run rampant.

[00:09:31] And when you are trying to show up and do something new or different or hard or great. The first step in dealing with these fraudy feelings is to adjust your mindset issue, to understand where they come from. Basically fraudy feelings are the efforts of your ego to protect you from doing anything even a little bit risky.

[00:09:56] The second step is to hear them when they happen and [00:10:00] learn to turn down their volume. Now I'm definitely not an expert at imposter syndrome, but if this is something of interest to you, we've done several great episodes with experts such as Tara Mohr, Tanya Geisler, and Jay Pryor. And I do recall a particularly great episode with Jason Zook and also with Marie Forleo on the topic of imposter syndrome or complex, or fraudy feelings, whatever you want to call it, you can find the links to all of those shows in the show notes

[00:10:30] if you want to dive any deeper. And I hope that that show list who list of shows, shows you that negative mindsets run rampant within entrepreneurs. We all deal with them, but your job is to not let them hold you back. Instead, there's a shift that you need to make, and that is becoming aware of the little fact and holding it at the forefront of your mind every day for the rest of your entrepreneurial journey and beyond.

[00:11:01] Then a majority of the situations, when your fraudy feelings come calling, you don't need to be anything enough more than you already are to do what you're here to do. Granted, there are some situations where regulations are in place or permits or required. I don't want anyone going out and starting like a dentist practice, a dental practice.

[00:11:26] If you don't have the required education licenses, but for the majority of our businesses of your dreams, you just need to get started. You need to know that an entrepreneur learns along the way. There's no age limit. There's no body type requirement in place for you to start your business. You just need to make friends with being uncomfortable.

[00:11:50] And entrepreneur is basically always uncomfortable. You have to get comfortable with doing new things, of doing hard things of trusting that you will figure it out along the way. Being Boss is believing that you've got this. It's a little thing we say because we find it to be very true. You cannot let fraudy feelings hold you back from doing the great things that you want to do.

[00:12:18] Most of them are not true. So don't let false hoods keep you from being great. I will say that if you need more support around dealing with fraudy feelings, I did recently do an episode of the 10 minutes to being boss podcast called overcome imposter syndrome, four tactics to kick fraudy feelings to the curb.

[00:12:38] You can find that episode wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can watch the video version on YouTube, if you would like. Now I also want to add another perspective to your fraudy feelings that I was introduced to. That is another shift you can make around them, which may be needed because we're all dealing with them and likely we all need to deal with them in our own different ways.

[00:13:00] In the Being Boss community last month that we book clubs, Adam Grant's latest book, Think Again, which I'll make sure is linked in the show notes on our website as well, which provides a different view and way to use fraudy feelings or imposter syndrome as he calls it that they have a purpose that serves us.

[00:13:21] I totally resonated with this. This is kind of crazy. I'm excited to share this sort of different perspective. There are three number one is that fraudy feelings motivate us to work harder. Grant says that confidence makes us complacent. Anyone agree with that? I think I agree with that. If we feel like imposters, we think we have something to prove.

[00:13:45] And when we show up and work hard, we're more likely to reach our goals than if we're showing up and just kind of going through the motions because we're too confident to work too hard. Number two is that fraudy feelings can motivate us to work smarter. And, you know, we're all about working smarter, not harder.

[00:14:04] Grant says that feeling like an imposter puts us in a beginner's mindset, leading us to question assumptions that others have taken for granted. And y'all know that if there's anything that I believe makes our kinds of businesses work is that we. Throw out industry standards and find our way of accomplishing what we're here to accomplish.

[00:14:25] And this sense fraudy feelings may actually facilitate a key characteristic that I believe makes us boss. And number three fraudy feelings can make us better. Learners. Grant says that having some doubts about our knowledge and skills takes us off a pedestal, encouraging us to seek out insights from others, which again is some foundational stuff to how we position entrepreneurship here at being boss.

[00:14:52] We're lifelong learners. We lean into support from our business besties and entrepreneur community. With these mindset shifts around fraudy feelings. Maybe it's not about putting them to bed. It's about using them to make us more boss. So do what you need to do to deal with your fraudy feelings. Learn to identify them, to hear them to know that they are not true.

[00:15:15] And to instead move forward in your journey and know that you will figure it out as you go along. Now, if you want to book clubs, some business books, like think again with like-minded creative bosses, you can learn more and sign up for the Being Boss community at beingboss.club/community. Which then leads us to number two.

[00:15:38] And this is the not boss belief that I'm the only one who can do this. Once you're in it, almost every boss I know has a moment in their growth, when expansion is inevitable. You've overcome your fraudy feelings enough to have proven the concept. You're delivering. You're doing it, but to keep going, you need some help for most bosses

[00:16:04] this is administration or marketing help. You need someone to do your bookkeeping or answer emails. You'd like for someone to help with your social media. Occasionally though the support looks like hiring someone to share your workload with it's a junior designer to help you with production work or a paralegal

[00:16:20] if you're a lawyer. It doesn't matter what the role is. Bosses usually fear that no one will be able to do this work for them, even if you're the worst bookkeeper in the world, you fear that they won't be able to understand your business well enough. And you're definitely still going to end up getting audited or that they're never going to write in your voice or properly represent your brand, or they're definitely not going to design as well as you, or treat your customers as well as you do.

[00:16:49] Trust me, you will jump through some weird hoops to talk yourself out of delegating of looking for the help that you need, even if the life of your business depends on it, [00:17:00] which is why you need to flip the switch on this mindset and begin the journey of finding and cultivating, working relationships with people who will let you continue your path forward

[00:17:10] as an entrepreneur. There's a couple of shifts that you can make to get you on the other side of this one. First, accept an area or two of your core genius, the little nugget of your awesomeness that you are here to monetize. You are not the only person who can do all the things in your business.

[00:17:30] This is your ego. Again, keeping you from doing something risky. Is it a process to set up systems, to find a good candidate, to delegate things? Yes, it's a process, but it's part of the process of building a business. You got to do it sometime or another, or you're never going to expand your impact beyond the hour or two a week that you're able to squeeze out your core genius in the midst of everything else.

[00:18:00] It takes to run a business. And yes, there's going to be bumps along the way, but no one said entrepreneurship was a smooth ride, but I will actually be getting to that one in a second. With some trial and error and trusting yourself and others and learning some new habits, you can find people who can actually do it most things in your business better than you, but you won't, if you never get started.

[00:18:24] But to get you to that place, because it's really a very short journey, I'm actually going to offer another mindset shift to assist you in starting the track. And that is that done is better than perfect. This is a common phrase attributed to lots of folks, but it's often in my environment. Thanks to Dana Kaye,

[00:18:44] who's a boss in the Being Boss community. She's a member of the C-suite and she also leads our community book club. You heard her here in episode number 250. And it piggybacks off another saying, perfect is the enemy of great, no one will [00:19:00] ever do things perfectly. Not even you, if you're striving for it personally or in others, you're never going to get very far, put the people in place, set clear expectations, and then let them do the thing.

[00:19:14] They're going to mess up. So are you, but it's the process that will move you forward if you give yourself and others the grace to figure it out as they go and soon, you'll see the benefits of releasing the belief that you're the only one who can do something and hopefully find that there are people who can do it even better.

[00:19:34] You'll be able to reap that reward and you'll have time back to do your work.

[00:19:43] Business is hard work. They don't call them growing pains for nothing and scaling up the communications that make your business run can often be the hardest part, managing conversations with prospects and customers throughout all stages of their journey can be tough information can get lost, add team members and the problem gets more complex.

[00:20:04] With HubSpot's CRM platform at features like live chat and mail templates, and more, you get a unified system of record that allows you and your team at the ability to create a better customer experience without missing a beat, you can install, live chat on your websites and marketing emails. Allow prospects

[00:20:24] to book meetings and more, and it all lives in one place. Learn more about how to scale your business without scaling complexity at hubspot.com. Money mindset is not even something I'm diving into here today. Though you better bet that your thoughts, beliefs, and practices around money are also important to consider and continue working through along your entrepreneurial journey.

[00:20:49] But it's one of the most important parts of doing business, which is why we love FreshBooks. From invoicing, which makes it easy for you to ask for money to expense tracking, which allows you to stay in tune with where your money's going. And so many features in between like automated reminders to help your clients pay their bill.

[00:21:08] FreshBooks makes the money part of doing business way more easy. Try fresh books for free today by going to freshbooks.com/beingboss and enter Being Boss in the "How did you hear about us" section.

[00:21:22] Okay. So we've gone through two of our four mindsets that I want to discuss and have you shifting into more positive entrepreneurial ones, those being I'm a fraud, you're not, and I'm the only one who can do this, you're not. Now we have two more you want to dive into you. And number three is you. This is hard work.

[00:21:50] Yes, it's hard work. And that's really the shift that you need to make. Yes, this is hard work. As an entrepreneur, you have to love to use your brain to think creatively and strategically to solve problems. Cause you're literally always solving problems, but you're not just solving problems. You need to nerd out on them.

[00:22:13] You need to become very passionate about them. You need to put in the hard work and. You got to expect it to get harder because it will, which I also recommend you get kind of excited about when you have infinite opportunity and possibility for growth, you pay a price. The opportunity comes because you're choosing entrepreneurship.

[00:22:34] The price you pay is that your work will never be truly easy. I know this is a controversial statement and I see all the backlashes against working hard or hustling. So to prove my point and went to the dictionary. Dictionary.com defines easy as not hard or difficult. No great labor or effort free from pain, discomfort, worry or care.

[00:23:00] These are all the things that entrepreneurship is not, you know, it's hard doing everything that you need to do to make a fully legit business from licenses and permits to taxes and bank accounts, having the legal things in order to hire a remote team members and other States, or making sure that you're sending out all the right tax warms to everyone you need, and that you're receiving all the right ones that you need as well.

[00:23:22] And that is just the tiniest part of what is required of you as an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is difficult. It is a great labor, the most difficult decisions I've ever made have not been as a mom or as a podcaster. It's been as the boss of my business as an entrepreneur, who's responsible for a community, for a team, for the families of my team.

[00:23:44] And if that doesn't hit home for you, if nothing else, it's not easy because you care, you're not an entrepreneur because you don't care. You're an entrepreneur because you care enough to do something about it, whatever that it is for you. That care makes your job harder. It makes decision-making harder.

[00:24:02] It makes prioritization harder than if you were just waking up and clocking in. And if you don't like that perspective, if you think entrepreneurship being a more largely contributing member of the economy of culture of your community should be easy. Be a freelancer, go get a day job. I'm not saying that those are easy.

[00:24:24] Many of them are so hard that we decide to be entrepreneurs instead, but most of those paths are easier than entrepreneurship. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you got to eat hard for breakfast and you need to at least not hate it. I'll admit as an acquired taste, but entrepreneurs are successful when they find challenges to be exciting.

[00:24:46] It's not you hard work. It's cool. Let's figure this out and make it do. It's the willingness to show up during the rare times when it is easy, because sometimes that does happen. But most often, when it is hard, that's going to get you to your version of success. Nothing short of that is going to get you there. Which brings me to mindset number four.

[00:25:11] And that is if I don't blank, my business will fail. If I don't go to that meeting or sign this client, or spend more time on social media, my business will fail. I'll tell you if there's just one thing that if you don't show up for, in your business, that your business is going to fail, you haven't built a very good business.

[00:25:34] And in 99% of the cases, whatever your iteration of that statement is, it's completely false. And do you fretting about that is wasting precious time and energy. And it's going to keep you from success, your business, your brand, your reputation is bigger than one choice. And in fact, it's the culmination of gazillions of choices that you've made from the day that you were born.

[00:25:58] Maybe not quite that day, but probably pretty soon afterwards as such, it's going to take a myriad of bad decisions to put your business in the ground. Not one, not even two. Your business can stand it. If you pass on an opportunity, if you don't publish that piece of content, if you don't nail that launch, that doesn't mean that you can let one of those decisions snowball into a whole bunch of those decisions, because that's when things start getting dicey.

[00:26:28] But overall, your business is way more resilient than you probably believe. This is where my favorite entrepreneurial mindset comes in really handy. The acceptance that business is a constant experiment. You got to test and change when you adopt that mindset, the weight of every decision lightens just a little bit, and you become more engaged with tracking outcomes.

[00:26:52] Few decisions are final, never to be made again decisions. They're interim decisions until you have proof as to whether or not they were the best decision. Which also puts you in the head space to accept that sometimes test and change actually results in failure. So another mindset shift here, I'm definitely way over four at this point.

[00:27:13] So forget math is for you to realize that failure isn't bad. Failure is a step on the journey. Do you hear that failure is a step on the journey of an entrepreneur period. In fact entrepreneurs have businesses fail all the time. It doesn't mean you're a bad entrepreneur. It means you're an entrepreneur.

[00:27:36] Few of us hit it out of the park on the first go. And when you can accept all of that, it's easier to turn down a client that probably isn't the best fit. It's easy to hire that person to see if their special sauce is exactly what you need. It makes it easier to say no to that meeting or that obligation to focus on something else.

[00:27:56] In fact, flipping your mindset around these items is going to blow your mind. So here's a little exercise for you. Take a moment to think about an example of a current belief you hold true that falls into this category. This can be something specific. That's come up for you within the past few weeks, or even the past couple of days.

[00:28:15] Maybe it's a client request or an opportunity that came up. Alternatively, I encourage you to consider a big overarching belief that's really holding you back in your business. Like maybe you can't niche down or raise your prices or stop creating a type of content that, you know, isn't really serving your business.

[00:28:33] Feel free to pause me for a second while you think of what this is.

[00:28:40] Once you have it stated as the opposite and see what happens, literally feel what happens in your body. Maybe you believe that if you pass on an opportunity, your business will fail. Instead, what if, if you pass on this opportunity, you'll have more room for success. In my experience, these flips cause some insane things to happen.

[00:29:04] There's usually a loosening in my chest or in my gut, my shoulders relaxed, my anxiety lessens my mind opens up to a gazillion more potential thoughts or hints of inspiration, our kinds of creative businesses. Thrive on doing things differently on bucking the norms and finding new ways to achieve our individual definitions of success.

[00:29:26] You can't do that. If you're closing yourself off to different before you even have the chance to try. A little mantra I've picked up for myself over the years to help me break these thoughts cycles is I release all expectations. I don't anticipate success nor do I anticipate failure. I'm just here for the journey.

[00:29:49] I try to be completely unattached to the outcome. Am I a total boss at this? Absolutely not, but I'm definitely getting better as an entrepreneur for over a decade. I've had far too many instances where I became too attached to an outcome or to a belief around something that I thought would, or wouldn't work in my business.

[00:30:10] It's a waste of time and energy and it will play hugely into any impending burnout. From things I did that I just knew would lead to raving success to things I thought could be the death of my business. And none of them painting out the way I thought I've simply learned to let it go be unattached, just walk down the road and see what happens.

[00:30:32] Here's a fun example of this. Not necessarily my belief, but one where I got to challenge everyone else's many of you may remember the huge Being Boss Facebook group that we had back in 2017 ish I think at its peak, it had between 25 and 30,000 members, and it was becoming a nightmare to manage for months.

[00:30:54] Every time an issue would pop up, the team would patch it with a band-aid and I would recommend that we close it down. But the team and my partner believed that that Facebook group was one of the most important assets in our business. And possibly believed that on some level, if we shut it down, our business would fail.

[00:31:11] There was definitely talk that it would have a major impact on our bottom line, even though it was a free group, if nothing else, it was a very nice vanity metric. But when we got down to our values as a company, that group did not need to exist. It wasn't cultivating community. And the way that we most desired it was on a platform that was distracting, not adding to our bosses ability to do the work.

[00:31:37] So we did the unthinkable and we closed down the group. For months, every time I did an interview, that was the topic of discussion. How could we possibly make the decision to shut down such a large and vibrant and engaged Facebook group? After we did it, I watched our stats like a Hawk. And so I can tell you firsthand that it had no large immediate impact on any numbers in our business.

[00:32:06] And it opened up the opportunity to make more meaningful spaces for our audience to cultivate community in ways that were more aligned with our brand and mission. It wasn't easy. It literally took me a year to get everyone on board. It was completely against the grain of what every other online business owner was doing or wanted to do at the time.

[00:32:29] There was a fear that it would do irreparable damage to our business. It didn't a perfect example of how a common belief does not necessarily mean anything for your business. Now, I challenge you to challenge some of your own beliefs in your business. Kick this not boss mindset to the curb. And instead, truly embodied the test and change mindset.

[00:32:54] But before we wrap up, I do believe there is a time when this mindset is absolutely true. And that's something I want to address, which is, if you don't take care of yourself, your business will fail, which honestly is a whole episode on its own. And not what I'm getting into today, but for the moment, just know that if you don't fill in the blank, your business is likely not going to fell, have your priorities in order.

[00:33:24] And no single decision is likely to keep you from your version of success. And with that, I hope your thought process is operating a little differently about yourself, your work, your business. I hope you've changed direction, at least a little bit to thinking more like an entrepreneur, because my guess is that if you're still here, you want to make this work for you, whether you're just getting started or you've been at it for years, which is kind of a lesson in itself that I wanted to reiterate.

[00:33:54] It doesn't matter how long you've been in business, whether you're a baby boss just getting started or you've been an entrepreneur for over a decade. Fraudy feelings still come up. Your ego still tells you that no one can do this as good as you can standing in the way of you seeking the help that you need.

[00:34:10] Sometimes the hard work does feel a little ill, and I'd love to hear from someone who is a really kicked the fear of failure. The journey of adopting these mindsets returned with every phase of entrepreneurship. Every time, the flavor of it's a little bit elevated, slightly different, but very much so the same.

[00:34:31] So strap in and get ready to do the work that it takes to reap benefits and put them into entrepreneurship with lifelong adjustments to your mindset. I think it's pretty likely today's episode. Has you thinking forward as to what's possible in your company, if you can just get out of your own way. And usually that looks like doing some hiring, which brings up a whole bunch of new mindsets, but I also have some bats, the technical side of hiring's not as hard as you think it is not when you're using Gusto to bring on your new employees.

[00:35:04] From onboarding and payroll to benefits and taxes. Don't let the fear of all the things. Keep you from making your next move. Check out Gusto and really see how easy it can be. Get three months free when you run your first payroll. By going to gusto.com/beingboss. Now until next time, do the work, be boss