Your attitude that you show up with each day has a lasting impact on your behavior that affects your outcomes. A person’s attitude is an expression of their mindset at any time and in any given situation. Your attitude represents a feeling that can be changed instantly or maintained for a lifetime.
Why is this important?
It is important to understand the attitudes of the most successful business owners so you can emulate them and move your business forward.
Let’s begin.
1) Success Business owners are passionate about the success/value they can create. Unsuccessful ones are more passionate about watching people on TV live out their dreams in sports, movies shows etc. than actually going out and creating the life they want.
Action Steps:
Consider any major success story – what did they have in common?
· Passion for the value they could create.
· Ask yourself am I really passionate about my project?
· Is this passion sufficient to take me through all the ups and downs that I can expect in growing and scaling my business?
· If the passion is really not there – stop and rethink your next move carefully.
· As the old expression goes – “Don’t climb your business ladder to only learn it is leaning against the wrong wall“.
2) Successful owners maintain a positive mental attitude as a steady state condition. Unsuccessful ones have a mental state that changes and varies with outside circumstances.
Why is this important?
Many times in life you rise and fall to your level of expectations.
If you start with a Negative Mental Attitude you are likely to not fully apply yourself and get results consistent with your expectations.
Life is too short to be grumpy and you will attract other people who are also grumpy and will pull you down.
A positive mental attitude is not sufficient but it is a requirement to succeed.
Action Steps:
· Change your attitude right now by focusing all your thinking on what you are grateful for.
· You cannot maintain two completely different thoughts in your mind at the same time.
3) Successful owners are hyper consciousness about what they are thinking and their attitude at any given point in time. When they feel their attitude turning towards the worse they take massive evasive action to change their attitude since they know their attitude determines their altitude in life. Unsuccessful Business owners allow their emotions derived from their environment to run unchecked. They pay little attention to what they are thinking about and emotionally move with the current. Unsuccessful Business owners are not in control of their mental state.
Action Step:
· Take time at multiple points during the day and ask yourself: “What are my thoughts and feelings on ________ (the most pressing issue for you right now).
· Journal those thoughts and then analyze why you think the way you do.
4) Successful Business owners understand the importance of understanding the root of fear so they can eliminate it before it impacts their attitude. Successful Business owners have an abundance-oriented attitude and believe there is more than enough for everyone. Unsuccessful ones never get to the root of their fears and correspondingly their attitude is impacted. Unsuccessful Business owners have a scarcity-oriented attitude and believe that the pie is only so big – for them to prosper someone must suffer.
Action Steps:
· Write down a list of what you are fearful of.
· Separate the fears into two columns.
· Those that are rational with real consequences and those that are not rational without real consequences.
· For example jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to sky dive is a rational fear – you could die.
· Speaking to a group of 1000 industry peers at a conference is an irrational fear.
5) Successful Business owners have a can do attitude and focus on what they want irrespective of the odds. Unsuccessful ones allow the statistics of others to shape what they believe is possible and often settle in life.
Action Steps:
· Write down very clearly what you want and why you want it.
· Now go deeper and ask the question why again – you will soon discover your internal core motivation and it is this motivation that you need to harness to drive you through to achieve what you want.
· Pay no attention to the Nay Sayers and those that tell you why the odds are against you – they have already given up on their dreams and consider themselves to be “practical”.
6) Successful Business owners maintain an attitude of true collaboration and cooperation with others because the notion of competition while important is not the primary focus. Successful Business owners preoccupy their mind with offering incredible service as a way to differentiate themselves and be selected by the market. Unsuccessful Business owners believe that competition is the primary focus and their attitude is they must beat their competitors into the ground. Unsuccessful Business owners preoccupy their mind with how they can hurt the competition and by accident win new customers.
Action Step:
· Develop the ideal customer journey path for your client.
· Vividly imagine how a district and delightful experience can be crafted to meet your customer where they are to help them get to where they want to go.
· Focus 100% on the customer problem and anticipating their needs because you understand them so well.
7) Successful Business owners maintain a balanced attitude and seldom allow events in life to be taken personally. They look at life’s events objectively and are careful with the labels they use. Unsuccessful Business owners love to assign labels to everything and often get very excited because they take everything personally.
Action Step:
· Exercise your intellectual asset of Perception – whenever you examine a new idea – turn it over in your mind to see things from all perspectives.
· Be very careful before you assign a label to something as being “good” or as being “bad” because these choices impact your thinking downstream.
· For example if you lose a key customer and associated this as a “Terrible Loss” you cut your mind off from understating why they left and what can be done to improve the customer experience to:
· retain the rest of your clients and
· To innovate your service to attract more clients.
8) Successful owners maintain an attitude rooted in humility. Their inner self does not need this validation. Unsuccessful owners win so seldom that they want the whole world to acknowledge how great they are when it happens. Their sensitive inner self needs this validation
Action Steps:
· Objectively look at how you respond to wins and loses relative to your interactions with others
· Do you boast about your wins or are a quietly confident individual?
· Consider asking those that are very close to you this question and see what they say.
9) Successful Business owners maintain an attitude that is open to being wrong. Unsuccessful Business owners believe they are seldom wrong because they are so smart and accomplished
Action Steps:
· Make a list of mistakes you have made or were wrong about your business.
· Take a look at your financial statements and ask yourself this question again. If you struggle to see your weakness you will never address it or compensate for it through smart hires.
