As a business owner, when faced with challenges, it often comes with feelings of being overwhelmed, not knowing what to do, or how to handle it, and sometimes can lead to thoughts of failure as a business owner. What if we told you those challenges don’t have to push you to that point? What if instead of thoughts of failure, those challenges were able to provide you with plans to grow bigger, stronger, and better? The key to handling challenges as a business owner isn’t how educated you are in business, but your mindset. Changing your mindset on challenges can and will make a world of difference in how your business operates, grows, and ultimately thrives. Challenges don’t have to be overwhelming, with the right mindset, they can be the catalyst that takes you and your business to new heights. This blog will highlight 3 different ways that challenges, when faced with the right mindset, can grow your business to new heights, and ways you can work on changing your mindset to be a creative problem-solving whiz.
Challenges force innovation. Challenges are often seen as problems, but when you change your mindset to one of positivity, challenges no longer hold that negative view. With a positive mindset, you can view challenges as catalysts for innovation. This happens through creative thinking, which allows you to come at would-be problems with a new perspective, in turn offering your business new creative solutions, that may not have been explored without those challenges. An example of a challenge would be a dwindling cash flow. To most business owners, this may seem like the end is near. To someone with a positive and creative mindset, they see a dwindling cash flow as an opportunity to explore new revenue streams, new products, services, and even creative marketing strategies, to boost that cash flow. Often, these creative solutions not only fix the problem but can elevate a business to new heights.
Challenges show opportunities for improvement. As business owners, we should always be looking for weak points within our business that we can improve on. The catch is, oftentimes, those weak points don’t show up until something happens to highlight that weak point. We may not realize that our cheap CRM is a weak point in our sales funnel until we have issues with potential or current clients who are getting upset and frustrated that communication is spotty or lacking, due to the CRM’s lack of functionality. In that moment when the weakness is exposed, business owners have two choices; to allow the challenge to rattle them and create chaos in the company, or to rise to the challenge, and improve the weaknesses, allowing the business to grow. By choosing to rise to the challenge, you not only improve the customer’s experience, but you grow your success with your business, while inspiring your employees, and those in the business community around you.
Challenges build resilience. Resilience is a trait that every business should have. Not only is it a key to success, but it speaks volumes to your clients and target market. Brands that showcase resilience, often have an extremely loyal fan base. Resilient businesses don’t quiver at a challenge, they build upon it, grow their business, and soar to new heights.
These are just a handful of ways that optimizing your mindset can help propel your business forward. But how do you change your mindset? We all know there’s more to it than just saying “I am going to change my mindset” out loud. Below we are going to list out some key ways to change your mindset so that you too can reach new heights in your personal and professional lives.
Celebrate Small Wins. Taking the time to celebrate even the smallest victories can have a massive impact on your mindset. By recognizing the small wins, you are keeping the momentum of that progress moving forward, which will in turn continue the progress of those small wins. It also reinforces the positive mindset that a business owner needs to have to have continued growth.
Set boundaries and prioritize. No is a complete sentence, and something we have noticed is far too many business owners struggle with. As a business owner, you are always going to have people, customers, business partners, employees, and even family pulling you in a million directions at the same time. By allowing this and not having boundaries, you are setting yourself up to be overwhelmed, which will only create negative feelings and mindsets. When you can put up boundaries for yourself and your business, you are allowing yourself to prioritize the most important things, which will help foster that positive mindset, by allowing you to achieve the important goals, while not becoming overwhelmed.
Limit exposure to negative influences. “You are what you eat”, I am sure pretty much everyone has heard that expression before. But did you also know that “you are what you watch” or “you are who you associate with”? Who you choose to associate with, and the content you choose to watch on TV or social media, all can influence you and your mindset! If you spend 5 hours a day on Facebook, and the pages you follow are negative, doom and gloom, your mindset will reflect this. This is why it is incredibly important to limit the content you choose to follow and watch, making a conscious effort, not only to limit the amount of time spent on social media or watching TV but also to limit WHAT you are watching or following. The old expression that “TV will rot your brain,” may sound silly, because it doesn’t turn our brain into a rotting pile of goo.. or does it? If what you are watching or following, is negative content, it will rot the way you think. So maybe that expression isn’t all that wrong.
Be persistent and embrace failure. OK, I won’t lie, this one sounds great in the beginning, but who in their right mind would embrace failure?! Well, Thomas Edison did. “I have not failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This happens to be one of my favorite quotes, simply because it reminds me that no matter how many times I “fail”, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Failure is only negative when you choose not to learn anything from it. If you look at every failure, and learn a lesson that you take to heart, not only are you that much closer to success, but you are maintaining your positive attitude. Positive and successful people aren’t immune to failure, they can, have, and do fail as often if not more than most of us. The difference is that their mindset doesn’t allow failure to be the end.
There are many other ways to change your mindset. This list is not the full list, and we encourage all business owners to take the time to learn about different ways to change their mindset and learn to see challenges as opportunities.