What does a winning entrepreneurial mindset sound like? I embrace failure as the gateway to success. I will succeed if I persevere. Creativity is the mother of invention. Planning is the difference between a gamble and a calculated risk – I won’t go on…
To me, a winning mindset isn’t just a stock of affirmations, although these are quite useful for practising resilience, but I think it’s made up of five key characteristics. Characteristics that form the way an entrepreneurial mind works and views decision-making, risk, obstacles and all the things a person faces when starting and scaling in business.
You could be sitting on a goldmine of potential, just by exploring and adopting these characteristics.
The five characteristics of an entrepreneurial mindset and how to develop them
1. Creativity
A natural entrepreneur is a problem solver. They identify solutions easily and use innovation to seek solutions.
Practise: Curiosity, brainstorming, mind-mapping, reverse thinking, challenging assumptions, exploring alternatives, experimentation, flexibility, meeting with others.
2. Resilience
There are always challenges and failures in business. How you bounce back, dust yourself off and get back to the task at hand determines how resilient you are. With resilience comes perseverance.
Practise: Embracing uncertainty, learning from failures, using your support network, growing your community, pursuing meaningful goals, using meditation or affirmations, self-care.
3. Risk-taking
I touched on calculated risks earlier. When taking a risk, an entrepreneur not only considers how to execute their plan, what resources they have and when to put the brakes on, but also what happens if it fails. They always know what to do next.
Practise: Starting small, aligning your risks with your goals, exploring new technology and processes, reframing fear as ‘false expectations appearing real’.
4. Flexibility
Going back to the pandemic, where would we have been if our favourite shops and suppliers hadn’t been flexible?! An entrepreneur spots opportunities to shape their offering to the circumstances. Sometimes those circumstances are welcome, other times they are enforced.
Practise: A growth mindset, learning new skills or technology, listening to others, asking others, resilience!
5. Vision
As I said, entrepreneurs always know what to do next – but they have a vision that reaches further into the future too. They ill not be distracted from the activities that get them closer to their end goal.
Practise: Being inspired by others not envious, motivation through reading, tracking progress, carrying out high pay-off activities, risk taking!
As you can see, these five characteristics of an entrepreneurial mindset are all interwoven. When you seek to cultivate one, the others will naturally follow. Remember it will take time to develop them, but whether you’re a start-up or a scaling business, the potential you can unlock is well worth the time.