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Friday, November 20, 2009

Creating Your Entrepreneurial Mindset

By Steven Schlagel

I talk a lot about the nuts and bolts of starting or buying and running a small business. In my coaching and consulting business, my clients and I work together a lot on streamlining their systems to allow them more personal freedom and increased income. But there is much more to understand.

Through working with them, I've noticed that entrepreneurs and small business owners have a different viewpoint. Many small business owners build companies in industries where they were once employees. They often have trouble leaving an employee mindset behind. Entrepreneurs take more risks and think bigger, planning the future sale of their new business in the beginning and starting multiple businesses at once.

The small business owner tends not to work on their business but rather they work in it and get very married to it. The downside is that when the economy gets tight the small business owners often end up in survival mode. For the entrepreneur, the down economy is just another opportunity waiting for them.

Small business owners can change their mindset to model the entrepreneur's. Creating a vision of what you want your entire life to look like, and how your business supports that, is a key step. Really generate the details of this future life and then write down that detailed picture. Ask yourself questions as you go. What does your day look like? What income are you generating? Do you want more time versus more money? How would you spend that time. Don't try to figure out the details. Just write down the dream.

Most business owners have a strong gut idea of what they really want, but practical thoughts bring them down. When detailing your life's vision in writing, skip being practical. The "how's" can what. Take time to focus on the "what" for now. Don't pressure yourself with timelines. Just getting a detailed vision down on paper can be enough to help you bring it to reality.

When you've written a detailed vision of what you want work and life to look like, it is important to feel it. If part of your dream involves a new car, what does the steering wheel feel like in your hands? How does that book you wrote look and feel? Professional athletes do visualization all the time. Tiger visualizes his perfect putt hundreds of times before he actually makes it. They work with coaches to help them with this process. Why shouldn't this work for you?

What's your big vision, the one you hesitate to share with anyone? Are you married to your small business, afraid of economic change? Start changing your survive mentality NOW. Think like an entrepreneur: BIG.

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