Do You Have an Entrepreneurial Mindset?

05 Dec Do You Have an Entrepreneurial Mindset?

It is the solution to your business challenges

Think about the last challenge you encountered in your business – slow growth, employee turnover, unmet client needs. Now think about how you approached the challenge – did you implement the same methods used in the past? Did you seek out guidance from a trusted advisor? Did you focus on something else because you didn’t have a clear solution?

How we approach our challenges speaks to our entrepreneurial mindset. The entrepreneurial mindset differs from the two types of mindset we are familiar with – growth and fixed¹.

As entrepreneurs, our primary focus should be “What is the problem I/we are trying to solve?” This could relate to a problem a current or potential client is dealing with, an internal process inefficiency, or the company profitability or growth, to name a few. When focus is kept on solving a problem, great results transpire. As Arash Asli, co-founder of Yocale.com put it in his article 6 Tips for Growing with An Entrepreneurial Mindset

“The entrepreneurial mindset is about a certain way of thinking – it is about the way in which you approach challenges and mistakes. It is about an inherent need to improve your skill set and to try and try again.”

Entrepreneurship is not just about generating new ideas

Is the secret sauce to be a successful entrepreneur finding solutions to your challenges? Consider the serial entrepreneur who is great at coming up with new ideas but fails to execute them effectively. Coming up with new ideas all the time can be a detriment to success because it takes focus away from your current path. Therefore, we idea generation is a small part of the puzzle. There are other vital qualities and skills that must come into play.

In 2012, research by a team of professors at Eckerd College in Florida found 7 personality traits and 7 skillsets that distinguish entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs.  These traits are tested in an assessment called the Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile (EMP).

Let’s go back to our example of someone who is great at coming up with new ideas. What Personality Scales do you think he would be strong in? Maybe Non-Conformity, Risk Acceptance and Passion. If he took the assessment, he might find that he didn’t have a strong inclination for Independence and Need to Achieve?

What about the Skills Scales? He may show strengths for Idea Generation and Optimism and perhaps a low aptitude for Execution, and Persistence. We can only presume, so taking the assessment would provide useful insights to why he may not be achieving the business results he had hoped for.

Assuming we were correct, what would this mean? Depending on how his outcomes ranked as compared to entrepreneurial norms, we may find that some of his strengths are liabilities that limit the growth of his business. For example, because he is overly optimistic, he may not see warning signs that an opportunity is being derailed and therefore won’t react fast enough to get things back on track.

Having information about your entrepreneurial traits and skill sets enables you to see your blindspots, compensate for our shortfalls and respond to situations more strategically in order to achieve our goals.

My assessment results helped me to realize that while I don’t like to work within the parameters of someone else’s structure, I do need to create structure to be productive; my passion for what I do can stop me from seeing that an idea might not be as great as I think it is; and while being sensitive to the needs of others is important for the work I do, I might be a bit too sensitive to their feelings and not act in a way that is truly in their (or my) best interest.

These insights are priceless. Awareness is the first step to change. The slight changes I adopted in myself are evident in the improved results in my business.

How might you be getting in the way of your business success? Curious to see your entrepreneurial strengths, shortfalls and overplayed tendencies? Let’s connect and get you registered for the assessment and debrief. The small investment will provide you with a huge payoff!

1. According to Dr. Carol Dweck, when a person has a fixed mindset, they believe that their basic abilities, intelligence, and talents are fixed traits. In a growth mindset, people believe their abilities and intelligence can be developed with effort, learning, and persistence.