Business mindset.
You may wonder why I am putting the words business and mindset together in the same sentence, and it is really straightforward, one of the things that will be holding your business back is the way you think and therefore the way you behave in relation to your business decision making.
Quite simply the quality of your business will be defined by the quality of your decisions, now I have no idea what your business aspirations are but I assume you’re in business to make money and if you are taking a few minutes out to read this post I can assure it will be helpful.
Having worked with a large number of small and medium-sized business owners in the past 22 years I have noticed a handful of things that made a real difference to those businesses, how they operate and how profitable they are.
These things can be split into three areas, marketing, processes and mindset. In this post we going to be concentrating on the mindset aspect, you may have heard the saying you either “think you can or think you can’t and either way you’re right” well it’s true.
If you start to think about the quality of your business you will understand that this is to a certain extent is based on the quality of your decisions, the decision to stock a product, or the decision to do things in a certain way, or to charge a certain level of price. All of these decisions will have a direct impact on your overall profitability and therefore the success or otherwise of your business.
All of your decisions are made based on the information that is presented to you and your analysis of this information, if you get any part of the analysis wrong your final decision will of course be flawed. The problem you have when considering the options is that your mind will often not allow you to think clearly and this has been proven many times by a range of academic studies written extensively on the subject.
Quality decisions need quality analysis and quality thinking, the problem is most business owners are not able to think clearly or with any quality. How do I know this? Very simple the chatter inside your head will not allow, or will hinder what ever it is you decide to concentrate on.
It’s not possible for you to make a decision without a civil war being started in your mind, it is this same civil war which causes people to commit suicide or to make very bad and flawed decisions.
Just think about that for a moment, as you read this how many times have you received an interruption in your own mind, with that little voice coming up to remind you that reading this will be a waste of time, you won’t learn anything, what are you doing this for!
It’s amazing how we all have this voice (or Nutter as I prefer) that keeps coming in with its comments and opinions, I have no idea who it is or where it comes from but we all have one. The fact is, in order to get clarity of thought and therefore quality decisions you need to shut it up.
As this person has been around for a good number of years and you have heard it day in day out, time after time, it can sometimes be difficult to quieten down. But let me assure of this it needs to be quietened down or you will never ever be able to make the decisions you need, the sort that will have a real impact for years to come.
In order to prove my point try this exercise :
Sit down in chair, take a deep breath, and relax.
Set the timer on your phone for 15 seconds.
Now I want you to focus on one of your business problems for just 15 seconds, no matter what the problem is it could be manufacturing, finance, staffing or whatever. Just select one of them that is currently on your desk or pressing. Sit back in your chair, start the timer and think about this problem solely for 15 seconds.
Very few business owners manage to do this for five let alone 15 seconds before that voice inside your head starts to disrupt and throw in comments, opinions and other questions. Only now you can hear it clearly, if you are anything like me the first time I tried this the banter was just insane, during the first few seconds I had a barrage of thoughts which come running towards me. It seemed like somebody or something did not want me to think clearly about anything at all.
It’s absolutely amazing as business owners we all think we are in control, we all think we are thinking clearly about the subject matter in hand however as I have just proven the truth is substantially different there is a lunatic in there causing all sorts of trouble and most of the time we had not even noticed they were there.
It is certainly possible with practice to increase this 15 seconds to longer periods of time which means the quality of your thinking will increase exponentially however this is not the only problem with your thinking, but just the start of the process.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be talking to a number of business groups about this issue of controlling your mind (shutting up the voice) and improving your thinking by taking control.
If you are interested in having me speak at your business groups please contact me using this page. Contact Richard Smith.
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