Cultivating a Success Mindset for Your Business

Written by Rob Malec

To be a successful business owner, mindset is everything. I have worked with thousands of business professionals over my 21 years as a Fractional VP of Sales, and the common thread amongst those who have achieved peak performance is having a success mindset.

What Is Mindset?

Having a success mindset is not simply about adhering to a series of trite, sunshiny slogans and phrases aimed to pump you up. Nor is it a collection of pithy aphorisms that point out obvious truisms about the merits of remaining diligent and focused.

Rather, mindset is a system of attitudes and beliefs put into purposeful action each and every day. A business mindset, then, is an approach to the way a person conducts their business. It’s how feeling, intuition, knowledge, skill, and wisdom are applied toward an identified challenge.

The Benefits of a Successful Business Mindset

Mindset manifests itself as actions and activities aimed at turning ideas into reality and making the difficult or seemingly impossible, possible. The right business mindset can make a bad day better (or prevent a bad day from happening in the first place). It can take a seemingly calamitous event and turn it into an unforeseen opportunity. It can take a person from a low-energy, unproductive state to one of high energy and productivity.

Mindset can straighten out a circuitous journey and make the path to a destination crystal clear. When you and your team share a business mindset, it can help you all converge on a path toward achieving your company goals. So how then do you develop the right business mindset for success?

Cultivating a Success Mindset

It has been my experience as a Fractional VP Sales that there are very few select individuals out there who possess a success mindset based solely upon biological disposition. They just came into the world with it.

The rest of us mere mortals need to cultivate and nurture a business mindset over time. This is a daily practice requiring purposeful focus. It’s a garden that needs regular watering. Here are a few ways to do so.

Cultivate a Success Mindset by Reading Often

We’ve all seen the statistics that say the most successful business people read X [insert seemingly unreasonable number of books] per year. Regardless of the number of books your Google search tells you successful people read, the message is clear: consistently filling your brain with fresh ideas is the best way to broaden your thinking and sharpen your focus. Note that ‘fresh’ here means new ideas for you. The ideas may have been around for centuries, such as those contained in books that are thousands of years old, but they could very well be new to you.

Remember That Inspiration to Help Cultivate a Success Mindset Can Come From Anywhere

The reading path to developing a successful business mindset can begin just about anywhere. The journey begins when you, the student, realize you have a desire to learn. As the saying goes, ‘when the student is ready, the teacher shall appear’.

It may be that “how to” focused business books are the best place for you to start. For others, reading about mindfulness makes more sense. For still others reading a book on how to improve their tennis game may have obvious applications in the business realm. The key is to start with your interest and go from there. Be sure to examine how what you read applies to your business.

Initiate A Successful Business Mindset Within Your Team

The journey of initiating a success mindset within a team begins with a conversation. It may be one that you’ve never had with your team. Many leaders are so busy focusing on having their team handle the issues of the day that they don’t set aside time to have higher-level conversations. It’s important to peel the onion and get to the heart of how your team shows up to their job roles and what could be done to elevate their performance.

If peeling the onion and starting down this path makes you nervous, you’re not alone. Many CEOs and business owners I’ve worked with have felt the same way. If you would like to discuss how you might tackle this challenge feel free to reach out to me.