Entrepreneurial Management

The truth is, if you want to grow the business, you have to grow the person running it. And the way to grow is by managing your mind.

Many entrepreneurs come to us and tell us how exhausting it is to run a business. They think, “I can’t handle this. It’s too overwhelming. My employees aren’t doing what I want. This will never work.”

This kind of thinking will never work. We often tell our students, “Your relationship with your business is your thoughts about your business.” So if you are not thinking about your business in a positive, amazing way, then there is no way you can create amazing results.

The way you think about your business will determine how successful it is, which is why we recommend you write down all the thoughts you currently have about your business. This is what we call a thought download. Stop whatever you are doing and write all the thoughts you have about your business.

Pause And Do A Thought Download

You may be surprised to see that many of your current thoughts about your business are negative. This is totally normal, especially for those who are growing and ready to scale. Regardless of where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, we are here to help you manage those thoughts to become deliberately positive.

After clients work with us, they realize how fun and enjoyable their businesses can be once they change the way they think. Imagine how you would show up if you thought, “I love my business. I’m excited to do this work. I see so much opportunity.”

The Power of Thoughts

The way you think changes how you approach solutions, the ideas you generate, and how you lead. The way you think also got you to where you are today, and it’s normal for every entrepreneur to hit a wall as they scale and get bigger. This is why it’s so important to write down your thoughts, recognize them as thoughts, and then work to change them so you can get different results.

You are going to want to think that your business causes your thoughts, and that you’re just noticing that it’s not working. And we must tell you that your business doesn’t cause your thinking—your thinking causes your business.

This is not just a soft skill. This is a deliberate thing you must do regularly to manage your mind around your business.

Thoughts Create Feelings

Another thing about thoughts is that they cause your feelings. We often think that business is stressful or overwhelming, and working with employees is frustrating. This is never the case. You are responsible for your own emotions because you’re the one causing them with your thinking.

As you go through this course and grow in your business, you may feel yourself getting stressed, tense, overwhelmed, or in a hurry. When this occurs we want you to take a minute and recognize that nothing good is going to come from working from that place. You can’t hustle your way through these emotions.

The most simple thing you can do is notice what you’re feeling, and you will always find a thought that you’re thinking that’s causing it. “I’m past a deadline. I need to get somebody hired. My customer’s waiting on me.” You will think your thoughts are just observations, but they’re creating emotions that aren’t serving you.

You have to remember that the energy that you are using to build your business has to be positive energy. Because if you’re fueling yourself with negative energy, you’re fueling your business with negative energy and negative emotion. And this will always end up producing negative results, which further perpetuates the problems.

If you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or in a hurry, you must stop. You can’t think that that’s normal, you can’t think that that’s part of running a company. It is not. You need to take a deep breath and say, “What is the most effective emotion I can have right now to create this result?”

Don’t Rush

Many of you will be in a hurry. You will feel like you have to get it all done and you have to do it all right now. The reason why most of us are in a hurry is we think there’s some better place we’re going to get to. We think we’re finally going to get to the place where we make a certain amount of money, or we hire just the right amount of people. That time never comes. It’s always out there on the horizon, it’s always moving.

Here are the things we recommend you do:

• Write down all your thoughts
• Manage your emotions
• Decide consciously what you want to be thinking about your business (all aspects of it)
• Decide what you want to be feeling about your business (notice if you’re in a hurry)
• If you’re in a hurry, stop, slow down, and determine what you think is going to happen when you get there (that feeling you think you’re going to have when you get there is actually the feeling you need now to move forward in your business.