It is All in the Mind – Entrepreneur and Small Business Owners Keys to Success in Business

Most students of business are taught about the lifecycle of a business. An idea is born in the mind of the entrepreneur; it germinates sufficiently to have a shape and form. Eventually it is given birth in some form – conventionally referred to as a start up. It grows strongly like any infant life form; it then matures and peaks in terms of energy, growth rates and dynamism. It can then whither and lose its way if renewed energy is not injected into the life form.

Each of these stages represents a critical stage in the development of a business. Newbies to business don’t necessarily know from an experiential or mental perspective exactly what each stage will bring. What mindset? What resources are required to get through this stage of the business? Yet without a clear line of sight to ALL of the stages, an entrepreneur will surely meet challenges that can make the even the most resilient entrepreneur flinch.

Each stage requires mental preparation and each stage has its own special needs. Consider the start-up stage. Here there are so many options, so many conflicting choices that nothing short of the most flexible of mental preparation is called for. Prior to ‘setting up shop’ an entrepreneur needs to have demonstrated – at least to himself – a fully articulated proof of concept for the business idea. It requires some extremely agile mental preparation. You simply cannot know how all the factors impinging on a business will pan out. In its early life, business is all about discovering what works and what doesn’t work.

Is there a market for this concept? Who and where are the customers? What does it take to get to market? The mental preparation involves both self-examination and a mental screening of external resources. The internal examination requires a brutal honesty about capability. It is better to come from the position of “what resources do I need to get this to where I need to get to next? No one can do it all alone – at least not to the extent of building something significant.

Some people need to control every aspect. That’s’ fine – for a while at least. But the mental preparation for the early part of a business’s life and certainly the part that requires any significant ‘sizing’ needs other people. Employees, partners, allies, suppliers are all stakeholders in the business to some degree. These are all crucial links in the chain and there needs to be a mental preparedness to be able to meet the challenges of dwelling at multiple levels with multiple people. Creating and sustaining a successful business is not for the weak minded.