Having the right mindset when you’re starting a business can be the difference between success and failure. So, it’s important to understand what aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset you’re missing (if any), the aspects you need to work on, and the aspects you need to develop from scratch.

An entrepreneur can have everything going for him, but if he doesn’t have the right mindset, he could fail. Even though some people say that failure is great because you learn a lot from failure, I tend to think that success is even better. You can learn a lot from success too. Do you agree?

Failure is not such a great thing because it can affect your mindset and self-image. And why should you fail if you can figure out a way to succeed? Why should you accept that it’s okay to fail? Failure is a negative thing, and you don’t need to fail to succeed. Failure can sometimes be part of the journey to success, but it’s not a requirement. Smart entrepreneurs avoid failure, and they think of every angle possible. Failure can cost you a lot, so don’t accept failure so easily. Try not to fail.

To be a successful entrepreneur, it is important to have the right mindset and approach to entrepreneurship, as if it were a sport. It’s a 24x7x365 sport. A sport that never stops. If you’re building a business in North America, chances are there’s some guy across the planet in another country who is building a similar business. When you’re fast asleep at night, he’s up writing code or designing a new feature. Someone is competing with you all the time.

If you want to succeed in starting a business and you’re wondering what type of mindset you need to be able to start, run, and preserve a business, then keep reading.

Here are the 10 characteristics you need to be able to develop the right mindset to start a successful business.

1. Develop Strong Conviction

Starting a business can sometimes be more of a mental challenge than anything else. It’s like you have to give birth to this idea that doesn’t exist in the world the way you want to do it. It’s an idea that you have in your head, and you want to design and build it a certain way. Maybe you want to start a restaurant, build an app, or sell coffee. Whatever this idea is that you want to pursue, you have a way you want to build it.

Before you take the plunge, what is your brain telling you about the idea? Are you extremely positive and do you believe that, one way or another, you are going to be successful? Do you have any doubts in your mind? Do you believe that if there is one person in the world who can do this, it is you? If you have that level of conviction, then you’re in a good place.

Sometimes, entrepreneurs don’t have that level of confidence, and your brain can tell you things like, “I’m not sure if this will work,” or “maybe it’s not such a good idea after all.”

Let’s do a quick exercise.

Take a look around for a minute. Are you at a familiar or unfamiliar location? Take a break from reading this article for a minute and look around you. Pick an item around you that you haven’t noticed before and focus your attention on this item. Keep in mind that this activity should ideally be done with an item you have never seen before. If you maintain your focus on it, it will eventually get brighter and more real.

Now attempt to see your surroundings from the point of where that object is, as if you were standing there. This might come easily to you, or you may have to make a little bit of an effort. If you’re adept at focusing your attention, you might notice a little shift in your perspective.

Whether you saw something or not, your viewpoint shifted for a moment. In business, you need to create your own perspective and believe in it. If you don’t, you will believe someone else’s perspective, and it may not be the one you initially had a strong conviction about. This can lead you down a path of failure.

2. Don’t Worry Too Much About Competitors

When you have developed a strong conviction about yourself and your business ideas, you won’t need to worry too much about competitors, because you will have a vision of exactly how you want to do things. You’ll be successful if you stick to your overall vision while remaining flexible on the details along the way. So, make sure you are stubborn about your vision but be flexible on the details.

As long as you are willing to obsess about customer service and you keep finding ways to delight your customers, you will never have to worry about competitors. One customer at a time. Focus on turning a customer into a fan of your product.

3. Study The Giants

You don’t have to worry about every single competitor, but there are people in your industry who know more than you. If you are in a competitive industry, believe me, some guys and gals know more than you in your field. Your job is to figure out what they know, master every skill, and then outperform every one of them. If you don’t have this type of competitive mindset in business, you will eventually lose. I know that sounds harsh, but you do need to be constantly sharpening your skills and gathering more knowledge about your industry. Your goal should be to become the most clear-headed and knowledgeable person in your industry.

4. Embrace Change

Like death and taxes, change is the other thing that is guaranteed in life. If you aren’t continuously learning and willing to adapt to change in your business, you will find it very tough to build an enduringly profitable business. You need to have a thirst for knowledge, and you need to have the desire and drive to embrace change. There’s nothing more to really say about it. It’s guaranteed to happen, and you just need to be an expert in your field, so you can see the change on the horizon and plan and prepare for it so that when it happens, your business is ahead of the curve.

5. Expand Your Creativity

Entrepreneurship is all about creativity. Some of the biggest companies in the world have been able to succeed against all odds because there were some extremely creative “out of the box” thinkers on the team. When you start a business, you will inevitably face problems in all kinds of forms, shapes, and sizes. You need to decide how you’re going to respond, and creativity plays an important role.

You will not generate your next great idea by just duplicating what someone else has already done. Therefore, look for novel opportunities in a variety of organizations and niches. Discover which firms are succeeding and what their leaders are doing to set them apart.

Why do they behave the way they do? Ascertain their knowledge of your industry and find out what you don’t know. Were there any companies in which you had a strong conviction? Why?

How can you use what has worked for those businesses to benefit your own? Perhaps you can improve on certain concepts and add your creativity to them. You can be more creative if you look at and learn from the best practices in other industries.

When you feel like you have hit a wall with your creativity, incorporate practices like going for a daily walk or anything that becomes like a ritual for you. You can always use this to reset and get your creative juices flowing.

A friend of mine likes to walk to work because it helps him clear his mind. Instead of driving to work, he walks 90 minutes each way, so he spends three hours walking, and this practice helps him tremendously. To find out what works best for you and set your own cadence.

6. Be Intentional

As an entrepreneur, you need to be extremely self-aware and intentional with how you do things daily. Especially in the early stages of your business, you’re going to need to be responsible for everything. This is when you need to take the time to be intentional about the most basic things as well as be able to think about things that are important and could really move the needle in your business.

For example, it’s important for you to be able to think about how you spend your mornings to be able to maximize your impact when it comes to growing your business, but at the same time, you need to be intentional about how you treat your employees or contractors and the environment that you’re creating for them to be extremely productive.

7. Practice Extreme Accountability

Take responsibility for everything in your business. If something isn’t working the way you need it to work, take responsibility for it. As an entrepreneur, you don’t have the time to shift blame, and you shouldn’t do that. This is going to be your business, and you need to be fully accountable for it. The word “extreme” means “to the highest degree”. This means you will not leave any stone unturned when it comes to solving a problem in your business.

For an organization to be successful, there must be a strong sense of responsibility for others and the end result. This means going above and beyond to make sure that your coworkers aren’t disappointed and never forgetting that it is not about you.

8. Develop a Maniacal Work Ethic

To be able to get your business off the ground, you will need to work harder than you have ever worked in your life. I once heard someone say that building a business was the hardest thing they had ever done in their life. It was harder than raising a family or anything else they had done. If you don’t already have a strong work ethic, take the time to develop it.

There is no business in this world that is extremely easy, and if it is that easy, it’s probably not going to be worth pursuing, or it may not be an enduringly profitable business. As an entrepreneur who is just getting started, having a strong work ethic will mean the difference between success and failure.

Be prepared to get less sleep and just remember, no matter what the job is, it’s not below your dignity to just get it done. If the business needs it and there’s no one else except you, you just have to suck it up and do it until you’re in a position to hire someone else to do it or outsource it.

9. Be Optimistic

This seems like an obvious one. But when things aren’t going exactly the way you planned, it’s important to remind yourself that you are an optimistic person. When you gently remind yourself that you’re an optimist, you will tend to focus on the bright side of things, and your creativity will focus on problem-solving. Being optimistic is a choice, so choose wisely.

There will be times in your entrepreneurial journey when it will be tough to be optimistic. Remind yourself that you are an optimistic person, so instead of a knee-jerk pessimistic reaction, you ought to take a moment and look on the bright side of things.

10. Be Disciplined

Creating a cadence for your entrepreneurial journey and sticking to the rhythm is going to take a level of discipline you may or may not have. Not everyone takes the time to develop that level of discipline in their lives. It’s different than being an employee. When you’re an employee, if for some reason you’re not hyper-disciplined, you can get away with it because there are probably other employees who will pick up your slack.

When you are an entrepreneur and you are responsible for the day-to-day operations of your business, especially in the early stages, you cannot afford to not be disciplined. Because everything you do has an immediate impact on the company. If you choose to “call in sick” one day, everything comes to a screeching halt. Your business doesn’t move forward.

In the world of business, people who show up on time with enthusiasm, ready to get things done, are the ones who end up with the contacts, opportunities, and resources. Holding yourself to a high level of self-discipline can transform your business life and help you accomplish tasks you weren’t sure you could. It’s amazing how much momentum you can get from having self-discipline. Use this to your advantage and make the most of it, especially when you’re just starting out.

11. Stop Procrastinating

A friend of mine once told me that he left over a million dollars on the table because he procrastinated in the early days while he was still in the ideation phase. He knew he could have launched faster, but he allowed procrastination to get the better of him. There is a saying in the world of business, “procrastination is the enemy of profitability.”

If you have a tendency to procrastinate, you need to recognize that and immediately start taking steps to correct that type of behavior. The moment you find yourself procrastinating, you need to pick something on your “to-do” list that’s going to move the needle for your business and go complete that task. If you keep training this way, you will get better and better at the sport of business.

Finishing a task is much better than procrastinating and not accomplishing anything. There is a saying that goes something like “Done is better than perfect”. Learn to be okay with things not always being perfect the way you expect them to be in your mind. Sometimes, it’s good to pursue perfection depending on what the project or task is, but more often than not, we just use it as an excuse to kick the ball down the road, and we end up not accomplishing anything.

Done is better than perfect.

Distractions are also a huge reason why a lot of entrepreneurs procrastinate. When you are starting your business, there are going to be a ton of things that get put on your plate daily. From unsolicited emails from salespeople to notifications on your phone to family and life issues, you’re going to need to prioritize things and figure out which things get your full undivided attention. This is something you need to be deliberate about. You need to do this because it will help you maintain your momentum in the early days when you’re trying to get your business off the ground.

Losing momentum in the early days of your business can be detrimental to your success. Every little bit of momentum you get, you want to take advantage of it and figure out how to multiply it. The easiest way to beat procrastination is to ask yourself whether something is important to you. If the answer is yes, then it means it’s a mandatory task. When something is mandatory, you don’t ask questions, you just need to get it done. So, procrastination is just a maturity thing.

There are many things in life that we don’t want to do, but we do them because they’re required and we know we have to. So, figure out whether something is important and whether it’s going to move the needle, and if the answer is a resounding yes, then just get it done and get it out of the way so you can keep making progress towards your entrepreneurial dreams.

Conclusion

Starting out as an entrepreneur is the easy part. The part that takes some work is being able to turn a startup into an enduringly profitable business. There is nothing you cannot learn if you put in the time and effort required. Having the right mindset and understanding how to tip the odds in your favor goes a long way in the game of entrepreneurship.