274: Three Mindset Secrets Every Business Owner Needs to Know

Episode Transcript

Erin Aquin  0:01  
Welcome to the Superabound podcast with master coaches, Erin Aquin and Steve Haase, where business owners like you learn tools that help you clarify vision clear static, and overcome challenges. You are listening to Episode 274: Three mindset secrets every business owner needs to know. Hello, and welcome back. We're telling our secrets today. I know that maybe sounds a little bit dramatic. But I am always shocked at how many leaders and business owners don't actually know some of these things. And, as always, Steve and I are never here to tell you what to do or tell you how to run your business. But we do really encourage you to have a listen to this episode and try these three things on. For the next month or two, I can pretty much guarantee things will shift for you. I'm not going to sign any contracts about it. But these are things that have made all of the difference in our business, they have made all the difference in the lives of our clients that we've taught them to. And now we're teaching you our three biggest mindset secrets for entrepreneurs and leaders. So what's

Steve Haase  1:25  
interesting about this is oftentimes people will share, they'll share their tools, and they'll call it a secret in order to make it sound more enticing or compelling. But in this case, these are so secret that we didn't even know about them until last week, they came up we mentioned our annual off site. And these were things that emerged through that conversation as real superpowers that we bring to our business to maintain momentum, stay on track with our vision and not get lost in the doldrums, right. If you've ever found yourself feeling uninspired or overwhelmed, or just kind of, you know, like, you're not up to the challenge, these will help you and we kind of dug them out from our own minds and our own operations, how we how we run the business, to kind of package these up for you. So let's begin with one that we teased a little bit last time on the last episode. And that is delaying disappointment. This one was a real learning for me. Because I sat down and I asked Erin, in our off site, we were sitting in this beautiful little room overlooking the Niagara River. And it struck me that I often get bummed out when things aren't, you know, up and to the right. And Erin doesn't. And I said, How is it that you can maintain your creative juices, maintain your energy, maintain your enthusiasm, even as things seem to be not really moving? And she kind of thought and said, Well, what I do is she has quite a genius marketing mind. She actually just said this right on the spot. She said, I delay my disappointment. It's like, oh, man, you gotta tell me more about that. And so that began the conversation over this tool that will help you stay committed to the vision, even when things don't seem to be working. Erin, what's that all about?

Erin Aquin  3:23  
Yeah, as you said, it was a secret to me until I articulated it. But it is how I have run our business. It's so easy to put something out into the world, have it not work, and then get really upset about it really feel like a failure in you know, in my very early days as an entrepreneur, I definitely would like feel disappointed I would have like I should I quit Should I stop moment at least once a quarter if not more often. And when I when we started when I started the coaching business, I was by myself I was learning a new skill. At the same time as I was building a brand new business. And I know a lot of people do this. This is the story for many business owners, you're trying to really get your product or service to a level of excellence. But at the same time you're running the day to day operations. And it is probably in the lifecycle of a business owner or leader. It is the point in your journey where you have the least amount of confidence. The least skill, the least mastery, it is just such a vulnerable and raw time it does not feel good or at least for me I do not get excited about feeling feeling self conscious and like what I'm putting out in the world may not be great yet. So at some point I kind of I made a deal with myself that if something didn't work out the way that I was hoping it would, I would just, you know, I would feel the momentary like, Oh, that sucks. But I would delay that greater disappointment. For at least a week, I actually remember having a moment where this was, this was not at the beginning of our business, Steve. But this was when you had helped me really formulate the vision and the values for our company, when we articulated finally, that our vision is to help people realize the life the universe is dreaming for them, it kind of gave me a bigger context. Instead of just delaying disappointment for a week or two, I could say like in the grand scope of how big the universe is, and how vast the possibilities that we are just swimming in are, maybe I can just hit pause on my disappointment. And wait to really see how this turns out. And it goes to secret number two, it actually is very related to this idea of ripple results, I do not delay my disappointment indefinitely. But what I do is I'll hit pause for myself, until I see the ripple effect of what we've done something that doesn't work out in the moment, a project that doesn't go the way I wanted it to, usually three or four months later, I can point to a result that I'm very happy with and see that disappointing moment as the catalyst for it.

Steve Haase  6:46  
Yeah, delaying disappointment, and ripple results kind of go hand in hand. Because when you do something, you want a certain result, usually you have an idea of what you want to achieve with a marketing endeavor or with a with a product launch. And if those things don't materialize, you can be disappointed. So you delay that disappointment. And instead, what we're offering here, and what's been really powerful up powerful for us is noticing the other benefits that it has. And I had a conversation just last week that really highlighted this. I've been posting on LinkedIn for several years now ever since I, you know, began coaching full time, right, sharing ideas and articles and thoughts on LinkedIn has been part of my practice part of our practice. And sometimes I'll compare myself, you know, Ill advisedly, to other people on the platform. And kind of get down about, you know, I'm not as popular as the former CMO of HubSpot, or whoever right big name person who gets 1000s of likes on their posts, and, you know, seems to light up the internet with everything they say. And so I can get kind of disappointed about that. I know, I don't know if you can relate. But the the ripple results, I had a conversation just last week with a friend who was thinking about going into coaching and said that seeing my posts, seeing the company that we've created, gave him confidence that it's possible. And let him know that there is more to his professional track than just becoming a great leader within an organization that he could actually do something on his own. And so the ripple results of those posts, may or may not have turned into specifically, you know, may or may not have turned into clients, but definitely are touching people's lives in ways that I hadn't even intended, and could turn into business down the road, but definitely are part of the vision that we have for our company. And so it's it's being realized in ways that you might not even expect in advance. Yeah, I

Erin Aquin  8:58  
mean, if you think about this is why I think it is so important that if you don't have your Superabound vision laid out for you in your business, or as a leader, why it's so important, because you can see that the ripple result isn't necessarily in the metrics that you can count. We talked a lot about that last week. But it's in how how is this bringing our vision? How are we getting closer to our vision with this? Not every single person we help realize the life the universe is dreaming for them is going to be a paid client who is known to us and may be somebody that's reading what you write on LinkedIn and watching the evolution of our business knowing that, hey, if it's possible for them, it's possible for me, that is a way that we're totally fulfilling our vision and it's the ripple result of that level of consistency and doing the dance of social media. So that is definitely one to watch for. And we take this even further with folks in our programs, especially our super bound coaches, by tracking through a, what we call the decision log, or what we call the challenge log, we track the things that the activities that we're doing in our business, the decisions that are being made, the tasks and behaviors that are being performed. And we look at, of course, the immediate response. And then we look, look at the ripple results. I remember one of my ripple results was I posted something, just a quick post on a social media platform. And three months later, someone came to me and said, I've been thinking about that thing you posted three months ago, and I have to work with you. In the moment, I probably had two comments on it. But the ripple result was one that added lifeblood to our business in the form of revenue and a very enthusiastic client who told a lot of people about their journey working with us.

Steve Haase  11:01  
Another powerful way to see this in your business is when something doesn't work, it's easy to get, it's easy to see that as a failure. But when you shift your mindset, right, this is about mindset secrets for leaders and business owners. So when something doesn't work, let's say it's a product Initiative, or a sales campaign, what will often happen in an organization is finger pointing and blaming and trying to get out of the blast radius of the quote, unquote, failure. As a Superabound leader, your opportunity here is to feel that sense of disappointment, maybe even that sense of panic, and know that this is an opportunity to learn all of the lessons that are wrapped up in that moment, maybe it's things not to do, again, maybe it's assumptions that you made that you're you know, that you can learn from. But this is the opportunity to reflect on a big learning moment. And when you do that, when you do that, it's a chance to create a culture of experimentation, a culture where even, you know, failing, helps move you forward. Because then you can learn things, you can actually come together as a team who was willing to act and is bold enough to actually do things that may not work, which is the only way to actually even do new things.

Erin Aquin  12:29  
Yeah, it's not about bypassing disappointment, it's delaying your disappointment long enough, that you have a chance to actually do a deeper reflection, learn what you can learn. And maybe some of your referral results will come from that debrief. I cannot tell you how many times I've done this with clients. We've done this in our own business, where in that reflection period, a new in that reflection meeting on something that totally didn't work, like through and through a failure. But the next creative idea came forth from figuring out what happened, why it didn't work. Doing that is a creative process. And it's actually really interesting, because if you give yourself, I don't know about all of you, but I'm a very impatient person, I think it's sort of a feature of a lot of business owners and leaders. I want everything I do to work immediately. I don't want to have to delay this appointment ever. I don't want ripple results. I want everything I do to work. So knowing that about myself, the mindset shift keeps me out of the emotions that feel terrible. But also, I give myself that pause button, or I give my clients that pause button until after we've really done a deep dive and figured out what we need to know for the next experiment. Very often, I will walk out of those sessions feeling inspired or they will walk out of their reflection sessions feeling very inspired. And then you're like, Okay, I can feel disappointed now, except I don't except now I'm just hungry for the next thing. You know, it's not bypassing it's really just a way of not letting the disappointment mean everything.

Steve Haase  14:19  
Yeah, you can use it as fuel. If you're feeling disappointed, make sure you schedule a reflection meeting in order to gain those learnings because chances are that disappointment will not be present all that long if you have insights and inspiration for moving forward. Which brings us to the final secret and that is self invest like it is your job. And this one sounds a little outside kind of off on a tangent maybe you're like Dude, I'm here to run a company. Why are you telling me to self invest like it's my job. I'm just here for my company. The truth is your company doesn't care about you, your people as lovely as they are. Don't care about you your cause. summers as great as they are, don't care about you not in the way that you can, that you must, if you are going to be fueled, energized, creative and ready to work and create for the long term,

Erin Aquin  15:16  
okay, see, that sounds very harsh. I think all people care about us. But I think but here's the thing. You know, whether you believe that no one cares about you, or that everyone cares about you, and like, Oh, my company's different, my people really do care. It is no one else's job to care about you, it is your job. And if you are just next level, so committed as a leader, as a business owner, I know you all are, you have to make sure that part of your job. And part of your connection to your vision includes you being happy, and healthy, and well attended to it is your job to self invest so that you can do your best work. We're not like I mean, I mean, the thing is, we're not self investing just for our jobs. It's not like a selfless thing. Be selfish, you have to be selfish, if you are going to do incredible things in the world. And it is a you know, I It's so funny, I have this membership called your magical life. And the other day, I thought, Okay, I want to sit down and just plan out my whole year of all my self investment activities, you know, the monthly massages, and vacations and all of the things. And I said to Steve, I said to you, Steve, do you think people in the membership would find this interesting? Or would they just be like, I don't care what your schedule is, I polled my people, I said, Would would anyone appreciate a session where we just kind of like talk through the year and how to, you know, plan those vacations and plan those bigger self investment activities. And within 30 minutes, like I think almost everyone responded, that they that they would, I was just always funny to me. I'm like, no one cares what I do. But everyone's trying to solve this, this issue of how do we self invest in a way that makes our life as exciting as our business? And how do we self invest in a way that gives us energy for life and for our business. So it is a important thing.

Steve Haase  17:25  
And self investing is not just about your physical health, or even about your emotional health. It's about your relationships with the people that you love. It's about your relationship with yourself, what is your inner environment, like self investing goes so far beyond, you know, making sure your shoulders aren't tense? Like why are your shoulders tense? Maybe it's because you're sitting at your computer. And maybe it's because there are really important things that you need to address in your life in order to actually enjoy the fruits of your work, right? In our culture, the default will be work, work, work, work, work, because that's the thing that's important. And it's important to actually create a separate current within yourself a separate narrative that says, No, my life is what's important, my relationships, my impact is what is of primary importance. And my work will flow from that. And so that's what you need to self invest. Like, it's your job. Because we are so addicted to work, we are so drawn to, you know our contribution in the world that we can sometimes forget about ourselves, which is the whole point of our contribution. So that is the third secret is to actually make it your job to be deeply well be deeply fulfilled on every level that matters to you. And that is spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, all these quote unquote, soft things that actually make up the foundation of a Superabound life of a life that you are happy with. And one of the ways we're doing this is through a book study club. I know it sounds a little it sounds a little nerdy, but I gotta say, I love nerdy we are nerds over here. It's true. So join us as we dive into some of the best books out there on leadership and running a business and having a fantastic life. We're starting with Adam Grant's Hidden Potential. We're doing that this week. And we invite you to join us over at besuperabound.com/collective We'll see you there. Thanks for listening.