5 key differences between successful and struggling business owners

It's not so much about the actual practical day-to-day things that business owners *do* that determine success (or struggle)—it's about mindset and the words between your ears. In today's episode, I'm sharing 5 of these key differences between successful business owners and those who are struggling.

– Why constantly looking for external validation means that you're not trusting yourself, and how you can shift your experience.
– Why worrying about the things you cannot control is a waste of time and energy, and why it's important to focus on what you can control instead.
– What “imperfect action” really means and what you *actually* need to know to keep moving forwards.
– The importance of prioritising long term growth over short term wins.
– How setbacks are actually a lesson in disguise and how you can make the most of this growth.

 

 
Today, I'm sharing five of the key differences that I've noticed between successful business owners and struggling business owners. Now, back when I first started my business, I always thought that there was some kind of secret that successful business owners had figured out, some magic thing that they were doing that the rest of us didn't figure out.

And over the couple of years that I've been in business, I've realised that the biggest difference between the ones who succeed and the ones who don't is actually what's happening between the years. Most of it is mindset-related, not the actual practical things that they are doing day to day.

There's not some magical Instagram algorithm hack that they've figured out or some way that nobody else has realised to sell more of their offers. They are doing things differently mindset-wise. 

 

#1: Struggling business owners tend to look for external validation that they're doing the right thing.

They want somebody else to tell them, Hey, yeah, the decision you made, that's the right one, or the things that you're posting, those are the right things. Whereas the people who are successful business owners, tend to trust their own gut and their own intuition a little bit more and this makes sense, right?

When you're new to doing anything at all, of course, you want to make sure that you're doing it okay and you're going to look to others for advice and tips and confirmation that you're doing the right thing. But at a certain point, you need to learn how to make good decisions on your own. This is a crucial part of succeeding in business is learning how to make good decisions, effective decisions.

And if you are always outsourcing your decisions to other people, then the business that you end up building, might not look anything like the business that you actually want, it might end up being somebody else's vision entirely. 

Now, part of this whole process is learning to trust your own experience and your own intuition and it also means knowing what your vision for your business is, what your vision for your life is, and making decisions based on that, not based on a book that you read or a post that you saw. 

 

#2: Struggling business owners tend to worry about things that they can't control.

Whereas successful business owners tend to focus more on the things that they can control. Worrying about the things that you can't control is such a waste of your time and energy. You can't control whether the Instagram algorithm shows your content to the right people. You can't control whether anybody shows up for your webinar or not. You can't control how many people will buy in your next launch but you can influence these outcomes with the actions that you can control, actions that are within your control, like doing audience research so that the content that you're creating resonates with the right people or writing a really awesome pre webinar sequence so that people are more enticed to attend or nailing your launch strategy. So that more people are likely to buy in your next launch. 

These are things that you can control and there are much better use of your time and your energy than worrying about the things that might not happen anyway. 

 

#3: Struggling business owners need to know all of the steps and have it perfectly planned out.

Whereas successful business owners just need to know the next step and the end goal. This podcast is called Imperfect Action for a reason. I believe that imperfect action is the secret sauce to success and if you ask anyone successful in business or in life, they will tell you, they've taken a bunch of blind leaps and they've figured it out along the way, and it's scary. 

But the more imperfect action that you take, the easier it becomes. Your comfort zone begins to expand and it becomes a lot more comfortable for you to figure those things out and you begin to realise that actually, I can figure it out as I go. I'm way more capable than I ever could have imagined.

 

#4: Struggling business owners tend to prioritise the short term.

Whereas successful business owners tend to prioritise the longer term. The things that create long-term growth don't usually bring you wins in the short term.

For example, prioritising creating your online course is going to mean that maybe you have to say no to one extra client in the short term, which means less revenue in the short term. But in the long term, you've now built a new revenue-generating asset. You can now go and sell that online course, and that's going to bring income into your business.

Successful business owners know that they have to make these sacrifices in the short term to achieve that longer-term vision and they're okay with this because they have their eye on the prize. They know what they're working towards, and they're not going to delay that or give up on that for a short-term win and then not worrying about how many likes their Instagram posts got the other day or how many people unsubscribed from their latest email because they're too busy laying the foundations for the business that they want five years from now not the little wins that they want tomorrow. 

 

#5: Unsuccessful business owners treat setbacks as a sign that they should give up.

Whereas successful business owners treat setbacks as a lesson in disguise. Let's say that you've spent all of this time creating an online course and nobody bought it.

Now you could say, Oh, it's a failure. Nobody wants it. This sucks. And you could give up or you could get curious and you could find out why nobody bought it, make some tweaks with the insights that you get from that, and then try again. 

And there's a lesson in pretty much everything if you look hard enough. Successful business owners know this, they also know that setbacks are pretty inevitable part of the journey and they have the confidence to know that whatever setbacks they face, they can overcome them because the more setbacks that you do face, the easier it becomes to overcome them. 

The more resilient you get, the more grit, tenacity, whatever you want to call it, you begin to develop and you build that self-confidence because you know, Oh, if I've overcome that, well, I can overcome this as well. 

 

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