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#25: How to Elevate Your Business with a Growth Mindset (vs Fixed Mindset)

Samantha Bell
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Can the secret to entrepreneurial success be held in your mindset?

in this episode, we uncover the transformative power of the growth mindset in business.

Drawing from the work of American psychologist Carol Dweck, we discuss the limitations of a fixed mindset and the boundless potential of a growth one. By the end of this episode, you'll understand how your mindset could be the key to overcoming fear, embracing challenges, and unlocking new opportunities.

We start by laying out the stark contrast between a fixed and growth mindset, revealing the crippling effect of fear and comfort zones on our potential. But the real magic happens when we delve into the growth mindset - it's not about being the best, it's about being better than you were yesterday. We share proven strategies for nurturing this mindset, highlighting the importance of mindfulness, stress management, and self-compassion. No matter where you are on your entrepreneurial journey, this episode will equip you with the tools and insights to reimagine your capabilities, tackle obstacles head-on, and reach the top. So, ready to change your mindset, and maybe your life? Let's get started.

(full transcription below)

Main Points

01:18 - Unleash Success with a Powerful Mindset: The Key to Business Growth

03:04 - Exploring the Many Shades of Mindsets: What Influences Your Success?

04:01 - Mastering Your Mindset: The Secret to Business Transformation

07:11 - Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets: Your Path to Success

20:40 - Silence Self-Doubt, Embrace Resilience: The Entrepreneurial Mindset

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Thank you so much for being here! I look forward to seeing you for the next episode.

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The Brilliant Business Beautiful Life Podcast is dedicated to you - because you deserve the business – and life -
of your dreams!

PS. Download the Brilliant Business Beautiful Life Playbook and start designing the business and life you deserve today!

LISTEN + SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS + SPOTIFY

Hi, I’m Samantha Bell

I’m all about helping you build the business – and life – you’ve always wanted.

Listen in for the simple, actionable strategies, mindset shifts, and practices you need to make your business thrive. Plus, a healthy dose of self-care, health, and wellness so you can live the life you absolutely adore while building your beautiful business.

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Transcription

00:00

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here with me again. I want to open today's episode with a quote from Professor Carol Dweck ‘True self confidence is the courage to be open to welcome change and new ideas, regardless of their source. Real self confidence is not reflected in a title, an expensive suit, a fancy car or a series of acquisitions. It is reflected in your mindset. Your readiness to grow.’ Isn't that great? I love how she focuses on confidence and courage being directly linked to mindset and not possessions. Welcome to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast, where we share simple, actionable strategies plus the mindset and wellness practices you need to build the business and life you love. Head to https://www.16thavecreative.com/playbook and download your free guide to design the business and life you deserve today. I'm your host, Samantha Bell, and this is the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast. Are you ready for the business and life of your dreams? Let's get started.

01:18 - Unleash Success with a Powerful Mindset: The Key to Business Growth

Mindset is a common buzzword that we've all heard a lot about. Particularly, the term mindset is popular among business owners, and it's for good reason, because your mindset affects everything you think, feel, and achieve, not just in your business, but throughout your entire life. Now we're about to dive deep into the very core of your entrepreneurial success. You guessed it, your mindset. As a current or aspiring female entrepreneur, your path to success is paved with incredible opportunities and challenges. Whether you succeed or not, it all starts with how you think. You may think there's only a couple of different mindsets, but there's actually quite a broad spectrum of mindsets and, being human, we tend to slide between them all, with particular mindsets dominating our thoughts during specific times. A mindset is simply what you believe. It's how you see yourself, how you see the world, and how this viewpoint influences your behaviours and actions, your outlook and your attitudes. Sometimes, we see people's outlook or personality change, and this happens because your dominating mindset can shift depending on your environment, the challenge you're facing or even the company you're in. That's an example of the externally controlled mindset versus the internally controlled mindset. Depending on how confident you are in a particular situation will depend on whether external or internal controls win during that moment.

03:04 - Exploring the Many Shades of Mindsets: What Influences Your Success?

Mindsets generally sit in pairs that are opposite to each other. For example, you may have a consumer mindset versus a creator mindset. You may like to work as an individual rather than a team. You might be an introvert or an extrovert. Think rather than feel. Be negative or positive. Feel scarcity or abundance. Be productive or defensive, be outcome-focused or process-driven. You might be closed or open to new ideas. A perfectionist, or you might strive for excellence. So, you can see from all those things, all that big list, you've probably either consciously or subconsciously acted in most of these different mindsets at different times. Now they're all super powerful and they all have a direct impact on your life, your joy, your outcomes, and your business.

04:01 - Mastering Your Mindset: The Secret to Business Transformation

You may have noticed I didn't mention all the mindsets, and that's on purpose because today I want to chat about two mindsets that can potentially explode your business growth or snuff it out like blowing out a candle. They are fixed mindset and growth mindset. Now stop for a moment and have a think about those words fixed and growth. As a business owner, it's a powerful practice to take a few moments to work out which of these mindsets comes naturally to you and if that mindset is what you need to embrace to achieve the success that you want. So what are fixed and growth mindsets, and do you have a healthy relationship with them? Are they working for you or against you, and how can you use them to help you in your business. Let's start with what they are. Carol Dweck, who I quoted at the beginning of the episode, she's a mindset guru.

04:58

If you haven't heard of Carol before, she's a very well-respected American psychologist who focuses on mindset and motivation. She has written many excellent books. She's studied at Yale, and she's been on the faculty at Stanford and Harvard universities, among others. So she's one really smart lady, and you may be familiar with one of her books ‘Mindset: the New Psychology of Success.’ In this book, I think Carol sums up the definition of growth mindset and fixed mindset perfectly. She says, in summary, in the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail or if you're not the best, it's all been wasted.

05:44

The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing, regardless of the outcome. They're tackling problems, charting new courses and working on important issues. Isn't that interesting? This means that people with a fixed mindset believe their abilities, their intelligence and their talent are fixed, that they're just born with them and they're limited. They must work within those limits and they can't get any smarter or any better at things. They most likely find themselves constantly seeking the attention and approval of others. They need justification that they're doing well. They need to know they're bright or gifted or have a strong need to always be right. They need constant validation of who they are and how well they're doing In business.

06:39

People with a fixed mindset. They're actually less likely to push themselves to try new things or to embrace creativity or to step out of their comfort zone. Why? Because they have a fear of failure. What this does is put a ceiling on their potential and it caps their success. They'll see others growing, innovating and building really wealthy brands and they'll be wondering why they can't do the same thing. It all comes down to mindset.

07:11 - Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets: Your Path to Success

Now, the flip side of the fixed mindset is the growth mindset, which embraces, confidence and independent thought. If you have a growth mindset, you understand that your talents and abilities are not fixed and they can be developed. They can be improved, you can learn and strive to be better through persisting even when things don't go as you planned. A growth mindset fosters resilience and creativity, plus the determination to keep going and use obstacles as vehicles for growth and opportunity. If you've listened to my podcast before, you'll know I'm always talking about obstacles being opportunities. In episode 20, I actually go into detail about reframing challenges as opportunities and how doing this can open up a world of opportunities that you didn't know even existed. And this is the essence of a growth mindset Simply by reframing your mindset you can conquer your fears. You can achieve elevated levels of success in your business. I mentioned earlier how confidence in certain circumstances will determine which mindset clips into play at any given moment.

08:33

A lot of female entrepreneurs are naturally aligned to a growth mindset. It's what makes them take that leap of faith in themselves. It takes them out of the safe, secure nine-to-five corporate world and allows them to embrace their dreams and do the hard things so they can live a life of excellence, joy and fulfilment on their own terms. Even if they're not supremely confident people, they have a strong belief in themselves and in their ability to do more and to be better. They're not afraid of other people's opinions, they're not afraid to chase their dreams, and they're not afraid to step outside their comfort zone. Can you relate to that? If you're an entrepreneur building your own business or thinking about it, you probably can, and guess what? It's exhilarating! Now here's what I love about learning and growing in your own business.

09:33

One day, you start, most likely with little to no experience in navigating the online business world, the whole new world, and there's so much you don't know, and your goals and your dreams are limited at that time by what you currently have in your bank of expertise and what you currently believe. But a few years later down the track in your entrepreneurial life, as you've progressed in your business journey, you wake up one day and you feel such a sense of accomplishment and achievement for all the thousands of things you've learned and how much you've grown as a business owner and as a person. And the beauty is you can see even more possibilities for your future. Your horizon is even broader than when you started and your opportunity for creating even more ways of solving problems for clients becomes limitless. So does the capacity for the impact you create in the world, and so does the capacity for your profit margin. It's exciting. You really feel energised and proud of how much you've grown and achieved when you stop and look back. And one of the other great things is you actively think in terms of expansion as your dreams also continue to grow and expand. And this all stems from your mindset, from a growth mindset. This mindset is all about embracing challenges, assisting in the face of setbacks and seeing effort as the path to mastery.

11:17

So ask yourself do I have a healthy mindset? You might think you do, but think about how you respond to challenges or failures. Do you feel devastated, worthless, stupid, or embarrassed? Or are you curious about why you didn't achieve what you set out to, and do you want to know how you can do it better next time? Do you wish you didn't even try? Are you going to try it again and do it even better next time? There's a clear distinction between these negative and positive responses, isn't there Now? I'm no psychologist, but I guarantee you will feel better, you will perform better, and you will enjoy your life more if you think and act positively. When you don't get the results that you want Now, that's all fine. But how do you embrace a growth mindset to help your business grow?

12:15

A growth mindset requires you to do two things to be brave and to be bold. Staying in a fixed mindset means you will naturally gravitate towards providing services and activities that demonstrate your strengths and abilities, but do not provide any opportunity to reveal your weaknesses. You might think that's a good thing, because you want people to see your strengths and abilities. We do. That is a positive, but if you're focusing only on showing strengths and abilities and hiding weaknesses, this is harmful to your business because you are operating from a place of fear and you're staying stagnant. And neither of those things are entrepreneurial traits because you will miss out on opportunities, particularly if they take you out of your comfort zone because you won't do them. So therefore, the first thing to do is to find ways to be brave and to be bold. Acknowledge areas where you adopt a growth mindset and the results you enjoy from this way of thinking. Then work out where you are stuck in a fixed mindset, the areas where you think to yourself that there's only one way to do this, where you say to yourself “I've already mastered this concept, so I don't need to focus on it anymore,” or “People always tell me I'm amazing, so I don't need to improve.” Any topics where you have these types of thoughts mean you've limited yourself and put the brakes on becoming more successful. Have a think about what you have already improved in your business. What prompted you to take that action? What was your initial perception of the problem? What steps did you take to analyse and improve, and how do you feel now that you've purposely made positive changes? And when you start to think in this way? It's easier to repeat those improvements the next time you have challenges or things that don't turn out the way you want them to Now.

14:29

Another way to embrace a growth mindset is to look to others for inspiration. It's a great idea to take inspiration from other great entrepreneurs. They can be either people that you know in person or mentors, people that you admire online. Find someone you respect, someone who has grown a successful business that's in alignment with their purpose, and think about how they got to where they are. What did they do when they failed? Because, guaranteed, they've failed many, many times, but they got back up. How did they respond when people said no or said, oh, that's a terrible idea, you can't do that. What challenges have they faced and how did they overcome them? Read their books, listen to their podcasts, watch their TED Talk. Absorb as much as you can from them. Your mind is a sponge. It's ready to take on all their wisdom and experiences to help you on your own journey. So take advantage of your innate unlimited capacity for learning and be inspired by the people who've already gone before you.

15:42

Another way to embrace a growth mindset is to welcome feedback. You can't grow, improve or innovate without feedback. So a simple way of getting this feedback is to survey every single client you work with, get their opinion on every project they do with you, ask some deep questions that probe into your services how you've delivered your services, your pricing, the outcomes they've achieved since working with you. How was your communication? Where did you do well? What can you do better? Are there new ways you can add products to your ecosystem to increase your revenue, to better serve your clients? Can you create processes that will speed up your delivery or reduce confusion in communicating with your clients? Where are you wasting your time? What areas do you need to enhance your skills in? Look at your skillset, where can you make that better? So all these little things are questions that great entrepreneurs ask themselves regularly. Now, it takes some grit to do this because you may not like the answers that you get, but being brave and bold in doing this research can only make you better, it can only make you more profitable, and it can only help you increase your impact in the world.

17:09

Another concept that I love, which is very helpful to embrace the growth mindset, is the concept of the power of yet. Again, this is from Carol Dweck and in one of her TED talks, she talks about the power of yet. It's the concept that understands you're not great at something yet, but with time, effort and training, you can improve and even become amazing at it. The difference between the power of yet and a no or a can't is enormous and, depending on how you frame your thoughts, is either going to help you soar or make you fail or flop. I don't like using the word fail, make you flop. So this concept of yet means no, maybe I can't do it yet, but I'm going to work at that and I'm going to be able to do that one day. And then working out what it is you need to do to get better at it, to learn it, to master it. You can keep improving, improving, improving. So develop a state of yet and you will open the door to even more possibilities in your business and in your life. And it just keeps you fresh and energised too, because possibilities are engaging, possibilities make you happy. Another way is to just keep learning, and this all ties in with the power of yet. It's embracing learning.

18:43

When I was at school, I did great in the subjects I liked, not so great in the ones that didn't interest me. I could learn anything I put my mind to, but where I didn't put any effort into the topics I didn't care about. I didn't do as well in those areas as I could have, and what I realise now is that by not even trying, I let myself down. I limited my opportunities to think bigger or more expansively, and in the process of doing that, I possibly let myself down by stopping myself discovering new things that I could potentially have enjoyed, or enjoyed learning.

19:25

When running your online business. there are going to be things that come along with business ownership that don't interest you, that you find difficult to learn or you don't want to learn or don't want to know anything about. But by shifting how you approach these things, you open yourself up to better experiences, and to having more fun, and by practicing, getting out of your comfort zone and tackling these things, you're expanding your mind. You're expanding your opportunities. But don't just take that attitude to the things you don't like. Spend some time and energy learning more about what you're already good at. Cone your skills when you think you've mastered them. Learn more, challenge yourself more. Eventually, your brain will be so fired up and expansive that learning will become second nature and something you actually look forward to and crave. Learning keeps you vibrant. It keeps your mind young. Curiosity is such a fun thing to incorporate into your business and into your daily life, so embrace it, keep curious, keep learning and you will reap the rewards.

20:40 - Silence Self-Doubt, Embrace Resilience: The Entrepreneurial Mindset

One of the most effective things you can do in your business journey is to silence self-doubt and replace it with self-belief. Overcoming self-doubt takes one specific thing, and that is practising self-compassion. Create yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would give to a friend who's going through a challenging time. Also, celebrate your small wins and recognise that setbacks are part of growth. It's being resilient. Resilience is your entrepreneurial armour. It's your ability to bounce back from adversity even stronger than before. It helps you get better. Focus on your business journey, as I keep saying, are inevitable, but it's how you respond to them that determines your trajectory. You may not associate these with a growth mindset, but incorporating mindfulness and stress management into your daily routine is vital in your entrepreneurial toolkit. Mindfulness techniques like meditation and deep breathing they can help you stay grounded and focused. So prioritise self-care, being kind to yourself, maintaining a really lovely balance between your business life and your home life and getting help and support when you need it. They're all integral to your success.

22:17

So, now that we've unpacked a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, it's time to think about where you feel you currently sit. Which mindset do you feel you currently have? If you've already have a growth mindset, that is amazing, but don't stop there. Keep nurturing it and growing that attitude. Keep finding ways that you can embrace it even more and deepen that attitude within your daily life and within every aspect of your business. Keep looking for opportunities and keep looking for ways to improve and grow and get creative. If you're more naturally aligned to a fixed mindset, have a think about whether that's something you feel you want to change. Would embracing a growth mindset improve your life and your business, or do you want to stay stuck in that fixed mindset? Have a think about that. By embracing a growth mindset, though, you are conquering self-doubt, you're building resilience, you're fostering a positive attitude and practicing mindset. By doing these things, you'll not only navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship, but you will thrive in the process.

23:37

Now I'm going to leave you with another quote from Carol Dweck. You can tell I'm a bit of a fan, and it's for good reason. This is her quote. ‘Many growth-minded people didn't even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It's ironic the top is where the fixed mindset people hunger to be, but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.’ Isn't that amazing. I love that quote. I want you to say that to yourself. Embrace it and take that on every day and, as a by-product, your enthusiasm will get you to the top.

24:23

I hope this episode has awakened you to the power of your mindset and helped to make you more aware of where your current mindset sits and what you can do to change that mindset if you need to, and how to elevate your business using this powerful tool. So thanks so much for being here with me today and remember your success story begins with the way you think You've got this. I'll see you next week on the Brilliant Business, beautiful Life Podcast. Thanks so much for listening. I'd love to know your biggest takeaway from today's episode, so leave me a comment below or send a DM on Instagram. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe button wherever you listen to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life Podcast and feel free to share it with someone else who'll love it too. I look forward to seeing you for the next episode and remember, the time is now for your brilliant business and the beautiful life you adore.