The 3 biggest growth mindset mistakes small business owners make

Forget reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic — one of the key things school teachers are told to focus on today is a growth mindset. And they’re teaching it to kids as young as five!

Why? Because we’re increasingly aware that the key to success isn’t what we do, but how we think.

When you’re building a business there can be a million concrete reasons why you fail to hit the goals you’ve set. You’re not making the sales you need, your finances are a mess, you’re not marketing yourself properly…the root of every one of these problems is the wrong mindset.

There are usually two big mindset mistakes behind business owners thinking they have to do everything by themselves:

The belief that no one can do things as well as you can.

The belief that you can’t afford help.

Both are false. When it comes to your core business activity, sure, you can do the lion’s share. But when it comes to everything else? Not so much. If you’re an accountant, you’re not necessarily a whizz with design or writing so just think how many more clients you could squeeze in if you outsourced some of your marketing tasks to a graphic designer, content writer or VA.

And if you’re not an accountant but you’re still muddling your way through your own finances, you’ll save time and money by hiring an accounting professional to take over. When outsourcing any part of your business to a pro, you soon find that not only do they do a better job than you, they’ll do it far quicker, which puts paid to the ‘I can’t afford help’ excuse too. You’ll save yourself so much time that the extra clients you can take on will more than pay for the tasks you’ve outsourced.

This is a common mistake many SME owners commit in the early days of running their business — merging business finances with personal ones. Again, it comes down to a mindset problem. You’re not thinking like a business owner. You’re treating your business as a hobby rather than a professional enterprise.

Not only will this make you look amateurish to your customers, but you run the risk of errors in your bookkeeping as you struggle to keep track of which expenses relate to the business and which to your personal spending.

Luckily there’s an easy fix. In the past, setting up a business bank account was an arduous process, with multiple forms, lengthy waiting periods and no guarantee you’d even be accepted. And that’s without the worry about how you’ll cover the huge fees when you’re just starting out.

Now you can open an affordable Countingup business account in 5 minutes from your mobile phone. And because your new account can be linked to your bookkeeping, you don’t need to worry about accounting errors come tax time either.

We’re bombarded with stats about how many businesses fail within the first couple of years and stories of how hard it is to set up a business in the first place. And yes, there is a lot of hard work involved. But don’t let fear paralyse you.

This is where a growth mindset really comes into play. Instead of thinking, ‘this is all really hard, I don’t know how to do this’, think ‘yes, this is really hard, I don’t know how to do this…yet. I will figure it out’.

Then find a way to do just that.

There are a tonne of resources out there to help budding entrepreneurs. When it comes to the legal nuts and bolts of setting up a business, www.gov.uk has you covered. For everything else, check out our blog where we help you learn about marketing, controlling your cash flow, dealing with tax and invoices and other essential business issues that you’ll encounter on your entrepreneurial journey.

When it comes to running and growing a successful business, remember this equation:

The right mindset = The right actions = Success.