To have an online business mindset is to be the visionary and not just the technician. Many who transition to online businesses make the mistake of bringing their old employee mindset with them. In Michael Gerber’s The E-myth Revisited, he points out the difference between the mindset of an employee and that of an entrepreneur who owns an online business.
The employee is told what to do in order to play a “part” in the running of a business or company. So often, an employee decides to jump ship because they imagine how nice it would be to not be told what to do, to make more money and run the show. When things go wrong they don’t see themselves as the problem. They’ve been “programmed” to think that working as a technician gives them the result. When in fact as a business owner, a different mindset is required.
Online Business Mindset – Limiting Beliefs
All sorts of factors are at play when someone shifts from employee to entrepreneur. But as an employee, you get paid whether a company is profitable or losing money. So as you become accustomed to working in a certain way, you imagine that’s also how to run a business. This can work against you, especially if you’ve been working a certain way for some time. As a business owner, you need to lift your vision and see how you can acquire more customers and drive your business forwards. A technician’s role is much smaller.
A technician’s job might be a smaller part of the business as a whole. If you’re in the habit of working for a pay cheque, you’re all the more likely to fall into this trap. Working on the business, and in the business is the role of the entrepreneur. The technician only works in the business.
Online Business Mindset – Job Vs. Business
When someone transitions from a job to a business of their own, all sorts of problems can surface. Many of these are old thinking patterns and limiting beliefs.
In a job, you get used to a pattern of behaviour which serves you. In a business, this doesn’t serve you! How you think of yourself, and your role in your business can be very limiting. If you don’t become aware of your limiting thinking, this can ruin your personal and business growth.
An online business, for example, is global. Most people are not used to thinking in global terms. We think locally; especially if we have previously worked for a local business or even owned one.
If you’ve owned a small local business, you will likely be in the train of thinking about using advertising on a small scale. An online business is globally scalable, and so such thinking will dramatically limit the growth of your business.
The Upper Limit Problem
In “The Big Leap” Gay Hendricks talks about the upper limit problem as a self sabotaging mechanism which stops us attaining our largest goals. “When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure”.
This can be a big problem for online business owners. Their very beliefs will often sabotage their own success. If they are doubtful that they deserve success, or uncomfortable with some element of building an online business, they will use it as a reason to quit or limit their business growth.
Unconscious beliefs can act as invisible barriers to success. Just when things seen to go well, something happens which halts your progress.
Unfortunately our beliefs are often hardwired into us as small children, without our conscious control. Elements from our childhood are embedded deep within our unconscious minds and they still control us, even decades later.
An example of an upper limit problem is feeling guilt over success. If you carry any limiting beliefs over having too much money, or feeling too good, you’ll self sabotage when guilt raises it’s head and stops you from feeling good for wanting more abundance.
Online Business Mindset For Success
The entrepreneurs who succeed online don’t do much that is different from those who fail! Those who fail online just give up before those who succeed. A successful online entrepreneur has failed many times. The difference being is that they look upon their “failures” as feedback and part of the entrepreneur’s journey. See also affiliate psychology for more on this.
An online affiliate business takes time and effort before it produces the flowers of your efforts. Many quit before they see even a bud!
A good analogy for an online business is the Chinese Bamboo Tree. In a six-week period the Chinese bamboo tree grows to a staggering ninety feet tall. However, the tree takes apparently 5 years to emerge from the ground, and only if it’s well nurtured.
Most people who know nothing of the Chinese Bamboo would do the same as those online business owners who quit after 6 months. They would give up on the tree, if they didn’t know it’s gestation period.
Start With Why
In Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why”, he points out that the greatest business owners and entrepreneurs created amazing businesses because of their “why”.
If you look at top companies such as Apple and Microsoft, you’ll see they will have a mission statement. Apple’s is “to bring the best personal computing products and support to students, educators, designers, scientists, engineers, businesspersons and consumers in over 140 countries around the world.”
Microsoft is a technology company whose mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. We strive to create local opportunity, growth, and impact in every country around the world.
Starting with “why?” is powerful because it’s a big enough reason to keep going despite whatever amount of success you can achieve in monetary terms. In Start With Why, Simon uses various examples of why companies overshadow their rivals.
In all cases, a clear and concise mission and purpose was the driving factor which propelled businesses and individuals to overcome the odds. Without a mission, bigger than your own self interest, it’s much more difficult to sustain an online business, or any purpose driven idea to fulfilment.
Summary
Having the mindset for an online business is pretty important if you want it to succeed. All manner of things will get in your way: well meaning friends and relatives, your own unconscious bias and habits and underlying beliefs which stop your from progressing.
Having a clear and meaningful objective, mission statement and vision is clearly something which matters. Top businesses and companies have them. Without a clearly defined goal it’s impossible to hit it! But it’s also important to have a “why” which is greater than your own self interest.
Most online business owners who succeed have worked for some time and overcome many of these obstacles. See also super affiliate mindset for more on this topic.
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