How to Develop an Experimental Mindset and Curiosity Culture in Your Small Business
We have seen too many business owners allow themselves to get stuck in a planning and research phase (because planning is fun!) that the big dreamy goals they have for their business never really come to fruition. The #1 thing that’s helped our business reach 7-figures, employ us and our amazing team, allow us to take time away and live Life-First, grow (when we want to) and sustain is the fact that we’ve created an Experimental mindset for ourselves and a culture of curiosity for our team.
In today’s blog we go over how to develop an experimental mindset not just for you and your business but how to also implement it within your growing business.
What’s an Experimental Mindset
Inside our program that helps service business owners soar past 6-figures, The Incubator, we started noticing a theme. We’d be on a coaching call and could feel the frustration thick in the air. Frustrations from things not going exactly as planned. Goals being changed and apologizing for it. Priorities shifting (because #life). But when asked about what was actually happening in their business things didn’t look as bleak as the energy in the room felt. The only *actual* issue was that whatever was going on wasn’t part of the plan so, therefore, it felt like a failure.
Right then and there we broke down our experimental mindset policies here at Boss Project.
So what does this have to do with an experimental mindset? It’s a mindset shift that business owners need to have in order to keep growing and moving forward. It’s knowing that the things you are creating in your business are ultimately experiments. Some things you create will soar and other things won’t be as successful. Having an experimental mindset is recognizing the facts of what happened, taking that information and then implementing what you learned to move forward.
We want business owners to have an experimental mindset so that they can be flexible. Your business isn’t linear so take action, learn from those actions and then move forward.
Letting go of timelines, urgency and speed
The second step in developing an experimental mindset is letting go of what we thought was required to run a business. Repeat after us,
“I will let go of the addiction to timeline, urgency and speed that we have created for ourselves.”
We seem to all make these arbitrary timelines for ourselves where tasks or goals all have to be accomplished within a certain timeline. And if we don’t accomplish that then we’ve failed. It’s this constant cycle of creating a timeline, then feeling rushed, then feeling a false sense of urgency, then feeling stressed. It doesn’t have to be that way! It’s time to let go of our addiction to timeline, urgency, and speed.
We started looking at the actual journey we were on in order to reach an outcome. The goal can shift and still provide us that outcome.
Encouraging an Experimental Mindset and Curiosity Within Your Team
Now that you are understanding the importance of creating an experimental mindset for yourself and your business, it’s time to introduce this idea to your team.
One of the first things we do when a new hire comes on board is introduce them to our values. One of those values being lightheartedness. Why is lightheartedness one of our values? Well, like we’ve talked about throughout this blog, there’s only so much you can control. You can have goals and aspirations but in reality the only thing you have control over is the steps that lead up to those goals. The majority of the time we have extreme flexibility when it comes to resetting expectations, deadlines or projects. The way that we uphold this value is to overly communicate our needs and share a measure of what’s on our plate so the proper team members can step in if need be. The Boss Project Team is here to impact others and have a heck of a lot of fun while doing it. Not to mention, by taking off the pressure, you’ll automatically improve creativity and productivity.
Another way to encourage an experimental mindset for your team is by introducing an MVP. An MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. Our team isn’t free from perfectionism either. That’s why we talk a lot about MVP versions of things. We don’t want our team to get stuck in creating the perfect “whatever.” We want them to do the things! We encourage them not to get stuck and sit on ideas but instead to take action.
Another part of having an MVP version of something is that it’s okay if you aren’t 100% done with something in order to submit it for feedback. We understand that creations of any kind are going to need another set of eyes and so we encourage our team to submit things even before they’re done. Then as a team we can make edits and get it ready to go out the door.
P.S. It’s why another one of our values is collaboration.
We want to encourage you and your team to have a willingness of letting go of that perfection, get it out there, and then see what happens.
Is The Incubator Right For You?
Owning a business can feel lonely sometimes and you might not have anyone telling you that not being perfect is more than okay. That’s what The Incubator is for (and so much more). It’s filled with business owners who support one another and can come together with their greatest fears and concerns. We collectively, as a group, are able to show you the facts and help you take a step back so you realize that hardly anything is a step back, it’s more of a shift and a move forward.
If you think the Incubator may be the next move for your business, then take 10 minutes to fill out our short application here. We have conversations with everyone who applies before they invest a penny to make sure your business and goals align with The Incubator to yield you the best results, so go ahead and fill out this short application.
Once you apply, DM us on Instagram @bossproject and let
