Part 1: How to Develop an Experimental Mindset (The Mind Work it *Actually* Takes)
Episode 649: Show Notes
How many times have you struggled to make a decision in business out of fear that you’d make the wrong decision? What if instead, you viewed every decision as an opportunity to learn, rather than succeed or fail? Today on the show we unpack what it means to have an experimental mindset, how to foster that for yourself and within your team, and how it can free you from regret and help you make decisions that will help you learn and grow.
Tuning in you’ll get a taste of what we've been chatting about with our clients inside the Incubator; from how unrealistic expectations can warp your mindset, to how to figure out what you really want. We’ve seen so many of our clients struggle to react to success and failure and as a result, we wanted to discuss examples of actionable strategies. Learn what you can implement within your company and your team so that if you're in a similar situation, you have strategies to help you adapt to any situation!
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Developing an Experimental Mindset
We’ve seen too many businesses get stuck in the planning and research phase which stops them from getting the information they need in order to move forward. Often this happens due to a fear of failure. As a result, we wanted to create specific training to talk with our clients about how everything in one’s business is evolving. This includes your goals, the work that it takes to get there, the headspace that you need to be in, and everything in between. While you might be intellectually aware that business isn't linear and reaching your goal isn't linear, you can’t truly understand what that feels like until you’ve gone through the process yourself.
How Identifying What You Want Can Help You Make Decisions
While many of us are aware that we’ll need to make small — and sometimes big — pivots in life and business, the reality of it can often be overwhelming. And because a lot of our clients aren’t following a guide map that someone defined for them in childhood, they can often be quite confused about what they actually want.
When past clients have encountered a crossroads and need to pivot or recalibrate, we often see them reacting in the following two ways, neither of which is ideal. In the first scenario, they feel like they’ve failed, it completely derails their mindset, and they really struggle to get moving again. Or they succeed, and all of a sudden, it's not a challenge anymore. And they react by searching for new challenges. So, instead of perfecting and continuing to scale what is already working for them, they decide it's not challenging enough and deliberately break things that are already very effective.
Because we’ve seen so many businesses fall into these traps, we want to arm you with thoughts and ideas on how you can practice being experimental in a way that decreases the feeling of failure and also gives you guidance on how you can incrementally move towards a much larger and audacious goal.
How to Separate Your Self Worth From Your Business
We talked about a few things that our clients need to let go of inside this training. The first is letting go of the addiction to timeline, urgency, and speed. Often we create artificial deadlines that are simply there to give us boxes to tick and in the long run it doesn’t help you or the business. It’s also important to separate the wins and losses of your business from your sense of self-worth. While it may feel great when your business is doing well, it can be detrimental to your mental health when your company is not in a season of growth. It also serves as an important reminder that it’s unrealistic for a business to be profitable every single month, and it's unrealistic for a business to make the same amount of money every single month.
When You Have An Experimental Mindset, You’re Always Learning
When you own a business, the only way you’ll learn is by doing. And even if you make mistakes along the way, they allow for the opportunity to learn, grow, and make better choices next time. While you can’t always be certain that you’re making the right decision, the art of choosing to have an experimental mindset can be extremely beneficial since it allows you the flexibility to make mistakes and find solutions. In fact, when you foster an experimental mindset, nothing is a mistake because everything is experimentation, which means that all you can do is learn.
If creating a sustainable and profitable business is important to you, then checking out The Incubator needs to be your next step! Have questions? Send us a DM or head straight to our website and apply! P.S. applying is totally free!
Quote This
When you foster an experimental mindset, nothing is a mistake. Nothing is a mistake. Everything's in experimentation. And so if everything's an experiment and nothing's a mistake, then all you can do is learn.
Highlights
Developing an Experimental Mindset [0:10:51]
How Identifying What You Want Can Help You Make Decisions [0:12:45]
How to Separate Your Self Worth from Your Business [0:15:04]
When You Have an Experimental Mindset, You’re Always Learning [0:22:53]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Experimental Mindset, Learning, Success, Failure, Pivot, Mistakes, Evolve
