Podcast #18 The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Are we born with an entrepreneurial mindset? No. No we’re not. 

In today’s episode, I’m going to be giving you 7 characteristics that you need to develop in order to strengthen your entrepreneurial mindset, some myths that are out there, and what you can do to help yourself out in order to do this. 

I want to share with you the things that I see stand out in successful entrepreneurs. Have you ever thought to yourself, “Maybe they’re just born like that?” Or “They have skills that I’ll never be able to develop?”

We ALL have the ability to become entrepreneurs, and successful entrepreneurs at that, if we put in the time, learn the skills we need, and take actionable steps to get us to where we want to go.

Being successful isn’t handed to anyone. You have to get the mentorship, grab the opportunities that present themselves in your life, and be aware of the nudges that your higher power is sending to you.

It takes discipline and resilience. These are two steps I’ll be covering in today's episode, but as you grow yourself, and your business, you have to have discipline around your calendar, your health, relationships, and your boundaries. 

I remember when I first started my journey and I felt like I didn’t know enough, felt like I wasn’t enough and I felt like I didn’t know how to move forward, even though I had a coach. Self-doubt is something SO many of us experience. But we can work to CHANGE that. Change how you talk to yourself, change how you think about yourself. You do have the ability to turn your self-defeating thoughts into empowering ones. Self-doubt needs to be obliterated!

I encourage you to take action, accept your responsibility for your outcomes in life, and find that mentor, or that coach that you need. Keep improving, and keep growing. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Remember that!

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*Note- The Brand Disruptors Podcast is produced for the ear and made to be heard not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it in print.

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Greetings greetings, greetings, greetings. Oh, here we go. Yay. We are alive. Yay. All right. Y'all let's talk about this. Are you born with an entrepreneurial mindset? No, we're not right. We have to develop this. So we're going to talk about that today. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about who I am first, and then we can get into the meat of today's training. I am Mia Lamott, image, consultant, personal brand strategist, and also a transformation coach. And when I got into entrepreneurial ventures I realized really quickly, I still had employee mentality, even though I knew deep down I had what it took to become an entrepreneur. I still had employee mentality and some days it shows up and when it shows up for me, I acknowledge it and then I let it go. So here's one of the things that I want to talk about today. I'm going to give you guys seven characteristics that you need to develop in order to,

Speaker 2 (01:08):
In

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Order to strengthen your entrepreneurial mindset. But also I'm going to talk about a couple of myths that are out there, and then what you can do to help yourself in order to do this. When you're trying to develop this mindset, you definitely want to think about the kind of person that's an amazing entrepreneur. They can overcome challenges. They think outside the box, they make quick decisions. So they're super decisive. I've worked with a lot of people who can't make up their minds about what they want, how they want to do it, who they want to work with. And those kinds of folks are the folks that don't have the kind of success that they want. So if you want to, if you want to be good at becoming an entrepreneur, you really need to make decisive. You need to be decisive, make decisions accept responsibility for outcomes and what I mean responsibility.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm also talking about like, you get to be accountable for whatever happens in your life, no matter what it is. And we'll talk a little bit about that. You want to always be improving or growing. Otherwise you're dying. If you're not improving or growing, you're dying. Think about plants. You're a living being, you're a human being. And if you're not being and living into that, you're dying. And then finally you got to take actions on your ideas. There's so many people out there who get these nudges from the universe or from God, whatever you want to call your higher self, you get these nudges, but then you don't act on them. And then you wonder why you're so miserable. It's when we take the action. When we take that inspired action as entrepreneurs, that's when the world opens up to us. All right, guys.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
So let's get going. Number one, if you do this work, if you're willing to do the work, you can have the mindset of an entrepreneur. So the number one thing you got to do get rid of self doubt. Self doubt will take you out of the game before you've even started. I remember when I started this journey and I felt like I didn't know enough. I felt like I wasn't enough. And I felt like, I didn't know how to move forward. Even though I had a coach telling me what to do, I felt like, Oh, she knows what she's doing because she's been doing this for so long, but it was more about my self doubt and thinking that I could actually do what she was doing. So if you have the self doubt, you have to work through those, got to work through that self doubt.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
And the way you work through self doubt is to get into action. You have to get into action entrepreneurs that get into action. They're the ones that make things happen for themselves. So that's you get into action. If yourself, if you have self-doubt work on that, self-talk right. The things that you tell yourself or the things that come true for you. So if you say to yourself, you're not good enough, guess what that's going to become true for you. So make sure that you're getting rid of that self doubt. It is nothing but a sabotage, a saboteur. And it does nothing for you. So you can, you have the ability to think to thoughts you can think of self-defeating thought, or you can think about when that's gonna empower you. So you want to make sure that self doubt is obliterated because it's the one thing.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
It is the one thing that can kill your entrepreneurial spirit. All right, let's kill it. All right. Now let's get into it. Let's get into the top seven characteristics that you need to have in order to become a successful entrepreneur. The first one that I have guys decisive, you gotta be decisive. You have to be quick with the decisions that you're making for yourself. And I don't mean quick uninformed decisions. I mean, informed decisions that lend to where you say you want to go, what does that mean, Mia? Okay, let's talk about it guys. I am not going to enroll in a course to learn how to make widgets, because it's going to take me off of my game. I don't teach widgets. I don't teach how to become a widget maker. Why would I join a course to do that? Right? That decision would be, would not be a million dollar decision, right?

Speaker 1 (05:35):
That would not be a disruptor kind of decision. So you want to make sure that the decisions that you're making are propelling you into the land that you want to go into. The other thing I want to tell you about being decisive decisive is that if you don't make a decision, that's also a decision. So being indecisive is also a decision you're deciding you're deciding to let something else or someone else seal your fate. What are the best things that you can do to build this decision muscle is to go into restaurants and begin to be decisive with your order. I'm super decisive about what I want. I always know, typically know before we even get to the restaurant. If I know that I'm going to the restaurant, a lot of times we're already prepared to go wherever we're going, but sometimes I'm surprised like I was for my birthday, but even then, I didn't even have to look at the menu.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
I heard what would the specials were? And I knew what kind of restaurant I was in. Plus I'd seen some other peoples spoon. I already knew what I wanted. So you have to become a really great decider, get into the habit of making decisions and then get into the habit of making great decisions that are going to propel you to where you want to go. That's number one, number two, discipline. You got to get some discipline. You gotta get disciplined around your boundaries. You gotta get discipline around your calendar. You got to get discipline around your health. You gotta get discipline around your relationships. Like you got to become very disciplined in order to become a great entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs that I know have a morning routine like myself it involves exercise, meditation, reading. What else am I doing? Reading exercise, meditation, writing, write, writing down ideas and really synthesizing things that you've learned or things that you want to learn and just like going for it.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
But you have to be able to discipline yourself in order to get there. The food that you're eating is part of your discipline. Like stop eating crap. Why are you feeding yourself? Crap. It's not going to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. It might feel good in the moment, but it's not going to help you at all. Trust me. I know the first year that I was in that I started working for my own business. I gained a lot of weight and I gained that weight because I was so uncomfortable with who I was and who I was becoming that I had to knock myself out. So if you're doing that, be cognizant of it and start to develop a discipline habit of making sure that you're taking care of your health. Because if you don't take care of your health, you have nothing else, nothing.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Oh, I want to go back to decisions, guys. The power of decision by Raymond Charles Barker is one of my favorite books. And it's also an amazing book about decision and making decisions. So if you need help in that area, please, please, please get that book. Discipline. One of the books that changed it for me was the 5:00 AM club. Everybody's not a morning person. I tried to get Sanford my significant to do this 5:00 AM club with me. And he wasn't feeling it. He's not a morning person and I don't need to make him a morning person in order for us to have a break relationship or for us to get these principles down. But for him, you know, getting up that early in the morning actually drained his energy for me. I'm ready to go. I can roll out of bed around three, maybe four, depending on what time I went to sleep and just be rare in a go, it takes him a minute to get into it.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
So you have to know yourself. You have to know your body, know what you want, but the 5:00 AM club, the principles is what I want you guys to really lean into. And that was by Rob Sharma, lean into the principles because it really talks about how to focus, how to create this kind of routine for yourself. And if you, you are a member or if you're, if you're interested make time, your is one of the trainings that I have. It's a free trial. And,uI talk about the body of club a lot. Like I break down the book for you. So you don't even have to read it. Number three, confidence, you got to learn the confidence. So whatever skills you're lacking in, go get them, but make sure that they're in your zone of genius. And if you don't know what that is, I highly recommend that you find out I did a training on this.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
I also, I did a training on that. Yeah. In this group, a two part series, I also have a podcast about it. And I highly recommend that you take some assessments to get to know yourself better. And my favorite one is the Clifton strengths, 34. And I'm like, amazing changer, loved everything about it. So your strengths, your strengths is your brain. So if you don't know where they are, then you don't really know what your brand is. So I highly recommend that you get and to know yourself really well. That was number three. Number four is accountability. Like get super accountable. I mentioned this earlier, but being accountable does not blame you for things that have happened being accountable. It means that you can take, you can trace your steps back and say, Oh, you know what? That's why this worked. And Oh, you know what?

Speaker 1 (11:21):
That's why this didn't work. So when you can do that, especially as an entrepreneur, it's going to help you to take shortcuts and get, and make quantum leaps in the future. So once you can develop that skill and develop that habit, being accountable, it's going to help. It's going to take you much, much shorter time to get things done and to make stuff happen for yourself. So getting accountable is probably one of the greatest skills that, and you can develop for yourself, like get, hold yourself accountable and hold the people around you accountable. Right? this is highly transformative. This principle is highly transformative. When you can stop being a victim in your own life. And trust me, I played the victim card, plenty, plenty. And I can see it in other people. And it annoys the out of me when I seen another people, because I don't like it in myself. Right. So when you see yourself playing the victim, like how do you become accountable? Those are the questions you need to be asking yourself, right? So I'm making excuses nor passing the book and blaming others, take accountability and keep it moving. Keep it moving. This is going to help you shortcut take shortcuts and also help you to transform how you see yourself. All right. So we're at number five. Number five is all about focus.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
I

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Got to tell y'all I was lacking in this one, for sure. Like focus was really hard for me because I have shiny object syndrome. And when I see someone else doing something, I'm like, Oh, I can do that. Oh, I can do that. You need to get focused on where you're going and stay focused. Like put your blinders on, like, like at the horse race, put your blinders on. Cause you don't, you need to see what other people are doing, but you need to say focus on what you're doing. Figure that out, stay in your lane. Let's do it. Like go and get that stuff done.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
All right. Entrepreneurs, like we have lots of ideas. So for me, I'm constantly generating ideas and I have to get my business manager to say to me, no, no, you do not. We're not implementing this idea right now. We said we were working on X and this is what we're going to do. And so I need her to keep me focused, but then we put those ideas on the back burner. And then when we come back to it, like we, we have a list of things that we're going to do. So you say focused, you're going to get to your goal a whole lot faster than if you are going everywhere in every direction, like stay focused and stay on task. This word has been thrown around a lot lately. And you know, we are like this. We, we do a lot of us have the skill, but we also want to make sure that we're not using it to our detriment, but you have got to become resilient.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
So resilience is characteristic. Number six, resiliency means, you know, like you can fall down, but you get back up. And sometimes when you fall down, you do have to take a break because of mental health. Because of like maybe you're just in pain, maybe you're sick. So you get to take your break, but you also get to get started. Again. People who get up from when they fall down, those are the ones that actually are successful. You can't fall down and say, you know what? I tried, but it didn't work for me that doesn't ha that's not going to help you to become a great entrepreneur. Not at all. You have to be able to fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up. Just use it, use it as a the metaphor I love to use with this is walking. Like, we wouldn't know how to walk. If we decided that when we fell that first time we were not getting back up. So as an entrepreneur, you have to build that muscle. You build that resiliency muscle and your success is going to come your way. It it's, it's inevitable. You have to keep getting up in order to get to where you're

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Going.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
All right. And my favorite, this one is it's my favorite because it was one of the things that I probably was most challenged in and you're going to laugh because it's what I actually do for a living. Right? You gotta be coachable. So coachability is the seventh characteristic that you've got to develop in order to become a great entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs have a mentor. And if you don't have one, you're just like flailing in the wind. And guess what? You're not going to get to where you're trying to go. If you're doing that. So you need, you need a mentor, but you also need to listen to your mentor. So I have, since I've been doing this work, like I didn't have a mentor when it came to my career as a, when I was in public administration. Right. But as soon as I got into business for myself, I've always had a mentor. I've always had a coach and that's been

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Gosh,

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Guys, that's been over 11 years that I've had always had a coach. I might take a break for a month or two, depending on the coach, depending on the intensity of the coaching program. But I've always had a coach. I've always had somebody I looked up to and emulated some of the things that they've taught me. So you want to make sure that first you get a coach, but then you have to be comfortable. Listen to your coach, listen to the ideas. Yes. Some things will work for you in some long. So take one, take what works and then leave the rest. But also ask your coach. Why ask your coach, why she's telling you to do certain things, or why are you wanting me to focus on this one product instead of 10 products, right? Ask the questions, find out the why, and then move forward.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
It the why works for you. Take what she said. If it doesn't then refute it, like, let's talk about this, right? But you have to be coachable. You have to be willing to, to not be right. You have to be willing to not look good. You have to be willing to jump out of your comfort zone in order to be coachable. It's you just have to, to do that. Let's see. I also think that there's some people who get aspirational coaches and they're not ready for that. Yet. I have the experience of working with coaches on many, many levels. And one of the coaches that I had was probably an overreach for me. Right. And when I'm you mean by overreach is that I aspired to be like this coach, but she was basically out of my league. And while I learned so much from this woman, yeah, it was, I wasn't ready for that yet.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
I needed to take a step back and like, know where you are. Find a coach that is two to three steps ahead of you because it's going to be the freshest for them. They can be able to relate to you the most. And if you're looking for someone who is at a higher level, then go to that higher level. But you also want to be you willing to pay for that. The people who have invested in themselves, the people who have the experience, the people who have the the social proof, the people who have the receipts, that's who you want to work with. There. Well, people that are going to be transparent about where they are, people who are transparent about the things that they've been through to get to where they are. And that is the kind of coach that I love working with.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
And I didn't realize that until I had one. So you want to make sure that your coaches two to three steps ahead of you. And also you want to make sure that your coach is transparent. Ask your coach those hard questions, get in their face. And I don't mean that to be in a disrespectful way, but is there not telling you upfront and you have to get in their face to ask the questions, then you might want to reconsider your coach. That's what I appreciate. And I think that my clients appreciate that about me because I tell them the truth about where I am. I tell them the truth about where I've been. And I also talk about like, I understand struggle, right? I understand struggle from the entrepreneurial point of view, but it doesn't have to be that way. And I needed to understand that. And I needed to understand the metaphysical and the transformational pieces before, after I got out of struggle mindset, there's a step that was missing for me. And so I teach that to my class. Yeah, so don't be so eager to step. So high guy that you stopped our growth. Don't be, don't try to run before and crawling, right? If you try to run before you start walking, you're gonna like, you're gonna fail. So steps, baby steps. And then you make quantum leaps like the quantum leaps come from you taking those baby steps initially, and then rocketing yourself forward.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
That's how it happens.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
So those were the seven characteristics. I'm going to go over them again. Right? The first one is decisiveness be good and making decisions, great gig, great and making decisions. Let me take that back gate. Great and making decisions. Number two, discipline, create really great disciplines. Daily disciplines. You gotta have it. You're not going to be successful without discipline. Number three, confidence. Get you some, go get some confidence, figure out who you are and be unapologetic about that. Go get some confidence. Number four,

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Be accountable.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Be accountable to yourself. Accountability is key. Number five, focus and stay focused. Don't get caught up in what everybody else is doing. Resiliency work that resiliency muscle. When you get up, when you fall down, get back up, take a break, take a rest, take a weekend, take a beat, take a day, take a walk, but get your back on the horse. And finally, number seven coachability. So be coachable, look for a mentor, look for a coach and be coachable. That's how you develop an entrepreneur mindset. So here are a couple of misconceptions about entrepreneurship that I have that I've seen. And I haven't written down here. I keep looking at my notes guys, cause that's what I'm doing. Uhere are the myths. Entrepreneurs are born hustlers. We got to get out of this hustle mentality. Like for me, hustling meant like digging ditches and hard work and sweating and like being out in the sun. Cause that's what I saw my family do. I come from a family of contractors and that's what they were doing. They were always outdoors building things. My grandfather was a farmer, so he was growing things and that's an entrepreneurial mindset.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Possibly

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Is not entrepreneurial mindset. Hustling is a worker mentality. You're a worker. If you're hustling, okay, you just bought yourself or you just bought yourself a new job and you have a horrible boss cause you're your boss. Right? Quit hustling. Learn how to use this, to leverage the work piece.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
You need to be different to have success with million dollar ideas. Yes. Or is it, or is it a million dollar question? You have to have million dollar questions to get the success. Ideas are amazing, right? I just told you, I generate ideas all day long, but if I'm not asking the right questions about where to go to next or what's the next step, then I'm losing the people that I'm mentoring are losing the people that I'm coaching are losing. So you want to make sure that you're asking the right questions and ask better questions, right? Ask better questions for yourself.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
You gotta be a tech genius.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
That's a myth guys. I'm not attacking. I'm not attacking genius by no means. I have developed the skill to work my way around zoom and around Instagram and things like that. But it's not my wheelhouse. So guess what I do. I form that stuff out. I've learned what I needed to learn in order to be functional, but then I formed everything else out because I know that it's a better use of my time for me to be doing this, talking to you guys than for me to be worried about how to get into Instagram and how to

Speaker 1 (25:02):
And then you can't succeed. If it's not full time, total BS, it's going to be harder, right? You're going to be working more hours. Yes. But you can totally do this on a part-time basis. You can totally do this on the weekends, but you have to be focused and you have to remember all of the characteristics that are needed in order to do this. So you can absolutely do this guys. Mastering an entrepreneurial mindset is totally doable and it's for you if you want it. So I want you to think about

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Like,

Speaker 1 (25:39):
You can't do this by yourself, right? You have to get some help. So whether it's mastermind partners, whether it's a business bestie, whether it's a mentor or a coach, which I highly recommend, you get way more out of something when you paid for it. Okay. which is why I opened up and created this group called the disruptor society. And this group, I help women to discover their brands because I know that without that you won't have the confidence that you need to become an entrepreneur. You won't be able to create the brand. That's going to stand out for other people. You won't be able to say to others, this is what I do for a living. This is who I am. And not back down from that. You won't have that. If you don't know who you are at your core, and you don't know how you want to project yourself in the world.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
And that's what we do in disruptive society. I helped you to figure that out. And I'm going to put the link in this and this live for you guys. Cause I know that that you really need to hone in on who you are. And double down on that. I was talking to someone at another at a retreat that I was speaking at this past weekend. And one of the things you said was I live in, I forget what town she lived in, but my vibe is totally Miami. So I don't really dress like that because it's not, what's warranted here. And I'm like, what? Like you get to be you. If you're Miami and you live in Kentucky, you get to be Miami all day long. Like you don't have to conform to Kentucky ways of being like, if you want to be Lexington, Lexington might be a place in Kentucky. I don't really know. But in Miami is your vibe. Then you be Miami sand out. Like don't be afraid to stand out guys, because if you're afraid to stand out, you're already out of the game. You're already out of the game. The other thing that I want to talk to you guys about is that in disruptive society, like you either need to be a member of disruptor society or brand disruptors, which is my group coaching program.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
You guys can attend my retreat. That's happening in December. And it's all about mastering money because you can't have a significant brand if you don't have any money. Right? So if you want to attend that, you gotta be a member of one of those two. So disruptor society, brand disruptors. I'll just put the link to my website here. So you guys can go through whatever it is that you want to go through and see what works best for you. Again, we're gonna be talking about mastering money in December, because what I know is that you cannot grow as a business, as a person, as an entrepreneur. If you have no cash, so cash, credit money, and then you, I mean, that's also another mindset, right? You have to change the way you think about money in order to have lots of it. So I know you guys will love it. So I hope that you can join us. And I hope that today's session was super helpful for you. And like, I enjoy putting this together. This is like one of my gifts. Like I like to put things together to present them to people. And like you need to know what your gifts are. So go and find them out, come and join us and brand disruptors or the disruptor society. And I'll be happy to help you out and be so great to meet you. So take care and lots of love.