You Can't Grow Without The Right Mindset

Much is said about growth mindset since Carol Dweck's book came out. The idea became popular, got distorted, and now sounds like a cliché every time it's mentioned. But if you're consulting independently, this really matters.

As Dweck puts it:

What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?

For me the answer is clear: It will lead you to take action. Those actions will create results, momentum, and motivation. And this will lead you to believe more in yourself, and sustain or take more actions.

Understanding this link between action and belief is a must for every consultant.

Do You Want To Grow?

There are many ways you can grow your consulting business. By winning more clients, increasing your fees, building a team, cultivating expertise and choosing what you want to work in. But to do it, you must actually want to grow.

You will need to do and experiment with new things. You will need to change. And every change has a built-in risk of failure in it - you can't insure yourself against everything.

This is where a growth mindset comes in. It helps you accept that growth is a process. Why waste time trying to convince yourself over and over how great your ideas are, when you could be getting better?

Consultants who succeed at growing their business make it happen. They don't wait to take action to achieve it. It can be as easy as picking a goal, a timeframe, and breaking up the steps they must do to reach it. They do the basics.

Developing this mindset is scary since you'll be doing many things you've never done before: specializing in a narrow domain, speaking in public, writing articles or books, leading other people. But these are all things you might need to go through to grow your business on your own terms.

To grow you will need to do things differently than you do now, and continuously do them better.

Growth Requires Investing

You can't grow your business without investing in it.

A scarcity mindset is a result of our habits and beliefs, and will directly impact our self-talk, our expectations, our goals, our use of time. One of the easiest ways to discover someone's mindset is to look at how they invest their resources.

Your most valuable resources are your attention, your time, and your money. You choose, consciously or unconsciously, how to allocate them. Everybody has a budget, but there's a cost of doing business.

To grow you need to learn to invest. It might be in coaching and self-development, new tools and systems, hiring people, marketing your business - all of these investments come with risks. The point is taking calculated risks, instead of avoiding them all.

Your goals and challenges are less unique than you might think. What is it worth to you to have access to someone who's been through the same problems and managed to solve them? Who can guide and support you during your journey?

These are the kind of people you will invest in if you want to grow. These are the people you will surround yourself with if you want to grow.

Without the right mindset, there can be no real growth.