How To Change Your Business Mindset To A Transformer Mindset
Dan Sullivan
What’s your business mindset, and is it helping or hindering your growth? In this post, I will teach you about the “transformer mindset,” why it’s important, and how to change your business mindset today and into the future. I also discussed these ideas in a recent podcast I recorded with Joe Polish.
Going into any situation, I consider my business mindset and how I can leverage the wisdom I’ve gained from the past. First and foremost, I treat the past as raw material. In other words, I’m very interested in my past, but only as raw material that can be transformed into new lessons for the future.
If you want to know how to change your business mindset, always make your future bigger than your past. The past is simply referenced for learning, and the future’s there for winning. That’s my basic attitude. So, in a way, I’m always walking into a new experience with a fresh, beginner’s mindset—a business mindset that is actively looking for things that are positive, helpful, and transformative so my eyes and ears can pick them up when they cross my path.
I’m very thoughtful and intentional when I go into experiences because I know the role my business mindset plays in making them worthwhile.
As Strategic Coach has grown, we’ve started to attract bigger companies. But I’ve noticed something: some people who are incredibly successful still have a business mindset that I would call a “consumer mindset.”
Understanding the consumer mindset.
The consumer mindset holds that the world is supposed to do things for you. It has three primary functions as a business mindset:
- To criticize,
- To complain, and
- To blame.
How to cultivate a transformer mindset.
The opposite of the consumer mindset is the transformer mindset. With this type of business mindset, you transform the actual experience you’re having. Instead of waiting for things to be done for you, you put yourself in the driver’s seat and claim what you want from the opportunities in front of you. There are three qualities of a transformer mindset:
- Contribution,
- Collaboration, and
- Creativity.
My goal is always to expand my transformer mindset of contribution, collaboration, and creativity. I feel that this business mindset also causes time to slow down so I can have more freedom of time, money, relationships, and purpose.
Creating an environment for success.
By changing your business mindset and creating an environment that fosters and supports a transformer mindset, you can build on your strengths and naturally know how to surround yourself with supportive people who are operating within their Unique Ability too.
How to change your business mindset.
Your business mindset alters your behaviors. So, when you look at people’s behavior, you must look upstream at the business mindsets that determine that behavior. There’s a decision everyone makes, a choice, of who they’re going to be in the future and what the business mindset needs to be to fulfill that choice.
Entrepreneurs have a special ability to see themselves further out into the future and engage intellectually based on that vision. They can also emotionally commit to this vision of themselves. Even though there’s no evidence of it yet, they’re committed.
So, as an entrepreneur, who you are constantly gets created by your vision of who you want to be in the future. That visioneering is a choice and the way to change your business mindset for good.
The decision you must make to see this through is to give up criticism, complaining, and blaming for the rest of your life. The thing is, once you enter this path and business mindset, you can no longer stand back. That’s the decision. That’s the fork in the road.
There are all sorts of business mindsets that build up around being a transformer, and your behavior changes along with them, eventually becoming automatic habit. Then, you’ll notice other people with the same mindset. This is where the payoff happens.
The truth about intelligence.
Contrary to what the school system would lead you to believe, our brain is not our intelligence. Rather, knowing how to access other people’s brains is our intelligence and best business mindset. The school system teaches people to be isolated individuals who think their intelligence is solely inside of themselves. This can make changing your business mindset to a transformer mindset difficult, but this shift is critical to access the intelligence of others through collaboration, contribution, and creativity. The truth is, the intelligence of others is yours and vice versa, but you won’t access other people’s unless you give up the weaker business mindsets of criticizing, complaining, and blaming.
To learn more about how to change your business mindset, grab your copy of the Strategic Coach Approach To Cultivating An Abundance Mindset guide. The 12 distinctions explained in the guide will help you make sure you and your business are always operating with an Abundance Mindset that sees opportunities for value creation, breakthroughs, problem solving, and continual growth. A transformer mindset and an abundance mindset are critical for lasting success and maximum freedom as an entrepreneur.
