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4 Traditional Mindsets Women Entrepreneurs Must Break Free From

 

Women entrepreneurs often complain that they feel held down by their circumstances and obligations, such as managing family, juggling household responsibilities, etc. However, the fact is that more often they are deeply impacted and chained down by their own traditional mindsets. These traditional mindsets are the product of the society they live in and their upbringing and they influence and minimize the chances of their own success and that of their business.

Following are the four major traditional mindsets that need to be broken by women entrepreneurs and to be replaced with growth-oriented ones:

If I Am Unsuccessful, I Can Always Go Back To Whatever I Was Doing Or Just Be A Housewife.

Giving yourself the option to go back to your old job or becoming a homemaker again means giving yourself the space to fail at the very start. Giving yourself wiggle room or alternates like just in case things do not work out is one way to minimize risks, but it also means a partial commitment to a dream project on your part. Partial commitments and success don’t go together.

I Cannot Network. I Am Not a People’s Person.

Not everyone is outgoing and social by nature, but if you are starting out as an entrepreneur then you absolutely have to network because networking means linkages, introductions, generating leads, marketing, selling, raising capital, finding a community of like-minded people, sound advice, partnerships, and joint ventures.  It is one skill that guarantees value and return on investment in the most subtle ways.

I cannot sell. It’s Above or Beneath Me

Selling is another important skill for an entrepreneur. In fact, the survival and success of every entrepreneur and business depends upon this. A product, no matter how innovative it happens to be, won’t sell by itself. You have to get the idea, the innovation out of the door and turn it into a sellable business. Despite the thought of yours being unable to do it, you are already in the selling mode and doing it all the time. Every time you are convincing someone to do something, you are selling it to him or her!  You sell your idea and vision to your team, your investors, and your vendors before you even get to selling to your customers. Ideally, you have an elevator pitch ready for your business all the time. If you lack in sales skills, then invest in learning it, which brings us to our next point.

I Don’t Need Personal Development Or Professional Training

A growth oriented mind seeks personal development opportunities. It understands that the claim to be sufficiently knowledgeable and perfect means being vain and basically, is setting oneself out for failure. Being an entrepreneur means the ability to evolve that you have to constantly upgrade your skills and learn newer things. The other alternate is learning through trial and error, but it takes a lot of time and wastes a lot of energy and money. Now a days, learning doesn’t mean going back to school but also going to a women entrepreneur retreat, getting in touch with a career coach or personal development trainer, finding a mentor, subscribing to a virtual workshop, downloading an e-tutorial, watching a ‘how to’ YouTube video. The thing is that learning no longer has to be long, in person and costly.

Luci McMonagle is a personal development coach and trainer who has been teaching women entrepreneurs to break through their self-limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs and replace traditional mindsets with growth-oriented ones.  Follow Luci McMonagle to get more on how to be a better businessperson.