During one of the COVID-19 lockdown days, while I was taking a webinar with several small & medium business owners, I asked them a simple question: What is the most important asset in your business?
I got varied responses: Plant & Machinery, Distribution system, Customers, Employees, Investors, IT system, and the list went longer and longer to cover everything in business, except one… “the entrepreneur himself”.
The participants highlighted the significance of everything in their business, except themselves. Here let me harp upon the fact that – In a small & medium business, NOTHING really moves without the involvement of an entrepreneur. Although we keep preaching that businesses should not depend on one person, and businesses should rely on systems, the ground reality in most SME businesses is that: Everything starts and ends with the promoter.
Now that we understand the gravity of the role of an entrepreneur in business, we need to then understand what is it that differentiates a successful one from a failure.
Is it their knowledge, their skills, their decision-making abilities, their past experiences, their network/contacts? Although all these are important, one thing that is of paramount importance, especially during tough times, is their mindset/attitude. Their mindset determines whether they face tough times bravely, or do they give up. And that’s the need of the hour for business owners in these tough times of falling sales, difficult client recoveries, disrupted supply chain logistics, lack of liquid funds, and unpredictable times ahead.
During ancient times, when kings used to fight among each other for kingdoms – the most successful kings (such as Alexander, Genghis Khan, and Ashoka) had one thing in common; and that was the “mask of victory“.
Even in the worst of times, they always wore their mask of victory, i.e. they never showed their fears to their commanders, or to their armies. They were masters in overcoming their internal fears and braving all odds, thanks to their unbreakable mindset.
Even though we understand the significance of mindset, few actually take conscious efforts to really work on it. I personally feel there are 3 concrete steps to develop a shatter-proof mindset:
- Acknowledge / Accept the current situation: It’s no use resisting tough times by thinking “Why did it happen to me?”, or “Why now?” or “This is not fair”. Resistance creates friction, thereby stopping us think about solutions. Acknowledging the challenges helps us graduate to the next level, i.e., thinking about probable solutions.
- The buck stops at me!: In these tough times, it’s very easy to play the VICTIM card and blame uncontrollable factors such as destiny, government, etc. Till we keep blaming others for all our problems, and believe that “someone (maybe Government) should now come and help us”, we will feel dis-empowered and week. The moment we accept total responsibility for everything happening in our life, we gain all the power to change things around us.
- Abundance mindset: A lot of us attract negative emotions (such as fear, insecurity, jealousy, etc.) during tough times. The source of all such negative emotions is a scarcity mindset; here we are afraid of poverty, failure, death, etc. Instead, we need to nurture our inner faith on the supreme. We need to firmly believe that we will be taken care of, and that we need to now help others to solve their problems. That’s the abundance mindset that attracts all the riches in our life; it opens the roads to a brighter and better tomorrow – for us, and for everyone around us.
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The above article is penned by one of our finance mentors CA Vikram Menda to disseminate the best practices followed by some of the best businesses across the globe.
CA Vikram Menda handholds businesses in implementing new-age tools & techniques of financial management, thereby ensuring cash-rich businesses and timely compliances.