Why mindset is the most important thing in an online business

When starting an online business there are many things to consider and the running of your business has many different components. However, an internet business is different from other businesses and often it is simply you on your own – no staff, no co-workers. The limit of your business is really your own limitations in terms of your mentality. If you get dismayed and disillusioned with your business, you lack the drive to carry on and your business suffers. Often there will be no-one supporting you to move forwards except for you and your inner drive. People will often try to dissuade you from even having an online business and this can further distract you from your goals.

Mindset is everything

Once you lose your motivation for your online business it is hard to move forwards. Your once ‘dream job’ working from home or anywhere in the world becomes a bind and you struggle to achieve results. You question whether you should be doing it and look for alternatives. Rather than moving forwards with your online business you become frustrated and indifferent, wondering if it was too lofty a dream. This can happen when you are working on your own and it illustrates why mindset is so important. Once you get into this state how productive do you think you will be?

We can often get caught up in the details of the business without focusing on ourselves and keeping our spirits high and our mindset focused. When this happens it is time to focus on the problem – you and your belief. Work on the person and not just the business. Look at your business and yourself as potential rather than simply looking for the results. Look at your activities rather than for results. Don’t blame the business and take full responsibility.

Looking for results often means we are looking for some acknowledgement that our business is working. This can be because we lack the belief in our business or ourselves and the drive to move it forwards. We look at our poor results and re-enforce our limiting beliefs about the business. Our efforts reflect our lack of belief and we ‘struggle’ to move forwards. We look again for results which are not there, and this reflects on the amount of effort which we are prepared to put in. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and the route cause is our lack of belief. We need to go back and remind ourselves at this point why we are working on an internet business. We need to develop the owner not the business.

Once you can acknowledge when you are getting into a negative state of mind, you can readjust your activities and take appropriate action. It may be that your activities are not moving your business forwards or that you are doing the same things over and over again which are not giving you any results. Go back and write down your goals. Write down your reasons for owning your own internet business. Visit the places you would like to live and create some inspiration to move towards. Set a lofty goal which if you would achieve it, it would blow your mind! Get outside of your comfort zones. Get uncomfortable. This is the fuel of your business – your drive and your mindset. Keeping in a positive ‘state’ will dramatically improve your results so becoming more aware of your state is an important part of working for yourself.

If you haven’t already checked out the SFM boot camp series you can click here for a free series of videos which show you how to build an internet business from the ground up. Jay and Stuart are passionate about this course and it covers a huge amount of mindset material. Even if you already have an internet business the material on mindset alone will dramatically improve your results. 

How to be more effective in your online business

Having an online or ‘work from home’ business can be incredibly rewarding but it can also be very frustrating. To be effective in what you are doing your need to set some goals and prioritise your time.

One success principle which has stood the test of time is Pareto’s principle: the 80/20 rule. Successful people spend 80% of their time doing the things which are most important in moving towards their main goals. Of the things which you do in your daily routine only 20% of really matter in terms of your results. So the trick is to spend 80% of your time doing those things.

Unsuccessful people spend most of their time doing the things which they enjoy the most and give them the most amount of pleasure in the moment. In effect they are spending their time doing unproductive activities. It is a habit which tends towards instant gratification. Successful people know how to delay gratification and work on their goals first before rewarding themselves.

Prioritising your time is a successful principle which when put into effect will begin to make dramatic differences to your life over time.

‘To Do’ lists

One way to immediately springboard your success rate is to prioritize your ‘to do’ list. This is something which has been discovered in big business as a way to immediately improve production and performance. Rather than simply creating a random to do list with a huge amount of items which can lead to overwhelm and indifference, create only a list of 6 or less items – more than this becomes unmanageable.

For each item arrange it into order of priority giving priority to those items which will make a massive difference to your business and giving the lesser tasks a lower importance. Never move on to another item on your list without doing the more important item first. If something comes up which often it does, place it into your list in terms of its priority. That way you don’t become distracted and put others’ needs in front of your own. This strategy will help you to avoid the temptation to only do those things which you are good at and enjoy. This can be a problem when working for yourself from home as you have no-one to answer to but yourself. Rather than moving your business forwards you can simply fall into the habit of just having a ‘nice day’! You avoid the ‘difficult’ tasks for the easier or more enjoyable ones. As a result your business doesn’t move forwards.

Prioritizing your to do list on a daily basis will massively improve your productiveness and you will find your time is much better spent doing the most important tasks first which will have a greater impact on your business.

Don’t do list

If there is something on your list which, if you don’t do it, it will make no difference to your business, cross it off. Operate a ‘won’t do’ list and you will free up more of your time to do those things which have a massive impact on your business. Ask yourself regularly ‘Am I doing the necessary or am I simply distracting myself with the unimportant’.

Having a worthy goal

If you are indifferent about your list then you need to come up with a more worthy goal. You goal needs to be something large enough to get you out of bed in the morning but not so large that you don’t believe it is achievable. Without goals it is very difficult to generate momentum in your business and give yourself a meaningful direction.

If you are working on an online business by yourself and you don’t have goals you will most likely fail! It sounds harsh but how do you expect to get somewhere when you don’t know where that somewhere is! How can you hit a target when you can’t see it.

Goal setting is an important topic which is covered in Jay and Stuart’s course on The Six Figure Mentors. Check out this free bootcamp videos course which includes some inspiring videos on building your online business.