You have already validated your product within the marketplace and achieved significant traction, and now it’s time to scale. Shifts to managerial processes and internal workflows are crucial to growing your business. However, another critical element to this evolution is expanding your leadership mindset from focusing on launching your business, to growing it.

Founders who only focus on external efforts most often fail to succeed accelerating growth and have a harder time managing to scale their businesses. Dr. Carol Dweck has done an extensive research on achievement and success and has discovered a truly groundbreaking concept. In her book “Mindsets: The New Psychology of Success”, Dweck explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success, but whether we approach them with a fixed or growth mindset.

This is one of the reasons, all the tactics, systems and strategies won’t help at that stage of your company’s development if you don’t have a strong mental game. Your mindset has to grow in lockstep with your business, and a fixed versus growth mentality can be a critical factor in achieving success. Let’s see why!

Fixed mindset entrepreneurs

This group has a defined identity and often uses labels and affirmations. They would see situations and qualities as unchangeable and their skills and capabilities as fixed. They may say: “ My experience is such that I won’t be good at/or successful at (some new task)”,  or believe that certain people were born leaders, or “the people’s type”, or communicative etc. The strengths and behaviors allowed them to successfully navigate the early stages of their business won’t be sufficient for scaling or could even work against them in the process.

The initial tactical approach needs to be replaced with a strategic one. That requires a shift in the mindset and identity, to see the bigger picture and understand what new behaviors and skills they need to develop in order to succeed the rapid changes coming their way. “Know it all”, keeping a tight control or not adapting are clear signs of a fixed mindset. How we choose to see ourselves and our identity can have a tremendous impact on our overall success.

“I think anything is possible if you have the mindset and the will and desire to do it and put the time in.” – Roger Clemens

Growth mindset entrepreneurs

This group is constantly evolving. Themselves and their businesses are never seen as a finalized structure. A company really grows by finding ways to serve a sizable market and/or constantly innovating and adding to their products or services. The same applies to entrepreneurs with a growth mindset. They seek ways to add to their skill set by not being afraid to be exposed to a challenging situation.

They are able to see the hard times as opportunities to develop a side of themselves they didn’t even know existed. They see themselves as a product of their experiences, hence they look for more experiences to help them expand and enrich their personality and skills even more. They don’t label or judge these experiences, they see them as an opportunity. The success of their company so far is a product of a number of contributions everyone on the team has brought in.

Data and feedback, negative or positive is welcomed and serves as a reason to get curious. That way of thinking enables continuous innovation and improvement. Change is always positive because it is not only a constant in business nowadays, but it brings more chances to evolve. Growth mindset entrepreneurs see the bigger picture of the journey, are more resilient and have more chances for a long-term success.

Here are a few ways to set yourself on the growth track:

1. Give up control and delegate

It’s absolutely understandable to have a tight grip on everything in the beginning stages. Most of the work is done by you, your co-founder and maybe another team member. The processes are not documented, so you’re used to overseeing everything closely. When it’s time to scale, you have to find a way to delegate appropriately. Not leaving the scene, but learning to trust and build your people up. Giving them the right tools to execute without you and helping them unfold their potential too.

2. Open up your mindset to see the challenges as growth experiences

The easiest way to do that is to simply ask yourself in the face or a difficulty or as a matter of fact in the face of success too: “What might be the opportunity here?” This will help you lessen your judgment of the situation and offer you different angles of how to solve the problem.

3. See the bigger picture

It is time to build the systems and most importantly to work on your strategy. As much as the creative side and the experimental phases are fun, scaling needs more structure. Instead of the immediate gains, seek ways to implement the tactical steps to follow the long-term strategy. Setting this in place will allow you to free up more time, so you can get involved in solving the harder problems. And this is essential to get through the threshold.

“Grinding is a mindset and a willingness and commitment to work at it.” – J. B. Bickerstaff

4. Take ownership

Take ownership of your attitude and leave your ego behind. Having a growth mindset is about being open to admit you can and will fail. How you see the difficult situation is what makes all the difference. Failing is a part of the learning process and the more you get used to sitting with these experiences and grow from them, the more your identity will develop. Adopt a perspective of being in the constant act of becoming and evolving. Everything that happens serves as a test to teach you what works and what doesn’t. You must be versatile and embrace change as something inevitable and beneficial.

It is great to be recognized as an expert, but when it comes to entrepreneurship, as Andrew Weinreich, a serial entrepreneur, said to me a few weeks ago, it is vital to have the basic understanding and general knowledge about the different areas of your business. You don’t have to be the best in everything, but curiosity and being open to learning new things constantly will help you connect the dots and see the big picture. It is important to understand how things fit together, so you see the opportunities for connections inside and outside of your company. That naturally leads me to the last point.

5. Celebrate the success of others

Celebrate the success of others and appreciate collaborations and partnerships. Noticing and validating the success of other people will help your mindset shift in a positive and more abundant perspective. Understanding that there is enough pie to go around for everyone is a game changer to your level of growth.

It will enable you to internalize your own wins as well and determine the qualities and skills you have acquired up to this point. Most importantly, it allows you to build deeper connections which can lead to more satisfaction and of course opportunities for your own business to grow.

You’ll be a part of the whole and surrounding yourself by successful people will bring you more motivation. Always seeking a “win-win” situation is the way to go if you want to build strong partnerships and expand your network for future positive ventures.

At the end of the day, you need to think big to achieve big results. Scalability has to do a lot with your mindset and building from that place makes a difference.

What are some techniques you use to level up your mindset? Comment below!