Episode 10: An Owner’s Mindset

February 8, 2022

Guys, nowadays everybody wants to be a business owner.

Some studies have shown that millennials are starting almost twice as many businesses as boomers did.

It’s just the way it goes.

Oh, and if you ask me, I think this is awesome.

Awesome for the country, awesome for the people, and awesome for the economy.

But like they say, with all this power comes responsibility.

And today, that’s what we’re gonna talk about.

We are gonna dive deep into The Owner’s Mindset, what it is and why it’s so important.

So buckle up, and let’s get straight into it.

Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership

So what we got here is two types of leadership. Transactional vs. Transformational.

Transactional leadership is what most businesses are doing nowadays. It’s where you’ve got the owner being strategic. It’s where they’re being clever and tactical in their work. Then it reaches the stage where they think to themselves:

“I can’t do all this myself anymore.”

So what they do is they find somebody else to help them.

An’ that’s problem sorted.

So their relationship becomes transactional. Literally as in “I’m gonna teach you to do this system, and I want you to follow it this exact way.”

It’s just transactional. You do this, and I give you this in return.

But there’s a problem with that.

When a business owner looks at their employees this way, there’s no room for what we call “transformational leadership.” This is the kind that really inspires employees, getting them onto your mindset.

And in the long run, it’s a hell of a lot more efficient.

It’s more efficient because it gives your employees the chance to develop into the “owner’s mindset.”

Having The Owner’s Mindset

So it all comes down to having the ownership mindset.

Because at the end of the day, everything is about your mindset.

For example, take our business. When we go to hire somebody, we don’t care how many degrees or skills that person has. If their mindset is off-track, then nothing can make up for that.

Literally nothing. If they’re not proactive about things or willing to give everything, all their effort, then it won’t be a good fit for us.

That’s what the mindset is all about.

One of the simplest ways to engrave this kind of mindset deep inside your company is what we have here: a profit-sharing system.

Literally sharing a bit of your business is easily the fastest way to grow the owner’s mindset around your business.

Because everyone quite literally becomes an owner of a small part of the business. And whether they realize it or not, they instantly gain a small bit of the owner’s mindset.

Take this recent example.

The Owner’s Mindset in Action

So like I said, we have a profit-sharing scheme company-wide.

The other week I was down in the warehouse. I was talking to one of the guys, and I said, “is this gonna cost more or cost less?”

And he replied, “What do you mean?”.

I then told him that if costs go up, our profit comes down. And that if he’s happy with that, then so am I.

You know what he did? He turned around and did something else.

That’s the power of the owner’s mindset and it’s one of the reasons why it’s so effective.

The owner’s mindset is about taking responsibility for decisions, always expecting the best and having what is called “extreme ownership.”

Where the Owner’s Mindset Goes Wrong

See the thing about the owner’s mindset is, you gotta go in all or nothing.

If your company just half-asses it, then it’s just not gonna work out properly.

You gotta have everybody on board with this idea. They gotta be open to creativity, new ideas and improving their systems to work out.

‘Cos if that’s not the case, then you’re just gonna have a bunch of butt-hurt managers who can’t take feedback from people below them.

And with that, you gotta have employees that are open to being accountable for their actions. ‘Cos if you got managers that aren’t open to constant feedback, and employees that aren’t gonna take extreme ownership for what they do…

Then you’ve just got a recipe for disaster.