From the course: Small Business Marketing

Adopting a growth mindset

From the course: Small Business Marketing

Adopting a growth mindset

“

- I won't sugarcoat it, marketing as a small business is tough. There's a lot on your plate and you're often trying to quickly evaluate what initiatives will move the needle but not break the bank. And you're not alone in thinking, "How can I pull this off?" But many have been in your shoes and have built lasting strategies with virtually zero resources. How? By adopting a growth mindset. Simply put, a growth mindset is believing that your skills and abilities can be developed with hard work and dedication. That is to say, you will unlock your marketing skills if you simply continue to invest in learning. And the great thing about marketing is that every campaign and every initiative is a learning opportunity. If you fail, you learn. If you succeed, you learn. It's win-win. To get yourself in a growth mindset, you need to find ways to be bold, be courageous, and take risks. Arm yourself with all the relevant data you have and use it to evaluate what actions you think will yield results. I also want you communicate your passion. Failure will happen but you can't believe you are destined for failure. You have to believe that each idea could be the big one. If you keep sharing and discussing the wins and the losses, you'll find yourself connecting more and more dots. And you need to set stretch goals. You don't want to be 10% better, you want to be 10X better. And maybe you won't hit 10X but if you shoot for 10X and you get 5X, well, that's amazing, it got you further than 10% better. And to stretch your mind, you also need to simplify. It's in our nature to make things more complex, but you need to be making decisions that remove complexity. Keep refining your ideas until they are simple, you want the least amount of moving pieces and the lowest barriers to delivery. Look at each idea and keep asking yourself, "Can I make this easier?" How? You also need to be fast. Growth is about pushing the gas pedal a little farther than you're comfortable with. To move you fast, you have to be okay with good enough. This isn't time for perfection, it's a proving ground. Try ideas that are good enough, if they're promising, you can improve them later. And finally, keep learning. The faster you can dial in analytics the better, the quicker you can build a presentation to share with stakeholders, the better. You are not wasting time learning new things. Now there's a lot of reward, but it's not without risk and you need to make this happen to succeed with small business marketing. I believe it's possible. Anyone with enough motivation and an ability to execute, can capture a growth mindset.

Contents