Where it comes to how you run, operate and grow your business, there’s three fundamental areas to consider, to cross the gap between ‘here’ and your goals:
Mindset, Method, and Skillset.
You might want to spend some time reflecting on your goals, and where, in each of these three areas, you ought to make improvements.
Mindset is about how to think, how to look at the playing field, the decisions to make, the things to say no or yes to.
It’s about your attitude, how you hold yourself, the way you show up to the job of being an entrepreneur and the challenges that you face.
It’s about how you curate your energy. It’s the overarching ‘how’ of the way you run your business, and, very importantly, it’s about being ultra-specific with consciously deciding what you say no to – for instance, all those minor things you should never major in, or all those fun and future-profit-destroying cases where you think you should spend a little time to save a little money.
And mindset determines how you will react to events, and no matter what happens to you: the reaction you choose determines what the event represents in your life, and that choice determines whether events will be a setback to you or an enabler.
For instance: I can easily moan about how AI is giving people a cheap way to get help with their sales, and how that can harm my business. But I think it’s a great thing, because people who would get advice from an AI on sales are typically not my clients anyway, so all these AI enabled sales tools are actually a boon, because they create a harder separation between my ideal client and those who aren’t. That’s my choice. That’s how I handle mindset.
Method is straightforward, hands-on, measurable. It’s about planning, strategising, and steps to take, in such an order that one thing can build on another.
In other words, it’s the ‘what’ of being in business. What to do, in what way, what next, what not to do, what to measure, and what assets to leverage in order to create a thriving business.
Strategy, measurement, tracking, leverage: all these are part of a Method – a methodical, of course, and thoughtful way of running and growing things. (Slowth ties in real nicely with this.)
Skillset is, as the word says, about capabilities: the specific skills you need to bring to your game in order to actually make things happen.
It’s important to choose what skills to develop, because all too often we buy a course or training on something that feels like we’re learning useful and important skills, but that instead don’t really contribute to your growth, or not in a leveraged way. Yes, great, go learn how to prompt an AI. But you can also learn how to prompt your buyers, by asking better questions, which happens to be a far more direct way of generating sales and revenue. Funny how that works.
So, for the goals that you have, which skills are you going to need, and which are the skills that most directly contribute to you reaching your goals?
Together, Mindset, Method and Skillset cover everything that you need in order to get where you want to go. And you’ll need to carefully assess, nurture, and develop each of them – you’ll need to work with all three areas, because it’s like a three-legged stool: if one leg is missing, the thing will fall over. [Update: it’s not actually a three-legged stool, but instead it's a series of enablers. I call it The Achievement Stack]
For instance: You may have an excellent method and strategy, and crazy good skills at marketing or delivering your work, but if your mindset says "It’s pointless, the economy sucks, people just don’t pay what I deserve", then method and skillset don’t do you much good because your mindset is screwed.
Or if your mindset is "I can do this, I know I can find the people who do want to pay good rates", and your method for finding them is great – but you don’t actually have the skills required to find those people, it won’t work either.
As you can see, you always need all three, for whatever goal you have.
If mindset needs improving, work on yourself. Read books, get a coach, go to workshops and retreats. Learn to make your mind work for you, instead of against you.
If method is undefined or underdeveloped, straight-up learning and education are in order, especially in terms of strategy, measurement, and systems.
If skillset is lacking, train yourself. Be it in copywriting, or selling, or SEO, or using social media or building your list: there’s things you can do and do well, provided you train yourself in how to do them.
So whenever you feel things aren’t working the way they ought to, take yourself through a little thought exercise, and ask:
Is my mindset configured correctly for reaching my goals? Is there any belief or elements to my attitude or showing up that I can change, improve or replace?
Do I have a well-defined, hypothesis-based method in place for growing my business, that allows me to test, iterate and optimise?
Do I have the skills required to actually make it work – or do I need to acquire new skills?
Either way, if you want to make it in business, you need the three pillars: mindset, method, and skillset.
So take a moment to think, list out your three most important goals, and ask yourself for each of them:
- Do I have the mindset, and method, and skillset that I need, in order to reach this goal?
- Historically, in what way have I missed similar goals – due to which lacking element?
- What’s the minimum required level of upgrade that I need, in the lacking area?
- When will I start working on that?
This exercise isn’t necessarily fun – it can be a tough job to park optimism and take a cold hard look at where you’re lacking.
However, the kind of entrepreneurs who have the humbleness to accept shortcomings, and the decisiveness to do something about it, and are willing to do the uncomfortable things instead of defaulting to the fun, procrastinate-y, ‘helpful-in-the-future things, are the ones who most stand a chance of winning big.
Yes, my work covers all three areas. I’m presently looking at a 2026 with only two slots for new clients and probably for the entirety of the year, so now would be a good time to have a conversation about how I could help you land more sales and at higher prices.