Change Your Thinking—& It Will Change Your Life

Why did you start your business?

Take a moment right now to sit and think about the first days or weeks before you opened your doors.

A lot of people jump right into business because they think they have a great idea, want to make more money, or don’t want to be lorded over by a boss. You may have started your real estate business to provide passive income, but quickly realized that a lot of it is not passive at all. I bet you didn’t start your business to feed the cash-eating, time-sucking monster it’s become.

In order to stay in business and beat the odds we all know about the long-term viability of a small business, you will have to take control of your business finances. You will have to treat them seriously, take action, and be proactive and not reactive to stay in business and thrive.

You started your business to make you money and to help you accomplish your “why.” You deserve to know where your money is going, manage it as competently as possible, and make more money than you dreamed of even when starting your business. You deserve to achieve your “why” and your passion. You deserve not to be stressed and confused.

You will have to commit to being more profitable and keeping your profit a priority over the course of your business life. You will have to change your mindset and implement systems for your profit.

In the end, it will be worth it because growing and learning and implementing good change will always yield good results in some form. In this case, I want that form to be more profit in your bank account so you can achieve the big goals and dreams you set out to achieve at the start of your business journey.

Changing Your Behavior

I have found that if you can do what you’re already doing and leverage it to form behaviors that are more conducive to making and keeping more profit, you will be more apt to retain those behaviors and actions over the long haul.

Let me give you a personal example. In about a year’s time in 2018, I lost 30 pounds. Before I lost that weight, I was the heaviest I had been up to that point. I felt slow and sluggish. I didn’t like how I looked in the mirror and didn’t have the energy I wanted. I knew something had to change, only I knew that a lot of diets don’t work because they are not sustainable long-term, and I wanted to do something that could fit in with my daily routine.

I basically said I need to consume around 1,800 calories a day to lose weight over a period of time, so for 2018, I kept track of my calories for about a month. After that month I basically knew what 1,800 calories were in a day for me. The biggest trick was that I was still eating the food I loved.

In my head, I had tricked myself into thinking I didn’t make a huge drastic change. I ate the food I loved, but I just had smaller portions, and I didn’t snack all day every day like I used to. This helped me lose the weight I wanted to. Today I have maintained my weight on a more normal calorie intake during the day, and I have taken up kung fu which has added exercise to my weekly regimen and helped even further.

A lot of entrepreneurs have it in their heads that they have to do a lot of work themselves and don’t have time to delegate and offload their tasks. Have you ever been with someone that says there’s no way they could find the time or money to hire, train, and delegate responsibilities? Maybe you have said that yourself.

That really is a crock.

First, like the example above, you need to make sure the training and behaviors can fit into what you’re already doing. And second, you don’t have the most streamlined, efficient, and productive system to hire, train, and delegate; all of those can be done by the right system. Having that right system will allow your business to build that habit and make sure you aren’t changing drastically and doing something you struggle to sustain.

But there is a caveat.

If you are not doing the right things or your behaviors are way out of whack, you might need to make a drastic change that becomes your new normal. If that’s the case for you, then all those drastic changes will help your business become the business you always wanted it to be. The right behaviors and system for your profitability will give you and your business the much-needed boost and stability you are craving in your day-to-day business life.

Applying It To Your Business

I say all this because you might need to change the way you think before you change the behaviors. In order to be more profitable, you don’t necessarily have to do all the work—if you have a great team surrounding you and you are a great leader.

You can take these concepts and practicalities on behavior and apply them to yourself, but the true power will be to apply them to your business to truly transform your business (and by extension, your personal) life.

John Maxwell wrote a great article for Success magazine called “It Only Takes 6 Steps to Change Your Life.” The six steps are below as they read in the article:

When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs.
When you change your beliefs, you change your expectations.
When you change your expectations, you change your attitude.
When you change your attitude, you change your behavior.
When you change your behavior, you change your performance.
When you change your performance, you change your life.

Your thoughts don’t just influence what you do, they are the catalyst for your actions. Your thoughts are the first domino that needs to be in line and fall correctly for the correct actions to take place in your life.

How does this all apply to your business? You need to behave your way into more profit. You need to be thinking the thoughts by reading, studying, copying, modeling, and hanging around the people who are where you want to be.

Your behaviors are really predicated on what you know and what you’ve done. You may love numbers or you may hate them. Your behaviors towards your numbers and your profit need to be in line with the profit you really want to be making.

Up to this point, if you are not where you want to be in your business, you probably have not behaved in a manner consistent with focusing on your profit and making sure your business is truly healthy.

What behavioral changes have you made that have impacted your business?

Tell us how in the comments.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.