“Permanent beta is essentially a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth”

It’s a quote from Andy Hargadon, head of the entrepreneurship center at the University of California, in a book by Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha.

9 mindsets to boost every young entrepreneur

An essential part of personal growth as a young entrepreneur is having the right mindsets or attitudes to achieve your goals and dreams.

This post explores some critical ones.

What does permanent beta feel like to you?

For example, taking a glass half empty view, permanent beta suggests perpetual stress and uncertainty, never reaching full mastery of anything, instability and perpetual dissatisfaction.

Seeing the glass half full, this is a thrilling experiential adventure, full of opportunity, unknown pleasures, healthy stretch with enough breadth and depth.

For some of us, that’s the competing experience and mixed emotions of a theme park ride. Then again, you can always give it a miss… but then you’ll never know. Do we have a choice if we want to succeed in business today and in the future?

If permanent beta is the way it’s going to be, it pays to adopt a lifelong learning mindset that benefits the business because you stay up-to-date, energized, and fresh.

What are mindsets?

Your mindsets or attitudes are your angle on things, your unique lens on the world through which you see and navigate life, a state of mind based on what you see, think and believe.

They are internal and get shaped by yourself (personality), your circumstances (education, economic, social, political) and other people’s perceptions and expectations (family, friends, teachers, employers).

You can shape how you see the world and how the world sees you by understanding and developing your mindsets.

9 mindsets for young entrepreneurs

9. Future-oriented – seeing beyond the day-to-day. Giving attention to the future. Thinking ahead so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Leading in thought and action. Check out your time perspective with this free online inventory.

8. Time to think – debating the future, reflecting on feedback and not just ‘doing’.

7. Questioning assumptions – asking the right questions. Challenging accepted wisdom (’we’ve always done it like that’). Being inquisitive or curious.

6. Solutions – proposing ideas because you are best placed to see what needs changing. Creative experimentation. Seeing failures as part of the process of finding success (failing forward).

5. Breadth of view – looking outwards as well as inwards (to your colleagues, other teams, the wider context and business environment).

4. Balancing behaviors – between task-focused behavior and people-directed behavior, between business ethics and social responsibility.

3. Discipline – many budding entrepreneurs fail when their drive focuses too much in the wrong areas. For example, over-focusing ‘in’ the business and under-focusing ‘on’ the business. They don’t pay enough attention to clarity, discipline, and accountability to make things happen smartly and effectively. Here’s a useful resource, the Check-In Strategy Journal, that will help you to stay on track and deliver.

2. Renewal – reinventing yourself on occasions (checking your goal is still the right one for you and adjusting it if necessary). Being comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, and variety.

1. Values-driven – many successful people have clear links between their strategies and their values and aspirations. Your personal values are the most powerful drivers of what you want to achieve. Identify, understand and use them as rocket fuel to drive your actions, maintain momentum and increase your chances of success.

Which ones do you need to pick? What would you add?

Take the next step and explore online learning with these bite-size courses – Mindset Matters and Your Personal Values.

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