1. Growth Mindset – As an entrepreneur, I'm sure you've heard this a thousand times, “you have to have a growth mindset!".  But what does this truly mean? Having a growth mindset means using every experience as a learning opportunity.  Taking challenges and risks; being willing to try new things, make mistakes, and learn from them.  A big part of having a growth mindset is investing in yourself.  The hard truth is that while you've done well so far in business, you don't know it all. To seek knowledge, gain skills and overall make yourself better is key and comes with a level of investment whether it's your time or money.  
 
2. Discipline Mindset – When you don’t want to, but have to do it anyway.  This one is haaaard!  We all have days we don't feel like it right?  But our success sometimes hangs on the ability to push through.  Having a disciplined mindset keeps us focused on the things that need to be done in order to move the ball forward.  We also have to be disciplined with our time and money.  Growing a business takes sacrifice - it may mean you can't Netflix and chill ALL day, shoot the breeze with a friend for 2 hours on a Monday or splurge on a trip to Vegas - you've got work to do and business expenses to cover.  
 
3. Focused Mindset – There’s a lot of information running around the internet on what you should do and could do.  Everyone has an opinion and a plan for how businesses should run, grow and scale. That’s not to say the information is bad and some of it may actually benefit you.  Having a focused mindset means setting parameters around what you consume and act upon based on your goals and what you are trying to achieve in business.  It's easy to get distracted - have those squirrel moments - especially when we see nice shiny objects or people flexing on the 'gram and want that lifestyle too.  Keep focused on what YOUR mission and vision is; the purpose you are meant to execute.  The goals that you set and the action plans to get there.  If the information you see doesn’t line up with those things, then put it away for another time and stay laser-focused on the steps that will help you achieve your goals. 
 
4. Take Action Mindset – Dreaming big can be scary and when we experience fear we have a fight or flight response.  Most of us will activate our flight response, which in business looks like stalling, being paralyzed, trying to make things perfect, and not putting yourself out there.  But, in order to grow you have to condition your mind to fight even when it's uncomfortable; mostly when it's uncomfortable.  The take-action mindset is about execution, making decisions, and doing what it takes to reach the level of success you desire.  Having amazing ideas is great, but if you don't take action they just stay ideas and no one gets to benefit from them - not even you.
 
5. Give Yourself Some Grace Mindset – You're doing a lot, wearing all the hats.  Balancing family, possibly a 9-5 or part-time job plus trying to grow a business. Give yourself grace.  With this mindset, you have to take time for mindfulness and self-care without guilt. When you feel yourself getting burnt out, frustrated, or overwhelmed – listen to your mind and your body.  Reset and recenter – do yoga, meditate, take a hot bath, read, watch a movie, take a walk, or spend quality time with family.  Keep reminding yourself that you are doing the best you can, with what you have and it's beyond an amazing job.  You've come so far - celebrate all the wins, no matter how big or small.
 
Ok, I had to add this bonus:  Awareness Mindset – I couldn't leave this one out because we all experience it, don't quite know how to deal with it and personally I don't think it's talked about enough.  As entrepreneurs, we experience ALOT of emotions, mostly in dealing with ourselves personally.  This journey can feel like you are stepping into a new you or a more evolved version of you.  It's important to have an awareness mindset where you recognize these feelings and take moments to dig in.  Some of it stems all the way from childhood traumas. Things that you've suppressed for so long are surfacing as you are trying to build and grow a business. There are likely going to be instances where you find yourself being stretched, uncertain of if you can do this, and why all these things are coming up all of a sudden.  Take moments to reflect internally, even on your past of how you came to be who you are. Ultimately, you will reach a point of having to face yourself and be willing to become new in order to grow personally and your business.  Being aware and doing the work internally to be better mentally will make all the difference, promise.
 
So, what's my biggest struggle?  Well truthfully I experience and deal with ALL of these from time to time.  But my biggest mindset struggle is Discipline believe it or not.  I know the things I have to do, but pushing myself sometimes is tough. Especially when it comes to creating content LOL!  But I'm intentional about working on it daily and putting strategies in place for me to keep executing according to plan.
 
Before wrapping up, please know this is not a catch-all list.  These are what I consider the 5 main areas (6 including the one I threw in lol).  As you can imagine being a CEO comes with an array of mindset needs.  These are, however, core areas that I’ve experienced personally and work with my clients in facing as they are shifting into the growth phase of their business.

​I would love to know what mindset areas you are working on as you continue to grow and scale your business.  Leave a comment and let me know…let's chat!

So, what is a Business Integrator?  I’m glad you asked…
A Business Integrator is the glue that holds all the pieces together for the business or organization. We are the ying to the creative entrepreneur’s yang.   More than just doing the work, Business Integrators drives results, provides clarity, manages the team, solves problems, prioritizes business needs, executes the plan and best of all -  partners and strategies with CEOs to filter their ideas and make them a reality.  
 
So, you know…we do all the things and make ‘ish happen!
 
So, why does EVERY CEO need a Business Integrator?  Well, there comes a time that doing it solo or even with a small staff just doesn’t cut it.  You’re either feeling stuck trying to do it all yourself, or finally managed to hire help only to now be spending your time telling them how to do their job.  You've hit a ceiling that you can't break through.  In order to grow and scale, especially as a visionary entrepreneur, you are going to need a leader, your #2, a strategic partner to help make all your big dreams a reality.  You need to have space and time to create, doing what you love.  I mean that’s why you started the business in the first place right?

​A few weeks ago I had my first personal launch within ESC Business Management Solutions.  It was both a scary, yet rewarding experience LOL!

See I thrive in the background of client launches and executing them to the ‘capital T’…but my OWN?!  Whew, talk about stepping outside my comfort zone.

What I love about this experience is how much I learned about myself and even improvements I’ll make to support future launches for clients.
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So as I reflected back over everything, from pre-launch to post-launch and all that was in between I identified several lessons learned, here I’ll share my top 3:

1.  3 Days is a lot to do ALONE!
​As an introvert it already takes a lot of energy to talk and speak in front of a crowd, and be “on”.  But 3 consecutive days, whew!  By the end of day 3 I was T.I.R.E.D!!  There was just SO much information I wanted to share that one-day wouldn’t not have been enough.  So when I first decided to do the workshop and wrote down all that I wanted to talk about it came out to be 3 days – and truly that still required me to trim some original content down.  In hindsight there are other approaches that would have worked well, but saved my energy.  Such as doing it one day a week for 3 weeks or having guest speakers to cover some of the topics.  All in all, I was able to maintain enough energy to have a great workshop…I definitely rested for several days afterwards though!​

3.  Wake Up Call – You can have a well planned & executed launch, yet still get low registration
As someone who is used to making sure the planning and execution of launches and projects are as flawless as possible, I ensured the preparation and implementation of all my launch activities went off without a hitch.  And they did!  All my systems worked; emails were drafted, scheduled and sent on time; my presentations were great; no issues with connectivity, etc.  There were no operational or delivery hiccups.  I’m very proud of that.  Yet, the registration numbers weren’t as I had hoped.  And please don’t get me wrong, the people who should have and needed to be there were there.  I appreciate each of you who registered as well as showed up each night.  This was just a wake up call for me that everything operationally and systematically can go extremely well but still get an unexpected outcome.  So that’s actually when I asked myself, “But what did you learn”.  As I reflected I came up with a list and these top 3 were born.
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While I may have not gotten the number of registrations for the live launch I still walk away with knowing I helped those that did join.  I also have almost 3 hours of content I can repurpose and some amazing lessons learned for the next time I personally do a launch.

If you are currently planning a launch or thinking of having a launch soon – whether webinar, challenge, course, mastermind, membership program etc. – I’m currently accepting new clients for launch management services.  Book a discovery call with me to discuss!

How many times this month did you get to the 10 o'clock night-time hour and say “ugh, I wish I had more time”?  Because likely, your to-do list still isn't complete, you're exhausted and now you have to decide to burn the midnight oil or catch some zzzzz's and push the rest off til tomorrow.

Listen, we've all been there…myself included! 
 
But many times what we don't realize is there are so many opportunities to save time throughout the day that's right in front of us.  What I've discovered in my own life and with my clients, there are 3 main areas where we simply, waste time!
 
As entrepreneurs we have ALOT on our plates, but wouldn't you rather close the computer at 5pm instead of 12am?
 
So, let's chat about these 3 time wasters and how we can change that….

Whether you’ve been in business a while or just starting out – your company’s mission, vision and values are critical to success.  They serve as a central node in the focus of your business.  The types of clients you work with, the services or products you offer, your yes’s and no’s are all set in the mission, vision and values you create for your business.  Let’s break all of these down:

Mission
Your purpose and passions drive your mission.  The mission statement of your business clearly defines why you exist.  This clarity is key because it sets the framework for validating the types of products, services and even clients you will work with.  Your offerings should directly align with the mission of your business.  If they don’t you should assess and reconsider if your mission needs changing or if your offerings are misaligned, thus needing adjustment.
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In drafting a mission statement, I like to start brainstorming by completing the following sentence: “I’m on a mission to….”.   Once I get all my thoughts out I review, group together similar ideas and refine into statements that are succinct and make sense.   Here’s our mission statement for example:

ESC Business Management Solutions strives to help small business owners:
1) streamline operations and systems to create efficiencies that save their business time and money,
2) implement structures and solutions that lead to increased productivity, and
3) strategize and plan effectively to achieve their goals.