5 mindset shifts from entrepreneur to CEO everyone must make! 🙌🏼

All right. Good morning, you guys. Happy Monday. You're here, you're Alive, it's the 4th of July and you're back. I know Mondays can be rough, but I always feel like Mondays after a holiday weekend can be especially daunting. Although I am all about it today because I had the hottest, sweatiest weekend ever. I have never experienced Wisconsin to be this hot and humid as it was this weekend. So I finally washed my hair today and I'm feeling like I can handle it. I can handle a Monday because I finally got to shower. I don't know if you guys were outside this weekend, it was blazing hot wherever you are, but I hope you guys had a really, really good holiday weekend and you are ready to smash it this first week in July. So I wanted to come live this morning because a couple things really. First of all, last week was incredibly exciting inside of the boutique hub because I got to hear from so many of you guys who were crushing all of your last minute June, end of month goals. And I mean, tell me what you think in the comments. But I feel like when all of the pandemic started, it could have been so easy to just like crumble and run the other way because we were all so fearful. And I think there still is a lot of that fear in business. Lucky for you, as a retailer, as a boutique owner, you had the opportunity to pivot really quickly and to start to shift online or live selling or try on sessions or using more video. I think it forced so many people to get out of their comfort zone and to try new things, which has resulted in some epic numbers for a lot of business owners. Now, if that's not you, I would love to hear, like, number one, yes, that's me. And I'm ready for July. I'm going to crush it in July if that's not you. However, I feel like there are some real lessons to be learned and some real actionable takeaways to have right now going forward into July. So if you haven't had that epic moment yet, it's still possible for you. And so right now, my heart is just really in the space of, like, how do we pour into every single business in one of these two places that really needs it? Because this is the time for independent retailers to soar. And I just want us to be like, the catalyst that gets you guys the information as fast as possible. So we are fresh off a virtual summit and it was amazing. It went better than we could have planned. So thank you to you guys who attended virtual summit I hope you loved it. Gosh, we had over 30 speakers there sharing different ideas and tips and takeaways. Some really, really good, new, fresh ideas were shared there. So I just want to keep the momentum going and keep bringing new life and new ideas. So today I specifically want to talk about something that you may be dealing with as you come back from a holiday weekend. And that's five mindset shifts to really help you move from entrepreneur to CEO. Because like I said, I know what it's like to come back from a holiday weekend. And you're just like, what now where do I go? Especially in July. Now we always talk about the theory of the J months, and a lot of you crushed June, so it blew the J month theory out of the water. But July can be hard because a lot of people are out at the lake or at the beach or doing things. I mean, the pandemic kind of changes that. So I think people are a little bit more captive than they normally are. Um, but regardless, I want this month to be strong for you. And even if this isn't your best month ever, which July typically isn't, this is the best month of the year, July and January, to make system changes in your business that are going to benefit you to the long run. Because what happens after July is we hit August, September, and then we're into the fourth quarter and things go like this and hopefully your sales go up, but your time gets extremely limited. So, so mentally, what do you need to do right now to shift into the place where you're ready for that? And really, I did this whole session at Virtual Summit. You'll have to drop me like a thumbs up. If you were there and you saw this keynote at Virtual Summit that I did all about scaling from $100,000 company to a million dollar brand. Like, what does that actually look like? And today I'm going to give you just a tiny little taste of what I talked about in that keynote. Because again, I think this is the week where a lot of you are going to be able to run with and implement some of these new strategies. So five mindset shifts I'm going to drop for you right here. Okay, perfect. And I can see your comments. Oh, man. Angela, 90k in June. Best month ever. That is awesome. I love hearing that. Erica, bring it on. You bet. Hot, hot. Yes. Okay, so five mindset shifts to move from entrepreneur to CEO. Number one, a CEO values their time, time, time, time. And I think as you're coming off of a holiday weekend, let me know if you came back. And at any point, yesterday or today, you said to yourself, I need more time. Like I need more time with my family, I need more time off. I want to go to the beach more, I want to be at the pool more. Like drop me a heart or a number one in the comments. If that was you, if you realize this weekend that you really do need to take more time. And I think the thing is we get into business and we think like, oh, I'm going to do this because I'm going to have friends, freedom. And then you're like, crap, I'm a business owner. I'm actually working way more than I ever did at a 40 hour a week gig. But you do it because you love it, right? So how do we mix the freedom that we want and that we love into this business that we've got and not just burn ourselves out running, running, running, killing all of our time. So CEOs value time. Here's what they do. Number one, I have this post it note. You guys hear me say this. It's on my desk and it says, are you the bottleneck of your business? For me, the answer is usually a yes. I really fight to say that it's a no. But no, it's not. Even as I grow and I continue to shed things off of my plate and as our team grows and picks up more things to do, I'll say it still becomes me being the bottleneck of the business. And I feel like I'm at another turning point now where I've got to just like refigure out how I'm going to get through this crazy to do list. Because priorities just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger, right? So the more you can ask yourself that honest question, am I the bottleneck? And when you say yes and admit that to yourself right now, you can start to make the changes that you need to move forward. So when you discover am I the bottleneck? Now we go into, okay, what are the boundaries I'm going to set for myself? And I think that's key. Again, after a holiday weekend, if I want to value having more time at the lake, where am I going to put that into my schedule? If. Because if you show me your calendar, you show me your priorities, right? So where am I going to time block that in? What is the boundary? For me, working after 5:30 is a super hard boundary. I will not do it because my kids and husband like they sacrifice enough, right? When I travel a lot and that kind of thing. So like that is their time and I'M really hard on that boundary that took me a long time to get there because I felt like I could just do more and more. And that's the entrepreneur in all of us. We think like, well, I'll just do it. I'll just take it on. I'll just say, yes, I'll DIY it. I'll save the money. And these are such lies that we tell ourselves, like, you can't take more on your plate. Mike Michalowicz does this talk and he talks a lot about the theory of the small plates. And I forget there's like a scientist who did this whole theory. And so I'm not giving him proper credit. But I heard it from Mike Michalowicz and he talks about how, you know, even with fast food in America, right, the larger the plate that we are served our food on, the larger the serving size, the more we will consume. And it's true with food and it's true with time. If we think that we have time, like we will use all the time in the world. There was a study that was done and it was proving the point that we could accomplish in a 40 hour workweek the same that we accomplish in a 20 hour workweek. When we smash that time together and we get really, really laser focused on our boundaries and our priorities, we get just as much done in 20 hours as we do in 40 hours. Because you guys know, hands up, like number two in the comments, if you are on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok way too much and when your little phone report comes in and they're like, congratulations, you spent four hours on your phone on average every day this week and you just want to vomit. We've all been there. It's an absolute time suck. So when we set hard boundaries for our time now, we can really get laser focused and actually accomplish more. Number three, I want to illustrate this example for you in terms of valuing time. Time is such a leverage point. And I think the mindset shift that we really get hung up on, or I know I used to anyway, is the leverage between time and money. And I used to get so annoyed when people are like, it takes money to make money. Well, really doesn't. It takes someone who's smart about leveraging time and money together. I'm going to give you this example between a CEO and an entrepreneur. So let's just say it's July 1st and the CEO and the entrepreneur both get $100 and they're like, I'm going to give you this $100 go make as much money with this hundred dollars as you possibly can, okay? And they're both going to do the exact same thing with $100, but they get to decide how they're going to use it. The entrepreneur says, well, I'm going to save the hundred dollars. I'm going to DIY the project. Let's just say it's to create a website. I'm going to DIY this. It's going to take me three weeks to get it done, but at the end, I'm going to have this $300 profit. Okay, so I've got my $100. Then I've got my $300. Now that's $400 in my pocket. Entrepreneur's like, yes, I did it myself, because this is something we value as entrepreneurs, right? Well, the CEO comes in. The CEO says, okay, give me your hundred dollars. And the CEO takes $100 and says, okay, I'm going to hire three people. I'm gonna pay him $20 each. So it's $60 spend. I'm gonna keep 40 in my pocket. I'm gonna go build the website, and I'm gonna make $300, but I'm gonna do it in one week. Okay? So the difference now when we add that MA entrepreneur has $400 net profit, the CEO spends $180. Because they're paying $60 a week, they're keeping the initial $40, but because they made $300 a week, now they've sold $900. So their net profit at the end of the day becomes 760 versus the entrepreneur's 400. So almost double because they leverage time and money. I know that sounds really simple, and you're like, duh, I know that already. But really, as an entrepreneur, I like, this is the struggle. When we are looking at our cash flow and we're like, I can't spend money to have someone do a website for me or that's too expensive. Like these lies that we tell ourselves. We're like, no. If we would leverage that money to save more time, we could get to the profit faster. And we could often get a greater profit because someone who is an expert in their field is going to do a better job at that than we are anyway. So give me an amen in the comments. If you're like, I need to do this. I. I really need to do this. Even. Even at the Boutique cup, like, we have to do that. There's a lot of things that we still DIY and we just really have to. To Leverage what we've got. Sarah Burks always says, do what you do best and hire the rest. And she couldn't be more right. But we get stuck in this. I don't want to hire anyone. I don't want to lose the money out of my pocket. It's like the fixed mindset, right? Fixed mindset versus growth mindset is, is like safe sand. And if we were trying to pick sand up in our hands and we do like, we scoop it up like this. Growth mindset says, oh, it's abundant, right? I can carry more sand when it's in my open hand like this and I can share it with other people. Fixed mindset says, I don't want to lose the sand. Ah. So then we start to clinch it. What happens when we clinch sand? The sand all runs through our fingers and it's gone. Fixed by mindset. And sometimes entrepreneurs get into this is like, we try to focus more on like what we're going to possibly lose than what we're going to gain. And I'm going to talk more about that in just a little bit. So values time. That was tip number one. If you want a book to read on this, Rich Dad, Poor dad is absolutely life changing. Robert Kiyosaki. It's an older book, but I think everyone, I think that Rich Dad, Poor dad should absolutely be a required read for school kids. Like when you get into high school, you should have to read Rich Dad, Poor dad, although I don't think our education system would ever allow that. But it is so, so good. So give it to your parents, give it to your siblings. Read it yourself. It's going to help you shift into valuing your time and leveraging time and money. CEO mindset shift number two is values progress. And again, this goes back to like, I'm just going to DM DIY it, right? Or it has to be perfect or I can't let someone else do it because they won't do it as good as me. Done is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. You can come back, you can optimize, you can tinker, you can tweak, you can do all those things, but you cannot do it all yourself. So valuing progress means what is the 20% of my list that's going to get me 80% of my results? And I'm going to focus on those big rocks here. The lie that society tells us is that you should be busy and you are not a contributing member of society unless you're busy. Well, busy and you can be busy doing anything you want. Like, we just get so busy making ourselves busy that we're focusing on the wrong busy. We're focusing on answering emails and Facebook messages and all this junk that just clutters up our desk, clutters up our time and, and loses focus on what's actually going to move the needle. The 20% of our list is going to get us 80% of the results. So that's valuing progress. If you email me, I'm just going to just be really honest with you. Okay. If you email me, you might not hear back for a week. It might be two weeks now. I have Beth will help answer my emails from time to time. But I value the email. I value communicating. But I also know if I don't do the 20% of my to do list every day first, it'll never get done. And so someone once said to me, they're like, hey, an email inbox is a holding place for other people's priorities. You have to focus on your own business priorities first. So just make sure you're not busy on things you shouldn't be busy on. Right. And we're busy on the big rocks so that we can value progress. And I think this moves into KPIs as well. Well, right. The more we can focus on the key performance indicators, the KPIs in our business that are going to move the needle forward only attract number grows. So we're going to talk more about that when we talk about systems in just a minute. So values time was mindset number one, values progress. Mindset number two. Method number three is culture. What's the proverb? If you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for a lifetime rather than if you give him a fish, he'll feed him for a day. The same is true for building a team in your business. The more you can focus on teaching your team, which will take more time, I guarantee you and your entrepreneur brain is going to go, I don't have the time, I'm too busy. Just figure it out. Shoo, shoo. Or you're going to micromanage them and only focus on the things they did wrong rather than celebrate the things they did right. Right. Because you're worried about the time and getting the things done. Like that's just going to work us backwards. So the more we can build a culture of try it, figure it out. Teach vision. Right. Teach looking ahead to what do you think needs to be done next? Like, what do you think would help grow? Give a Mistake and a goal in where you're trying to go so that they try to get there themselves versus you trying to, you know, push them from behind. You can't push a wet noodle. You've got to lead it right? So lead by example and build that culture into your team. Mindset number four is systems. And I could talk for days about systems and KPIs and all the things SOPs. If you don't have SOPs in your business, this is the biggest leverage point when it comes to hiring a team and teaching them to have vision. Because if you can say, okay, I'm hiring my first team member, I'm going to document this every step of the way so that when I come back I have a plan the next time I need to do it or team member comes in and they need opening duties, closing duties, product upload duties, photo shoot duties, social media duties, whatever it is, document it every step of the way so that training becomes easier for the second and the third employee or whatever the new system or process is that you're leveraging in your business. The more you have an operations plan, handbooks, SOPs, formulas, this goes into like traffic formulas for your business. If I know I want to make X amount of money this week divided by my average order value, I need this number of orders divided by my average conversion rate. Okay, now I know I need this amount, amount of traffic to hit this sales goal. Now I can work a plan for my marketing that hits all these numbers right? That's a system. And the more we can systematize our business, the faster it's going to grow. I have 10% battery left. Perhaps I should have charged my phone before I did this. So systems and then test theories on those systems. That's a mindset shift. It's not just done and forget about it, but it's done and come back and see what of the the rest result was and then iterate, right? Test and retest and try something new on that system. So time, progress, culture, systems. The last is simple growth mindset. I don't know about you guys. I think we all came from different backgrounds and probably different mindset shifts. But I think this goes back to like I was talking about the grains of sand. So CEOs seeking to gain. This is a growth mindset. Seek to gain versus seeking not to lose. Do you guys know people like that in your life? You probably know people that are willing to take risks because they're seeking to gain versus you know, people that hold on to the sand like this and they're seeking not to lose. And I think that's just a huge difference, in my opinion. In some businesses that make it or don't, I think sometimes we get so, so stuck in like, okay, I made it this far. I've just got to stay, I've got to maintain. And then our capacity for risk is really limited, and so our capacity for growth becomes really limited. So how do you mitigate those risks but continue to seek to gain? That's growth mindset. Yeah, man, grow. I could say a lot of other things about abundance versus scarcity. I think this goes back to our whole mission at the boutique Teacup too. When it comes to community over competition, the more you see the world as an abundant place where anything is possible, the more opportunity you're going to see in your own life versus feeling like it's fixed, it's scarce. I have to compete with someone to get it. That's the fixed mindset and holding onto the sand and seeking not to lose something. Abundance is knowing anything's possible and going for it. And the more you help other people up, the more they will help you up as well. So five huge shifts between an entrepreneur mindset, which we all have to have the hustle and grind of entrepreneur mindset to get us started moving into CEO mindset, which is all about leverage, training, systems, culture to continue to grow our businesses. So as you come back from the 4th of July this week and you are serious about getting back into your business, but also saying, I want more time with my family again, drop a number one in the comments if that's you. And you're like, I'm spending more time at the beach. Right. Life is short and 2020 is out of this world. Crazy. We could have never predicted any of this. And so I think for anything it's taught me, it's that we can't take this life for granted. We can't take our family for granted. We get to spend some time with friends this weekend. We will not take our friends for granted. So we're going to do everything we can to grow our business and your business and, and the community. But at the same time, it's about, like, why'd you start the business in the first place? It's about building a life that you love. And if there's anything I want you to get from today's message and from any message, it's that growing your business is great. But if you're doing it at the risk of losing the reason you got started in the first place, it's not worth it. So this stuff, this growth mindset stuff, this CEO mindset stuff, that's got to be number one and everything else will follow if you can get these initial things right. So, guys, I hope this message resonated with you. I want to let you guys know we're doing a training this week again, coming off a virtual summit. We just want to keep pouring into your business and keep helping you guys hit record months. So we're doing a four day double down. We've never done this. We're also trying a brand new webinar system that we've never used before. So like, say some prayers, that technology does not fail this week. But Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we're doing a four day double down, 10am Central time every morning. It will be short and sweet because y' all are hustling and you're busy and you're back after a holiday. But I will give you a message every day. Sarah Burks will be joining me for Thursday's message and we're going to cover four key areas of your business that are critical to grow your income in 2020. So I know that our team has drafted the links. Draft the links. I don't even know what that sentence is. I just said they've dropped the links in the comments. So if you want to register again, it's completely free. It's for four days. It's a four day double down. And I will see you every single day, Wednesday through Saturday. So if you guys have any questions, I'll come back. I'll monitor the comments in just a little bit. But again, drop me a thumbs up if this was helpful if this hit home and if you are ready to crush July coming off of a holiday. So you guys, always happy to serve you again. I'm Ashley. I'm the founder at the Boutique Hub. Blessed to have you guys in our community. So thanks for showing up and hanging out with me this morning, guys. Bye.