MBA1428 Guest Teacher: Kenneth Aldrich – How to Create an Entrepreneurial Mindset

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Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Because your business is not going to build itself, that's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our Guest teacher episodes I bring on an expert to teach their area of exper and today's guest teacher is Ken Aldridge and he'll be teaching you how to create an entrepreneurial mindset. There's so much information out there about how to market your business, how to create a great product, great service, forming a business plan that's good and all, but you can't be successful in the long run if you don't have the right mindset. The way you see things, the way you perceive your day to day actions, challenges, opportunities in your business is what's going to differentiate you from a successful entrepreneur to a not so successful one. Your mindset in any profession is a defining factor. If you look at the greats in sports, for example, let's say Michael Jordan in basketball, he was known for having a very strong mindset when it comes to competition. When it comes to understanding his opponents, understanding how to utilize their weaknesses or take advantage of them, if you look at a ER surgeon, they have to have the mindset of being calm under pressure, understanding the importance of bedside manner. Every profession has a mindset and you need to build your own entrepreneurial mindset as an entrepreneur. And that's what Ken Aldridge will be teaching you today. I love today's lesson because it touches on so many important things that are not talked about enough. Like how to define your dream as an entrepreneur, what you want out of this whole thing and how to embed that dream in your brain so you have a clear vision. How to change your mindset from I can't to I can. How to redefine problems that you face in your business, how to create wealth and not just creating a job that you like to do and so much more. I can't wait to share it with you this lesson today. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's guest teacher, Ken Aldridge is a highly, highly successful entrepreneur for over 40 years has built big time businesses, over 10 successful businesses. Today's guest teacher, Ken Aldridge is a highly successful entrepreneur that has founded 11 businesses, some with nine figure success. But he has learned a lot as well from his failures which he'll be sharing in today's lesson. Talking about how to form the best mindset for an entrepreneur. How to make sure you have the right conditions in your brain so you can succeed. A lot of us just want to do, do, do, and we don't allow ourselves to work on our mindset because our mindset is what's going to help us move forward, get to next levels, to, to move past certain milestones in our entrepreneurial career. I firmly believe what you tell yourself is really what you have limited yourself to. So if you've told yourself, hey, in some way, I can't make more than $10,000 a month, that's just my limit. And that could be manifested in different ways, like, hey, I'd be happy with 10k. Of course we'd be happy. But when we say that, are we really telling ourselves, that's really all I can do. Let's break through these barriers and form an entrepreneurial mindset. I'm going to pass it on to Ken Aldridge to teach you this lesson. But I'll be back with my takeaways and to wrap up today's lesson. So for now, take it away. Ken.

Welcome to a discussion of how to create an entrepreneurial mindset. My name is Ken Aldrich. I'm a serial entrepreneur and professional angel investor. As Such, I've started 10 companies that have been successful in varying degrees from modestly to several hundred million dollars. And I've also invested in probably 50 companies, some of which have succeeded marvelously to the multi billion dollar level. And others, as happens with startup companies, have not made it, and have gone broke. So I've had a lot of experience over the last 30 years in seeing what works and what doesn't work in starting companies and being an entrepreneur. One of the things that I am most convinced of is that successful companies and successful entrepreneurship begins with what I call an entrepreneurial mind. And that in turn begins with a very clear dream, if you will, on behalf of the entrepreneur, of what they want success to look like. What is the real goal, both personally and in terms of the business? And that's not always easy to define. And so I've worked out a. A method which I outline in much more detail in my book, the Dream Toolbox. But I can outline it here. And the concept is, take a sheet of paper, close off doors and windows so that you can be alone, and write down for about 10 minutes everything that you would love to do if you knew that you could not fail. And that's the important part that knew that you could not fail. Because what our subconscious minds will do to us is edit and say, oh, don't write that down. That couldn't happen. But that's the mistake, because we need our minds to run freely. Suppose, for example, Wilbur and Orville Wright had decided to do the same thing, and then it said, oh, no, I don't want to write down anything about flying. Man can't possibly fly. Well, we'd all be riding around in cars or trains or buggies. So don't edit the list at all. Just put down your wildest dreams of what you would really like to do. Then the next morning, pull the list out and go through it for those things that really resonate as a true goal that you'd like to achieve. That's how you begin to create an entrepreneurial dream that can be actually fulfilled. Now, there's a second step to this, and I call it visualization, or embedding the dream in your subconscious, because you have a plan. You know now what you want to do, whether it's cure cancer or write the most brilliant sonata ever, whatever it is. But what do you do with that? Well, one of the things that is very important is to bring that dream from the future into the present in your own mind. And I call that visualization. But what it amounts to is really this. Take some time every day. I used to do it every morning in front of the mirror, feeling very foolish, but it worked. And visualize exactly what your life would look like and what the business that you're talking about founding would look like when it's completed when it's a success. But don't do it as some future thing. Imagine how that would feel today so that you're in that dream as actively as it's possible to be. Think about, for example, when you sometimes wake up from a dream and there's a period of time before you even know whether you're still dreaming or not. You want that level of concrete visualization now. It takes some practice, but you can get it. And once you do, then your subconscious mind takes over. And it's amazing how that will keep you on track and keep you from going off track as you work toward the fulfillment of your dream. Now, having done that, we have to go to another step. By the way, let me digress for a moment because all of this seems very woo woo and very strange. Probably if you said, wait a minute, I got on this recording so that I could learn to be an entrepreneur. And yet there are thousands of books on how to write a business plan and how to become an entrepreneur, but very little on how to change the mindset that makes all the difference in the world. So please bear with me. So now you've taken the dream and you've embedded it deeply in your subconscious. There's another step, though, that has to be taken that's very much related, and it's changing your core belief systems from I can't to I can. And that's very important because all of us from childhood have been surrounded by all the things that people tell us we can't do. You can't go in the street, you can't do this. Very seldom, though have we been taught to say, yes, I can. And when we have, sometimes that's carried negative connotations. But the reality is the belief that yes, I can do that is very, very important. So the only drill I know for this is every time you find your subconscious mind saying to you, gee, I can't do that, stop and say, why not? I think I can. In fact, yes, I can do that. I can accomplish it and make that be your default setting whenever you're confronted with a challenge that yes, I can actually do that, that will also make an enormous difference. Now let's get to some of the more practical things. Every new business is confronted with myriad problems and sometimes the obstacles look enormous, like a huge mountain wall in front of us. Sometimes they look like a freight train coming through a tunnel right at us and we have no escape. But there's a mental process that can make those problems a lot easier to deal with. And it's quite simple in a sense, if instead of looking at problems that you are facing as if they were insurmountable obstacles or a giant brick wall or a freight train, think of them instead as puzzles, puzzles to be solved. A mental Rubik's cube, if you will. And that makes all the difference. Because think about it. The very definition of a puzzle implies that there's a solution to it. And once your mind begins to think about your problems or the barriers or the obstacles as puzzles to be solved to which you know there's a solution, then a very subtle change begins to take place, and you begin to see every problem, every barrier, not only as a puzzle to be solved, but as you go along, you'll begin to see them as possible alternate. Excuse me, possible opportunities. I'll learn to talk eventually. That makes all the difference in the world. There was a saying attributed to Rahm Emanuel, who used to be mayor of Chicago and was on the. I think it was the Obama administration, and it was never waste a crisis. And it's the same principle. Never waste the opportunities that are hidden within a barrier or an obstacle to our success. Now, what's next? I'm kind of going through a list of things that have been very important to me in developing an entrepreneurial mindset and recognizing it in others. I think the next thing that we should consider is to confront the thing which I think causes more failures than almost anything else in the entrepreneurial world. And very simply, that thing is the fear of failure. Because the fear of failure causes people never to start or causes them to start, but always kind of with one foot behind them and saying, well, but if it doesn't work, I can retreat. And it's deadly to an entrepreneur who's trying to start a new business or make a major change in their life if they're working as an intrapreneur within some other organization. So it's a huge one. And the trick is, how do you deal with it? And I'll give you my secret. It may not be the one that works for everyone, but I found it enormously powerful. What I try to do when I'm confronted with a new project or a new dream that I'd like to fulfill. And it's pretty scary, is I try to walk to the edge of the abyss and look down and say, okay, what's the absolute worst thing that could happen if I try this and I fail, will I die? Probably not. Will I lose my marriage? Maybe that's a real risk, and you have to weigh that. Will I lose Some money, maybe. Can I live through that? Yes. In short, look at all of the worst things that could happen and then say, can I live with that? Can I survive that? Can I go forward if that happens? If the answer to that is yes, then put that fear aside and say, okay, I've looked at the worst that can happen. I can survive it. Let's get this thing done. I can do it. I can go forward. And that is enormously powerful. But you have to go through that drill. And I think without looking at the worst side, you never have the power to create the best side. Now let's talk a little bit about something slightly different. And that is the key to entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial mind is that we are always looking not for a better job, but to create wealth, to create assets that are tangible and that will serve us as we go forward. So the entrepreneurial mind is always looking for ways to create wealth. That's why if you're working within a corporation, you want to look for opportunities for stock options or for equity in some project, because a better job will never make you wealthy and a better job will never make you a success. But creating something that will give you income for the rest of your life does. Similarly, you don't want to start a business that you're captive to. So every entrepreneurial enterprise should ultimately be be designed to say, okay, how can I exit this at some point and let it give back to me instead of me just working more hours every day? Finally, let me talk about one other thing, and that is banish the myth of someday. How many times have you heard people say, well, someday my dream will come true. Someday I'll start that business. Someday I'll do this or whatever it is. That's a very pernicious myth, and it is a myth. But the way to banish it is simply to refuse to talk in terms of someday. Let someday begin. Now, what is your dream? When do you start? Now. I'd like to borrow, in closing, from the slogan of just do it, don't wait. Just do it, do it now, and banish the myth of someday. Thank you.

This is Ken Aldrich at Capella University. Learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the courseroom to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

Loved that lesson by Ken Aldridge. So many great insights. And you could just tell by the way he was speaking, the way he was teaching that he comes with a wealth of knowledge that he's had a lot of experience and he's put a lot of thought into this. If you want to learn more about creating an entrepreneurial mindset, you should check out Ken's book Dream Toolbox, and you can find it at dreamtoolbox. Com. I particularly loved his insight when it comes to problems or challenges, seeing them as opportunities. One of the things I like to tell new entrepreneurs is that if you're getting into entrepreneurship, understand that you're in the problem solving game. That's all you do all day long. So see it like Ken says, like a puzzle. What's the solution to this puzzle? Every time you're approached with a problem, whether it's a customer that is upset or you have delays in your product launch, or you have an issue with your product itself, this is a puzzle. This is a time for you to solve a problem. And this is what you do day in and day out. This is your area of expertise. Just like you know a surgeon will save lives or an actor entertains people, this is what you do. You solve problems as an entrepreneur. So get used to it. Start seeing them as challenges, as puzzles, as Ken alluded to or suggested. Thank you so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now. By hitting subscribe, you tell whatever you use to listen to this podcast. Whether you're using Stitcher Radio or Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you're telling that app, hey, when the next episode is available, make sure it's already on my device. Hit subscribe right now. Thank you so much. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of my favorite quotes by Jim Rohn is stand guard at the gates of your mind. And what he means by that is you've got to be very careful about what you listen to, what you read and what you tell yourself. Whatever you put in your mind is going to affect how you think and therefore it's going to affect how you act. And you're just not going to get the results that you're looking for if you just allow anything to enter your mind. So stand guard at the gates of your mind. I love that. Thank you so much for listening and I'll take you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the courseroom to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Eduardo.