Date: Aug 12, 2020

Do you dream of being your own boss setting your own schedule or would you love to be a freelancer working from your laptop in a cafe, or travelling the world as you work? 

It might just feel like a nice dream on a bad day, but what’s actually stopping you from building a career that supports the lifestyle you want? Do you tell yourself you don’t have enough time or money to start a business? Or do you worry what other people might think? Could the fear of failure be keeping you in your salary job?

We can all justify to ourselves why we simply can’t do something, but how do we move past the limiting beliefs of what’s possible, or stop procrastinating, and start building a mindset that sets us up for success? 

In this episode of The Wallet, we welcome Lauren Armes, CEO of Welltodo, entrepreneur, and business coach emphasises the importance of dreaming big and creating a mindset ready for success and abundance.

***

You can listen (45 min) and subscribe here:

Apple Podcasts

Acast

***

1. The power of a success mindset

Having a success mindset in today’s turbulent world is critical for our health, happiness and prosperity.  Adopting a success mindset not only facilitates your ability to view problems from a range of perspectives but can provide the clarity of mind required to find the path to success.  

The abundance mentality lies at the root of a success mindset. When we adopt an abundance mentality, our outlook changes: we trust that when we pool our ideas together that everyone benefits. This means acknowledging, delighting, and celebrating in others’ successes, and not harbouring feelings of bitterness towards our competitors’ talents. Spreading positivity throughout your network will allow you to focus on your own positive performance free from distractions. For Lauren, the underlying abundance mentality behind her success mindset was vital in starting her global wellness business Welltodo. When she moved from Australia to London seven years ago, she was initially taken aback by how competitive, bright and qualified people were in the entrepreneurial landscape, but instead of resenting the talents of others, she tapped into their capabilities for inspiration. In fact, to this day, she continues to meet and share her ideas with coaches, academics and entrepreneurs in her field to further her knowledge base in the wellness industry, believing that when you work with others, their credibility rub-offs on you and creates a mutually beneficial outcome. In this vein, having an abundance mindset is also about being curious and continually thirsting to learn more.

In contrast, those stuck in a ‘scarcity mentality’, the world is a zero-sum game. The scarcity mindset can often lead people to believe that there is only enough success for a finite pool of people, breeding a culture of paranoia in which people compete in isolation and fear.

2. Overcoming the fear of failure

On an individual level, applying a ‘growth’ mentality to your life can mean the difference between success and failure. This is especially the case when it comes to learning from your mistakes. Indeed, Lauren argues that one of the main reasons for entrepreneurs’ lack of success is that they are afraid of failure to the point that they will not pursue their dream in the first place. 

Much of our understanding of the growth mindset stems from Dr Carol Dweck’s seminal work, ‘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success’. Dweck studies the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how they touch nearly every aspect of our lives in a profound way. One of the core beliefs we shape at an early age is how we view ourselves and the possibilities that are available to us. Stemming from this fundamental belief we derive either a fixed or a growth mindset. With a fixed mindset, we assume that our character, intellect, and capabilities are static givens that cannot be changed. Under a fixed mindset, our failures act as markers to the limit of our intelligence and ability, while our success is an affirmation of our inherent strengths. Through the application of this myopic standard, those with fixed mindsets will seek to avoid failures at all costs to maintain the sense of being capable. Conversely, a growth mindset thrives on new challenges and the unknown, viewing failures not as evidence of our set weaknesses but rather as springboards for growth and learning. We can extrapolate that, depending on our mindset, springs a whole plethora of behaviours that will, fundamentally, impact our capacity for happiness and success. 

Lauren argues that building a successful, resilient business requires a growth mindset. She urges people to follow the voice in their head that makes them want to start their own business, nurturing their curiosity and learning in the process. 

In this sense, Lauren suggests that building a business is a personal development journey, compelling you to create change in the way you work, how you respond to feedback and how you adapt to life’s challenges. By aligning your personal and professional goals, it is possible to extend this growth potential by removing the limits on the capacity of your business. For example, during the initial development stages of her startup, Lauren had called her business Welltodo London until she worked with a business coach who told her to remove the implied geographical limits on her business. Since then, Lauren has been an advocate of starting where the potential is and by looking at your business model to envisage what might be possible. This resonates with Debbie Millman’s advice: that you should “do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love…imagine immensities”;  “if you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve”. Millman’s message is deeply rooted in the modern psychology of mindset and belief systems about our own abilities that ultimately determine the trajectory of our success.

3. Building a business

Lauren explains that the best way to set up a business is to ask yourself how your business will operate in the context of the life you want to live. Using this logic, if you want to travel and work remotely, setting up a brick-and-mortar business will make you feel like a failure because you will not be able to do the things you set out to do. Reverse engineering what your business will look like in this way will help you to succeed in your business venture since you will align your personal and professional definitions of success. By building your business around your personal passion and notions of success, you will be more likely to meet your end-goals. For Lauren, this meant setting the right mindset and beliefs in place in order to work out what she wanted to get out of her business. During this process, she discovered that she had a strong desire to work remotely so that she could see her family in Australia during the year. Reverse engineering your business model will also tell you how much money you need to live your dream life and help you to hire people that align themselves to your personal mission. Lauren’s initial desire to work remotely has led to hiring people that similarly want to be flexible in terms of where they base themselves and given her a competitive advantage when it comes to reaching people through digital products and offerings. 

While reverse engineering your business model in the context of your dream life can be the cornerstone of both personal and professional successes, it is important to remember that you are still running a business to make a living. Lauren recounts that at the beginning of her Welltodo journey, she didn’t know that it would actually become a business. Instead, she was seeking to build a community around her wellness blog. The issue with this was that building her audience and network over coffee meetings did not pay her bills, and she was soon forced to make big financial sacrifices to keep going. In light of her experience, Lauren encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to focus on a product or service that they would like to offer and work out how you will make money. For Lauren this meant investing in business coaching and extending her business into this arena. 

Creating a successful business has required Lauren to onboard a smart team to help her in her journey. One of the top financial tips she gives to new entrepreneurs is to find an incredible accountant that understands the raison d’être of your business. She believes that this can make a big difference when trying to run a synchronised business and make money. However, despite having an excellent team of talented people around her, Lauren acknowledges that she is the driving force of her business and, as such, must be the one to take responsibility. It is for this reason that she’s stopped treating personal development as a ‘nice to have’ and instead embraced it as an entirely necessary tool for her own growth and the growth of her business. This is especially important given the global pandemic, during which our health and wellbeing should be even higher up on the priority list.

***

You can listen (45 min) and subscribe here:

Apple Podcasts

Acast

***

Resources: 

You can connect with Lauren and learn more about coaching and wellness work at; 

• Instagram: @laurenarmes

• Twitter: @laurenarmes_

• Welltodo: www.welltodoglobal.com

• Lauren website: www.laurenarmes.co

Some of the great resources Lauren recommends in this episode can be found on the links below:

• How rich people think by Steve Siebold 

• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker 

• The Secrets of getting rich by Wallace D

• Wattles Unshakeable: Your guide to financial freedom by Tony Robbins 

• The Lucky Bitch Podcast Denise Duffield-Thomas