Even though sometimes it can feel like a nightmare, growing and running your business can really be a dream come true.
However, making roofing CEO mindset mistakes is the foundation for a struggling business. So what’s the way around this? And how can you constantly focus on the right things?
You’ve might’ve heard the saying that “Your business can never outgrow you.” Yes! Your business cannot outgrow your mindset towards it; neither can it outgrow your investments into yourself to run it.
As a CEO, you’d need to invest in yourself and improve your business by reading books, listening to podcasts, attending conferences, and, most importantly, applying what you learn. Let’s get into these roofing CEO mindset mistakes from Kimba Garcia of CEO-AF.com
Why Should You Have a Right Mindset?
The goal of all the above-mentioned activities is to renew your mindset. And this is what we’ll focus on today. Here are a few reasons why your mindset plays a crucial role in your business’s success.
- The Right Mindset Will Make You Stronger
Most CEOs battle with constant anxiety about their businesses and possibly depression when things don’t work out. However, the proper perspective makes you stronger in the face of these possibilities.
- The Right Mindset Helps You Run Your Business Correctly
If you can’t manage yourself properly, you’d have difficulty successfully managing a company. If you don’t know how to keep your negative thoughts and/or imposter syndrome in check, you’ll have a hard time showing up to work as your best self.
- The Right Mindset Will Help You Lead Your Employees Appropriately
You can’t function well as a leader of other people’s careers when your disposition says otherwise. Your job as a leader is to motivate, inspire, and develop your employees to ultimately help them reach their dreams while they help you reach yours. By keeping a positive mindset and a clear vision, you give your employees something that they can be proud to be a part of.
With this in mind, your business won’t outgrow you if you don’t start implementing specific mindset hacks into your life. So let’s identify the things you might be doing wrong and then move on to how you can always stay focused.
Common CEO Mindset Mistakes
Before diving into how to improve, let’s talk about a few mistakes CEOs make. There are many, but you’d find these to be the main ones to look out for.
Inertia to Learning and Unlearning
In the roofing and the contracting space in general, many people prefer the same old methods they’ve implemented for about 20 years in the industry. We jokingly refer to that as “the guy that likes to work with his hands” or “the classical rigid CEO.”
But as beautiful as passion is, it might not be enough to run a company. Your mindset must say, “I’m open to growing, I’m open to learning, and to building this company a little outside of my comfort zone.” Once you learn to think that way, your thoughts will train your brain to discern what the future holds rightly.
Another reason most CEOs are close-minded is that they believe they are already relatively successful. They believe they are doing pretty well because they’re raking in thousands. But you also have nothing to lose in learning better methods. Instead, you stand to gain even more in the future – don’t subconsciously put a cap on your success.
Feeling Overwhelmed
There are plenty of battles to be fought as an entrepreneur—the external conflicts of insurance and competitors and the internal ones of stress and anger. Consistently giving in to these various obstacles can easily get you in the wrong headspace.
You can’t create and flow in passion if you are always tense and stressed out. The skill of turning negative energy into positive energy would be a massive plus during moments such as these.
Constant Blaming of Employees
Many CEOs are happy to play the victim while assigning the villain role to their employees. Of course, you could expect them to consistently deliver 100% on any job and blame them when they don’t. That’s why you hired them, right?
Wrong. Even the best employees need the necessary training, support, and resources to perform optimally and exceedingly. If they don’t get the training they need, or if your company lacks a working process, they won’t be able to do their job correctly. Then, you’ll be left frustrated when they don’t live up to your expectations and shift the blame (that is technically, yours) onto them.
If they don’t have the tools they need to do the job—like a sales process, for instance— they won’t be able to fit in appropriately. So instead of only focusing on the things they aren’t doing well, like asking, “Why can’t you write estimates or manage projects?” why not pay more attention to equipping them for the job?
Overly Focusing on Your Competitors
Another common mindset mistake most CEOs make is focusing too much on their competitors. An important question to ask yourself is, “Who even are my competitors?” As a roofer, for instance, your competitors shouldn’t be those businesses building great quality roofs and treating homeowners fairly and ethically.
Your competitors are those that are out there lying to homeowners and destroying the industry’s reputation. Reframing your mindset to think of competitors this way makes you more open to beneficial collaborations rather than seeing everyone as a competitor.
In addition, you don’t need to feel that customers are scarce—there are so many homeowners to help. And since the percentage of those that do it right is very small, there’s a lot of room to take over.
Stop trying to attack, worry about or even compete with the competitor. Unless it’s in the way of inspiration—that is, if you’re chasing them because you respect what they’re doing. But if otherwise, it’s only costing you the time and energy you should invest into yourself, your company, your growth, and your impact on the community.
A simple way to illustrate this is for you to think of a race. To be on top of your game, you must stay in your lane and run as fast as possible. You’ll lose momentum if you constantly turn sideways or backward. But if you look to the guy ahead, you’d likely be increasing your speed forward.
Mindset Tricks and Hacks to Help Keep You Focused
Now that we’ve looked at some mindset mistakes you should watch out for, let’s zoom in on how you can always stay focused on the right things.
It may seem cheesy or a bit abstract, but learning mindset tricks is just as vital as trying to learn business hacks from the top guys in your industry. Time management is a big one on this, but it still comes down to loving what you do and developing the right attitude about doing the work.
So the answer to the big question, “How do I manage my time and stay focussed on the goals I’ve made for my business?” is to change your mindset about these things. We’ve outlined practical steps to carry out this “rewiring” below:
Diagnose Yourself 🩺
The first thing you must do on this journey is accurately diagnose your mistakes. How have your anxieties been holding you back? Are you open to learning? Is your struggle with leadership a result of past failures? Lay it all on the table.
Cut out the Self-sabotage ✂️
Learning to stop stealing your power also goes a long way because a wrong attitude to work is counterproductive. Science has proven that stress makes us less intelligent, so to harness your potential, you need to train yourself not to self-sabotage by having the wrong mindset.
Take Thought Audits📔
Auditing your thoughts means being conscious of what you’re thinking and understanding what emotions those thoughts produce in you. Do these thoughts fuel your anxiety or newness, positivity, and motivation?
When things are seemingly going haywire, catch it with a thought audit. For instance, we tell people to stop thinking and saying things like “I’m having a bad day“. It might just be a bad moment, but when you let this instance negatively impact your outlook on the day, the rest of the day will surely go bad!
A thought audit also involves knowing the correct response when negative thoughts DO come up. Although terrible days come occasionally, your brain needs to be ready to respond correctly when they show up. So when you unconsciously start putting cynical thoughts in your mind, audit those thoughts!
Discover your Big “Why” ❓
What’s your biggest motivation for doing what you do? If you don’t know it yet, you’ve got to discover it. You need to identify that big reason why you must never give up on your goals. For instance, are you doing this to send a message to yourself or someone out there, maybe your kids?
Every business owner should have a big “why”. When you discover it, you should use it as the foremost reason to motivate yourself and to call yourself to order when you’re going in the opposite direction of this motivation.
Get your Internal Cheerleader in Full Gear 🎉
There’s almost no better motivation than an inner cheerleader—be it a mini-version of yourself or of someone or something that drives you.
So when you’re in dire need of a shot of energy to power you to your next big moment, activate the power of the inner cheerleader. That way, you’ll be focused on reaching the target and be less distracted by other things. Think of them standing on the bleachers and cheering, “Let’s go! Get after it! Don’t stop now!”.
Enjoy Your Work 😁
Here’s another powerful mindset hack. How much do you love what you do? How passionate are you about it? Although some might think this is unnecessary, we dare say if it’s not fun for you, you’ve got some serious thinking to do about your path.
Now, seeing work as fun doesn’t mean every day will be a cakewalk. Instead, it means being able to connect firsthand with the beauty of your job in a way that makes you happy that you’re doing it. The result is when going out each day, you’d be glad to be able to help another customer or homeowner in the best way you know how to.
Drive Away Negative Energy ⚡️
Of course, you can’t avoid getting mad or frustrated sometimes. Even the best of us get upset and angry at times. But we all can learn how to channel such bad energy away. For instance, you can ward off negative emotions by taking a break from work and giving your mind a break for a while.
Once you make this a habit, you’ll always be able to maintain your subconscious creativity by keeping negative emotions in check. You can return to that situation later, but by then, you’ll be responding appropriately and not just reacting.
Conclusion
Mindest discussions might just look like another motivational speech to keep you hopeful. However, developing the right attitude for work is the foundation of every sustainably successful business or career.
Ruling your mind takes first place in managing a company. And even with a well-crafted business plan in place, a wrong mindset could limit you from taking the next big step.
Your journey as a CEO is as peculiar as it is typical; your journey won’t look the same as the next person’s. However, a positive mindset is something that is vital for every entrepreneur so remember to rewire your brain to think positively and focus on the right things, and you’ll be golden!
