Episode 56 | 3 Ways to Achieve a Stretch Mindset In Business

Sophia Noreen: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I am going to be your host for today. And before we get started, for anybody who's new here, Boss It Podcast is for anybody who's looking to start an entrepreneurial journey or is in the middle of an entrepreneurial journey. Our main goal for this podcast is to keep you motivated, to give you practical tips that you can use regularly on your day-to-day, either in business or in life, because we know how hard it is, especially in the early days, between years 0 to 5. Many businesses will not be able to survive past the five-year mark. 

Especially for our lady bosses, we know it is difficult, and we want to make sure that you are as successful as possible while you are continuing striving towards your goals. Today, we are going to be speaking about a very interesting concept called a Stretcher's Mindset. And this was coined by Scott Sonenchein. 

I'm wondering if we should invite him to the podcast guys because when I heard about this concept structures versus Chaser's mindset, I thought it was great. And for anybody who's in the entrepreneurial space, I felt like these concepts, the Stretcher's Mindset and the Chaser's Mindset, could be really informative on how we practice and how we approach entrepreneurship. I want to share three tips that Scott shares with us in his book called Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less- And Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined. So these three tips are from his book, but I'm going to apply them to entrepreneurship because this concept of Stretcher's Mindset could be applied to all avenues of your life. So I definitely recommend this book, and maybe one day we'll invite Scott onto the show. That would be great to chat with him. 

So the first tip is to achieve psychological ownership. Now, I think this is a fantastic trip and I'm going to apply it now to entrepreneurship. And as an entrepreneur, we generally lack resources such as time, energy, and money, or even some financial funding. We, as entrepreneurs, when we get started, have to be scrappy. We have to be very resourceful. And the Stretcher's Mindset is all about being resourceful, versus a Chaser's Mindset which is the complete opposite, is someone who feels that they need more resources to do better or do more.  

So when you are in a Chaser's Mindset, you generally have this ideology that needs this much more revenue, or I need this much more funding to be able to do this much more for my bottom line. Versus Stretcher's Mindset would say, no, let me look at the resources I have today. And let me see if I can still achieve my goals without having more funding. that's a very broad example, but I'm going to bring it down now to how you can use psychological ownership to become more of a stretcher. So again, using the resources that you have available to you today in order to achieve your big goals. Obviously, when it comes to financial funding, if you're making money, you have ownership of that asset. 

And many people are very careful of how they're going to spend that money because they have ownership of that money. Versus if you are a child and your parents hand you a credit card and they're like, go spend some money, you may buy as many toys as you would like. Or if you're working for a large company and the budget is endless, you may go and just spend the money like you don't own it. You have no ownership over it. If you have ownership over your money, then you're more likely to be very careful on how you're going to spend it. I do like to cite Sam Walton. If you do read his biography, you will see how much ownership he had of the funding. 

And even when Walmart was growing tremendously and they would go out for trips, he would ask the team to all share the same hotel room. Some would stay on the floor, just so they could save money. And that's just a really extreme example because it showed how much ownership he had over that funding, and how he was being really resourceful on how he would spend that funding. 

We can also apply this psychological ownership principle to your energy and also to your time. And I think this is where it gets tricky because if you have ownership over your time, you'll be very diligent on when and how you use your time, and what to say yes and no to. So the money of course is very easy to say, yes, I have ownership. I'm very careful with my money as an entrepreneur. As a responsible adult, I will be careful with my money. But can you say the same thing about your time? Have you taken ownership of your time? That is a bit more difficult. Not everyone will take ownership of their time by diligently saying, okay, this is what I'm going to do at this time of the day. Especially when you're in the entrepreneurial space, if you're not working in a traditional 9 to 5, you are your own boss. You may not have the ability to have an accountability group at this time so no one is standing over your head and saying, okay, you need to accomplish this task at this time.  

So you have to have the psychological ownership to get it done. If you don't have that psychological ownership of your time, then your day could be gone and you may not even realize that you spent three hours scrolling through Instagram when you really should have been completing a deliverable that you had for yourself.  

Another example of psychological ownership is over your energy. Sometimes people are not as cognizant of how they spend their energy. It takes me a lot of energy to do simple things like social media. Doing a social media post is very toxic for some people. If you don't have a great strategy yet, it could be taking hours. So not only are you not owning your time, your energy is being depleted because you're not enjoying the task. If you're enjoying the task, then that's different. Because you're enjoying the task, you get stuck into a good flow and in the end, you realize, oh my time went by but I really enjoyed that task. Versus trying to complete that task, not enjoying that task and now you feel depleted. You don't feel energized after doing that task.  

If you feel energized after doing a task, that's fantastic. But if you feel depleted, can you say that you have psychological ownership over your energy? So again, as you would apply the same principles to time and to money, you should also apply it to your energy and be really, really careful on how you spend your energy. Because again, energy is not infinite. You need to be able to conserve your energy for the best tasks for you to complete, and then develop systems or find team members, find volunteers, find your mom, find your sister, find your best friend to help you with other processes. So that way you're not getting stuck and burning out, and then not being able to achieve the goals that you're looking to achieve.  

Okay, so that was all about psychological ownership. I love it because it can be applied to all the domains that we spoke about. Time, money, and energy, and are the three domains that I really like to focus on because I really feel they're the fuel that will help push you to the next level. If you have the ability to systemize and protect your time, money, and energy, you will be able to push to new heights for sure. 

Tip number two, when it comes to the Stretcher's Mindset, is all about embracing constraints. Now, embracing constraints can sound very ominous because why would we want to embrace the constraint? The example I like to give for this is the lack of time or the constraint of time. Everybody feels a squeeze of timelike the clock will keep moving. It doesn't matter what happens in life, the clock will keep pushing forward. So that's a constraint that we all live with. All humanity has the same issue. It doesn't stop for anyone. And the perception of time, of course, is different for everyone. But for most of us, we feel like time is constrained. And that could be because many people who listened to the podcast or watch us on YouTube, they are motivated, they are trying to achieve something great, they have families, they have side hustles or they have the part-time job. We just have a lot of different things happening, and so that's a constraint, or time is a constraint. Of course, energy can be also a constraint. And so why I like to use time in this example because time is always constrained. I think you should use that to your benefit as an entrepreneur. You do need to set deadlines. You do need to get real about how long it takes you to do a task. And this goes all the way back to the psychological ownership about time. You need to constrain your time even more.  

So for example, if you feel like you're running out of time to complete a task, have you actually set the metrics and watched your time? And what are you doing during that time? Parkinson's law says that a task will basically fill the time you give it. That's the general premise around Parkinson's law. So for example, if I'm recording this podcast and I say, I'm going to have two hours to record the podcast. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to probably dilly-dally on Instagram. I might look at Pinterest. I might do a few other things in between like check emails because I've given myself a full two hours to complete my podcast. So I'm doing everything else except for completing my podcasts. That or maybe I'll do some more research that that's not really required for the day. The point is, I'm going to use that full two hours up doing all the other things, and maybe at the end, I'll do my podcast. Why? Because my podcast doesn't take two hours to record. So getting real on the amount of time it takes, perhaps it takes me half an hour to record the podcast, so I will ensure that I work within the constraints of the time given to me. And because time is such a valuable asset, I feel most entrepreneurs do need to set restricted time limits.  

For example, many individuals complain about social media and how they constantly feel like they're on the social media hamster wheel. Today, I did the bulk social media content creation, and I gave myself an hour and a half to complete a week's worth of content. And I completed it within an hour and a half. Why? Because I turned off all my distractions and focused on exactly what needed to get completed. I was very resourceful on the captions I was using. I had hashtag saved from before. And so, you learn the tricks of the trade when you are doing things quickly when you have to become very resourceful. 

And so, why tip number two is so great, is it saying work within your constraints. This could be within many other domains. This could be within time. It could be within the money. It could be with energy. So another good example I can give you right now is energy. I have my most productive hours between 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. After that time, my energy level starts falling. I have to have a 2 o'clock coffee, or I have to go for a nice brisk walk. If I wait too late in the day to do a task that's going to take more executive functioning, I'm not going to expect myself to have the best quality work. So what that means is I need to get all those big projects between the hours of 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. And that is an energy constraint that I have. Many other people will have energy constraints similar to myself. Some people are really bad in the morning, some people are really bad at night. And so again, I'm working within my constraints. And of course, we've already spoken about money. It's also a constraint. So if you have a constraint with money, you will find other ways of becoming resourceful. For example, many people can't hire a graphic designer at the beginning when they're starting off their entrepreneurial journey. You can go and spend $99 on a logo if you wanted. Or if money is tight, you can go on Canva and create a local on your own, and use that for now. And then later on, when you have the resources, you can always do a rebrand and bring your new logo. Or you just decide to keep what you have. So the point is, embrace your constraints and you'll feel much better about the accomplishments that you've achieved, versus having a Chaser's Mindset where you're thinking, oh I needed more of this. I needed more money to do that, or I needed more time to do that, or I needed more energy, or I don't have enough energy so I can't do that. Trust me, when you work within your constraints, you will feel much prouder of the results that you're achieving.  

Okay, let's go on to tip number three. Don't fear your frugality. And there's a big difference between being frugal and being cheap. In our society, frugal means that you are not afraid to spend money, but you don't like to waste resources. Versus being cheap in our society. We think cheap is somebody who just doesn't want to spend money. We are saying for you to be frugal. We want you to use the resources you have and extend its life as long as possible. You can apply this to all domains of life again, but today we're speaking specifically about entrepreneurship. 

When you are frugal with your resources, you will be less likely to waste resources. Meaning, you're going to perhaps give things a second life. And I'll give you a very, very practical example, especially for our friends that like to go to do markets. So I know many Etsy shop owners like to go do handcraft markets and, some individuals might want to purchase nice furniture or they may want to go ahead and get big signage, whatever it is. Or you could look around your house and you can be resourceful and you can say, well, that shelf actually would work perfectly. We have a personal example where we actually use a friend's home shelfing unit. We basically dismantled it and put it back together onsite twice in two weeks' time just so that we didn't have to purchase additional furniture for the event. And so that's us being frugal. We're not afraid to spend the money, but we want to extend the resource. We want to extend the life of that shelving unit. Why not use it? It's already there. It's already available to us. 

Another common example I see for new entrepreneurs, especially ones who are still pick-and-packing and sending out products from their homes is that they're very good at reusing boxes. Now, again, a very simple example but I think something that hits home for many of us is that there's a lot of wastage that happens when we are doing e-commerce. We get lots of boxes, a lot of packaging and in the end, why do we need so much packaging? If we have packaging coming to our door, we can save it. So many of the small businesses will reuse the boxes that they've gotten from other sellers, such as Amazon or Walmart or any of the big stores. They'll save those packages, and they'll just reuse it for their own merchandise going out. That is being resourceful, and that is using the Stretcher's Mindset. Versus the Chaser's Mindset would be like, well no, I can't use that box. It has the logo on for Amazon and that will look terrible. And then you basically discard the Amazon box and you go purchase another box. Not only are you wasting resources, your time, energy, and money, you're now causing more pollution. Because that box, of course, can be recycled but there's always energy involved in recycling a box. So you might as well reuse what you have, because that way you are saving your time, energy and money because you'd be spending all of that by trying to get a brand new box. 

And I know people will say, oh well, perhaps we want our logo on the box. Maybe, but in the end, the goal is to get the product to the customer. Unboxing's important, of course. But in the beginning, especially when you're just testing out your products and testing out your brand, sometimes those things can be far gone. You don't have to always have the logo on every single box that's coming into the mail. And if you have a statement on your website saying that we are very eco-conscious and we like to reuse as much as possible, your customers will overlook the Amazon box. They may even think that they got it from Amazon. Who knows, right? So that's another example of embracing frugality and trying to stretch every dollar, every energy ounce that you have, and also your time. 

Another thing with frugality is those who are frugal are less likely to compare themselves to others. So social norms, your friends, keeping up with the Joneses, whatever you want to refer to it as there's always a rat race when it comes to material goods. And if you embrace that Stretcher's Mindset and frugality trait, you will be less likely to say, oh, so-and-so has a beautiful new car. I want a beautiful car too. Sometimes, not only will it help you in your entrepreneurial space, but it'll help you in all domains of your life.  

Okay guys, let's go from the top. We spoke about three mindset shifts or three mindset characteristics that Stretcher's Mindset embraces, and we applied it to entrepreneurship specifically. And I gave you some very specific examples of how I use these mindset tricks to help me with my Stretcher's Mindset. So from the top, we have psychological ownership where we talked about owning your time, your energy, and your money. We also spoke about embracing your constraints, especially when it comes to time. And we spoke about Parkinson's law. And finally, we spoke about frugality and how you should not fear frugality, you should embrace it. And of course, there's a difference between being cheap and being frugal in our society. So try to lean more on the frugal side, so that way you're not afraid to spend when you need to spend.  

Okay, guys, I hope this was helpful. Again, if you have any questions, you can always email us at [email protected]. If you are loving these episodes and you're finding them extremely helpful, make sure you subscribe and follow so that way you'll know every time we drop a new episode every Tuesday morning for you. And if you are really loving this show, make sure you share it with your friends. I'm sure they would love these tips as well. And you can always drop us a five-star review on iTunes.  

Okay, guys, that's all for today. Remember, make a plan and take action, and yes, you can have it all. I'll talk to you guys next week. Bye.