🧠 Change Your Mindset
There’s usually a narrow gap separating winners from those who give up. We call that gap mindset—and it’s crucial when building your platform.
Michael Hyatt, founder of Michael Hyatt & Company, was in ninth grade when he broke his right elbow. To make matters worse, it happened just as he started taking guitar lessons. Memorizing chords and running scales is challenging enough, but he had to do it with a chunk of plaster hindering his arm.
He found the mental battle was tougher than the physical challenge, requiring a mindset of focus and determination to succeed.
Likewise, building a platform can be daunting. The competition is tough, the field is packed, and finding an audience sometimes feels impossible. But when things are stacked against us, the right mindset makes all the difference.
When building your own platform—this usually plays out in at least one of these three mental battles.
“I Don’t Have Time For This”
You’re probably building your platform while working a full-time job, which means finding time is a real issue. The solution is found in developing:
- Creativity in your approach
- Clarity about the essentials
Getting clear about the essential issues within our challenges will trigger creative problem-solving. The main obstacle most of us face in building our platforms isn’t too little time, it’s doing too much of the wrong things. The combination of creativity and clarity can turn that around.
“I Don’t Know How to Do This”
Today’s technology makes platform building easier, but it’s still hard work, with a steep learning curve that can foster self-doubt and frustration.
It’s especially challenging when you have a full-time job and a family to take care of, with no team to rely on. How will you master it all? But like Michael learning guitar with a cast on his arm, you can succeed.
The key to winning this mental battle was reminding myself I didn’t have to learn everything at once. When we intentionally and incrementally build on our learning over time, we’ll have what we need to win.
It’s important to find people who’ve been there and done it already. We can learn a lot from someone else’s mistakes and successes while getting the encouragement we need to keep plugging away.
“I Don’t Have What it Takes”
Inevitably we’ll experience times when our message falls flat, traffic or subscriptions go down, and criticism appears in the comments. Because our platform matters so much, our tendency is to magnify our setbacks, which can really shake our confidence.
The key to this mental battle is persistence. Quitting before the whistle blows just cheats ourselves and others.
Effective persistence requires creativity, clarity about our essentials, and belief in incremental progress, but it also requires courage. Find people who believe in you and speak encouragement into your life when the doubts come.
You Can Succeed
Michael had every reason to quit trying to learn guitar. He sat on his stool with his instrument and broken elbow, butut he really wanted to play the guitar. His determination drove a mindset which overcame his physical limitations.
Most people who set out to build a platform don’t succeed because they don’t learn or apply the basics of platform building, and the remainder usually lose one of these three mental battles.
Don’t let that stop you.
What do you really want?
Success isn’t guaranteed, but you can improve your odds. Winning these three mental battles will give you the best chance possible.