Developing your mindset and finding your strengths is a lifelong path of discovering your passion and competences. This path enables you to enjoy your work. Mindset is a quality that changes over time as you develop. This is the reason why we should observe and nourish our mind daily the same way we nourish our body or take care of our children, pets and bicycles.

If you are working in business, it is good to know the concepts of startup mindset, entrepreneur and intrapreneur. Startup mindset is about being bold, thinking like a visionary, embracing risk, observing environment and learning from others. It is a state of mind, that helps you to see opportunities, be curious and solve problems as they appear. In today’s working life everyone needs an open, startup mindset in order to be successful. If you possess a startup mindset  you are able to choose your place of work – either in your own business as an entrepreneur or in someone else’s business as an intrapreneur.  The co-founder of the coffee chain Coffee Republic and confectionery brand Skinny Candy Sahar Hashemi is an entrepreneur and promoter or startup mindset. She believes it is possible to work in startup mode in any size of a company. She has grown her cafeteria chain from mere startup to a large chain of over 100 cafeterias in UK.  While working on her business she discovered her six principles of how one can always act as a startup – in big or small company or as an entrepreneur or intrapreneur.

1. Become your own customer means stepping in your customers’ shoes and walking in them to understand what they really want. The only way to gather this type of information is to interact with your customers – this knowledge is not found in books or in theories. You need to take action in the real world.
2. Don’t be too busy states against unnecessary bureaucracy and fully booked calendar. Busyness doesn’t make your business successful. You need to prioritize and find time to interact with customers and your team, and to be creative and encourage innovation. Cross out meetings from your calendar and work with your team co-creating ideas to viable business.
3. Do become clueless is about asking questions and finding the answers. As you move along asking questions, you learn more and you keep getting closer to the core of customer understanding.
4. Learn to bootstrap. Use your resourcefulness to gather the information needed to make progressive decisions. Get out there and find your answers.
5. Don’t think “NO” is a stop sign. New ideas will always encounter resistance – they raise fear and uncertainty. Most businesses got several no’s before their first yes.
6. Don’t put work mask on suggests that you should find work that supports your interests and passions and you should put your true self to work. To do this you need to be honest to yourself, your team and your customers.

In addition to Hashemi’s principles, startup mindset is about finding your strengths and interests and building your competences on solid ground. Be passionate about things you do in life and in business. Developing and sustaining startup mindset is a lifelong path of learning about yourself, your business and your customers. Having a startup mindset builds corporate culture to more sustainable. Openness and curiosity support innovation and new ways of working in organization. Members are happier and more devoted to the purpose of organization.

Why is it important to grow all the time? If you look around yourself in the world and nature, you see the reason: All things around you that are not growing are slowly disappearing.  Startup mindset enables constant growth of yourself and your business.