Your business model describes how your business creates, captures, and delivers value. There are key ingredients that go into its development, including purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, and operational processes and policies.

While there are many factors that go into developing your business model, there is one key ingredient often overlooked by entrepreneurs: Your Inner Entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs often try to execute a business model that worked for someone else but become easily frustrated when it doesn’t work for them. After hours of trying to execute their model, they wonder why their results aren’t the same. Despite implementing many tactics, the entrepreneur becomes discouraged, worn out, and exasperated.

This dynamic happens when the entrepreneur does not consider how they are naturally hardwired and how their hardwiring impacts the execution of that model. Hardwiring is natural to who you are. It is present just underneath the surface. It determines how you give and receive information and one of the filters through which you see the world. If you have taken any number of behavior-based tools, such as DISC or Meyers Briggs, you probably have some insight into your natural hardwiring.

When working with my clients, one of the first steps is to help them understand their unique hardwiring. After explaining components that make up a person’s hardwiring during a recent 3-day intensive live event, one of my clients approached me. With a big grin on his face, he remarked that what he learned in just one hour explained why he and his brother didn’t connect on many things for the last 50 years. He now had a brand new insight and adjusted the way he delivered information so he could communicate much more effectively.

Another entrepreneur had a business where he fixed computers. As you can imagine, it was very detailed work. However, this entrepreneur loved the part of his job where he hunted down the next business deal. He was consistently energized by that kind of activity. So when he came back to his business and was working on the detailed parts of his business, he often procrastinated. He also had to summon up a lot of energy to perform this detail and routine work. It was no wonder that he had a hard time staying focused and his results suffered. He was trying to execute a business model that was not congruent with his hard wiring (part of his Inner Entrepreneur). To a person who is energized by new ideas and needs to be consistently challenged, the execution of the routine part of his business model was boring to him yielding less-than-favorable financial results.

The activities that energized him were a clue to aligning his natural hardwiring and the execution of his business model. Once he created awareness of how his natural hardwiring influenced his execution of that model, he made a few modifications.

He shifted the way he worked and created a crew of people who enjoyed the detailed work, but didn’t like hunting down new business as much as he did. Armed with this new perspective, he built a compatible business model that worked for him, utilized his crew’s innate hardwiring and strengths, and better served his clients.

One small change to your business model and how you execute that model can be the difference between standing still or utilizing your innate strengths to build a business that works!

When visiting my parents one bright sunny weekend, I noticed that my mother had a beautiful plant with purple flowers resting on her window sill.  As I was admiring her plant, a hummingbird approached the window desperately trying to reach these flowers.  He must have tried three or four times each time banging his beak against the window.  I thought he must have learned his lesson when he flew away to pause on a nearby wire.  As he darted his head back and forth, he shook off his frustration but looked completely confused as to what just happened. Instead of flying away, the tenacious little hummingbird flew in again, banging his beak against the window, in a frantic attempt to break through and reach the flowers. 

It got me thinking about the concept of invisible constraints or barriers many small business owners experience in today’s marketplace.  It’s kind of like the hummingbird who tried the same approach over and over expecting different results.  It also reminded me of the elephants at the circus that are tied down to a small stake.  It seems almost silly to believe anyone would think this would actually prevent an elephant from breaking free, but the conditioning comes years earlier when they are young and their feet are secured with a chain.  Their attempts to free themselves are so painful, and, as they get older, they never try again.  That experience imprinted this invisible constraint. 

The hummingbird and elephant parallel the marketing problems of small business owners who limit themselves by what they have done in the past instead of looking at a new way of connecting with their ideal clients.  Just like the hummingbird who tries the same approach or the elephant that remains apathetic, you may be affected by invisible constraints that you are unable to see, but are acting as a window blocking you from reaching your goals.

When I first meet with my clients, one of the things we review is their tactics for attracting clients.  I hear the usual responses, including advertising, marketing, networking, and contacting their existing clients.  When they mention that they are always busy, but they are not seeing the results, we dig a little deeper.  While we drill down to specifics like marketing frequency, business systems, marketing systems, stay-in-touch systems and sales funnels, we start to chip away at how connected, streamlined, and effective these tactics are for them.  As they review these tactics, I usually hear how this or that won’t work and other limitations. Once they hear themselves aloud, they start to realize that they are like that hummingbird hitting that invisible window.  When they let go of the self-limiting mindset, emotional barriers, apathy, ego, or bad habits that are getting in the way of a new or different approach, they create innovative ideas and solutions.

After working together, they almost always realize the very first step to breaking through their invisible barrier is when they became self aware.  Creating awareness of the basic infrastructure where you think and act in the world is especially important. When you create that kind of awareness about how you’re naturally hardwired and the way you think about things, there is a fundamental internal shift in your ability to think and act beyond existing limits or views.  You begin to open up to a different way of problem solving.

When one of my clients had a mental block on where to look for a specialized resource for one of her projects, she used a coaching question I often used with her, which is “where in your life could you find the answer right now?”   The question is based on the premise that everything you need is in your life right now.  As she thought more about it, she realized that her resource was right in front of her the entire time.  She found the person in a volunteer group she belonged to.  She was trying to look everywhere other than the existing resources that were in her life at the moment.  She also realized that she tried to do everything herself (a throwback from times where she couldn’t ask for help because she felt she had to do it all alone).  With this new found awareness, she began to also think about other aspects of her life and business breaking through some of her self-imposed limitations.

Often times, if you are unaware of your framework that you base your thinking and decision making, you overlook that which is right in front of you.  Once you become aware of that framework, it’s almost as if an invisible window is lifted and the solution appears.  A mindset shift can be one of the most powerful marketing strategies to attracting more clients with less effort.