Ch 1: The Humble Mindset

I often see a lot of business leaders treat and operate their companies as if they’re a mechanical machine, with each cog and part contributing to making the mechanism operate. The issue with this approach, however, is that it doesn’t take into consideration that the outside world is evolving. A machine is by nature, something designed for a specific purpose. While you can swap out pieces and make minor adjustments, you can’t change the overall purpose it was designed for. What eventually happens, is that their business model (machine) will be unable to modify their structure enough and will soon find themselves to be obsolete.

A huge part of being a successful leader, in my opinion, is being able to anticipate these shifts and get a “feel” for the business. It’s a three-part formula of utilizing past experience, analyzing trends in the market, and overall knowledge of the industry. These three ingredients are the building blocks that influence the decisions I make for New American Funding, and help me to treat it as if it were a living breathing entity. The best way I have found to develop this “feel”, is to approach your career with a humble mindset.

As more tech and start-up companies with young leaders make headlines, more people are operating under the assumption that they too can have overnight success. While I don’t discredit that it is doable, I would say that these influencers are exceptions to the rule (we’ll dive deeper into what makes them so special in another article). While there are a multitude of factors that can influence a person’s professional success, I would comfortably say that a common trait is their willingness to start from the bottom rung. I credit this as the secret to my own success.

Starting from the bottom rung of the ladder is never fun. Quite honestly, it can tedious work that makes you want to scratch your eyes out, but it's the element that helps you nurture those foundational blocks I mentioned earlier. Socrates said it best, “One thing I only know is that I know nothing”. When you operate from a humble mindset, you are opening yourself up to absorbing knowledge. You are willing to accept that you don’t know everything, which in turn allows you access to information you may not have even been aware of. This is crucial to your professional growth, and day by day you will soon find yourself more prepared than those who decided to leap to the middle of the ladder. When the time comes, you will find that you have a better intuition on how to navigate your industry, while those who skipped the grunt work find themselves stuck in their outdated silos.

I myself started New American Funding from the ground up. I did everything from licking stamps on our solicitation fliers to entrenching myself in capital markets. It’s a technique that’s served me well. If there is nothing else you get out of this series, I would highly encourage you to adopt this humble mindset. You may not see results right away, but I’m living proof that it will take you further than you could have possibly dreamed.

Stay tuned for next week’s article: Strategy: Tapping Into the New Buyer