The Mindful Entrepreneur is the right book and the right time for me. It brings together the best elements of the best in business management and development theories and combines them with the importance of understanding ones self and other’s mindset. The book takes strategies from Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited, Jim Collins’ Good to Great, Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, as well as psychological inspiration from Victor Frankl, Aron Beck and Dr Carol Dweck (all links previous book reviews). It offers a wholistic package of approaches across a range of disciplines to strategic and operational opportunities to take your business to the next level, to where you want to go, while not forgetting to take care of your self, family, and those important to you.
What makes the book successful and resonate is that it is presented in a narrative style. There are three “characters”: the business owner Howard, the business coach Joel, and the mindfulness mentor Aryeh. It is no coincidence that these are the same names as the authors of the book, as this story is their story. Putting the key concepts in place within a narrative makes it more relatable. It is also beneficial that the concepts are not too difficult to grasp (especially if you have read the authors work above, 5 from 6 I had). The story of Howard itself carries you through interesting, familiar, and sometimes majorly significant challenges. As a business owner you are reading the tale of a contemporary, and learning about their challenges and how they overcome them, or at least, manage them.
The book takes you through four stages: Strategic Foundation, Rapid Growth, Braking Free, and Focus and Fulfilment.
Strategic Foundation looks at your business plan, purpose, values, product/service identification and differentiation, strategic objectives, current reality, and action plans.
Rapid Growth looks at marketing strategies, and understanding your customers journey and motivations.
Breaking Free is about structuring the organisation such that it can operate without you the owner and/or manager. It encourages looking at the tasks that must get done how, and by whole using a useful structure of building the business, managing the business, getting the business, and doing the business.
Focus and Fulfilment is about your personal purpose, finding your motivational needs, and understanding your story and what it is telling you. It asks for your goals, promoting a growth mindset, and being open to opportunity to learn from and reflect on challenges.
The book itself embodies some of the marketing strategies. There are a number of resources including a free workbook and 30 minute free coaching session of which I took advantage. The book therefore is part of the author’s enterprise sales funnel, as the session is a taste of their range of coaching services. It is of course up to you, reader, what you do with it. The books stands up on it’s own if you have the dedication to apply the strategies yourself. The Mindful Entrepreneur with the accompanying resource summaries and workbook, is all you will need to make immediate changes and improve your business. I’m signing up to their “Growth System“, and who knows, it could present topics for future blog posts?
The Mindful Entrepreneur hit the spot for me because of it’s narrative style, the handy and applicable summaries and actions at the end of each chapter. Most importantly though, it brings together the key ideas from key authors in management, marketing, and mindset that have also appealed to me in my own research and practice. To read them in action makes them immediately relatable any business, as it is the story of the three authors saving, then growing, a business.
