Develop An

Inquisitive
Entrepreneurship
Mindset

Takis Athanassiou
Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
I’ve been visiting a small coffee shop in my town the other day to grab a small cup
of coffee for the rest of my (working) day. It is a small coffee shop I like a lot for
many reasons: excellent coffee, quality services, attention to individuals’ needs
and continuing personal interest and connection.

What else someone would ask from a small local shop. Right? Right.

All the best things characterized an ambitious new entrepreneur wrapped up,
packaged and delivered with utmost generosity and complement.

It happens to know the owner who is an excellent new entrepreneur in uenced a

lot by the continuing economic crisis and forced to change his professional plans
and do something he could.

He cannot afford to wait for a new job to come, and having 2 kids, an unemployed
wife and several elderly people in his family without a valuable pension he had to
gather all his courage, abandon his former ambitions and plans and compelled to
find some resources enough to open and sustain this small coffee shop.

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
I talk often with him about various things (when time permits, or as now waiting
for my order to completed) and especially so for entrepreneurship and customer
service. I often tell him that entrepreneurship is not a business and to become a
successful one you need to think more, do more, provide more value.

Small business, especially in Greece of nancial crisis need a different attitude,

and a different mindset to help you survive and see “alive” the next day. And you
need to implement speci c strategies that would help you limit the friction and
simplify your business.

Questions Posed Remains Sometimes Unanswered

The topic of our discussion was what makes a good entrepreneur and how you
should think in order to sustain your business in the time of crisis and, if possible,
make it grow.

I hadn’t a ready-made answer of course. What makes a good entrepreneur is not

just a matter of science or hardcore data. Entrepreneurship is not exactly a
science or an art and it is rather unpredictable when you try to define it.

The only think could answer at the time was a short list of characteristics I had
compiled for an article I have written in the past, but that list wasn’t exactly what
my friend was looking for.

My order come and I had to leave, but our discussion triggers me some more
thoughts about what makes a good entrepreneur. I promise to return with a
small different approach and a different set of attributes may help a small
business owner in the crisis to survive an unfavorite business environment.

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
My answer is that a new entrepreneur in a bad spot needs to develop an out-of-
the-box mindset cultivating a constant inquisitive attitude and business behavior.

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset

Let me explain my answer. “Business as usual” is a myth never applied in reality.
Every business is different and every business person had to face different
challenges every time.

The most effective persons in business are the people have authenticity,
originality and present and “difference” in what they do, how they do it, how they
connect to their audience, etc.

The most successful ones, though, are the one have stopped trading their time for
getting money and start spending money on getting more free time.

This it was my rst thought! And more free time means more time for the things
matter most to you. Family, planning, dreaming, doing what makes you “great”.

Everybody says that works more to do more in his or her life but actually this is a
huge excuse. A successful entrepreneur is the one can select how and where he
or she spend his/her time and more importantly what are the things would permit
to grab his/her attention.

At the end of the day, though, entrepreneurship is a:

shift in perspective radically changes the use of objects and ideas. John
Saddington

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
This kind of shift requires a completely different set of features, features are not
usually taught in business schools. Are part of hard earned lessons taken in
everyday business life.

Are also lessons, make you develop a more inquisitive mindset that would be
directed to nd problems or pains in your niche market and nd the proper
solutions to these challenges by providing constant value to the people you have
chosen to serve.

The Foundations of The New Mindset

The new business relies on a completely different set of skills and competencies
from any previous ones. The demand today is to provide value in an acute
competitive international business ecosystem.

To provide more value in a “different way” you need to examine carefully your
surroundings and the needs of the people in your niche market and for this, you
need to abandon old mental habits, abolish certainty and embrace the logic of the
dynamic balances on every level of your business.

This logic dictates that you should work with a mentality of “Thriving on Chaos”,
removing old ways from your business practice and developing new approaches
to “doing things“. This is not easy because you should abandon the concept of a
permanent balance and adopt the concept of the dynamic balances achieved ad
hoc and aiming at the maximum impact in your niche market.

And this approach dictates a different kind of entrepreneurship and of the

entrepreneurs.

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
These ideas make me think of attributes described in the classic book of Michael
J. Gelb (one of my top books, by the way), “ How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci”
which describes the 7 principle used by a genius like DaVinci to overcome the
challenges of his time and design a different and more creative lifestream for
himself.

Leonardo da Vinci, literally designed himself, and Michael Gelb argues that the
same principles used by him can help anybody today.

This thought led me to a different one and to another favorite of mine book:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Some
people would argue what the interlinks between formal systems have to do with
entrepreneurship, but if they think a little bit more they would realize that
“formal” system (like technology systems, operations, innovations, ideas, etc.)
because:

according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity
transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal
chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal
system of ring neurons, then so too will computers attain human
intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

As entrepreneurship is! A cross-cultural fertilization of ideas, approaches,

systems, and tools directed to provide value and respond adequately to existing
challenges.

But ideas are not enough. You need to act to achieve what you envision for, and
to do so you need the support of value provided and trustworthy systems.

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
Every small business owner knows that it is not enough to nd a “pain point” in
his/her niche market. You need to have the resources and the infrastructure to do
something about it.

First, you need to have the correct for you and the solution you want to achieve
systems and procedures. Especially so in the case of small business.

The employment of the right systems would provide you the necessary leverage
to achieve whatever you need to achieve.

And second, the proper systems would help you systematize your business in a
way that it can run without your presence. An operation run without you, it
means a business leaving you more time to focus on what matters to you.

So this approach is a win-win situation for both parties. You as an entrepreneur

and the people your business serve. You gain freedom (in the form of money,
time, etc.) and your “clients” enhanced value embedded within the systems you
have designed and operate in your business.

These were my ideas about entrepreneurship and that it was I’d like to convey to
my friend in the coffee shop.

That at the end of the day entrepreneurship is not just for making money. It is or
should be, something more, aiming at providing more value to the whole of
society. But in order to do that, an entrepreneur should develop and keep on
cultivating an inquisitive mindset!

11 Strategies To Become A Better Entrepreneur

How though a person deep involved to his/her own problems and daily
challenges (either personal or business ones) can develop an inquisitive mindset?

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
As everything else, it is a matter of discipline, focus, accountability and daily
habits. It is a matter of intention and of choice.

Besides that, to develop an inquisitive mindset today you need some basic
directions to help you shift your existing mindset towards a more open one
embracing all the different contradictory elements of reality to balance within
unique and readily applicable solutions for everyone.

To start growing such mindset you need to:

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
Stay Hungry. Staying hungry is an expression coined up by Steve Jobs trying
to exemplify that a young entrepreneur should never be satis ed with what
he/she is or have. A content entrepreneur is someone would soon stop doing
business due to the lack of ambition and fresh ideas.
Stay Curious. You need to be always curious about what’s happening around
in order to nd out what’s wrong and how you can correct it. You need to
embrace a hacker-like mindset trying to learn more, test the reality against
your beliefs and trying to make the systems to do more that the things they
designed for.
Develop a growing mindset. A new entrepreneur needs to have a growing
mindset that will lead him/her to higher achievements. In the end of the day,
you do business with people not with companies. And people with a growing
mindset are usually the best candidates for long and prospect business
relationships. You should always keep on learning and adjust your behavior
based on what you have learned.
Ideas. The main fuel of new business are ideas and innovation and these
elements can leverage your assets towards new heights. As an entrepreneur,
you should be able to nd, brainstorm, develop, validate, reject and
implement the best ideas possible to the service of the people you have
chosen to serve.
Find Problems and check on the possible solutions. As an entrepreneur,
you need to develop a strategy to nd out the problems concerns your niche
market and develop appropriate answers to that.
Check on how new things may solve old problems. You should be constable
aware of the new advances and trends can be used for solving old problems
in your market. And you should nd ways to implement them transparently,
and without a friction for the final users.
Be Proactive. You should remove your old responsive business re exes and
start embracing a proactive life attitude towards all things around you.

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou
Think in systems and in patterns within the chaos. Embrace uncertainty as
the main constant in your business life and try to nd the best dynamic
balances and the recurring patterns in the systems, the approaches, and the
solutions your sponsored that would support your work and provide more
value to your clients.
Exercise free will and independent thinking and nd innovative responses
and solutions to problems seemingly unsolved. Your originality and
authenticity will provide you the boost you need to surpass the ordinary and
address to the people you really need to speak about your services and
products.
Use Science and Leverage Experience. Try to leverage every insight science
can provide you and embed its propositions and suggestions to your services
and your products in your niche market. With science, you will also need to
leverage your experience in developing better and more effective services
and products.
Embrace testing and veri cation as basic principles of your life. You should
never be content with what is given or acquired effortlessly. You should
always contact your own veri cation processes against your reality and
verify your ideas to the benchmark of realism all the time.
These 11 strategies even though are the only ones may be able to provide you a
solid new mindset that would help you succeed in your business.

In no way, though, are enough, and you should always search for more mental
patterns, trends, procedures, technologies or tools that would mutually help your
business and provide additional value to your clients.

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship
Mindset - Takis Athanassiou

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Develop An Inquisitive Entrepreneurship Mindset - Takis Athanassiou