Your entrepreneur mindset has the power to shape your success, and in this episode, Zander Sprague dives deep into how to harness it for real change. Joined by Ken Attard, a mindset consultant, they explore how shifting your thinking can unlock true freedom in your entrepreneurial journey. Ken introduces his unique approach to helping entrepreneurs embrace challenges, let go of limiting beliefs, and enjoy the process. Tune in for insights that could redefine how you approach your business and personal growth.
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Entrepreneur Mindset Secrets: How To Thrive Through Challenges With Ken Attard
Introduction To The Episode
Hello, epic people. Welcome back to another exciting episode of Epic Begins With 1 Step Forward. I’m your host, Zander Sprague. I am joined by Ken Attard. Ken, tell us a little about who you are and what you do.
In a nutshell, I help frustrated entrepreneurs to adapt and shift their mindset. I use what I call the Proprietary Arc Method. It’s a method but at the same time, it intertwines every single type of training or program that I have. It’s intertwined in there and maybe we can elaborate a bit on that. Essentially, I’m a mindset consultant.
I assist entrepreneurs in understanding exactly what’s going on here and what’s happening in their minds so that they can achieve the results and the experience that they want. Whether or not you like it, you are using your mindset. It is just different when you use it purposefully. What I am all about is moving entrepreneurs toward what I like to call true freedom. It’s all about bringing soul back into business.
I love that. I’m a firm believer that our mindset and what we believe have a great influence on how things turn out.
It’s everything.
I remember years ago, I was reading a book for a coaching class I was taking. I was doing coaching, not mental. Now, I do mental health. I’m on the other side, but it’s funny how you read a book and the book itself was good, but there’s one little nugget that you pull out and bring with you. We were talking about this philosophy in Buddhism that inherently, things are not good or bad. It’s how we see them.
For example, I’m in California and the sun is out. I think that’s a good thing. If I’m a farmer, I might see the sun out as not being a good thing. Inherently, the sun being out or not is not in and of itself good or bad. In the same way that in business, if we believe that something happens and it’s bad, probably that’s how we’re going to treat it. Our actions will probably not be positive. Do you believe in that?
Absolutely. It is all about perspectives, without a doubt. It is how you look at it. This is why our beliefs play a very important part, and what we believe. We are looking at the world according to what we believe. What we believe has happened over a period of time, how we were brought up, what we were taught, and all of these things. One of the things that I love to talk about is the fact that I truly believe that many individuals have been fooled, and let’s focus on entrepreneurs here. When I say fooled, it’s interesting. One of the pillars of my Arc Method that I mentioned, the first one is awareness.
When I originally started and created this method, the first pillar was awareness. I used to speak about awareness and how it was about learning, which is vital. Nowadays, not only is it about learning. Awareness is also about unlearning, which is almost even more important in the sense that just because you have been taught something and potentially taught something all your life does not necessarily mean it’s the truth. It may have been the truth for someone from a particular perspective, as you were saying, yet it does not necessarily mean it’s the truth.
Let’s give a classic example. This is one of my pet peeves. I’m sure you’ve attended events. You’ve read books and listened to all kinds of audio over the years. It’s amazing that at so many entrepreneurial events and listening to speakers how somehow when we’re talking about entrepreneurship, intertwined with that are the words suffering, sacrifice, struggle, stress, and all of these words. Why is this so important to become aware of? It’s because when you hear this over and over, you’re an up-and-coming entrepreneur, you’re attending an entrepreneurial event, you’re there to learn, and you hear someone talk about, “Be prepared to struggle, be prepared to sacrifice, be prepared for the stress, and be prepared for the suffering.” I get it.
I’m not saying that you’re not going to have your challenges. The thing is this. What most people do not realize is what a belief is. To make it simple, a belief is simply a thought that you have thought over and over and it continues until it becomes a belief. Let’s use it in the example that we’re talking about. You hear that as an entrepreneur, you’re going to struggle and sacrifice. You hear it once, you hear it twice, and you hear it three times. You hear colleagues and peers talk about it as well and how it’s a fact. It is a fact in the sense that it is their reality as they perceive it. It is their belief. Because of that, the external world or their outside world is going to give them evidence or proof that they’re right.
A belief is simply a thought you keep thinking over and over. Challenge that belief, and see how your world changes.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
This is important because when you become aware of that, you can make a decision. This is what I find fascinating and for me is important. It is that I want to guide entrepreneurs toward true freedom. That true freedom begins all up here and it starts with shifting that belief. What if entrepreneurship could be fun? What if it could be impactful and inspirational? What if you could learn to simply enjoy the process of your entrepreneurship even through the challenges?
True freedom begins with your mindset. Shift your beliefs, and everything else will follow.
You’re right, Ken. You’re talking about that and I thought what is the external feedback that we’ve gotten so it becomes a belief? I’ve authored three books which blows my mind because I’m a talker, not a typer. I wrote my first book and I sat on it for five years. It’s because of the belief I had throughout school and all this feedback that I wasn’t a particularly strong writer, and I believe that. I kept telling people I was coming out with a book but the facts of the matter were I was lying to myself and everyone else because I wasn’t doing anything to make it happen.
I got tired of hearing myself say that. I don’t want to be that guy twenty years later and say, “I’m coming up with a book,” and I’m not. I got brave and I published the book. This amazing thing happened. You’re talking about belief and that’s why I’m telling you this story. The book came out. It was about sibling loss. I got feedback from people that they liked it and that the book was helpful. For the first year, I would have believed more if they told me it wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.
It was a real experience of having my beliefs shifted. I can be an author. I can write and share my ideas and the world likes it. It’s this whole shift that happened to me. I got positive feedback that let me know there is value. I agree and I was laughing when you’re like, “You have to suffer and it’s a struggle.” Absolutely, it is. It’s called work. It’s not cold play. It is work, but it’s the way that we interpret what that work is. Frankly, you accept the fact that when we’re on our epic journeys, there is effort.
Reframing Work As Play
This is cool. Believe it or not, I like the work part. You’re going to be putting in your effort. I get it and that’s a matter of fact. What if you could frame it as play and say, “I’m just playing here. As I’m writing my book, I’m just playing here. I’m playing with the words. I’m enjoying myself. I’m enjoying this process.” This is so vital because this is what makes it much more flowing. When we use these words, they create a lot of resistance. There’s nothing wrong with work.
For most people, when they think of the word work, they frame it in a way that it’s something difficult or it’s something that they don’t want to be doing. When it’s something that is creating some resistance, this is what makes it difficult. This is why we talk about struggles, suffering, and sacrifice. Nowadays we hear about hustle and grind. They’re not negative as such but they have a resistance to them. It’s like when someone says, “We want to push through.” The fact of the matter is whenever you are attempting to push something, it’s going to push back. If someone pushes you, there’s a very good chance you’re going to push back.
It’s no different when we’re talking about hustle, grind, and all of these things. It implies that we’re attempting to push through. We’re attempting to fight it and when we fight something, it fights back. The other thing that’s interesting that you mentioned as well indirectly was that the minute you wrote or the minute you published the book, you manifested it. You manifested this book and it’s published now. You began to receive external validation, which is cool. There’s nothing wrong with external validation. It’s great and it’s appreciated when we do receive it.
What is important for people to understand and what would have more than likely got you to publish the book sooner was that you would say, “It is irrelevant what people are going to say. I understand that my publishing this book and what it’s going to accomplish or not has no relevance to how worthy I am because that has never been compromised.” I can only guess because we’re chatting first time right now. I can only guess that you sat on this book for five years because you were worried it wasn’t good enough. It’s not only that the book was not good enough but you were doubting whether you were good enough, whether you were worthy to be an author.
This is what’s so cool about this. It’s the mindset. I love to guide entrepreneurs to the point where they start to understand this. You can’t have true freedom without this. You can only have true freedom if you understand and truly believe that your worthiness is never compromised irrespective of the external results that you’re getting right now, irrespective of where you are, and irrespective of whether or not you are financially free and stable or living in the gutters. Your worthiness is never compromised when you truly understand the essence of who you are.
Your worthiness is never compromised—no matter where you are in life or what you’ve achieved so far.
As I say in my EPIC Begins book, you have to be your number one cheerleader because no one is going to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. I am a firm believer that I have to be my number one cheerleader. Funny things happen in the world. If we believe what we’re selling, saying, and providing, other people implicitly will also believe it and buy it. You will get that external validation, but you’re right. You don’t need that external validation if you validate yourself.
It reminds me of a joke on Saturday Night Live years ago. Even though it was a joke, there was a lot of truth in that. They had personal affirmations with Stuart Smalley. He’s looking in the mirror going, “You’re good enough, you’re brave enough, and people like you.” It was a funny thing, but there’s a lot of truth there. If we say, “I am good enough. I am capable of writing a book and what I have written has value and will find the people who want and need it,” absolutely.
It has to happen when you do that, especially when you understand that if you’re doing an affirmation like that, the words are vital. The key element in that as well is the emotion that you feel. Something interesting is when we talk about appreciation, which is one of the easiest ways for someone to start to shift their emotions to a good-feeling emotion or even a good-feeling mindset. Nowadays I talk about a good-feeling mindset even more than a positive mindset. It’s simply creating that good feeling.
The great thing about appreciation is that it shifts very quickly. This is why some people start their day that way, with a bit of appreciation. The tendency for most people is to appreciate what they have. It was stuff that they have manifested and created in the past, or have right now. The cool thing about appreciation and tying it in with the emotion is that you can tap into the emotion of how it’s going to feel about something that you are going to manifest in the future.
For instance, someone who hasn’t written a book yet can feel what it would feel like to have a published book and be a bestselling author. If they can create that emotion now, what they’re doing is creating their future. They’re creating them here right now. That’s the cool thing. Not only can you appreciate what you do have, which is important, and be accepted of where you are in your life right now, but at the same time, you can be eager for more and you can tap into that appreciation of what you are about to achieve in the future.
I have this thing in my book called the 97-3 rule. Simply put, in general, 97% of our day is good, or at least good might be good. Up to 3% on any given day isn’t as good. Somehow we as humans focus on the 3% and ignore the 97%. As I look at it, I work with people, and I talk about them, “Why?” I tested that and I came up with this theory when I was doing my internship for my license. I was working with middle school and high schoolers. For a lot of them, part of their challenge was academics. I tried to help them understand this concept that they were missing a lot of what was going right, and they were focused on what wasn’t going so right. I’d ask them what their least favorite subject was. Can I ask you what was your least favorite subject in school?
My least favorite subject probably would have been Language.
How would you have felt if you got a 97 on a test?
Awesome. Brilliant.
You’d be telling everyone, your parents, and your friends. You’d be so excited. Would you be focused on the fact that you didn’t get those three points?
No.
All these great things happened. We woke up this morning and we got to do this show. These are good things and yet, “Ken, how was your day?” “When I went out to do an errand, it rained.” Maybe it only rained for two minutes, and you’re somehow missing all the goodness. I think as entrepreneurs, sometimes we focus on what isn’t going right. There’s that mindset. That’s what you are envisioning.
Having run some marathons. I have what I call my vision quest. I would be out at 5:00 in the morning, running and stuff, but I was picturing what it would feel like to finish that marathon and what would it be like. It was awesome when I crossed that finish line, but it was much better in my mind. I’m not saying that it didn’t feel good, but having made all that effort and gotten there. Honestly, I got down and the next question that entrepreneurs have is, “Awesome. I did this. Now what?”
It’s the cliche of cliches. This is what I tell entrepreneurs. How many times have we heard, “Enjoy the journey?” It’s the cliche of cliches, yet it is a truth because entrepreneurs are so lost in the end goal that is non-existent. There never is an end goal because you’re automatically going to say, “Now what?” The worst part of that is that the end goal is never going to be an end. The worst part of that is it continues and it becomes a goal that more often than not gets pushed further away. Why? Because there’s no joy in it. There’s no joy in the process. You can’t have a joyful result with an unjoyful journey.
Because that end goal that they’re searching for has an external factor; so much turnover, we acquired a certain client, whatever it may be, it’s so short-lived. It will not last long. This is why the inside work is so important because all of that joy or dare I say happiness that you want, that an entrepreneur wants, and that any individual wants comes from within. It is your innate natural state of happiness, joy, and love. That’s who you are.
I like to call it the umami self. Why do I call it the umami self? In the food world, when you eat something so good that the taste is indescribable, it’s called umami. The definition of umami is the essence of deliciousness. Umami self is the essence of the deliciousness of who you truly are. As you begin to recognize them, what happens is all of these veils that we’ve been putting up over the years, the belief systems, the ideology that we need to acquire something for us to feel worthy, to be happy, and to be joyful.
We think when we arrive, “Now, I got it.” We then realized that was just temporary. I was expecting it to be much more than that. I cross the line of the marathon and I should be joyous, jubilee, and all of these things. I am for half an hour. Now I’m going, “What’s next? What am I supposed to do?” This happened to the first astronauts who went to the moon. They spent their whole life preparing to do this. They went to the moon and came back. The parades were done, all of the accolades, and all that stuff, and then, “I just went to the moon. Now what?” If you’re not mentally prepared for that, there’s a huge void and identity crisis.
You get to whatever your finish line is or your destination, but your journey isn’t over because the human experience is not like, “I made it to 21 in the United States. Now, I can legally have a drink.” That’s your whole life end, or “If I only have this.” I’m sure you’ve heard this from your entrepreneurs, “When I’m making this much per year” or “When I get this big client,” or get whatever. You were talking and what I got thinking about was let’s say a car. You’ve always dreamed of having a Mercedes. You get the car and you’re all excited when you first get it, but then it is just a car. It’s great.
Just another toy. It’s just a car.
Whether you’re in a Ford or a Mercedes, they all do the same thing that we need them to do. The fact of the matter is that initial excitement wears off.
That’s why inside work is so important, the quiet time. It is so that you can tap into something much bigger than you. As I said, I call it the umami self. Some people will call it the quantum field. They’re all the same. It’s an energy, yet learning about that and understanding how you can drop the veils purposefully yourself. That’s exactly what happens when we do acquire something and why it’s temporary. When we acquire something for that temporary moment or however long it is, that half hour, or whatever it is. The veils drop.
At that moment, I’m not thinking about the future. I’m not thinking about the past. I am solely enjoying that moment. We drop all their veils and we tap into our natural state, which is that happiness and joy. You learn to purposefully do that on a daily basis, regardless. You mentioned the weather before. I don’t know who came up with this. When it’s sunny, it’s good weather. When it’s raining, it’s bad weather. Who determines that?
If you get that from the perspective of a farmer and we had a drought and there’s rain, I’m probably happy.
We’re grateful. What if you start to shift those perspectives from a different angle? This is one of the firm beliefs that I believe nowadays that helps me. Everything is always working out for me, even through what appears, and I use appear on purpose, to be a challenging moment. Some people will say, “How can you say it’s working out for me? Look what’s happening to me.” Yeah, but you only have the snapshot of right now. You don’t have what’s coming.
Everything is always working out for you—even in challenging moments. Trust the process, even when you can’t see the full picture.
You don’t have the full picture and you will never have the complete full picture because up until now, you’re still not omnipotent. If you were, potentially, you might be able to see the whole picture, but you’re not and you’re not going to be able to. You just have to trust. This takes practice. Trust that it is always working out for you. You just can’t see right now. Many people have examples of this. You could probably look at tons of times in your life when people can now go, “It was a good thing that that happened. Because that happened, this, this, and this happened, and now I have this.
That hindsight is so wonderfully 20/20, isn’t it? I’ll go back to training for the marathon. I knew what my goal was. I knew I would get there. However, there certainly were many miles in training where I was running and it was possibly dark and raining because I was running at 5:00 in the morning. I was on long training runs and it was hard. I was struggling and stuff. Yet in the moment, I was aware that there was a lot of effort, strain, and pain. However, I knew that it would all be worth it because I had an idea of where I was going.
I think all too often when I talk about epic journeys and the epic things that we’d like to do as an entrepreneur, we become an entrepreneur because we have an idea of something that we’d like to do. People don’t create the structure that they need to get you there. As a solopreneur, I have a hundred things I have to do every day. Yet what I have discovered is that I’m a single-core mind in a multi-core world. It’s simply saying I cannot write a book with my right hand and balance my books with my left hand. I can’t do it, but when I create the structure and I know I am having a podcast from 10:00 and then I know that I’m making these phone calls, it’s so much easier.
The Importance Of Structure And Clarity
People like structure. I said this all the time. The structure is survival. It’s the part of our primitive brain that if they’re structured, they’re safe because I know what’s happening.
The cool thing with structures is what structures do. There are various degrees of structure. Some people need extreme structure. Some people need a little less structure. I built a program around this in the sense that I was sitting down with a lot of entrepreneurs. One of the common threads that was coming out and it ties in with the structure is people had good ideas, yet they didn’t have clarity. The clarity will come with the structure.
Part of having clarity is having structure. It is understanding how to set a well-formed goal, and not to be held so tightly, yet if you have that structure and know the direction and where you are headed, and also what is required to be done to get to that goal will vary. It potentially can shift over the course of time for various reasons. Having that flexibility is wonderful, but if you do have that core structure like you’re saying, you’re going to be solid. The cool thing about having the structure and the clarity is it eliminates doubt. This is simply why some people have a lot of doubt. It is simply because they’re not clear on stuff.
We tend to get stuck on, “How do I do that?” That’s a big thing. When I decided to run a marathon, I was like, “How on Earth am I going to run 20 miles?”
You run.
You run, but that’s not it. I happened to join a team and training which is a fundraising side for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. In exchange for raising some money, they gave me a training schedule. That took all of the stress because I had a calendar on the spreadsheet that I’d look at and say, “Today, go run 30 minutes, go run 17 miles.” It’s not the running 17 miles but what I did after. All I needed to do was look at it and say, “Here’s what I need to do today.” It will get me to cross this finish line so I don’t have to worry about that. That’s when I rediscovered that I am a structure boy. I do much better doing it. As an entrepreneur, I certainly had times where I got a whole lot of nothing done, having spent 8 or 9 hours working.
I like to say this because I hear this so often. I’m attempting to contact someone and maybe potentially schedule a meeting. I’m busy. Let’s schedule a meeting. They’re like, “I can do this in three months.” I’m like, “Three months? You can’t find half an hour in these three months for us to meet up?” This comes down to beliefs. There are a lot of people busy doing nothing. It’s because their firm belief is that if they’re busy, now they’re important. They’re accomplishing something or whatever it may be when in fact, they’re not.
You’re busy doing nothing in particular is what I like to say.
There you go.
The hours went by, but I can tell you, Ken, “Here’s what I accomplished,” and yet if I have some structure I can point to it and say, “I did a podcast, I made these phone calls, and I reached out.” I put time aside to be quiet and focus on what my goal is, and think about why this didn’t work out. We’re going to fail at stuff in our life. We’re going to try stuff that’s not going to be the right thing for us. As an entrepreneur, I’ve been generous and spent thousands of dollars on tools, software programs, and stuff. It’s not that they were bad. They just weren’t the tools for me, but I wouldn’t know unless I bought them.
Something that I want to mention when you were talking about the structure and that you were given that schedule is that you also trusted the people or the organization who are giving you that structure. That is vital. That guidance is so essential when we know that guidance is coming from someone who has our interests and truly has your interests at heart. I think that’s right on that. It makes it even easier because you can say, “I trust these people. They know what they’re doing. I just have to follow the schedule.”
Sadly, we have been having a great time and our time is up here, my friend. I can’t believe it. I’m sure you and I could have a five-hour show and there’s still probably a lot to talk about. How can people get a hold of you?
Conclusion And How To Connect With Ken Attard
One of the easiest ways for them if they want to, and I like to offer this to your audience, is if they go to Growth4Entrepreneurs.com, they can get a little more information about me. Also, they have a short free online program there. It’s completely free, which is called The Mindset Choice – The Choice That Changes Everything. It’s a short online program, yet it’s going to give them a foundation and understanding as to why mindset is so important and how it has a bearing on every single result and experience in our lives. They can go there and then if someone wants to send me an email or LinkedIn. They can find me there, Ken Attard.
Lastly, I am the founder of Mindset Malta. For those who don’t realize, I’m based on the island of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. I’ve been based there for 45 years. I’m originally from Toronto Canada, and yet my parents are both Maltese. I’ve been here for a long time. If they look up Mindset Malta on Instagram or Facebook, they can start following me there as well. I put a lot of value there and it’s all free. They can contact me from there as well.
That is awesome. Thank you so much.
It’s a pleasure.
Ken, I want to thank you for being here. I want to remind all of you that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- Ken Attard – LinkedIn
- EPIC Begins
- Growth For Entrepreneurs
- Instagram – Mindset Malta
- Facebook – Mindset Malta
About Ken Attard
Have you ever wondered why pretty much every entrepreneurs’ doubts him or her self, while at the same time feeling and thinking that they are not good enough?
What if you could now begin to truly understand how you could shift the way you think and finally escape the mindset of uncertainty, regardless of the circumstances and apparent uncertainty surrounding you?
I have developed the unique Arc Method, a proprietary proven simple process, helping you to shift your thinking, so that you too can discover the true power of mindset, and restore your inner worth, that is inherent to who you really are!