We are trained, I believe, to approach our jobs as merely jobs, just a place we have to be on Monday morning because that’s life. We perform whatever tasks are expected of us and we get off at quittin’ time. At that point we are free for a few hours, then to bed, then repeat.

A business, as far as we are concerned, is the place where we show up in the mornings to “clock in”. It’s an entity that wields power over us by leveraging the necessities of living against us. But it doesn’t have to be this way, nor should it be this way. By approaching the way we make a living with this mentality we can and will cement a lack of personal success as a way of life.

To combat this frame of thinking we must start with the understanding that a business is just that, a business. It provides something to buyers in exchange for money. In one sense every employee at every level in that business experiences the same mundane routine. They get up, go to work, get off, have some free time, go to bed only to repeat the process the following day. But not everyone’s mindset toward this routine is the same.

Some employees realize that they are, as individuals, running their own business. I’ll call their business the business of self. I personally run the Danny Wright airplane-flying business for example. That business is owned and operated by one person. Me! How my business performs is extremely important to me because it will determine the success or failure of my business.

It so happens that my business has only one customer. Now while you might call my customer an employer, I don’t see it that way at all. And you shouldn’t see your “employer” that way either. No one should. I am selling a product, and as a business, especially a business that only has one customer, it is extremely important to me that my customer be treated extremely well by providing the best product that I am able.

For those who adopt this mindset the businesses with whom they do business have a different feel to them. This mindset will give you reason to understand and embrace the fact that the business with which you do business is a collaboration of much smaller businesses, and ultimately, at its smallest component parts are individual businesses of self.

Understanding this we can begin to grasp the importance of our personal brands. What are we known for? How do we deal with our inevitable failures so that the destruction of our brand is mitigated? A business rightly puts its successes up front. But the savvy buyer knows that there’s more to the story. He wants to know about the failures, and more importantly how the establishment handled them. This scales down as well to the individual. When we have a business mindset we own our failures and make the necessary changes to avoid our brand being tarnished.

In conclusion, we must remember that our thought-processes will ultimately make the difference in who we are and who we become. I experience people all around me in the work place who are just doing their jobs. From my perspective it’s easy to distinguish between those who are in the business of business and those who are simply performing the required tasks. Those who are in the business of business care because the success of their self business and their brand is intertwined with the the success of their customer’s business.

Going forward please realize that building a success-creating mindset takes time. Start today. Seek the counsel and advice of those around you who embrace their business with zeal. In time it will end in a more successful and a happier you.