Imagine two business owners running almost identical businesses.
Same market. Same team size. Same revenue.
Then, almost overnight, both experience a sudden drop in sales.
One immediately tightens their belt and works longer hours.
The other starts looking at their systems and their people — asking what needs to change.
The situation is the same.
The response is different.
And over time, so are the results.
That’s because business challenges don’t just test what we know – they reveal how we think, and what we believe.
And how we think is shaped by who we believe we are in our business.
The Cashflow Quadrant: How You Think
Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant describes this perfectly.
- Employee (E) – trades time for security
- Self-Employed (S) – is the product
- Business Owner (B) – builds systems and teams
- Investor (I) – allocates capital, not effort
These are notionally income levels, but they are more than that – they’re ways of thinking.
Look at how each identity reacts to the same challenge – say for that fall in revenue:
- Employee mindset: triggers a panic response
- Self-Employed mindset: cut costs and work harder
- Business Owner mindset: fix / change the system, train / upgrade the team
- Investor mindset: reallocate capital
Same problem.
Different interpretation.
Different future.
The big problem arises when you want B-quadrant results with an S-quadrant identity.
The Entrepreneurial Ladder: Growth Requires Letting Go
If you stretched this out and fine-tuned it a bit, you’d get something called the Entrepreneurial Ladder. And this is a great mirror to challenge your self-perception.
Advancing up the ladder requires learning new skills, but the bigger impediment is identity friction. Each rung up the ladder requires the death of a previous identity; otherwise, the pull of the familiar becomes too strong.
Life being life, this isn’t a binary thing. We don’t sit neatly on one rung of the ladder day in and day out.
We change according to external pressure and internal anxiety. You might act like a business owner when it comes to marketing – but with a Self-Employed mindset when it comes to handling customer complaints.
You see this identity friction playing out every day.
- Feeling the need to jump in and fix things whilst wanting your team to take more ownership
- Wanting to be the one with the ideas – but lamenting your team’s lack of engagement
- Needing to be the hardest working person in the room
The Identity Iceberg: Why Change is Hard
This is a simple model to help you delineate between behaviour – and what drives it.
The visual metaphor is simple enough. There’s the aspect of a person we see – above the metaphorical water – their actions, decisions and habits.
And what we can’t see below the surface – that drives them. Beliefs, Values and Identity (self-image).
3 things to remember about this:
- Environment is not just places and things – but also people and media
- If there’s a gremlin in the wiring at any particular level, it affects everything above it.
- The deeper you go, the harder it is to change – permanently
This is why good strategies can fail. It’s not the strategy – the problem is to be found deeper in the iceberg.
If the founder still believes “I’m the fixer”, “I’m the ideas guy”, “I need to be the busy-est person in the room” – they will sabotage every system designed to replace them.
The 5 Killer Identity Traps
There are 5 major identity traps that you’ll find entrepreneurs falling into with their businesses and teams.
All of them started off as a good thing because they all played a crucial part in the getting the business off the ground in the first place.
The Superhero: Always swooping in to fix problems and save the day. Always needed. Creates dependency rather than capability – thus guaranteeing the Superhero will be called for more and more into the future.
The Superhero Core Belief: I’ll do it, it’ll be quicker and better
The end result: A team that with no sense of responsibility.
The Genius: The one who comes up with the clever work-around. The innovative marketing angle. The idea that gets you back on the up. Who doesn’t want to be the brightest bulb in the bunch? Your team can only sit back, admire – and let you do the thinking.
The Genius Core Belief: I’m the smartest one here
The end result: A team that doesn’t think for itself.
The Driver: sets a pace that is beyond reproach. No-one can fault your work ethic or hours at the coal face. Ultimately either your team stop trying to compete – or become exhausted (as do you).
The Driver Core Belief: I’m the hardest working person in the room.
The end result: Exhaustion – you and them.
The Critic: Always spotting the fault or problem before anyone else. Finds it much easier and quicker to find the fault – takes the good for granted. Your team will learn it’s not worth the risk to take a risk.
The Critic Core Belief: It’s not good enough unless I check it.
The end result: Bottlenecks as everything has to be seen & approved by you.
The Abdicator: Most likely to think that people shouldn’t need micro-managing and being spoon-fed. That surely this should be common sense? No targets, no guidelines, no training, no praise.
The Abdicator Core Belief: People shouldn’t need to be told how to do their jobs.
The end result: creates confusion and disengagement.
The Identity Trap Loop
Together these form what amounts to a feedback loop – where each identity creates more need for the next.
The natural next step for the Superhero is to dream up the next batch of ideas.
They naturally have a greater sense of ownership in the idea – it’s theirs after all – than anyone else and work harder to bring it to fruition.
To the Superhero this will feel like you care more than anyone else and from there it’s a small, quick step to being the critic.
And as you are rushing around keeping all those plates spinning, there is no time to sit down with people to manage and lead them.
Conclusion
Most business owners don’t hit a strategy ceiling – they hit an identity ceiling.
The business you want requires a version of you that:
- Lets go (through delegation not abdication)
- Trusts more
- Designs instead of does
- Leads instead of rescues
Your business is not asking you to work harder.
It’s asking you to be someone different.
What’s next?
If this struck a nerve, it’s because your business is giving you feedback – and it’s trying to tell you something.
If you’d like to explore what needs to change to unlock the stage of development for you and your business, let’s talk.
I offer a no-cost, no-obligation business growth session where we will:
- Clarify what it is you do want for you and your business
- Identify where you are stuck
- Build a clear plan to move forward
👉 Book your session at: Contact Us – Tim Brown – ActionCOACH – Let’s Have A Chat
Or call me direct on 07825 589333.
Best regards,
Tim
