Founder Mindset: live outside your comfort zone, where the next move is always yours.

Strictly Come Dancing is now in its twenty-third series on the BBC. It’s my guilty pleasure on a Saturday night, although I watch it more for the pithy and caustic comments from the judges – Craig Revel Horwood and Anton Du Beke are my favourites - with their direct and unsympathetic feedback  than the outrageously flirty, athletic dancing.

Everyone knows the format: a guest and a professional dancer pair up to dance. The judges score each performance out of ten. After all the couples have danced, they are then ranked according to the judges' scores. The public also vote, and couples are ranked again according to the number of votes received. The points for judges' score and public vote are added together, and the two couples with the fewest points are placed in the bottom two. They perform a dance-off and each judge then votes on which couple should stay and which couple should leave.

Nearly twenty years ago, former Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel forayed into the ballroom. I recall it was a beguiling sight, watching a six-foot plus blond Danish giant glide elegantly across the dancefloor in Blackpool. Once a colossus on the pitch, there he was, in sequins and a pair of snappy shiny dance shoes. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense because Schmeichel excelled at defying expectations. He performed a Waltz, the Tango Paso Doble, Samba and Foxtrot.

I recall time and again he impressed in the traditional ballroom disciplines, but struggled to impose himself in the free-form Latin-based dances. When I say impressed me, I mean I'd look more like a whirligig washing line dressed like a bouncer on the dance floor and pity my partner in an expensive alluring frock, being flung with the aplomb of a rioter releasing a Molotov cocktail, rather than elegant finesse and control he showed.

If Schmeichel was going to go, surely it would have been after the Samba, when the judges' scores plunged him right down. Heinous was one of the verdicts - which my dictionary defines as shockingly evil or wicked which is possibly a bit strong for looking clunky during some shoulder wiggles and failing to pull off a set of hip thrusts. But this was reality television, and temperatures, if not temperaments, run high. His foxtrot looked good in training, I love this dance he said, with carefree openness about his enthusiasm for ballroom dancing that might have escaped him during his years as a seriously competitive professional footballer.

Perhaps he didn’t quite boss the dance area as he used to boss the six-yard area in his pomp, but he stood up to the challenge. True, one judge accused him of having a cumbersome bodyline and encouraged him to pull out right through the centre, which can be tricky for a big bloke, especially wearing a tight cummerbund.

Even after the harsh judges’ critique, and the ridicule Schmeichel potentially opened himself up to in the dressing room by entering in the first place, he had a go at something new. He threw himself into a new challenge with passion, energy, determination and two massive feet. He was obviously outside of his comfort zone, but I admired his determination. He had the drive of wanting to change things by his own efforts, a fierce competitive streak, and a will to win.

These are key attributes founders need to have on their startup journey - remember, failure only establishes that our determination to succeed was not strong enough, all things are possible for those who believe. Olympian Jesse Owens once said We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.

Now I don't want to be a ballroom dancer, but like Schmeichel, I'll push myself time and again to achieve something new. And at the end, who thought Schmeichel would come off worse in a 50-50 challenge with Emma Bunton? Schmeichel and his partner Erin Boag found themselves in the bottom two against Emma Bunton and Darren Bennet, and were eliminated. Still, let's not get too sad about Big Peter’s short dancing career. With the stout thighs and ruddy complexion, he had enough about him to escape being a pro-celebrity dance victim.

Like Schmeichel, a Founder’s mindset means determination, resourcefulness to act at speed with purpose and intent, taking risks. It’s easy to spot the mindset traits. I look for proof that someone got off of an established path, out of their comfort zone and learned from being off that path. For me, the founder mindset works around initiating, adapting, learning, and coming out ahead.

Successful entrepreneurs come up with brilliant ideas, with perfect timing and eye-catching effort, but beneath the surface, there’s a common thread that sets exceptional entrepreneurs apart from the rest: they live outside of their comfort zone, focused on learning and growth. They deliberately put themselves in unfamiliar situations, even when it feels uncomfortable. Staying comfortable is one of the fastest ways to fall behind.

There are many traits which contribute to this, and here are ten ‘founder mindset attributes’ I’ve seen which shape the behaviour of successful founders who live outside their comfort zone. 

1. Hold a growth mindset Comfort feels good, but it rarely pushes us forward. Entrepreneurs who intentionally stretch create opportunities they would never have discovered otherwise. Every time they do something unfamiliar, they expand their ability to tackle future challenges with confidence. Comfort creates limits. Discomfort creates growth. Schmeichel showed this.

2.  Embrace uncertainty Innovation doesn’t happen in environments where everything is predictable. When entrepreneurs step outside their comfort zones, they expose themselves to new perspectives. Creativity thrives when you’re facing the unknown. The willingness to take risks becomes the foundation for groundbreaking ideas.

3. Fear becomes fuel Fear often signals the presence of something meaningful. Entrepreneurs who succeed understand that fear is a natural part of growth and leverage it as a signal to move forward, not retreat. Stepping outside the comfort zone helps build emotional resilience. Over time, what once felt intimidating becomes manageable, or even exciting. Their actions may feel risky, but they’re often the gateway to opportunities that comfort zones never offer.

4. Your Comfort Zone is a constraint and shrinks success Staying comfortable leads to stagnation. But consistently stepping outside your comfort zone expands what you’re capable of. What once felt impossible becomes achievable. And that’s where real entrepreneurial power lives, building confidence to embrace uncertainty and the unknown in pursuit of a bold endeavour.

5. The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher Don’t shy away from difficulty. Nurture yourself: gain strength from the unrealistic achievements of others. Surround yourself with high achievers. Avoid toxic people like the plague. To be remarkable, you have to expect unreasonable things of yourself. In a startup, when you overcome one obstacle, another one waits in the shadows. Founders cut their own path, to figure stuff out for themselves. Aim for the high hanging fruit, not the stuff easy to achieve.

6. Be headstrong: Self-belief and relentless optimism are needed to keep going. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion - not ego, just relentless in their ability to make it happen, yet they are also objective in their assessment of their own limitations. Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you deliver results, trust your instinct more - successful founders refuse to accept the status quo and have a capacity to make things happen - but do listen to others to ensure your blind spots are not causing your radar to malfunction with deluded bias.

7. Don’t look at the world through rose-coloured glasses. See the world for what it is. Not what you want it to be. Hey, we’re back to being realistic, but it’s also about optimism, the mindset to expect the best outcome from every situation, and resilience to make it happen. This gives entrepreneurs the capacity to pivot to increase comeback success. Be openminded and hold an experimental mindset. Don’t bury your head in the sand or make excuses for poor results. Look for small bets you can make where you lose x1 if you’re wrong but make x10 if it works. Then go again.

8. Focus is a multiplier: What am I going today that will move the business

forward?  Avoid cruise control and simply working through a task list just ‘doing stuff that needs to be done’. Work on the right thing , even if the results are not immediately visible. Most people waste time on stuff that doesn’t matter. Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about executing priorities quickly. Successful founders are driven by passion, but it’s about graft too. Michelangelo said: If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.

9. Determination Startup Life isn’t predictable, sooner or later, everyone faces adversity. A habit of expanding our comfort zone equips people to handle change and ambiguity with more confidence, leading to resilience. Leaving your comfort zone means a phase of trial and error, during which at least some level of success is inevitable. Experiencing this success builds our belief in our ability starting to grow.

In 1907, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson conducted one of the first experiments that illuminated a link between anxiety and performance. In response to anxiety-provoking stimuli, the options are either fight (meet the challenge), flight (run away/hide), or freeze (become paralysed).

The Yerkes–Dodson Law is true not just for more tangible types of performance, such as being given a stressful new task at work, The core idea is that our nervous systems have a Goldilocks zone of arousal. Too little, and you remain in the comfort zone, where boredom sets in. But too much, and you enter the ‘panic’ zone, which also stalls progress:

10. Be part of a community Successful founders maybe headstrong, but are also highly gregarious and social, thriving in a community with like-minded others. They find a place to share their setbacks, failures, and successes, and create connections. They look for and give inspiration to others. Be part of a movement. Look at the impressionist painters in Montmartre. The Cafe Guerbois became the gathering spot for Manet, Renoir, Degas and Pissarro, and the movement was born and flourished.

Summary Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, even if they didn’t work out. Choose your mindset, choose your attitude, embrace the attributes outlined above. Sail away from the safe harbour. Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. 

Fundamentally, a successful founder’s mindset means you lose the uncertainty and reticence such that I don’t know how to do that thinking becomes irrelevant. The choose the challenge, inevitably encountering times marked by chaos and disappointment, in which they are likely to have higher highs and lower lows, the peaks and troughs are more vivid than if safer choices made.

It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit.  You must be willing to roll the dice. Be prepared for none of it to work. Standing over the precipice, the first step to getting somewhere different is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. Make sure the real enemy doesn’t live between your ears.

I see many businesses where  average performance is often tolerated. The choice is yours - average work, yields average results. Choose your attitude and get the right mindset. The real story of living outside your comfort zone is about hearts and minds to drive ambition. The next move is always yours. That's the essence of it, so make the most of yourself.