Three powerful mindset shifts for entrepreneurs

After nearly two decades in corporate sales, Martin Moloney had survived five rounds of redundancy. Each time, he kept his job,  but with every close call, the illusion of stability cracked a little more.

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Eventually, he realised that the security of a corporate career was never real.

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There’s no security in any job,” he told me. “You’re always a number on a spreadsheet… If you think you’ve got stability, you don’t.”

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That realisation changed everything for him. If employment offered no true safety, he reasoned, he might as well face uncertainty on his own terms. In 2024, he founded Growrithm, a consultancy helping SaaS companies grow through LinkedIn marketing.

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The early months tested him — uncertainty didn’t disappear just because he was his own boss. But what did change was his relationship to it. He stopped resisting uncertainty and started moving with it. Over time, he learned that stability isn’t found in circumstances, but in the confidence that you can adapt, rebuild, and begin again, as many times as it takes.

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His resilience came not from certainty, but from repetition — the daily act of proving to himself that he could keep going, even when results weren’t immediate.

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“There’s uncertainty every day — several times a day,” he said. “You just have to keep going.”

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For Martin, this became the cornerstone of his philosophy.

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“If uncertainty is what’s holding you back,” he told me, “remember that you’re never truly safe in a job either. At least when it’s your own business, the uncertainty is yours to manage.”

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The psychology behind the shift

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In entrepreneurship research, this mindset is known as tolerance for ambiguity: the capacity to act without complete information or guarantees. Studies show that entrepreneurs with higher ambiguity tolerance experience less stress and greater long-term success.

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Martin didn’t find certainty - instead, he built self-trust. By accepting uncertainty as inevitable, he stopped chasing control and started cultivating adaptability, which is the only form of stability that can’t be taken away.

When Maria Graves lost her job after her employer went bust, stability disappeared with it. With a young daughter to support and no safety net to fall back on, she had little choice but to find another way forward. Out of necessity, she launched weRtranslations, her own multilingual translation and localisation agency based in Edinburgh.

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Those first few months were marked by exhaustion and uncertainty. 

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“It was challenging… doing everything on your own and having to learn along the way,” she said. “It’s very much a learned skill. It’s not necessarily something you learn in university — it’s learn as you go.”

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But rather than being paralysed by fear, Maria found a way to channel it. 

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“It was very much a sink-or-swim situation,” she said. “I didn’t have many options, really… The fear is what drives you, or the uncertainty is what really makes you swim harder.”

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That mindset (seeing fear not as failure but as fuel) became her competitive edge. Every new challenge became an opportunity to learn faster. Over time, she built confidence through competence.

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“If you don’t have those uncertainties,” she reflected, “maybe you won’t go out and seek those answers. Fear is a good thing.”

The psychology behind the shift

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Maria’s experience mirrors what psychologists describe in the Yerkes–Dodson Law, which shows that moderate levels of stress or fear can actually enhance performance. Too little pressure breeds complacency; too much causes paralysis. But the right amount, channelled with purpose, sharpens focus, fuels motivation, and accelerates growth.

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For Maria, the fear of failing wasn’t a threat; it was information. It told her what mattered most: providing for her daughter and building a future on her own terms. By reframing fear as fuel, she transformed pressure into progress.

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Her story is a reminder that courage doesn’t come from the absence of fear but from learning to move forward with it, one uncertain step at a time.

At just 25, Eric Rogers co-founded Oofbeat, a creative design and web studio based in India. For him, entrepreneurship wasn’t about survival but about building a rhythm that allowed him to grow without burning out.

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When I’m working, then I’m working,” he said. “I’m not distracted for a second here and there. I don’t get frustrated, I don’t get angry, and I don’t get stressed.”

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That sense of focus didn’t happen by accident. Eric built it deliberately through daily structure that blended discipline with joy: morning football, focused work hours, evening badminton. 

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“When you eat healthy, when you are active, you automatically feel good about yourself and how you progress in your day,” he said.

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Where many see freedom as the absence of boundaries, Eric found the opposite to be true. Structure became his form of freedom as it preserved his creativity, protected his energy, and enabled him to show up consistently for his clients and his team. Unlike the typical entrepreneurial “grind,” his success was rooted in balance, not relentless hustle.

The psychology behind the shift

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Eric’s mindset reflects principles from Self-Determination Theory, which identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as the three foundations of motivation and wellbeing.

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By setting his own structure, Eric exercised autonomy (choosing how to work). By maintaining discipline, he built competence (confidence in his ability to deliver). And by protecting his mental balance, he stayed connected to his purpose and the people around him.

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In psychology, this kind of self-regulation (the ability to align daily actions with long-term goals) is one of the strongest predictors of sustainable success. It’s what separates short bursts of productivity from lasting performance.

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Eric’s story illustrates a powerful reframe: discipline isn’t the opposite of freedom; it’s the foundation of it. By moving at a deliberate pace and prioritising health, relationships, and joy, he’s building a business, and a life, designed to last.

Final thoughts

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What these stories reveal is that entrepreneurship isn’t a single act of bravery, but a continuous act of reframing. That’s because the challenges don’t disappear; they evolve. And the entrepreneurs who thrive aren’t the ones who avoid discomfort, but those who learn to make meaning from it.

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In the end, growth is less about control than about perspective — about learning, again and again, to move forward not because the path is clear, but because the journey itself has become the point.