Why Your Business Is Not Changing

by Alicia Arenas on July 27, 2010

San Antonio Business Coach Beliefs drive successHave you read John Maxwell’s book Thinking For A Change?

In it, Maxwell asks a provocative question: “Do you know what most people’s number one challenge is when it comes to making positive personal changes?”

Several answers came to mind:

  1. A positive support system is missing.
  2. Limited finances.
  3. Lack of knowledge.

Here is Maxwell’s answer: “It’s their feelings. They want to change, but don’t know how to get past their emotions.”

Feelings? Really?

I thought about this from the perspective of small business owners. In the clients I coach, 1-3 come up regularly.

  1. “My family doesn’t believe in me.”
  2. “We’re broke.”
  3. “I’m good at _____, but I don’t know how to run a business.”

Yet there are entrepreneurs who have all those things in place and are still not reaching their goals. Why aren’t they? Why aren’t you?

Maxwell proposes that the only way to make positive change is to change the way we think. He suggests that our actions/decisions come from our feelings and our feelings come from our thoughts. He believes that if we control our thoughts, we will control our feelings which will in turn, cause us to make good decisions.

Thoughts →Feelings→Actions.

Our Beliefs Determine Our Success

I agree with Maxwell and I’d like to take this idea a bit further. It is my humble opinion that every action we take, every decision we make stems from not just what we think, but what we believe about ourselves (internal beliefs) and what we believe about the world around us (external beliefs). This is an important distinction because at times, our core beliefs are different from what we logically know. And often, we are led more by our core beliefs than by the objective data we hold in our minds.  Our core beliefs are at the root of our behaviors.

Haven’t you seen this in yourself or others:

  • I’m not as smart as _______. =  Declining invitations to work on projects.
  • I’m not good at sales. = A low closing percentage.
  • God doesn’t want me to be successful = Consciously or subconsciously, this person sabotages their own success.
  • I must be perfect = Not taking risks.
  • If an employee believes nothing he/she does will impact the company, this person becomes complacent.

Conversely,

  • If you believe each “failure” brings you one step closer to success, you will keep trying.
  • If you believe you are fully able to overcome challenges, no mountain will ever be too big to climb.
  • If you believe in the greater purpose of what you do, you will have a well-spring of energy and enthusiasm.

Beliefs→Thoughts →Feelings→ActionsSuccess.

Our beliefs drive our thinking. Our thoughts impact our feelings. How we feel determines our actions. Our actions determine our success.

The First Step To Correcting Your Course

Assuming our success comes from our beliefs, it becomes even more important to evaluate our core beliefs – particularly those that are false and limiting. This is the first step to change our actions and increase our success.

If I may, that is my challenge for you this week: Identify the core beliefs that are holding you back.You may be able to name them immediately or you may need to dig a little bit. In either case, knowing what they are will bring you closer to changing them (which I’ll address in upcoming posts.)

What do you think? Or perhaps the better question is what do you believe?


Photo courtesy of Chris Runoff via Flickr

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How To Name Your Business

by Alicia Arenas on July 13, 2010

googleHand“How do I choose a name for my business?” It’s an important question.

Run your ideas for a business name through some of these filters and see what you get:

1. Is the url available?

If not, look for something else. The synergy of having your company name match yourcompanyname.com is too important to ignore.

2. Is it naturally optimized for search?

If the name of your company contains what someone would look for on Google, Bing or Yahoo, you’ve just scored major search engine optimization (SEO) points. For example, you are a PR pro in Santa Monica. People looking for PR assistance in Santa Monica will more than likely type “PR Santa Monica” into Google. If the name of your company is santamonicapr.com, Google elevates your ranking.

3. How short is it?

People don’t want to type or thumb something with a lot of letters in it. It sounds petty, but this is the world in which we live.

4. Is the name easy to spell?

You want your target market to find you easily. If misspelling the name of your company will lead your target customer to a blank web page or worse, to one of your competitors’ pages, you’ve got a problem. If, however,  you’re married to the difficult name you’ve chosen, consider scooping up the .coms for the misspelled version of your name and have those redirect to your main website.

5. What does the name look like as a url?

(PG-13) Your perfect name may spell something entirely different when pushed together as a url. In the mid-90’s there was a national insurance company named Titan who was working on their new marketing program called Titan Us. They bought the domain name, created billboards, tv and radio commercials. Literally two weeks before the launch, an employee saw the previews and noticed what Titan Us spelled as one word… Titan immediately changed the campaign to Titan Up.

Trademark6. Is the trademark available?

Just because you are small now doesn’t mean you’ll be small forever. Imagine this: The brand recognition you’ve worked so hard to develop finally gains regional or even national attention. Your sales are up, your profits are up, you are strategically planning to expand and… you’re served with a lawsuit for trademark violation. The few hundred you spend now to have an attorney do a trademark search will mitigate the thousands you will spend later in a lawsuit. And if you lose, you will spend thousands more on re-branding with a new logo, tag line, website, marketing materials, business cards, etc.

7. Does it transcend time?

This one is a little controversial so we’ll look at both sides of it.

Is the name of your business so specific that if you change directions or expand in the future, the name no longer applies? For example, you might run a small tutoring business called Math Wiz For Kids. If you ever decide to tutor college age students (or even adult students completing their degrees), your name could be detrimental.

On the other hand, if you’ve carefully selected your target market, having that target market in your name can be a useful marketing tool.

Whichever way you choose to go, consider this carefully as there are significant hard costs associated with re-branding (see #3). And the soft costs of re-branding can be even more devastating: people become confused about who you are and what you do and/or you can lose your following.

8. Does it transcend trends?

A great example is using “consultant” or “consulting” in your name. In the 90’s having a business consultant was the thing to do. (Kind of like high-waist jeans.) Companies that had consultants were taken more seriously and anyone who wanted to be someone had one or more consultants. Today, on an emotional level, the word “consultant” is immediately associated with expensive, unpractical advice. That and conducting kum-ba-yah retreats where employees burn their feet. (Consulting is part of what we do at Sanera, but it’s not a part of my company’s name. And we don’t do fire-walking by the way.)

As another example, let’s take a look at “coaching.” Today, having a coach to help you with your business, sales, or health & fitness goals is popular. But what will be associated with the words “coach” or “coaching” in 10 years? Will they conjur up the same negative feeling that consultant carries now?

9. Does it transcend technology?

We all need to be conscious of this. The technology we took for granted 10 years ago barely exists today. Linking your name to a technology could make your business name obsolete. For example, in 10 years, will “social media” be what email is to us today – outdated and a communication platform that is rarely used?


How did you select your business name? What advice can you share?

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What I’ve Learned From Rejection

July 8, 2010

Have you ever faced rejection? Perhaps your cold calling hit a dead end or your proposals have been rejected?
Some people told me I shouldn’t write this post. Their concern was that I might look bad or I might discredit myself by telling this story. But the truth is that we all face rejection. And the [...]

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The Slowkey Pokey – How To Turn Yourself Around

June 29, 2010

It happens. Business slows down.
Most people look at slow periods as a bad thing. But not you! You are a super-star! You refuse to think like everyone else around you. So let’s shout a collective, “Bull Feathers!” to being discouraged during slow times. This time is a gift. Use it to do good things for [...]

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What You Need To Know About Your Competition

June 22, 2010

True story: With high expectations, I recently attended a conference held by a nationally renowned company. Surprisingly, the company’s speakers weren’t very good and most of the curriculum was rehashed information I saw in other programs for years. The company was shocked by the lack of enthusiasm from the attendees. And we were shocked to [...]

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3 Reasons Why You Should Be Like Edward Cullen

June 9, 2010

My husband supervises mostly women and after work one day he asked me, “What is it about the Twilight movies?” I immediately thought about Edward in the first movie, desperate to save Bella’s life while struggling to control his thirst. I remembered when he told her she was everything he had searched for in 100 [...]

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Step Away From the Incubator

June 7, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about babies. My nephew’s wife is pregnant and so is one of my good friends. I’ve enjoyed seeing their bellies grow and studying sonogram pictures to figure out whose nose the baby has. We don’t have children so it’s fascinating to me.
Several years ago a dear friend of mine was [...]

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4 comments Read the full article →

What I’ve Learned From Rejection

June 4, 2010

Have you ever faced rejection? Perhaps your cold calling hit a dead end or your proposals have been rejected?
Some people told me I shouldn’t write this post. Their concern was that I might look bad or I might discredit myself by telling this story. But the truth is that we all face rejection. And [...]

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5 Ways I Won With Twitter

June 1, 2010

I recently did a revenue analysis for 2009 and discovered something. Almost 80% of my revenue from that year can be linked directly back to Twitter. Since my last post, I’ve been asked how I’ve made Twitter work for my business. Honestly, that question makes me uncomfortable because I am not a Twitter expert; I [...]

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5 Reasons You Don’t Need To Cold Call Me

May 24, 2010

Caveat – I believe in relationship- based sales. If that’s not how you work, this post may not be helpful to you.
Something extraordinary happened the other day. Someone cold-called me! It was such a shock that I had to think hard about the last time it happened and I realized it had been months.
Why You [...]

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