3 Signs I Know You’re Too Scared To Grow Your Business

After years of working on myself, I am fortunate to be in the place where I’m actually uncomfortable being comfortable. If I have lots of money in the bank, I go and spend it on a wildly scary new way to grow my business.  So I’m scared ALL the time. I want growth constantly. I don’t ever want to change.

For me, fear is the tension that motivates me but for others, it’s the terror that stops them from growing.

Here are the signs that your fears are stopping your business growth:

1. You Would Rather Do What You Know

If a business owner is unwilling to try something new or to invest in something new to grow their business, I know they are too scared to move their business forward. Remember comfort is the enemy of growth.

2. You Would Rather Delay Decisions

What’s the cost of making your decisions later? Go try to buy a plane ticket for a flight tomorrow and see. There is a huge cost to delaying decisions for your business. If you think the world goes on anyway, you’re deluding yourself.

3. You Refuse To Talk About It

The first step to getting help is to admit to the problem, as they say in AA. If you don’t even know about or can talk about the fear that’s holding you back, how are you supposed to overcome it? If someone spots it in you and you balk, who is going to help you get over this paralyzing fear?

So if you find yourself exhibiting any of these symptoms in growing your small business, get help. Any kind of help. Or stay in your safe, known corner of the world forever. But that is not what I would want for you or anyone…

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(VIDEO) Advertising Your Small Business: The Lazy Solution or Salvation?

Have you ever wondered if new clients are waiting to rush to the phones to call you if only you advertised?

I’m going to stop you right there. I am against service based small businesses advertising. I feel that there are way too many other ways to connect with and market to your ideal client that will result in much faster and higher returns on your investment. But I’m not here to judge. I’m here to help you decide whether an ad investment will pay out or not, regardless of my personal opinion about it.

1. Your first step in deciding on if you should advertise is to be crystal clear on who your ideal target client group is. You know, the group of people who can afford your rates, who need what you offer and who love you as soon as they meet you.
2. Once you’ve strategically found your target niche (as opposed to guessing it from your gut), then ask the ad rep how many of those target people will be reading/listening to or seeing your ad.
3. Then take the cost and divide it by the number of people the ad will reach and you will get something called a CPM, a cost per thousand calculation.
4. Now you do this same thing and find the CPM for other forms of marketing you’re doing, say a trade show cost vs how many people you talk to at your booth or a bus shelter ad and how many of the thousands will actually BE your ideal client etc.
5. Then you choose the CPM that’s lowest which means it has the lowest cost to reach a client. In my experience, I’ve gotten the lowest CPM through networking, public speaking and trade shows. Let’s see what your CPM numbers will show you?

For the love of God, please don’t just throw your money on advertising and expect your business to triple in size. Make sure it’s a strategic decision and you won’t regret it.

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What Makes You Say ‘F### it, I’m Going To Keep Going!’ After the 100th No?

I lived through 2 clients having deep lows this week. They had come to the end of their limits of failure. They were feeling weak, vulnerable and defeated. These are strong, intelligent people who are very successful at most things. Yet they were both reduced to despair at having failed at something in their own mind.

Cue the Universe

While the saddening drama was going on in my practice this week, at the same time, my own coach’s training was on the topic of What makes a person reach their true potential despite hardship? Coincidence? I think not…

Both of my clients (I’m proud to say) were able to grieve but then get back up and say ‘F### it, I don’t care about what it takes, I’m not giving up! I am going to make that next call, even if a 100 people say no to me!’.

The Reason

When it looks like the whole world is against you and nothing seems to be happening and you are tired of your defeats, there is A REASON that keeps you from giving up. All of us have one. For some it’s so their children will live a better life. For some it’s about freedom. For some it’s about healing the world. For others it’s about a lifestyle they want.

When I Cried

At the start of my practice, I often talk about how I couldn’t get a single client, even though I had dirt cheap rates and 20 years of kick-butt marketing knowledge. I used to cry and lie awake at night for months–you know the drill. What kept me going even though I did hundreds of free complimentary coaching sessions and heard ‘no’ over and over again was that I don’t want to die without learning how to create my own life and destiny in exactly the shape that I want it to be. I don’t want my childhood conditioning to dictate how much  money I make. I don’t want bosses I don’t respect to tell me how to live the majority of my time and dictate how much I will make. I want to teach this to my son, my husband, my extended family and clients.

The Old Lady

I went to pick up my 5 year-old from daycare several weeks ago. The children were playing outside and one of the new helpers was an elderly East Indian woman with white hair, a red dot on her forehead and a shawl around her head. She was clearly in agony while the cold wind made her shiver and blew through her meager clothing. She nodded to me politely as I passed but I could see her pain and discomfort about being outside for such a long period of time. This was a condition over which she had NO real control because probably her childhood conditioning and belief system made her choose a job with these difficult circumstances that she had to endure at her age. It broke my heart and the image of her stayed with me for a long time.

What’s At Stake?

If you don’t change your current situation, what’s at stake for you? What will your life be like in 10 years, what will it be like when you’re 75, like that old lady probably was? How much money will you be making? How many people will you be helping? How will you have fulfilled your destiny and promise to the world if you just keep being comfortable and safe?

So ask yourself that questions again: What Makes You Say ‘F### it, I’m Going To Keep Going!’ After the 100th No?

Need more chicken soup for your biz? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, watch me on YouTube or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk

When You Let Your History Decide Your Destiny: A Devastating Story

A few weeks ago, I got a shocking email: a friend’s young son was diagnosed with leukemia. He now needs a bone marrow transplant. The odds of a match are 1 out of 30 000. The donor can’t be anyone (I really thought hard about doing it myself!). It has to be someone from the same geographic ethnicity (which is tricky since the family has emigrated to Toronto) and be of 17-35 years of age. Is this breaking your heart yet? There’s more…

The Odds

My marketing mind went immediately to work on the solution. I thought, if my target market is a certain geographic ethnicity, why don’t we campaign for a donor in that very country itself? After all, there are millions of potential donors there vs. here. Go to where your ideal clients hang out, I always say. That turned out to be easier said than done. The country in question has no donation infrastructure and no funds for processing potential donors through the simple cheek swab match test. In fact, it costs $1000 per person to process this test.

Solutions

Then my brilliant marketing mind came up with the idea of running a dual campaign in the said country. One for marrow donors and the other for financial donors to fund the cheek swab. I would run the financial one through something like Kickstarter where we could take multinational donations from anywhere in the world!

Where History Meets Destiny

When presented with my idea, my dear friend who truly must be beside herself with worry for her son said these words that I’ve been thinking about for the past few weeks “Chala, I simply can’t and won’t ask people I know for money”. Now I know this woman is an intelligent, caring and loving mother. Yet that’s what she felt.

Sleepless Night

I lay awake all last night thinking about what caused my friend to reject my solution of fundraising money to possibly save her son’s life. And unfortunately the answer is that when someone in our childhood (our history) teaches us that it’s wrong to ask for money, we can’t even ask it to save our (our kids’) lives, let alone our businesses. Our history ends up determining our future (our destiny).

Your Insidious Mind

When your conditioned mind (your subconscious mind) detects a change is coming (i.e. you have to ask for money from your friends or even strangers which it was conditioned never to do since it said something bad about you), your mind responds in one of 3 ways: 1. avoidance 2. resistance and 3. defensiveness. The insidiousness of your subconscious is that it actually comes out as thoughts that make perfect sense to you, such as ‘it’ll never work’ or ‘nobody will give us any money’ or ‘I don’t think it’s the right way to do this’.

The next time you are feeling any of these emotions, beware. Take a pause and maybe ask yourself why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling and be honest with yourself. You might be surprised by how your history is shaping your destiny too…

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And The Sad % Of People Who Keep New Year’s Resolutions Are…

Happy New Year everyone! I wanted to greet you with a scary statistic..call me strange…Only 19% of people who make new year’s resolutions keep them for one whole year. Here are the other numbers according to the Toronto Star article:

19%: Less than 24 hours

15%: One week

52%: One month

19%: The whole year

As a small business coach and as an entrepreneur, unfortunately I see this all too often. Some clients start the program with a bang and finish with a whimper. Friends who vow to save the Timmy’s coffee money for a vacation are carrying trays of the brown stuff to work in a few weeks. Small business owners I meet while networking who vow to spend more time marketing this year, still get sucked into working more in the business than on it. It truly is sad to see.

Why is this happening? I came up with a few theories of my own on this one:

1. Nobody Is Really Holding You Accountable

Even for those who’ve announced their intentions to the world (remember Rob Ford’s weight loss promise) there’s no real New Year’s Resolution Police who’s going to drag you to the Broken Resolutions Jail. So who cares if a few people ask you about it, nothing really changes in your life if you don’t follow through.

2. You’re Not In Enough Pain To Change

Unfortunately humans don’t change unless they are in deep pain. Most of the time. It’s either a divorce, the loss of a huge client or a heart attack that makes people take real stock and attempt to change. Even then, studies show that most people can’t stick with the changes. When there isn’t enough pain, there’s no gain.

3. Your Body Is Ruling Your Mind

According to neuroscientist Dr.Joe Dispenza, our bodies are chemically dependent on the same thoughts we’ve been thinking (and those thoughts produce hormones and chemicals that translate to feelings) since the day we were born. So to simply start thinking different thoughts is pretty difficult.

What’s a Person To Do?

So how do the people who do keep their resolutions for the whole year differ? They usually have an accountability partner, a plan of action that’s committed and a structure that allows them not to slide back into previous behaviour. For example, in 2013 when I committed to losing weight, I signed on with Weight Watchers. Their weekly meetings and especially the scary weigh-ins kept me on track. Similarly, when I decided to grow my business exponentially, I spent an enormous sum to hire a top-level coach. I haven’t looked back since!

What are you going to do differently to make sure you’re not a sad New Year’s Resolution Statistic?

Need more chicken soup for your biz? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, watch me on YouTube or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk