Bobby LeHew explores how self-limiting beliefs like "we're too busy" or "we don't have the right people" block growth in promotional products companies. Fast-growing firms like Whitestone Branding and Hello Promo succeed by embracing constant change instead. Mark Freed, GenuMark's executive chairman, says the key is to "make your decision and then hit go."
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Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at CommonsQ. As regular listeners know, sometimes we reach back into the archives and read a short article from our blog that was popular with the community. Today I want to share the article, How Self-Limiting Beliefs Sabotage Change in Your Promotional Products Business. This is the kind of article I encourage you to pass along to every member of your team. It's a quick 3-minute listen, but I encourage you to share it because we seem to be at a unique inflection point right now as we emerge from COVID Expectations from clients are higher than ever before. Projects are more intense. Supply chain issues, though hopefully abating, are still challenging. And yet for many, business is ramping up at a high velocity, which creates an environment of constant change, which can be either a roadblock or an on-ramp depending on our response. Before I get to the article, one quick mention. We recently launched a new product summit called Product Summit Creativity. Now, if you haven't attended one of our product summits before, I'll tell you what it's about. It's only 2.5 hours, but it's full of inspirational education as well as breakouts led by some of the most innovative suppliers showcasing trends and merch. Product Summit Creativity is all about ingenuity, turning ordinary products into extraordinary experiences for your clients. It will be held on May 19th from 2:00 to 5:30 PM ET and will feature Shelley Williams, VP of Marketing at SanMar, on the topic, The Business of Creative. Jeff Anderton, Director of Content with Snugs USA. He'll be talking about bringing a product story to life. The amazing Rynian Nelson, founder at Brand Aid, on crafting merch for the most iconic brands today. And a panel on the topic Secrets Behind Ingenious Merch: From Ordinary to Extraordinary, featuring Lindsay Reed, owner at Emblem, Sean Mooney from Show Pony, and Heather McLeod, vice president of sales at Elite Promotional Marketing. And of course, followed by those amazing breakout sessions led by suppliers. This event is such a powerful experience because it's a very compact amount of time, and the ROI on that short time frame is insane. It's a great use of your time. So join us for Product Summit Creativity. Invite your team, May 19th from 2 to 5:30 PM ET. You can register at commonskew.com/productsummit. Now here's our article, How Self-Limiting Beliefs Sabotage Change in Your Promotional Products Business. Change is not a one-and-done experience for a growing team. Change is a rhythm. Whitestone Branding soared from $1 million in revenue to over 1,000% growth, propelling them onto Inc. magazine's list of the fastest growing companies, not once but 4 times. John Algemann and Michael Scott Cohen started Harper Scott in 2014, and by 2022 were well over $50 million in revenue. When COVID hit, Stephanie Taylor and Jamie Moore of Hello Promo went from concerns about their survival to recently hiring their 10th team member in a high-velocity turnaround. Every fast-growth organization knows that change is not merely inevitable but ceaseless. Infrastructure changes, leadership changes, sales process changes, changes the rule. Not the exception. And the culture that adapts to evolutionary change is a culture that wins. It's true in nature. It's true in business. And change is almost always the catalyst for growth. But what prevents some distributors from adopting change? We've conducted hundreds of interviews with successful distributors, distributors who outpace average industry growth by over 20%. In our work with customers, we've identified one success-killing trait the successful promo team does not accept, and it's this: Successful people do not let self-limiting beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. Self-limiting beliefs are far more than negative thoughts or doubts. Everyone has doubts, but self-limiting beliefs are deeper. Self-limiting beliefs are perceptions you hold that convince you of a seemingly incontrovertible truth, making us blind to the possibility that the belief is not only untrue, it's dangerously self-fulfilling if you buy into it. Self-limiting beliefs are half-truths, half-truths that become convictions when they become a pre-excuse to change. Or as James Victor says inelegantly but very effectively in his book "Fuck Perfection," we pre-shit on ourselves. Quote, "Words have power. The problem with repeating negative mantras to yourself is that you start to believe them. Then others believe them. Watch your words." Here's some self-limiting beliefs that are specific to our industry. It's just too crazy to make any changes right now. Let's wait until things slow down. Or we're too busy to even think about this right now. Let's punt this to another season. Or we don't have enough bandwidth for this project yet. Or how about our team hates change and won't buy this at all. Or maybe our team is too blank, fill in the blank, old, young, busy, inexperienced. Our team is too what for this next evolution? Or maybe we don't have the right people for this in place just yet, or we don't have the right capabilities for this project, or we don't have the right infrastructure at the moment. Other self-limiting beliefs: maybe we'll consider switching, replacing, improving in the fall, or we're just not big enough to work with that type of client, or we don't know enough about this to sell it yet, or I'm not smart enough to call on that buyer, or I'm not creative enough to work with that type of account, or I don't have enough experience. Or the supply chain is such a mess, there's no way we can handle that right now. Mark Freed is the executive chairman at GenuMark, the largest Canadian-owned distributor of corporate branded merchandise and one of the largest in North America. In a recent Skucast episode where Mark was retiring and handing over the CEO reins to Mitch Freed, we asked Mark, like many of us looking back at our business journey, there are probably things you would do differently. What would you encourage entrepreneurs not to do? Mark's encouragement: don't delay.
Make your decision and then, and then hit go. I think the times we've gotten in trouble is when we knew what we were supposed to do and we just sort of let it sit, whether it was, you know, whether it was process, whether it was personnel, whether it was a not a great client fit, all those things. So, you know, do your work, figure it out, and move on, because it's a fast-paced world out there and you've got to really keep it going and you've got to, you got to keep it fluid.
The most common enemy we and our teams face is not a threatening force outside of us, but a much stealthier foe within: beliefs that limit our potential. Self-limiting beliefs are insidious because they stop you before you even get started. No matter what change you are considering—change to your infrastructure, your pay scale, your support team, your sales team, your software, your culture, your client base, your business direction—abolishing self-limiting beliefs is what the most successful entrepreneurs do well. But you might say, wait, there's a pandemic or an embargo or supply chain or inflation problems. Though cataclysmic events like a pandemic can thwart even the most ambitious, beyond worldwide catastrophes, there seems to be always something happening in the world to give you pause. 3 years ago, it was embargoes and sanctions and the impact on importing. Over the past year, supply chain woes have upended production. And at the moment, inflationary concerns at the top of everyone's worry list. And more specifically, within your own walls, a crisis can strike too. Maybe you've lost a key employee, maybe a key client. It's often at these moments when the most radical change occurs. In hindsight, most successful people discovered that the crisis was not a reason to pause, but the very catalyst that created change. Leaning into these moments is what separates the boldly successful from the marginally so. There could very well be reasons to pause plans moving forward, but just be sure your reasons are not false beliefs fueled by fears. Just like you'll never be ready for marriage or kids, you'll never be ready for change. Begin before you're ready, continues Victor in his book, Fact-Perfection. Inside your business, it might seem chaotic now, but moments of complete readiness or 100% preparedness rarely come. Today you will breathe over 23,000 times. Your heart will beat over 100,000 times. Even sitting still, you are ceaseless motion and ceaseless change. Embrace change not as a one-time occurrence,— or an occasional shift, but as the river of reality you and your team thrive in. Thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by Commenscue, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonscue.com.
