I’ve been getting all sorts of questionable, contradictory business advice lately.
It’s like listening to a know-it-all golfer dispensing second-hand YouTube tips on a driving range full of 75-year-old hackers.
Ninety percent of it is bad advice that they will never be able to implement.
Five percent might help a little for a short time. And the remaining five percent might actually produce lasting improvement.
The problem is, the average golfer doesn’t know the bad 90% from the good 5%. So it’s easy to go down a long, dark rabbit hole the wrong direction.
Same thing at work. Most people don’t know how to avoid all the bad business advice floating around out there.
It’s easy to get sucked into click bait articles and videos. It’s hard to find credible information that’s relevant to your situation. So if you want to avoid a big mistake, you have to consider the source very carefully.
And the context.
You have to do your own research and carefully curate any instructions you get to determine if the advice is applicable to your operation and your brand.
In other words, just like in golf, you have to know your own game and become your own best coach. After awhile, you’ll be able to weed out the good stuff from the deluge of bad business advice.
Let me give you an example of advice that leads people astray. I heard this one recently from a Venture Capital Industry discussion regarding brand names…
“If it’s a brilliant idea, no one’s going to care what you call it.”
It’s true, investors might not care… You might be able to raise some money on the merits of your idea alone.
But if you want to build a profitable company and a long-lasting brand, you’re gonna need a good brand name.
Names do matter!
Jeff Besos learned that the hard way. When he launched his online bookselling business he called it Cadabra. As in, abracadabra.
Not a bad name name at first glance… Three syllables, starts with a hard consonant and ends in a soft vowel sound. It has magical connotations, which seemed appropriate for one of the very first ecommerce companies.
But it wasn’t long before Bezos realized that it sounded a lot like cadaver. Abra cadaver…
Oopsy. That name was dead on arrival.
Bezos rebranded under the name Amazon and the rest, of course, is history.
Names that sing make the cash register ring!
Amazon, Uber, Nike, Dell, FedEx, Zappos, Red Bull… those are names that people can remember. They have a nice ring to them. They’re easy to repeat in a conversation, so they encourage word-of-mouth advertising.
On the other hand, the easiest way to kill a brilliant business idea is to slap a dumb brand name on it.
A confusing brand name can quickly become a stumbling block for potential investors, prospective employees, suppliers and of course customers.
So regardless of what you may hear, it pays to get your business name right the first time. It’ll save you money in the long run.
So if you want to avoid bad business advice, sometimes you have to flip the script. Just because you have a great business idea doesn’t mean you should cut corners on naming.
Think of it this way… Your brilliant business idea deserves a brand name that’s equally brilliant.
A brilliant name has a multiplier effect. So even if your idea isn’t going to become the next Amazon, it can still be an iconic brand.
I’ll show you how to choose a name you can bank on in my new book, Money Name.
It’s an easy read that’ll help you choose the perfect name for your new venture. Download it now… it could mean the difference between being invisible, and being iconic.
