The Courage to Change: How to Evolve Without Breaking Everything

Welcome to Your Business, Accelerated! Digitally remastered with AI, Your Business, Accelerated! is the go-to podcast for entrepreneurs ready to scale smart. Hosted by Attorney Shaune B. Arnold, it delivers strategic business insights, legal frameworks, and real-world solutions to help you operate with clarity and confidence. Get actionable guidance to protect, grow, and optimize your business…one smart move at a time.

Ready to shift gears in your business or life? In this empowering episode, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold breaks down the strategy, psychology, and timing behind successful change. From NLP principles to leadership courage, she offers real-world tactics to implement transformation without chaos—and shows you how to bring your team with you. 

Transcript

Hello, everyone! And welcome …once again …to your business accelerated. I am your host, attorney Shaune B Arnold. I'm really excited to talk to you today about making changes in your organization and changes in your life. But before we get to all that transformation and make a brand new you, I need to touch on a few housekeeping matters that we do every week.

I want to make sure that you are aware I am a California business attorney. That means to the extent that we talk about legal issues on your business accelerated, then you can take that at face value if you are living in California, but if you live somewhere else, another state or even another country, I want you to take what I give you and take it to somebody in your jurisdiction who can let you know whether there are any changes or differences between the law where you live and the law where I live.

I also invite you to listen to my other podcast, legal biz Café. You see, Your Business Accelerated is designed to discuss strategies to help you make more money in your business. Legal Biz Café is different. On that show, we discuss the mindset issues that can make you feel fearful as an entrepreneur. We help you to eliminate the negative thinking that makes you give up on yourself and your business. On Legal Biz Café, we provide insights and emotional resources to support your entrepreneurial journey. When you listen to Legal Biz Café AND your business accelerated, I believe you are getting quite a bit of foundation to support you all around.

I am really happy to be able to talk to you today about change. You're probably interested in this topic because you want to make a change, right? I mean, every four years, that's the political mantra from the far side of the fence. Change. Change. We need change. We love change. Some of us in some ways, in some parts of our lives and in other parts of our lives, we resist it, even when it is not in our best interest to do so.

So of course, change for the sake of change is not good, but when you do need to make a change, then I encourage you to embrace it. And I'm going to give you a few tips today on how you can actually embrace change, especially when you see it on the horizon and you know that it is unavoidable in your business, or even in your personal life.

My first suggestion for you is, before you implement any change you should analyze whether this particular change is what you really want. Are you willing to jump through hoops to get it? Someone recently offered me a contract, and in order to get it, I needed to jump through a number of hoops that I just wasn't willing to jump through. It occurred to me, that was my answer to the offer of the contract. It just didn't mean enough to me to make the changes that I needed to make in order to get that contract.

I invite you to really take a look inward, spend some quiet time meditating on the change you want to make. Decide in a peaceful moment whether this is really the change that you want to make. Make sure that it's a strategic change because that's really the only kind of change that's going to be good for you.

Otherwise, it's just drama, and you don't need that. You're very busy, right?

So, how do you know that the change is good? Well, you want to make sure that the change is ecological. I'm Speaker-Trainer certified in Neuro Linguistic Programming. In NLP, we talk about making sure that any change that we effect in the world is ecological. That means the change is good for you in making the change, and that it’s good for your people, your organization and your clients.

if you answer yes to all of those categories is yes, that the change is good for you, your people, your organization, and your clients, make the change.

The next question I want you to consider is, does it give you the edge in your business or even in your personal life? If you look around at your competition, what are they doing? Would this change put you out in front?

I'm a real believer in adopting technology early and looking at some apps and games that I can put on my website so that people can return to the website to play the game. That’s something that I don't see on my competitors’ websites.

What do you see your competitors doing? Will this change you are implementing actually put you out in front of them, or will it put you behind them? If it will put you behind them, will it be just for a short time, and will the change then allow you to rocket yourself to superstar them in your industry?

Take a look and see. Don't be afraid to be an early adapter of these new technologies, like AI. I use AI daily. These tools will make the difference for you. They really could.

So, what happens if you want to make a change but you have a going concern and you are not really sure how to implement it, because you don't want to create chaos in your business? Well, my suggestion would be that if what you're doing is a systematic change, like a software system or hardware changes, then I would look to the sales rep that sold you that new system. They are trained to implement the system and will help you make that change from the old system to the new system. That service should be part of your purchase and or service contract with them. Make sure that they help you.

They are trained to do so. If the sales rep is not able to assist you, then I would suggest getting a consultant that can help you with the implementation. If the system changes involve beta testing and systematic rollouts of the new system, make sure that everything is working in the way that you planned for it to work, and you don't wind up crashing both of your systems and putting yourself out of business.

It’s very important that you roll the new changes out slowly and logically. Get consulting if you don't know how to do it yourself.

Let's assume then that you have done your beta testing and you have done your roll out. You are ready to move forward. The change is in place. My suggestion is that you take a look in the rear view mirror and survey your clients.

You can use Survey Monkey, which is really easy to generate maybe five questions for them. Don’t use more than seven questions because people won't want to take the time and energy to answer your survey.

Definitely contact the people that are affected by your change to make sure that you don't have to tweak what you're doing. You know, this is your best opportunity to make money in your business when you are tweaking your business in response to customer complaints. You wind up with a business model that is just what the marketplace wants and your customer gets the idea that they're very important to you because you're willing to make changes in order to make them happy. That is the best opportunity for you to make money in your business. Reach out and create some new innovations to respond to your customers’ needs.

Part of the survey should be forward looking now that we've implemented this change. Ask the client, What else do you need? What other service do you need in conjunction with what I'm doing for you, what do you typically buy at the same time or right before or right after?

Those are strategic alliance opportunities. You definitely want to get abreast of those. You want to create change in your business to get dollars that make sense. That's what I'm trying to say to you.

And you know, sometimes the change is actually not in your business or in your relationships. Sometimes the change has to be inside of you, and so that means that you might have to maximize your leadership potential by continuing your education.

And you know, I'm constantly attending seminars and reading books and financial and business magazines. I love the Wall Street Journal because if you read it for a quarter, then you are really up on the names and numbers of the business players, you can get to anticipate what the news is going to be, and you can actually play the stock market on that news, because that's really what makes the market move. News.

When you call me for legal advice or for business advice, you can feel assured that I've been looking around at what's happening in the marketplace, and that I've been studying certain topics very deeply, and that you are going to get the benefit of all of that.

I invite you to do the exact same thing with respect to your clients. If you have to make a change inside of you, make it an innovative change. Make it a learning change. Make it a reaching change, so you are the catalyst for somebody else's success. When you can do that, then you've assured your place in the marketplace.

So, you have to deal with your fear of change in order to really do these things that I'm talking to you about this evening. Fear is truly a four-letter word, is it not? You know, the president of Proctor and Gamble said that a difficult decision is not a difficult decision because we don't know what to do. He said a difficult decision is a difficult decision because we do know what to do, but so often, so many of us lost the courage of our conviction.

And that's really what it comes up to, is courage. Courage in the face of fear. Maya Angelou says that courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage, none of the other virtues matter. All of this comes down to doing what you have the will to do, right? You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don't want to apply that knowledge, you're not going to, it's just not going to happen.

So, ask yourself, why you're afraid. Ask yourself what's missing besides the will to make it happen?

Ask yourself how you can maximize your passion to ensure that your change gets made.

See, in a battle between two ideas, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it. You have to be that fearless heretic right now. Does that mean that you don't feel fear? No, that means that you can get past the fear.

Be clear on the changes that you want to make, and implement them strategically in your life and in your business. Ensure the progress of that change, to ensure that it really was what you wanted it to be and what you intended it to be.

Once you put these new systems in place, then take your tribe right along with you. People are going to buy into the change, and they're going to appreciate you taking them along and teaching them new technologies, teaching them new innovations.

You help them keep abreast of the marketplace so that they can be successful in their lives and in their businesses. And what you wind up doing is bringing them kicking and screaming into this millennium.

So that, folks, is the essence of change. I implore you to embrace it, to find out how you can get more of it, to implement it gently, to monitor it, and to enjoy it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for joining me for this week's episode of your business accelerated. I am attorney Shaune B Arnold, reminding you as always to maximize your competence, to get the confidence you need to succeed. I invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. In all of those places, my moniker is S.h.a.u.n.e. dot Arnold.

I'll see you next week, right here on your business accelerated. Bye-bye, friends!