Think of being on the deck

                                                   

of a boat in a storm

                                        

in the ocean. 

     Can ever there be a more challenging career than owning and running your own business? 

     You start out with an idea.  You add soil, sunlight and water.  POOF!  You take the idea and run with it.  You start to innovate by mapping your idea all the way through to completion, execution, implementation, activation.  You think it.  You plan it.  You do it! 

     You follow your idea and push your innovative thinking until others actually start to buy or buy into your product(s) and/or service(s).  At some point, presumably when startup or take-it-to-the-next-level funding is needed, you become convinced of the need for a formal business plan.

     Ah, the business plan.  Separating the dreamers and wishers from the realists is the almighty business plan!  If you’ve prepared one or more of these, you can stop reading here; you know what comes next! 

     If you’ve never done a business plan, don’t think, first of all, that you’re going to knock one out over the weekend.  Good business plans (i.e., those that succeed at stoking investor wallets) usually take months, some I know of have taken years. 

     Why?  Because when you are starting a business, you find out in a hurry that you must make constant, typically daily (sometimes hourly) changes in direction.  Costs change.  Suppliers change.  Facilities change.  Human, technical, and equipment resource needs change.  Regulations and legalities change.  Funding sources change.  The weather changes.  The competition changes.  The marketplace changes.  The economy changes.  Your personal life changes.  So, guess what?  Your idea has to change too!

     Entrepreneurs—not corporate, political or government gurus—are the only true agents of change!  Think of being on the deck of a boat in a storm in the ocean.  You want a captain who does things by the book or the way they’ve always been done or in order to gain the crew’s devotion? . . . or someone who knows how to go with the flow?

     Other people, places and events will shift the dynamics of your pursuits.  If you disregard, disrespect, gloss over, or ignore these shifting sands and tides, you do so at your own peril.  And you increase the odds of your great venture becoming one of those five hundred trillion brainchild businesses that open every week in every town and inevitably end up choking on their great idea because the owner(s)/founder(s) failed to adapt to the changes happening around them. 

     But, hey, that’s part of the excitement of entrepreneurship, yes?  Show me a business that has that ability to stop and turn on a dime, and I’ll guarantee you it’s not an established corporate or government entity.  But having the ability and using it are two different things.  Not unlike having a creative idea but not doing enough homework to innovate and actually see it through. 

     So what’s the magic ingredient that sets entrepreneurs apart from corporate and government types?  Attitude.  A burning desire kind of belief in one’s own self and ideas and goals.  Receptivity and open-mindedness, but with tunnel vision.  Self-motivation and stick-to-it-iveness.  Willingness to take reasonable risks.           halalpiar      

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BE A CO-AUTHOR!  ENTER YOUR OWN 7-WORDS OR LESS TACK-ON to the “billboard discipline” story started 22 posts ago. The next 7 words could be yours! 

Note-taking is NOT

just for writers! 

     Well, my writers critique group that meets at 6:45pm will never have to cross the bridge of me being unexpectedly absent due to the nearly pressing need I almost had to have to stay home to watch the 7pm Mets playoff for the National League wildcard slot, so I guess I won’t tell them.  See that?  Some good things come from losing. 

     You probably knew that baseballs, by the way, are rubbed up with mud before every professional game to render them less slippery and allow, especially, the pitcher to get a better grip?  Maybe you didn’t know, though that the “magic mud” that’s used for all pro team baseballs comes from one of two secret swamp locations in New Jersey!  Let’s hope not too many bodies surface while they’re digging in these swamps.

     This makes me wonder what each of us does to get a better grip on ourselves before strolling on stage to face the spotlights of business encounters?  You’ve heard me extoll the virtues of deep breathing a few thousand times, and it IS still the best way to collect your senses, calm down your muscles and make your brain more alert [complete detailed step-by-step at “ARE YOU BREATHING?” under Magazine Articles tab above]. 

•      There are of course other helpful things to think about, like being prepared with notes, and TAKING notes . . . no one is ever too smart or too experienced to excuse her or him self from note-taking!                                                          
•      A pocketpad should be as routine an item to carry as a cellphone, pen, and wristwatch. 
•      Note-taking is not just for writers!  Even the best and most successful mechanics and tech people (and surgeons!) I’ve known jot down information and ideas as they go through their workdays.  How else do you manage to remember all the details of a problem-solution situation after half a dozen telephone, email and walk-in interruptions? 
•      And, in case any of you wiseguy waiters and waitresses with your photographic memories are listening, stop playing show-off games and write the damn orders down; you’ll get bigger tips and make fewer mistakes.    
•      Besides, there’s nothing like flipping over a notebook cover to recite back a quote from someone (whether it’s to flatter or to snare a trap!), and –after all– don’t you like it when someone asks you to repeat something or speak slower so he or she can write it down? 

     Get back in the pen and paper habit:  sentences, phrases, key words, names, places, dates, diagrams, bullet points.  It may surprise you to know that there ARE some things that can’t be text-messaged.  Got that down?     halalpiar

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BE A CO-AUTHOR!  ENTER YOUR OWN 7-WORDS OR LESS TACK-ON to the “billboard discipline” story started 21 posts ago. The next 7 words could be yours! 

 LET‘S GO METS!

RIP for 2008

     Oh, well.  You kept your assorted chins up, guys!  Take heart in knowing you didn’t bail out this year even though your faltering bullpen gave you more reason to than 2007.  You’re were still in the hunt until late today. 

     More important though are two thoughts for you from this nearly lifelong Mets fan (since Yogi days!):

1) TODAY is the last game at historic Shea Stadium, and that alone –above all other considerations– was cause to celebrate.  Many spectacular players have passed through and many momentious plays and hits have served to baptise literally every inch of field, and of course raise the spirits of the thousands of fans who have sat in (and jumped from) each and every seat!

2) TODAY is your chance to leave that final game legacy as one that will live on forever as the time and place that New York Mets players and fans left their stadium for the last time with their heads held high.  Snatching victory would have been miraculously great, but –in the end– ACTING like winners is even greater!  Mets fans know in their hearts that this team has what it takes, and with a few twists of fate, could have won it all!

THANKS for an exciting season!

halalpiar  

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BE A CO-AUTHOR!  ENTER YOUR OWN 7-WORDS OR LESS TACK-ON to the “billboard discipline” story started 20 posts ago. The next 7 words could be yours! 

I guess the last seven words of the debate sum it up . . .                                  

I don’t need

                                        

on-the-job training!” 

                                                                              

     Oh, pardon me, you thought the “great debate” was a great success?  Then, I imagine you must be related to or working with one of the two candidates.  Surely no one else would have been impressed.  The whole deal was predictably ho-hum. 

     I’m quite certain, the presentation didn’t convince anyone to change her or his mind one way or the other.  If it did, I would be suspect of that person’s sanity to begin with.  I mean, by this point in time, we know whose leadership we trust, right? 

     So this “confrontation” (where neither candidate rarely even addressed the other directly) really didn’t serve to shed much new light on the choices we already know we’re going to make, right?  And let’s be real here, folks: we also know that there just are not all those media-invented independent-minded “undecideds” floating around out there who are going to tip the scales at the last minute based on the kind of exchange we listened to/saw last night. 

     Senator McCain called Senator Obama, “Senator Obama.”  Senator Obama called Senator McCain, “John.”  Senator Obama said, “I agree with John” and “I agree completely with John” at least 27,357 times in ninety minutes.  Senator McCain said, “Senator Obama just doesn’t understand . . .” at least 16,189 times in ninety minutes.  (McCain might have reached the 27,357 times figure had he not been interrupted so often.)  And left-leaning, gutless, niceguy moderator Jim Lehrer never asked the hard questions most of us would like to have posed. 

     McCain and Obama tangled over the difference between “strategies” and “tactics” [Could it be that no one actually recommended that the contenders read my blog posts on this subject:  May 2, May 18, June 10, Sep 13, Sep 23, and Sep 24???]  Lo and behold!  At least six different posts that explain the differences in six different ways.  I just knew one of those guys should have hired me for $3.8 million to be his strategies-tactics advisor!  [Hey, if either of you is reading this, it’s not too late . . . even at half that price!  Oops!  Almost forgot, only one of you is looking to spend so recklessly as that, and then only after raising taxes to cover the costs.] 

     What else?  “John” was patient, calm, controlled, and assertive yet diplomatic and gentlemanly.  “Senator Obama” was impatient, preoccupied with reacting instead of responding, defensive, bumbling and rude yet engaging and brash.  Both stretched the truth and both presented exaggerated dollar numbers to support their positions.  Only one was a “troop” but both noted that they wear troop bracelets.  

     Both made brief comments about their VP running mates: McCain simply related that Palin was an ideal “maverick” partner; Obama actually deferred to Biden as having the answer to a foreign relations issue question that he (Obama) didn’t have.  [A startling comment to hear, especially for me as a Delaware resident who has yet to experience Biden having the answer to anything!] 

     At least we can all know one thing for absolute sure: Mr. Biden (assuming he does actually stay in the race) will not be taking the risk of showing up for his VP candidates debate dressed in a moose outfit!   halalpiar

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BE A CO-AUTHOR!  ENTER YOUR OWN 7-WORDS OR LESS TACK-ON to the “billboard discipline” story started 19 posts ago. The next 7 words could be yours! 

Starbucks is like a 

                                                                                             

danceless, daytime, non-

                                                

alcoholic pickup bar . . .

                                                                                                  

at roughly the same cost!

                                                                                                                        

     Take a shower; wash, dry and fix your hair; shave; brush your teeth; gargle; deodorize. Grab your cell and notebook (cellphone and laptop computer, for the old folks!), sling your elbow-patched jacket over your shoulder (or tie your little cardigan around your little bare, bellybutton-ring-enhanced waist), hop into your freshly-washed and aroma-therapied car, and head on down to Starbucks to do a little work . . . or at least to give the appearance of doing something important.  Oh, and remember $20 for some coffee!

     Am I missing something here?  Okay, I always did officework in my office, schoolwork at home or in the library, but I can understand the need to expand one’s horizons a bit and have a more active backdrop than a window-view of brick or, heaven forbid, a TV screen, but Starbucks? 

     Starbucks is like a danceless, daytime, non-alcoholic pickup bar . . . at roughly the same cost!  And, to top it all off, you can be Democrat or Republican (but you’re probably an artsy-crafty screaming liberal); you can be gay or straight (or leaning); and you can get totally whacked on caffeine (without being embarassed at having to carry a 6-pack of Red Bull in the baggy sidepockets of your painter’s pants).  Whoa, and DUICS (Driving Under The Influence of Caffeine from Starbucks) is legal!

     So just meander on in, claim a tabletop space for your gear, then get in line behind some perverted coffeeholic who’s taking twenty minutes to order a Grande (so what happened to “large”?) peppermint pumpkin spiced skimmed-milk mocha latte with two and a half shots of peach espresso, one-half shot of amoretta reserve espresso, a squirt of alfalfa honey and three spritz’s of lowfat vanilla, with whipped cream.  Cha-ching, cha-ching, you’re thinking; this baby will run about $37 without a spoon for the whipped cream! 

     Oh, and, let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard the details of this request be bantered back and forth and “checked on” eleven times.  This is usually a good time to head for the bathroom without worrying about losing your place in line.

     So, okay, you finally get your overkill coffee and return to claim your seat, which has now been muscled in on by four people who decided to commandeer your table and work around your gear.  “Oh, sorry, Dude.  (or Dear)  We didn’t think you were coming back, y’know?  Do you want us to like move or something?”

     Game Over!  You lose!  You picked an idiot to get behind in line and you’re simply not up to battling four people for the table.  Time to call it a day.  But, no problem; you can just sit in your car and drink the hot mud, and be thankful you still have $13 left; that’s like a decent bottle of wine, right?

     So, next time, skip Starbucks; play your own game!  Stay dirty, dress sloppy, spend $1.50 for WAWA coffee (it’s better anyway), and go to the library to work.  Then you can get an $18.50 bottle of wine and just go to your room and drink and sleep.   halalpiar   

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BE A CO-AUTHOR!  ENTER YOUR OWN 7-WORDS OR LESS TACK-ON to the “billboard discipline” story started 18 posts ago. The next 7 words could be yours! 

Decisions.  Decisions.  Decisions. 

     Spin that drum again, and watch those Bingo ping-pong balls clatter around and crack into each other.  Does your brain feel like that when you’ve got more to decide than you want to decide?  Do you sometimes feel that there’s never enough information on the table to make the kinds of firm, strong decisions that you’d like?

     Henry David Thoreau once said of decision-making that we only ever have limited knowledge.  So, how can we make the most of that?  Next time you’re confronted with information-overload, and need to make a decision that doesn’t send you to a shrink, a prayer-rail, a sorcerer, or a lobotomist, try the following steps:

1. Of course, you knew this was coming, but it works: Take a couple of deep breaths [See “Are You Breathing?” under Magazine Articles tab above]
2. Draw a vertical line down the center of a page and put the decision topic centered at the top; put a + on top of the lefthand column and a – on top of the righthand column.  Itemize in the appropriate column every positive and every negative thing you can think of that will or could result from the decision, remembering that “will” is definite and “could” is not!
3. Next, give each item on each side a #1 (best or most important result or consideration or priority), or #2, or #3 ranking.
4. Go away!  Go get a glass of water (or shot of vodka . . . another decision!), or take a walk around the block, or sleep on it if there’s enough time; then come back and look at your list.  Edit it with your fresh perspective; move things around; re-visit the rankings.
5. Now decide! 

     In personal growth and development groups, participants are often asked to attack difficult decisions with a similar (scale-of-justice weighing) process that involves putting their left hands out, palms up, and saying: “On one hand, I think (or feel). . . ” followed by putting their right hands out, palms up, and saying: “On the other hand, I think (or feel) . . . ” and then assessing not just the words that surface, but the tone of voice used, the body language, and the impression given of imaginary physical weight related to each point. 

     Either way, by sticking an unemotional evaluative process into your decision making, you are forcing yourself to slow down, weigh all the options as you know them (with limited knowledge), and make a decision that’s typically going to be more rational, more logical, more realistic than one made on the spur of the moment.

     Quick and emergency decisions of course rarely afford the opportunity to dissect and evaluate every available consideration.  So, in those events, instincts come more into play.  It is highly unlikely, though, that even an emergency response wouldn’t leave you time for a deep breath or two or three . . .         halalpiar     

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BE A CO-AUTHOR!  ENTER YOUR OWN 7-WORDS OR LESS TACK-ON to the “billboard discipline” story started 17 posts ago. The next 7 words could be yours! 

SOME ACTION

BEATS NO ACTION!

     Growing up dirt poor, I learned the hard way that the old high school physics theorem (?) that a body in motion tends to stay in motion was true indeed, especially when it comes to both financial survival and to innovative thinking.

     Well, I guess it’s obvious that some degree of mental and physical hustle will generally produce a more stabilized income flow than sitting at the local bar downing beers or sitting on the beach counting grains of sand.  I can spare you the latter effort, by the way, by telling you there are approximately 10,000 grains of sand per average-sized handful.  (This magnificent piece of trivia is thanks to science and space superstar Carl Sagan from his marvelous COSMOS TV series.)

     But let’s take a quick look at the other end of the “motion” spectrum: innovating!  It’s important to keep in mind that literally ANYone can come up with creative ideas.  If you doubt this, ask those you would least expect capable of offering creative input for some creative ways to do something.  You’ll get them.  The point is that –in the end– creative ideas are worthless unless they are accompanied by detailed plans or strategies for how to implement them, how to make them work. 

     That’s innovation!

     Manufacturing a mattress that has a fire retardant in it is a creative idea that seems on the surface to be a positive step toward fire safety compliance, but when the fire retardant is made with toxic chemical ingredients that release chlorine and bromine traces that threaten the air we breathe and landfill leeching into waterways, the creative idea stops short of having real value. 

     Mattresses manufactured with harmless soy-based ingredients instead represent a path of true innovative thinking.  Someone didn’t just say, “Make ’em flame resistant!” 

     Instead, someone said, “Here are different ways to make the mattress so as to meet fire compliance codes and be safe to the consumers as well as the environment; here are the cost differentials; here is where the raw materials can be purchased and this is the expected delivery time and this is what the market will bear and here are the changes we’ll need to make in the manufacturing process, etc., etc. 

     And there’s no difference between the dynamics of this example and those involved with high-tech, or healthcare or, for that matter, with any other industry.

     Thinking a creative idea all the way through to completion or implementation is innovation.  It only happens with action (vs. inaction).  So go for it!  Besides, now you don’t need to count grains of sand.    

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US  

Go get your friends, family, neighbors and work associates! 

Everything You Always

                                                  

Wanted to Know

                                                                                           

About How to Manage

                                                                                  

Your SELF Under Stress,

                                                                                        

But Were Afraid to Ask.

     I see major seminar companies charging hundreds of dollars for the information presented here for FREE . . .  

     If you or someone you know has a “short fuse” or a tendancy to over-react at home or work, or be disorganized, put things off, be worried or anxious, or constantly feel guilty, do yourself or that other person you care about a favor by connecting to the blog posts found below on this page, and —especially– by clicking in the “Post Archive” section(under “Blogroll”and “Literary Agents”) about half-way down the righthand column (on this page).  

Then check out the following quick reads (from self-learning materials which produced the best results for over 20,000 students in 30 years of college teaching and management training seminars) :

JUGGLING CATS (Sep 21);     VICTIM OR RESCUER (Sep 19);     Dear Boss: Besides that they suck, meetings waste time (Sep 16);     Business Writing & Writer Writing Tip #1001: GETTING ORGANIZED (Sep 13);     PERFECTIONISM . . . (Sep 07);     MORE BUSINESS TO LEARN FROM SPORTS (Sep 06);     Calling All Corporate Types, Entrepreneurs, Homemakers . . . ((Sep 02);     DEALING WITH INDIFFERENCE (Aug 27);     ANGER IN THE WORKPLACE (Aug 26);     Thoughts While Driving . . . (Aug 22);     WATCH YOUR TONGUE . . . (Aug 20);     Surprise! Nobody MAKES you angry . . . (Aug 19);     REAL LEADERS . . . (Aug 15);     MANAGEMENT “THEORY A” (Aug 12);     HAVE YOU TAKEN A REALITY READING LATELY? (Aug 11);     THE POOL RULE (Aug 10);     EFFECTIVE JOURNALING (Aug 05);     DEALING WITH ANGER (Aug 02);     “CHANGE” IS NOT A LEADERSHIP WORD! (Jul 03);     ATTITUDE is the answer . . . (Jun 14);     REALITY THERAPY . . . (Jun 11);     LIFE IS JUST A BOWL OF WORRIES (May 29);     EVERY PROBLEM=AN OPPORTUNITY (May 21);     WHADDAYAWANT? . . . (May 07);     STRATEGIES MUST COME FROM INSIDE (May 02);     LIFE IS GOOD . . . (Apr 29) 

     And most important of all:

See “ARE YOU BREATHING?” under the “Magazine Articles” tab at the top of the homepage.  Happy blog post anthology-skimming!     halalpiar

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Dropping boots, sneakers, 

loafers, or gumshoes? 

     A mystery, I’m told, is when both shoes have dropped, and what remains is to figure out who dropped them . . . on what, and when, and where, and why, and how.  Super sleuth Sherlock Holmes leads the parade.

     A suspense story, on the other hand, is when having already gone through the dropping of one shoe, we need to be (as Thoreau once advised) “forever on the alert” in anticipation of what the who, what, when, where, why and how the other shoe will be dropped.  Alfred Hitchcock movies are prime examples:  The Birds, Psycho, North By Northwest, et al. 

     Neither of these writing challenges –mystery or suspense– is by any means simple, and both have varying degrees of tension sandwiched into and between the action scenes.

     So, okay, let’s take a step back and look at the big picture, okay? 

     Good.  Here we go then:

     Which of these genres best describes your life right now? 

     Are you, for example, living a mystery or keeping everyone around you in suspense? 

     Hopefully, neither of these terms serves your modus operandi.  I would like to think things are more in the healthy “comedy” zone for you, but reality dictates that we all vacillate from one to the other, and can make that shift at the drop of one’s jaw! 

     Of course, some folks lives are best identified as “sci-fi”, or “high drama,” or (ahem!) “erotica” or “chicklit.”  And then there’s (ho-hum) “nonfiction”-labeled lives of rational, logical, unemotional existences.  

     Ah, yes, and lest we forget: “literary fiction” —mostly Ivy League graduates who lie alot (especially politicians!)— which probably represents the closest lifestyle to those who live their lives as if they were inside “children’s picture books.”  HA!  Know a few people who fit that, huh? 

     So, tell the truth: I’ll bet you never thought of that politician/toddler analogy.  (Or maybe you have?)  Well, it might be a good idea to think about it in the next few weeks; we are after all, in that overlap season.  Baseball.  Football.  Halloween.  Elections.  Back-to-school.  Elections.  Back-to-school?  Elections . . . Hmmmm.  “Reality” stories and lives like yours and mine certainly can’t afford to have any toddler running the country now, can we?  See that?  Writing and book categories can come in handy.          halalpiar  ______________________________________________________________

Juggling seagulls

                                                                    

doesn’t work too well

                                                    

either,

                                                                                     

and rattlesnakes? 

      When the assignments on your plate seem impossible to deal with, and you’re getting scratched and scowled and screeched at, step out of the batter’s box, take a deep breath, and reassess where you are, where you’re going . . . and what you can do this minute to give yourself a better at-bat. 

     Are you trying to fulfill requests from two different bosses?  Get them together (or at least on the phone), explain the circumstances, and ask them to decide the priorities for you.  When you take that responsibility on your own shoulders, you are setting yourself up for a strikeout!

     A conflict in your time commitments with two different clients or customers?  This is one you have to decide, but you can always explain your situation, ask each for a little patience, and offer each specific target dates/times when you expect to have their needs met or materials ready.

     The conflict is with yourSELF?  That’s the easiest to deal with.  You probably won’t fire yourself, or cut your salary or take a demotion.  If you repremand yourself, do it in the mirror and make it short and sweet so you can get on with the work that needs to get done.  What you really need to do is focus on your prioritizing and delegating skills here.  You need to tackle task one and see it through to completion before even thinking about task two.  If you can delegate the task, do it.  If you can’t delegate the task at hand, examine what else you CAN delegate, and do that! 

     I mean, juggling cats is as impossible as it sounds, but if you don’t deal with it when you need to, you could go one or two worse . . . juggling seagulls doesn’t work very well either, and rattlesnakes?  Forget about it.  Now that you’ve weighed all this, get back up to the plate; concentrate on the ball; and smack the next one out of the park!                halalpiar    

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