No, this isn’t about donuts!

Here are a dozen leadership arenas:

• Corporate
• Military
• Political
• Industry
• Community
• Organizational
• Family
• Neighborhood
• Religious
• Sports
• Classroom
• Worksite

Where do entrepreneurial leaders fit?  Everywhere!  What about other leaders –those who are not entrepreneurs– are they locked into the individual arenas where they perform?  Not to suggest this is a bad thing; it’s just limiting. 

It’s part of the great appeal of entrepreneurial life that there are no limits.  Yes, there are laws, but no: there are no rules. 

Neither are there any theories to dictate performance because there are no theories of any value because (beyond some common character traits like poor school performances, engagement in childhood enterprises, rejection of authority, and childhood exposure to family business) entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial behaviors cannot be quantified or categorized. 

Yes, entrepreneurs take reasonable risks, but –no– there’s no traditional action plan approach to follow.     

Entrepreneurial leaders pop up in each of the arenas noted above (and many more as well) because in every arena on Earth there is always room for improvement.  Entrepreneurs are the agents of change who step up to the plate, who bring improvements to the table, who have the foresight and resilience to attack a problem over and over to produce the answers they believe in.

Alexander the Great was an historic entrepreneurial leader who proved that innovative strategies and tactics can defeat even the most overwhelming of military odds. 

“America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani was a great entrepreneurial political leader for his time and place, and the circumstances that changed our world. 

Cal Ripkin, Jr. was a dedicated entrepreneurial leader with his never-say-die attitude that re-invented value systems in the world of baseball – and all of sports. 

Mother Teresa, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ghandi, and so many more you could surely name . . . people whose entrepreneurial spirits have in some way made a difference to us all.  Though each of the kinds of leaders we’re talking about here made their mark in one arena, none ever limited themselves in the lives they live or did live.  Who would be on YOUR list?

What do those noted above (plus those you can think of) share?  What qualities would you list?  Here are a few for starters: Persuasiveness, Assertiveness, Communication, Self-Reliance, Self-Confidence, Insight, Recognition that behavior is a choice, a strong focus on the present, the ability to cultivate (cross-pollinate?) leadership in others.  What would YOU add to this list?   halalpiar

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” Entrepreneurs are agents

of change BECAUSE they

reject traditional approaches.”

     I just read a blog post that goes into the depths of theoretical discussion about what is attracting entrepreneurial innovation and it suggests that entrepreneurs care about this slop. 

     The author goes so far as to toss out my 30 year-old “Entrepreneurs are the agents of change” quote that I picked up from Entrepreneurial guru Bob Schwartz when I attended his New School for Entrepreneurs in Tarrytown, New York, back in another lifetime, and this Disneyland bloggette uses it as justification for further suggestions that entrepreneurs run on theoretical fuel.

     Please people.  Entrepreneurship is a state of existence brought on by those with independent business streaks running through their blood that are far beyond being able to be classified in any kind of theoretical dissertation.  Entrepreneurs are agents of change BECAUSE they reject traditional approaches to doing things.  And certainly, they have no regard for theory under any circumstances.

     Let’s put away all the B.S. rationalizations and just accept the fact that entrepreneurs cannot be quantified or categorized by any standard or traditional measure.  And you know what?  Thank God!  Entrepreneurship is what’s made this country great.  It’s the reason there is even a shred of optimistic existence in today’s economic suckiness. 

     Leave entrepreneurs alone.  Be grateful they exist.  Nurture them.  But stop trying to figure them out, and PLEASE don’t pretend they care about your theories.  They care only about pursuing their ideas and convictions.  They care only about making things happen.  If you’re going to analyze them, be one first.  You’ll realize how foolhardy your psychoanalysis ambitions can actually be.    halalpiar   

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“Opportunityville” . . .

every entrepreneur’s weekend! 

     Prowling America’s corporate halls on Fridays still produces an eerie aura of management abandonment and employee lethargy.  Given that weekends in this country now seem to start on Thursdays, the fact is that Fridays have become a sharp thorn in the side (poke in the eye?) to 9-5’ers who can’t sprint from their offices to their weekend festivities fast enough! 

     “HA!” you exclaim, “Good riddence to bad garbage!” you rudely proclaim.  Why?  Because YOU are an entrepreneur! 

     You started, or are in the process of starting (or probably both), your own business and you are TGIFing all over the place because now (FRIDAY!) starts the best time of the week to get some productive work done. 

     For the first time since last Sunday night, you have wrangled your way through 50 or 60 hours of sweat equity without financial disaster or customer base collapse, and have now earned the blessed arrival of 5pm Friday when –like living a dream– you can finally work for two whole days more with no interruptions. 

     It’s time to followup, catchup and plan (sounds like a law firm!).  Weekends, to you, are Opportunityville! 

     At last there’s no one around to bother you.  It’s your chance to think through how you’re going to shoot your business out of the cannon Monday morning . . . or how you’re going to open your 27th business while you keep juggling businesses 21 through 26.  (1-20 are either running on their own or –more likely– folded or sold or squandered or lost, but big-time learned from). 

     That’s okay.  It is, you know, what entrepreneurs do best is learn from their mistakes, get up and dust themselves off, and plunge back into things from a different direction. 

     Imagine what a solid strong economy we’d have today if corporate and government executives who are floundering around in their vast sea of incompetency could do what entrepreneurs do! 

     But asking them to learn is really asking too much.  It would after all fly in the face of their instincts to believe that they need only repeat what failed, again and again, until it eventually succeeds, which of course it doesn’t. 

     If you just clicked on this post and are reading this because you were perhaps thinking about igniting those deep-seated entrepreneurial fuses that you think you have because you had a lemonade stand as a kid, and you were thinking that this whole life pursuit direction seems glamourous, think again.

     Being an entrepreneur means being committed.  It means your business will be your spouse.  It means you may be living for your business more than your family.  Always?  No, but neither does it always rain (unless you’re in Ireland, where you carry your raincoat as often as your wallet!). 

     As an entrepreneur, you must be prepared to think, then act (vs. corporate tendencies to think, then think, and think again) every day . . . and especially on weekends! 

     TGFE = Thank God For Entrepreneurs!  Without them, we’d have zero jobs and no economy whatsoever!  Now, if we could just get government decision makers to make some decisions that assist small business in creating real and meaningful job growth . . .   halalpiar         

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The secret of college is

in learning how to learn.

Make your kids work to earn at least part of their college education.  Even if you can afford it, don’t give them free college, especially business majors!  They won’t appreciate it, and no matter how great their grades may end up because they are unencumbered from having to work, the odds are they will fail in business.  Disagree?  Read on.

First of all, this advice is coming to you from a former two-time business professor-of-the-year and student work internship program director who is also an entrepreneur (having helped start hundreds of successful new businesses) on top of solid Fortune 500 corporate experience.

At some point your college-bound son(s) and/or daughter(s) will have to face the reality of the need to gain real-world work experience.  Sooner is better than later.  And, in fact, it’s been my experience that those who hold jobs while attending college tend to be universally better performers both in class and on the job.  

Most college and university internship or cooperative education programs produce vastly superior students AND better workplace candidates.  Why?  Because nothing in any business textbook or computer program can come close to the value of hands-on experience gained on a factory floor, a retail store, a business or professional practice office, a showroom, studio, warehouse, or any form of sales.

Be aware that in today’s and the foreseeable future’s business climate (unless a college graduate is headed toward a career in law or medicine or allied medical sciences), college grades matter to absolutely no one except maybe the students and maybe the parents.

Recruiters and hiring interviews are more focused today on candidate answers to open-end questions.  How someone handles herself/himself on his or her feet (and has shown the ability to apply on-the-job experience to the classroom and vice versa) is light years more important than what an individual memorized in a management course, or than reiterating what is already on the person’s resume.

The truth is most business employers prefer an ambitious 2.5 GPA graduate with good communication and social skills who worked his or her way through college in a sales or office or manufacturing position, than a 4.0 GPA graduate with zero real-world work experience, who mumbles, shakes hands like a fish, and can’t look you straight in the eye.  That shouldn’t be surprising.  Wouldn’t that be your preference too?          

Sorry to burst bubbles here, but the secret of college is not being able to ace tests in accounting, finance, management, marketings, sales, advertising, economics, retailing, promoting, packaging and pricing, public relations, Internet business, etc. 

At least two truisms support this platform: 1) There are no rules in business.  Business moves forward by experience and innovation, not formulas, 2) The secret of college is in learning how to learn.  Subjective teacher ratings are far less important than having learned how to learn.

If you’re sending your kids off to college to learn business, let them prove to themselves that they can earn business learning by working while they learn.  The ROI is better for all involved.  

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HOW  THEY DO IT . . .

“Necessity is

the mother of invention.” 

—PLATO (Between 427BC and 347BC)

This quote drives every entrepreneur, scientific explorer and creative mind on Earth.  It of course holds true as well for military and quasi-military operations, cornered criminals and animals, and most homeless and foodless victims in society.

TODAY, the notion of necessity prompting inventiveness has great significance as a universal entrepreneurial hedge against economic downturn.  Businesses that will survive the existing economic traumas are those that can throw off the cloak of dismay and depression, shake themselves off, and charge forward with positive attitudes that are hell-bent on making the most of every opportunity.

WORKING TOGETHER with other businesses is a major step in that direction.  Networking with others to Barter goods and services should be a first and foremost thought for guiding daily travels. 

SHARING REFERRALS, common space, facilities, equipment, vehicles, furnishings, personnel, training, purchases and purchase discounts, databases, charity leadership roles, advertising, promotion, news release and blog site development and writing, website and online network development and content, are just some of the areas to consider negotiating.

LOOK TO BUSINESSES that are compatible and supportive to yours, or that your business serves.  Check out possible cooperative arrangements with businesses on the same floor, or in the same building, ir same cluster of buildings, or same neighborhood or town, or in the same industry, or that share some common characteristics (online retail as one example, or professional services as another).

TAKE ADVANTAGE of the opportunities to make and save money by working together.  Even competitive businesses can sometimes do this more effectively than standing defiantly alone.  Consider geographical clusterings of antique stores, for instance. 

CONSIDER New York City’s diamond and fashion districts!  Their competition alone in shared physical space/areas serves to boost business for all by bringing customers to centralized, more convenient and more price and quality sensitive shopping areas. 

CAN YOU EXCHANGE SALES LEADS?  Have you considered combining insurance coverage and benefit plans with another business?  Can the neighboring business receptionist do phone or clerical work for you during slow periods (instead of reading paperbacks?)?  Can you combine advertising time and space purchases to qualify for bigger discounts?  Maintenance services?  Supplies?  Conference rooms?

THE SHARED RESOURCES popularized by the old new business “Incubator” and “Conglomerate” concepts still work.  The only problem in realizing true economies of scale and values of barter may be YOU.  If you start with the attitude that it won’t work, it won’t. 

IF YOU START out discounting the ideas, they’ll never be more than ideas.  If you initiate discussions with others, you might surprise yourself with new-found sales and savings that could help you rise above the economic rubble. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Asking “Why?” Breeds Excuses!

“Ours is not to reason why.

  Ours is but to do or die!”

(source unknown, but help me out please if you know it)

     What makes this such a powerful one-two-punch thought is that it is based on the fact that anytime we ask “Why?” we are setting ourselves up for inaction.  We are investing ourselves in maintaining the status quo.  We are committing ourselves to going nowhere. We are on the road to over-analyzing!

     How is that possible?  Scientists are always asking “Why?” things do what they do, or “Why?” things are the way that they are, and their analytical pursuits end up helping all of us . . . hardly the stuff of status quo!  And what about accountants and history teachers?  They earn their livings by questioning “Why?”  And doctors need to check medical histories in order to . . .

Nope! 

Asking “Why?” Breeds Excuses! 

Period.  

     Imagine the range of answers to the question, “WHY were you late to work?”  Are any of those answers NOT a “reason” or “excuse”?  Now imagine the answers to instead asking, “By the end of the day, can you please give me–in writing– three ways that explain HOW you will prevent yourself from being late to work?” 

     Excuses (aka reasons)are responses we give out of laziness, ignorance, lack of self-discipline, lack of sense of reality, or when we seek to rationalize or explain something (like history teachers, archaeologists, sociologists, and accountants whose careers revolve around analyzing the past).

     Oh, and –by the way– the same do-nothing mindset infiltrates the entire vocation of self-proclaimed “SEO Specialists” and “Sales Conversion Specialists” who seem more often than not to simply be experts at smoke-and-mirroring you into a corner.  They LOVE when you ask “Why?”  Guess (ahem) “Why?”  They salivate at the thought of dragging unwitting non-geeks into their dark and mysterious corners of overkill analysis, and charging higher rates the darker it gets! 

     The bigger the organization asking, the more valuable the SEO and sales conversion answers pretend to be, and the results?  Well, the results in big-company cases are both more expensive to obtain AND more readily offered as justification for changes that should have been made on the fly, months or years ago without all the “Why?” questioning in the first place.

     In entrepreneurship training

and coaching, we call it

   “getting tangled up in your underwear.” 

(Not exactly a flattering image!)

     BUT it is this very point that in fact distinguishes entrepreneurs from the rest of the business world.  A genuine entrepreneur will not typically care about “Why” something is the way it is as much as taking trial and error steps immediately to do something about it.  True entrepreneurs believe in themselves!  “Don’t analyze the thing to death; you think too much!” you’ll often hear an entrepreneur say.

     An outstanding American business leader I knew in my second full time job always said that he didn’t ever want to hear problem-centered discussions about who did what to whom or when or why, that he was only interested in the solution, and that there was no better way to find the right solution than to try out what you believe to be right, and keep trying and acting on it over and over. 

     In retrospect, my guy must have been listening to Thomas Edison who disavowed public mockery of his 9,999 failed attempts to invent the lightbulb by simply explaining the attempts as 9,999 discoveries of ways that could be eliminated in his quest.      

     Passive minds do nothing.  Analytical minds exhaust themselves in circles of reasons, rationales, and excuses.  Active minds get things done. 

     Any entrepreneur will tell you that some action is always better than no action, and that the only way to move forward is to move, to act on gut instinct and limited knowledge . . . because, in the end:

Instinct and limited knowledge

     are all we ever have anyway.    

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“Let’s see, why don’t we sell

our cars by showing guys

crash their motorcycles?” 

Let’s show the guy that makes a wisecrack in a business meeting get thrown from the high rise office building meeting site.  Let’s show a man getting a bowling ball dropped on his head.  Let’s show people shooting at each other.  Let’s show blood spattering. 

Oh, and, by the way, let’s not worry about the whole violence deal; we’ll just smoke-and-mirrors it all so nobody cares, and it all serves to mask the negativity . . . like the guy who’s blasted through the conference room window out of the meeting will have his fall broken by landing in gently forgiving shrubs, and then he’ll get up a little stunned and tell the camera he was just kidding about his meeting comment.  No body will notice the violent edge because they’ll be so busy laughing. 

ARE YOU KIDDING US,

PEOPLE?

     I’m no peacenik or tree hugger or love-is-the-answer nutcase.  I’m even a “24” fan.  But I am a human being, like most human beings, who respects human life and doesn’t see anything funny or entertaining about violent representations used in TV commercials to sell products and services in primetime hours when children are watching!

     I find this particularly distressing and tasteless when program scheduling is aimed at a viewing audience that targets children . . . in the media and professional sports’ feeble attempts to build fan base, they have crossed the line. 

     This Superbowl run of commercials, with a very small handful of tasteful exceptions (and you know which companies these were) was hands down the absolute WORST collection of moronic TV advertising spots ever shown in sponsorship of one single event in the history of the world! 

     What on Earth makes the primadonna creative directors at America’s top advertising agencies think for ONE SECOND that the idiotic commercial storyline he or she was sold by some space cadet art director and dope-smoking writer could possibly be appropriate or salesworthy to push down the clients’ collective throats and written off as being in good judgement?

     [In case you’re wondering about the strength of my convictions, incidentally, I spent a dozen years working at three of the world’s most famous ad agencies, and won a national award at it.  I know whereof I speak!]

     How could ANY one think that the crap presented to Superbowl audiences (especially children) had the remotest chance of reflecting positively on the clients’ businesses?  Tell me.  I really want to hear this answer.  I want to know how dumb you can get?  It’s unbelieveable is what it is. 

     It is pitiful that any company in its right mind (whatever that might be) could even imagine that the impressions made on the viewing public would possibly translate to increased sustained sales.  Positively won’t happen.  But then hey, how hard do you sell your braindead ideas to clients when they’re putting up $3,000,000 for a 30-second commercial and your company is earning roughly half a million dollars for that one 30-second commercial?  Huh?

     Madison Avenue disgraced itself for stooping so low as to buy into the pretend violent mindset of low-life TV wrestling, and pawn it off as a client’s humorous attempt at reaching out to the tough-guy football fan crowd. 

     Got some news for you marketing research and focus group geeks: the football fan crowd you think you scored big with is not a collection of stereotype tough guys.  And I hope you sleazy characters who sold these commercials from the media to the agencies to the clients are all out of work soon! 

     That whole crowd of know-nothing advertising executives who haven’t a clue about what really sells, and don’t care anyway is almost as bad as those behind the warped decision to allow has-been Springsteen on the halftime stage.  They probably thought he was great while the rest of us all ran to throw up when he couldn’t sing on key or even hold his breath long enough to carry the notes he once made famous. 

     There was a reason of course that “The Boss” only performed old biggies that everybody knew . . . a great cover for fading skills!  He had no right to be there.  I feel sorry for his fans that he made such a fool of himself. 

     But I guess it’s all about money, right?  Right.  But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck!    halalpiar

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Do You LOVE

What You Do

For A Living?

     If you do, you are a rarity!  [Maybe you could sell yourself on E-Bay?]  And if in fact you DO love what you do for a living, then you’re likely to also be exceptionally good at doing what you do.

     But (and be truthful with yourself here) if you really don’t love what you do (and endless studies indicate that this constitutes the vast majority), then the odds are overwhelmingly that you’re not particularly good at doing what you do.  Similarly endless studies also say that we perform best when we enjoy what we’re doing! 

     So, if that’s the case, and you’re just muddling your way through your job or career, and not making waves, in order to keep food on the table and tunes on your ipod, you need to do two things: 1) Keep your day job, and 2) Get off your butt and pursue work that you’ll enjoy doing. 

     FYI, 1) and 2) above are based on the fact widely known but little followed fact of life that it’s easier to find a job when you’re already employed than it is when you’re not.  

     Now, if you are one of those oddball types that is extraordinarily good at job performance for a job or career that you hate, you need to make sure you’re sitting before you read the rest of this. 

     In a chair?  Okay, here’s the scoop: There may be dozens (hundreds, even) of reasons that you are performing well at what you hate, but none of them changes the fact that you need to work yourself out from under. 

     Why?  Because every minute of every day, you (your mind, your emotions and your physical body) are experiencing negative stress decay.

     Negative stress takes its toll.  Eventually it finds it’s way into your overall mental, physical and emotional health and well-being.  You may altready be well on the way there.  But, don’t let that depress you.  Not doing anything about it is what’s depressing!

     Like having your lungs miraculously return to healthy pink just a short time after you stop smoking, your mind, emotions and physical health can likewise begin to recover and surge and thrive as soon as you start to change your over-stressed lifestyle! 

     Remember that this kind of lifestyle/behavioral change is your choice.  And you can choose to make it hard or easy.  If you make it easy, you can take it easy.  Happiness breeds productivity and self-worth.  Take a couple of deep breaths and do it, or pass this post along to someone you care about!

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Check out and contribute to the daily growing 7-Word Story started 144 days ago (inside a coffin).  Click on the link to the right, or go to the “BOOKS” tab at the top of this page, then to the top headline link.