Entrepreneurship is 

the only solution to 

plummeting economy, 

job losses, and

government spending sprees!

It’s true. American history has demonstrated time and again that the only road to economic strength and stability is the one that leads to the support and encouragement of entrepreneurial pursuits. America’s federal government has underscored this point repeatedly with its own arrogant and misguided business incompetency that runs rampant to the core.

Job losses are continuing at a record rate, and new jobs are not being created.

Job creation is the single most powerful and essential factor in strengthening industry and service sector pursuits, and in boosting the value of the dollar. Job creation is almost exclusively the product of small business. Job creation does not come from the government that uses tax money to pay for useless jobs. Neither does it come from big business that invests itself in maintaining the status quo.

 Job creation is almost exclusively the product of small business.

Job creation is the child of small business because small business is owned and operated by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs don’t know how to give up. They don’t know how to spend their way out of problems. They find solutions, or — by instinct — create them! 

Entrepreneurs live with a  burning desire to make their ideas succeed.

Entrepreneurs alone know how to capture the spirit of innovation in both thinking and practice. And no one needs to look further for the proof of it than the single-mindedness of purpose exuded out of the garages of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, out of the 10,000 attempts by Edison to invent the light bulb, out of the persistence and perseverance of Henry Ford and Mary Kay Ash and Ellen DeGeneres.

Why has nothing but SBA tokenism been offered to small business? Because tokenism is enough to make good press.

Why has nothing substantive been done to drive job creation incentives to small business and to stop breaking small business backs long enough to actually foster new jobs? Because it doesn’t suit prevailing political spending spree goals and because government has ZERO business experience.

America’s 30 million small business owners need to accept the fact that no help is on the way

What needs to happen: America’s 30 million small business owners need to accept the fact that no help is on the way, and start acting like the entrepreneurs they were in the early “pre-cushy” days. There needs to be a resurgence of pioneer spirit and a greater sense of self-reliance that seems — for the lack of necessity being the mother of invention — to have skipped a generation.

It means now is the time to dig in.

It means now is the time to dig in, to plant your entrepreneurial energy firmly into shouldering the growth of your own business, with regard for your neighbor, but determination to go forward without dependency. Government and big business won’t bail you out. And there is no hope for banding together such fiercely independent souls as entrepreneurs into some kind of grass-roots movement.

Without losing regard for others and their struggles, or the virtues of charity, or the good of the communities that support you . . . it is time to act on your own and in your own behalf.  If even a fraction of America’s 30 million upstarts lead their businesses out of the fog, they will create needed new jobs and brighten the economy with the glow of real sunshine instead of a fading flashlight.

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116

or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Nine “Do Not” lessons

learned from 30+ years 

of sales-winning advertising

I know, accenting the negative isn’t always the best thing, but if you know what NOT to do, it’s a lot easier to figure out what you can and should do. I don’t pretend to know what you can and should do, but I sure can tell you what I’ve found out that doesn’t work (and throw in a few hints about stuff I know that works better!).

Here’s the scoop:

1. Do NOT advertise that you have integrity, or even about what wonderful integrity-inspiring things you or your business have done. When you conduct business at all levels with a high-trust approach and attitude, you will gain or boost a reputation for integrity that speaks for itself!

2. (…and this is really #1): Here is the single most difficult marketing, advertising, sales and PR challenge to face for all businesses everywhere (yes, you did indeed read that right: “all businesses everywhere”)– ready for this? — Do NOT promote how great you are to the rest of the world. Nobody cares. Well, maybe your mother cares, but nobody else does.

3. Do NOT get too cutesy. Readability must come before cleverness in font (lettering) use and treatments (Italics, boldfacing, spacing, underlining, shadowing, using a horseshoe for the letter “U” or crossed swords for “X” or an egg for “O”…etc.). And don’t trust a designer to worry about readability; most have no training or experience in how to design with and around text, especially branding lines.

4. Do NOT emphasize product and service features. Nobody buys features. People buy benefits. Make sure your marketing, advertising, sales, promotion and PR efforts focus on benefits — on answering the question, what’s in it for me?

5. Do NOT buy into fancy dog and pony presentations that stress how the work a creative service provider individual or organization or group or team can do for you will put you head and shoulders above the rest of your industry or profession. Get rid of creative service providers who seem more interested in winning awards for themselves than in making sales for you. Use performance incentives.

6. Do NOT ever accept a media rate that’s printed on a “rate card” or “rate sheet.” Think of it as the asking price for a house just put on the market this morning. Media people who aren’t willing to work with your budget aren’t worth your time and consideration. There are always other ways to market your business.

7. Do NOT try to hand-off advertising/marketing/PR responsibilities to someone who works with you because they articulate well or can write a mean email. And don’t try to do it yourself unless it’s what you specialize in. Remember that there are two success keys involved: writing skill and psychology expertise. Persuading customer and prospect brains is what it’s all about. 

8. Do NOT communicate too little or too much. Ask prospects and customers what they think the right amount of information is. Have someone who’s experienced at it run a focus group for you to get these answers, and to test alternative marketing approaches. 7 target market representatives for an hour works for this purpose. Give each a $20-$25 value reward for their participation.

9. Do NOT “settle” for ads, commercials, websites, landing pages, blogs, brochures, news releases, or social media executions or strategies that don’t feel right! If you don’t feel sure about something, remember it’s your business. Your gut instinct is your best decision maker.   

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Twitter is for extroverts.

Facebook is for introverts.

 Businesses can’t be introverts.

According to Google, there are now well over 500 million Facebook users. According to anyone engaged in social media, Facebook is an IN-bound media vehicle. This means simply that visitors, friends, customers and prospective customers must come to you to visit your profile, your friends, your photos, your comments, your network, your “wall.” All good stuff if that’s what you seek.

Interestingly, Google also reported at the same time, that there have been over 20 billion (with a “b”) Tweets (message postings) on Twitter. Again, according to social media gurus, Twitter is (conversely to Facebook) considered an OUT-bound media vehicle. This means Twitter users are reaching out to the world with their Tweets instead of (like Facebook users) trying to bring the world to them

If you run a small business (unless it’s minuscule, and caters, for example, exclusively to a neighborhood), odds are that Twitter represents a better investment of time for marketing some aspect of your business than Facebook. Yes, Facebook affords an additional personal touch for many businesses, and there’s nothing wrong with using both when you can afford the luxury of time.

But consider this:

If you already have a website, you already have an IN-bound media vehicle, and it’s one over which you have total control… and you can personalize it as much as you choose, including being able to orchestrate ongoing discussions, exchanges and commentary, even in fact as much as Facebook, if not more.

For healthy and maximally-productive promotion of your business:

• Focus your energy on developing your own website with your own blog (or have somebody write one for you because the more active your blog is the more activity your site generates and the farther up you move in search engine rankings).

• Realize that your website will never and should never be done. Accept the fact that the best websites are those that continue to change and reflect the changes in the business and industry or profession they target and the marketplaces they cater to.

• Supplement your ongoing site development efforts with ongoing investments of time and creative energy in launching ongoing Twitter Tweets.

• Avoid getting snookered by all the social media and Twitter “experts” out there of which there are probably a hundred trillion or so (and these are probably mostly people who spend all day at it and so proclaim themselves advisors, coaches, consultants, and pros). 

• Learn the best mix the same way you learned your business — trial and error, and maybe enlist some trusted, proven experience businesspeople who are top marketing writers with a creative flair who can help you get started, or re-started.

So, you can just barely find me on Facebook only because I like to keep in touch with family and friends, but not because I have the need to spend hours “socializing” on the Web or because I think Facebook will help my business. It won’t. I look at my page every few months; that’s a clue. 

You can  find me on Twitter every night because I have built a very selective following of people who are interested in business and marketing and leadership and selling and self-development and communications and creative writing. When those people like what I have to say on Twitter, they visit my blog.

When they like my blog, they visit my other sites. When they like what’s on my sites, they call or email me and that’s how I build a prospect and customer base. In other words, use Twitter as your outbound vehicle (combined with emails and ads or whatever you choose) to get visitors to your inbound vehicle, your website. Why shuffle people into Facebook as an extra step to visit your website?

Shuffled visitors often fall by the wayside.

Don’t you?  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

“Keep your eye on the ball!”

It’s what good coaches tell 

every batter and entrepreneur!

Concentrating hard on everything that’s right in front of you as much of the time as possible is a tall order for every ballplayer and every business owner.

It is a physically, mentally, and emotionally draining pursuit, yet focus has proven time and again to be the single most important quality to possess (beyond having a burning desire), in achieving big-time success.

Of course, having a burning desire is the motivational fuel that usually accounts for having a sharp focus to begin with.

In other words, if you truly want to win the game more than anything else in the world, you will undoubtedly make outstanding plays and you will get hits no matter how great the pitcher is. Whether or not others on your team are as committed — and if those commitments outweigh the opposing team commitments — will determine if your team wins.

When you have your own business, your “team” is your staff of employees. If you lead they will follow. Hmm, heard that before, huh? But it’s true. The hitch is in the words, “if you lead” because saying one thing and doing another doesn’t cut it for leadership. And we all know how far the screaming Little League coach gets with impressionable young players.

Then there’s the other team you’re up against — the competition. And herein lies the one-way, downward chute into oblivion for too many high-spirited entrepreneurs: gearing themselves and their energy and their businesses to the competition. They need instead to gear themselves, their energy and their businesses to the market they target and the marketplaces they’re in. 

Everything else is an ego-based, self-aggrandizing waste of time, money and energy.

Even one-one-one competitors — boxers, tennis players, swimmers cannot enter the arena focused on the competitor and expect to win. Yes, they need to review competitive strengths and weaknesses, and they certainly need to have a fix on the ring, court, pool they’ll be competing in. There’s no discounting the importance of these awareness’s.

But FOCUS has to be on what’s INside, on gathering personal strength and drive, on desire, on gumption, spunk and determination. When business owners and entrepreneurial leaders can bring that spark into work every day and nurture the spark they see in others, they will find it very difficult to fail.

We’ve all read and heard that stuff on calendars and posters and Tweets and the bottoms of emails . . . all the warnings and words of encouragement and lectures and reassurances, and what does it all mean? 

The bottom line seems to be that if you can’t feel the courage for focusing on success somewhere deep down in your gut, and if you can’t know in your heart that you can and will make a difference in this life, maybe you should reassess what you’re doing and not be absorbing all that stress. Because halfway efforts produce halfway results and halfway results produce stress. And stress kills.

Winning in sports and winning in business is never easy because — in the end — keeping focused means that you are really only competing against your SELF!                                                    

 Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Business media coverage

doesn’t start and stop

  with a news release! 

If your business isn’t getting the kind of news coverage you would like, maybe you’re giving too much attention to what your news release says and not enough to those who decide its newsworthiness.

Whether or not your news release prompts media coverage has first to do with how newsworthy (and UN-self-serving) it is. Second, it will only get meaningful placement attention when you (or whomever you designate) give(s) meaningful appreciation attention. This doesn’t mean fawning over or patronizing reporters and editors. It means appreciating their situations and responsibilities.

In the past 90 days, over 30,000 journalists have changed their jobs, their “beats” or their places of work.

 (Source: www.MyMediaInfo.com)

So regardless of how stellar and airtight your perfectly worded and formatted presentation may be, this is an industry where writers and editors may have other things on their minds besides your news release.

                                                                             

In most cases, you will not break through the clutter with an email or printed page and a half of sensational news about your company’s products, services, activities, or ideas. It will take more than that. The word here is empathy — putting yourself in other’s shoes. Maybe you think you shouldn’t have to do that as a matter of business practice.

But consider that media people (as much as we may justifiably bash the network TV anchors and often extremist editorial board behaviors) tend to be sensitive beasts. They are caught in the middle of the need to balance legitimate value stories with the illegitimate ones that will sell more newspapers and magazines and more broadcast airtime to keep enough revenues flowing to pay their salaries.

Yes, of course there are always online avenues of news exposure. Some of these — for example, www.PRWeb.com and online granddaddy, www.PRNewsWire.com, charge exorbitant fees by comparison with www.MarketersMedia.com, but they have higher “Reach” capabilities. If you don’t need to connect the world, consider MarketersMedia.

Combined with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and other less significant players, these news release outlets can be highly productive channels.

In fact, most traditional journalists now use Twitter on a regular basis. (Source: www.MyMediaInfo.com) But, still, for really big news coverage, many continue to look to major media coverage as the difference between news and N E W S.

Okay, so do you think a single news release delivered to the Wall Street Journal from any lower level name awareness than Mr. Goldman or Mr. Sachs is going to get your new Whiz Bang Production Facility on the front page? On ANY page?

Public Relations requires Media Relations.

The best business coverage only happens 999,999 times out of a million because relationships are established and nurtured.

Like every other industry and profession, there are “tricks of the trade” you need to know in order to make your efforts pay off.

It cost money to learn and apply these secrets. Many PR firms charge $10,000 to $30,000 a month to play the PR game for you, but a good PR Coach (who will help you play the game yourself) shouldn’t be more than $1,500 to $3,500 a month (including writing a monthly release or two!).

# # #

931.854.0474 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Business or Personal, one small story or a lifetime . . .

“You should write 

a book about that!”

Probably everyone has heard this suggestion at one time or another. Most, however, shrug it off or dismiss it without serious thought.

Some simply don’t think that what they have to say is book-worthy. Others don’t think they have the time or wherewithal to pull it off. Still others just don’t know where to start or how to get good guidance without getting ripped off. A few start and quit.

If you have a story that can hold

people’s attention, you can write a book.

If you or your business has experienced some unusual or inspiring or outstanding pattern or event that prompts tears or laughter, or provokes serious head-nodding or grins of satisfaction, or that serves as a strong example of what to do or not do (failures, remember, teach success), you probably have the makings of a book.

What kind of book? Whatever kind suits your fancy.

Books, contrary to popular electronics

industry hype, are not dying.

Electronic readers are, in fact, most likely to cause an increase in book writing, publishing, and sales as they continue to come down in price. Kindles (now $139) and the like are becoming the new cell phone for a generation that’s now finding its way back to storytelling with this extended form of social media.  

A full-length, hard cover or paperback book serves an important archival value for many, and can serve to spike credibility to new levels of industry or professional acceptance . . . regardless of whether it ever gets on bookseller shelves and earns you a royalty.

A downloadable ebook can have enormous promotional value for your website and social media stardom.

Bottom line: A book is a book is a book.

Can just anyone help you? No. Simply because an individual has written or published a book does not make that person an expert, especially if you are considering some full-length story treatment, and even more especially if business is the subject or a key subject.

It takes considerable writing and storytelling skill to help someone pull a draft together. It takes editing expertise to make the draft work. It takes business experience and know-how for a book-writing consultant to be able to help create a business-based book. 

But securing the kind of writing/editing and publishing help that’s right for you, and the story you have in you, doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. It depends entirely on what you’re looking to accomplish, and how willing you are to commit yourself to the task.

The best place to start is not with a title and dedication page. Start with putting ideas for pieces of your story on index cards or pieces of scrap paper you can shuffle around a tabletop when you have a dozen or so.

Next, organize the individual thoughts into some kind of order or plan or outline or list, then consolidate those that seem to fit or work together or play off one another. This is a good point to start poking around for some experienced guidance on productive ways to put your puzzle pieces together, and to help you keep focused and on target with your message. 

Need an informed, honest book idea opinion that’s FREE to my blog visitors? Try me. I just finished writing my 6th book, hold major writing awards, offer 35 years of business experience, and yes, I am approachable. (See phone and email below) 

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

No matter who you sell for, 

you run a home business!

There’s no escaping the fact that no matter what you sell or who you work for, if you’re a sales professional, you’re also a small home-based business owner and operator.

I’m not talking about the waves of fly-by-night multi-level marketing quick-buck scammers out there. I’m talking about the millions of honest, sincere, hard-working professional sales reps who are fighting their way through this catastrophic economic mess we’re mired in.

Every morning you get up and get on your horse and make sales calls and visits and networking contacts. Every night you come home to run the business that supports your daily sales mission. 

Neither your neighbors nor your dysfunctional in-laws can figure out why you need a home office to sell products or services for existing businesses. Why do you need to duplicate work?

Aaaaacht!

You tell them that selling is just part of the job and that the full sales function consists of 37,462 other tasks that you are required to do and that only you can do, like maintaining accurate CRM records, and expense and travel reports, and scheduling, and on and on.

In many cases, you need to be able to straddle opposite force-field careers, like entrepreneur and corporate rep, and salesperson and bill collector. (How much more opposite could these mindsets be?)

And it’s not just a matter of being a self-starter or having enough capital to support the administrative costs, as I heard some clearly ignorant bank commercial suggest today.

You need to be constantly on the alert to new product/service and market knowledge. You need to shore up your “non-business business” with the right kinds of input and advice and support services and marketing know-how . . . because you cannot any longer rely 100% on the company(ies) you represent to provide all this for you.

So now I’m going to complicate your life even more. If you’re a sales professional and you don’t have your own personal website, you are not making the most of your ambitions or your energy. You are not making the most of yourSELF, and you’re not helping yourself build or strengthen a meaningful reputation.

Why is this so important? Because you may leave or disengage from the company(ies) you sell for, but you will always carry your reputation forward. Your reputation will create new and improved circumstances for you whether you stay where you are or go to the greener grass. Your reputation is what people use to size you up and judge your integrity.

A personal website is the best tool you can have toward those ends because it’s YOUR tool about YOU and not something that belongs to and is manipulated by others. Your website can feature your professional self as well as your personal self. It can give you a place to be yourself in a professional light.

Show off your family, your church, your sports and community interests, your hobbies and past-time interests, the vacation you took, the fish you caught, your dog. And you can write about it all with a free blog in your own words, as often as you like. It gives you a special tool to help you sell yourself (which is mostly what customers and prospects “buy” anyway. 

Imagine a salesperson handing you a business card with her company and logo and contact info. and on the back, she hand-writes her personal website address. Do you think you’d check it out? Do you think you’d think that this person is pretty sharp? And, no, it doesn’t have to cost alot to get your own site up and started. It’s really just an issue of how professional you want to be.  

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Dear Corporate Guys. . . 

Open minds open doors!

Sometimes, when people and organizations get too big for their britches, they have a tendency to shut down their receiving antennas. They can become especially resistant to the idea of being taught a lesson by the smaller, younger whippersnappers that they once were. But here’s the deal, Neal (Sorry; been writing rhyming verse today). Any entrepreneur will tell you:

You’re missing major sales 24/7

HA! you say, you have a great salesforce, a top-notch explosive website, and wonderful customer service people. That may be true on all three counts, though not likely. Them’s fightin’ words, you mutter under your breath, behind your glimmering smile. That “them is fightin’ words” may also be true. But here…is reality:

You’re missing major sales 24/7

Pick up the phone right now, before you even read the next paragraph, and call (not a number you know) any number for your company that you can find (IF you can find one) on your company website. Start with your homepage and troll around until you think you have a number that could answer your question about what quantity discounts might be possible for major purchases.

Odds are that if you are not put through a barrage of push-this-to-get that instructions, which are unlikely to offer any bulk purchase information anyway, you will be put on hold listening to some imbecilic message wrapped in static, and maybe escape the telltale buzzing followed by: “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again.”

Okay, you get past all that. So ask. What arrangements are possible to make if I want to purchase 500 or 1,000 or 20,000 units from you? Who is the person I should speak with about quantity discount options? About custom-designed or packaged versions? Delivery timelines? About how staggered purchases can be when market testing is involved?

You’re missing major sales 24/7

Have you any idea how many sales slipped through the cracks this year because your company only talks user-friendly, but doesn’t leave doors open for prospective customers? Take a guess. Are you willing to admit that customers may have questions that simply can’t be accounted for by a program developed by some geek who doesn’t know spit about how and why people buy what they buy?

I wasted nearly two hours this week calling numbers I had to pry out of websites for three of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies. After battling to get past automated messages and static on-hold music from a company that truly should have offered superb listening, I began to feel frustrated. Hmmm, maybe they don’t want to sell stuff!

Then, after getting seven disconnects from one company and four from another, I finally spoke with stupendously pleasant people who –once they managed to slow down the pace of their speech patterns at my request– turned out to know nothing. Although, one did give me the name of a person to call and email. Another promised to “look into it” and would email me; that was two days ago.

Customer service departments should all be deleted anyway. When all employees are trained right, and accessible, there’s no need for separate (and expensive) customer service staff! 

You’re missing major sales 24/7

Oh, the call number I got, by the way (which I double-checked!), was a fax machine. The email address was answered three days later by someone else who said the person I had emailed was long-gone from the company, and how could I have ever gotten that name? (Instead of: “We screwed up, but what can I do to make things right for you?”)

The calls I made, FYI, were legit. I was representing the interests of a client who was actually considering purchasing a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise for major promotional use (the purchase of which, alone, may afford another hundred thousand dollars worth of unpurchasable positive publicity for the supplier!), but the client wanted answers now, not days from now.

Did you make that call yet? You might be surprised by what you learn.     

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

How you chunk up

daily commute time  

reveals the real you!

Ever wonder what you can learn about others based on how they spend their work commute time?

As unorthodox an HR assessment tool as it may seem, it’s probably as effective as any other. How a person commutes to work (i.e., by what means and process) indicates, after all, a little something of each of the following career attributes:

1. time and stress management skills
2. concentration and organization skills
3. entrepreneurship
4. motivation and prioritizing skills
5. sense of initiative and responsiveness

The first pair of these itemized attributes (time and stress management skills) signals a person’s ability to adhere to a schedule while juggling interferences, interruptions, and delays. It also offers some clue about tolerance levels associated with the daily barrage of pin-pricks and nit-picks (and occasional flair-ups) of fellow-commuters.

Yes, there are still carpool goof-balls who jam an unsuspecting neighbor between them in the backseat and proceed to laugh as they spill coffee on the sandwiched lap at every pothole.

Yes, there’s always a sprawling snoring (and probably drooling) sleeper to awaken and/or climb over who’s commandeering two (or three with luggage) rush hour train (or subway or bus) seats — always, of course, when there are no other seats available.

What’s a poor commuter to do? Standing for an hour of jerks (both kinds) and bounces is not usually a great option for starting the day, especially when the time window was planned for laptop or paperwork. And please don’t start with defensive comments from “business class” express trains or some limo drivers union. We’re talking real life here. 

The second pair of attributes (concentration and organization skills) assumes the first pair can be readily met and dispensed with. It’s almost always easier to concentrate and be organized when you’re on schedule and able to fend off anger, annoyance, and upset!

Then there are also some who thrive at concentrating and being organized in chaos and turmoil. (A terrific qualifier for government job applicants!)

Next is, aaah yes, entrepreneurship! First of all, most of these folks only commute a flight or two of stairs in their bathrobes. Hey, there has to be some trade-off with corporatesville, right? And if any of these types are not officially running a basement or garage or kitchen table operation already, they are planning the moment of great escape, and aren’t reading this anyway.

Motivation and priority issues surface as various commuters face the grueling daily ritual of “Commuter Mental Block.”  Not sure about that? Just stand back and watch how many smiles disembark commuter vehicles balanced atop those suits and skirts as they enter work zones and re-enter home zones.

You’ll get volumes of information to match up with Maslow’s Hierarchy theory of motivation and a truckload of clues about those with strong prioritizing interests.

Responsive individuals with a sense of initiative rarely keep commuting . . . except perhaps a bathrobe-clad flight or two. These are the innovators, the catalysts for change, the emerging entrepreneurs who will gladly move to live on the edge of their venturesome ideas. They are the people who happily leap from the daily traffic battles and 9 to 5 status quo monotony to take their chances with their own self control. For the rest: Don’t give up your day job!    

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

“HOT-DOGS”

Belong On Buns

Maybe it’s a friend or relative. Someone who tries too hard to be something she or he is not. A show-off, showboat, hot dog. You like the person, but tire of the boasts, antics, and pretenses. Maybe a Post-it note on his or her monitor with this page URL? You know the type. A small business that represents itself as “full-service,” or a guy (who just walked by) who wants to look like a girl.

Monster corporations, it seems, have caught themselves up in the transgender craze, pretending (not unlike the federal government) to be small business experts (you know which ones). Being “small business experts” simply means they want small business owners’ money. They haven’t even a lick of an idea  about how to run or grow a small business. They’re hot dogs!

How many website designers claim to be marketing experts? How many marketing experts are self-anointed copywriters? Optometrists (eyeglass lens and frame specialists) who pretend to be eye surgeons — ophthalmologists — who are medical doctors? How about chiropractors (trying to be specially-trained orthopedic surgeons) who claim to be “sports physicians”? Hot dogs!

Oh, right, while on this subject, there is of course the all-time worst impostor: the dentist who says “Well, I can do that tooth extraction for you.” Uh, sorry, I think if I have to suffer through this event, I’d prefer an oral surgeon. No, this isn’t a disease limited to healthcare. Had any CPAs tell you they could handle your tax attorney chores for you? Or wannabe CPA bookkeepers? Hot dogs! 

“This showroom car is nice, but I wanted a forest green model, not a black one,” says the customer. “Hey Harry,” whispers the salesman behind the customer’s back, “turn on the forest green lights, quick!”   

Americans appear to have an insatiable appetite for getting ripped off. It’s true that green consciousness, quicker/easier access to information through hi-tech tools, and a continuously miserable economy with no end in sight have fed us all bigger portions of more value-careful, more fully-informed, more dollar-conscious consumerism purchasing decision making . . . but nowhere near enough! 

And so there still are legions of businesses out there masquerading as bigger and better than they really are. And professional services are on top of the phony baloney heap! SAVE IT FOR HALLOWEEN! It really doesn’t matter what you’re selling (and EVERY one is selling SOME thing!):

Credibility is king!

Credibility comes from reputation.

Reputation is built on authenticity.

“Hot dogs” belong in buns, not in the office on on

the work site, except maybe at lunch, with mustard.

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!