You’re an entrepreneur, right? 

You own or operate a small business or professional practice. You’re in the hot seat 24/7. You’re worried about sales, overhead expenses, taxes, insurance, legal issues, and making the most of social media opportunities. You are constantly trying to be two places at once. You need a break. Just thinking about priorities gives you a headache. You’re talking to yourself?

So maybe it’s time to stop worrying and stop thinking. Keep your goals, but get rid of the “overkill” and simply get on with it. Let it go. Do it. Follow your instincts. Go with the flow. You think perhaps those are crazy unprofessional notions?

I have some news to share:

You got where you are not because you followed some carefully-crafted strategic plan.

Nor did you get to be captain of your ship by dutifully following orders, or a master plan outline, or some naive business school professor’s idea of business development rules, or some archaic family inheritance guidelines.

You are a maverick. But maybe you forgot? Did you forget that you have achieved what you have achieved by taking action and making adjustments and taking action again, and making more adjustments and taking more action?

Trial and error? Sure. So what? Something wrong with that? It worked for Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey and Mary Kay Ashe and Walt Disney any other success you can name.

But, you might say, you’ve been chasing your tail to survive the economic quagmire (the one that started as a mud puddle in 2007, and has since become the recipient of relentless dumping of mismanaged government quicksand).

Or has your entrepreneurial spirit been dashed by industry or professional incompetence, corporate or union greed, misunderstanding friends or family, or by government interference, and you’ve settled into an acceptance mode.

You need to re-discover yourself! Realize –first and foremost– you are you and you are unique and no one else is exactly like you and you already have the ability and the power to reverse or redirect your engines to get where you want to go without dragging along the burdens that outside influences try to impose.

How? How does one do that? By making the choice. All behavior is a choice. If it’s not an active choice, it’s an inactive choice or the result of something you may have chosen long ago. But you don’t need to choose to keep living with it. You can stop choosing to settle for inferior quality, unproductive activities, incompetent outside influences.

Okay, so you have to pay taxes. But you don’t have to choose to worry about them.

Choose instead to move on.

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

Seeing through it all

…maybe, maybe not.

There’s an awful lot of talk in top management circles trending to the favor-ability of transparent leadership, but reality often dictates the need to exercise the exact opposite, at least for certain situations. Two-facedness? Manipulative? Irresponsible? Lacking integrity? Ruling by exception? Well, even open windows do not always afford a clear view.

When every word you say and move you make is public to all around you, it can be inhibiting to decision making that might be for the good of all involved. Adhering to a policy of transparency can instead take on a neurotic life of its own which can prevent meaningful forward motion.

Consider, for example, the advisability of sharing content of investor or prospective investor discussions as they occur, with all employees. . . or, publicly airing the private meeting critique of an under-achieving employee. Actually, many if not most sensitive-type bits of information might best be kept private and only be shared on a need-to-know basis.

We badger government officials to maintain transparency because they are elected and paid by us to represent our interests, and we are entitled to know what they think and say, and how they behave. But business (thankfully, for the cause of cultivating entrepreneurial spirit and the capitalism that fuels our economy) doesn’t conduct itself that way.

Private enterprise shareholders are entitled to know how business management represents the interests of a given company, but not have a say in every issue. Shareholders are instead invested in the integrity of the management that represents the company they are invested in.

Effective transparent leadership may translate to open-door management for many, but even those who take their doors off the hinges have been known to beef up their effectiveness with periodic whispers and private notes. Because sharing everything with everyone can easily create more problems than it solves.

Another way to think of it is simply that not every organization member is capable of understanding areas of specialization beyond what she or he is directly involved with, and to expect that that’s the case is to invite confusion and delay that will block progress. It’s healthy to look at the total leadership picture before throwing all the doors and windows open.

To paraphrase Lincoln’s famous quote: “You can be transparent to all of the people some of the time, and you can be transparent to some of the people all 0f the time, but you can’t be transparent to all of the people all of the time.”

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116

 Once more with feeling!

Whatever it is that you have just finished doing —from writing a plan or report to doing a trade or professional show, from introducing a new product or service to handling a difficult customer or investor or partner, or from juggling a tight schedule to finishing up a long-annoying project– can you take your next step with more feeling?

PASSION is inevitably the single most important ingredient in owning and operating a successful business –as it is, of course, in every square inch of marketing (sales, advertising, public and community relations, packaging, promotion, pricing, customer service, and building your Internet presence). And isn’t passion what separates success from failure in all of life?

In business, sports, the arts, and science the differences appear most dramatic because they are more easily measurable than, for example, relationships. Sales, bookings, test results, and win-loss records are pretty clear-cut compared to trying to size up the meaning of someone’s smirk or raised eyebrow or abrupt message. Hmmm, where is the foot pointed?

What took place during your most passionate life and career accomplishments? What snatched you victory from the hands of defeat? How, exactly, did you feel before, during, and after? What was the passion –spirit of performance– that you evidenced at those times? Was that ingredient somehow missing in whatever it is that you just finished doing?

If you answered yes, how did you choose to back off from what you know you’re capable of? Did you decide up front or during the process that it wasn’t worth feeling excited about? How did you choose to pursue it in the first place? So you engaged yourself in a task that wasn’t challenging or wasn’t making the best use of your time or skills?

If the answer is no, congratulations! What specific things did you do that brought you to the results you sought? How can you rally those resources to deliver repeat performances on other upcoming challenges? 

When you can step back after each “performance” to assess your level of passionate input, you are in a far better position to deliver a better performance than when you disregard what happened.

Second, and perhaps most important, is to repeatedly rattle your brain to realize that everything you bring to your performance table is a form of behavior, and (you guessed it!):

BEHAVIOR IS ALWAYS A CHOICE 

It may not always be conscious or evident or intended, but it is always a choice or the result of a choice. If you think about this a couple of times a day, you will almost certainly improve your life and business situations within a week or so. What have you got to lose . . . bad choices and poor performances? PASSION WINS!   

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116

ENTREPRENEURIAL

TRIAL-AND-ERROR

BEATS CORPORATE

ANALYTICS!

Small business owners and operators invariably run their businesses –and practice human resource, industry/profession, and community leadership– by trial and error. The trade-off for not following all the latest corporate mumbo-jumbo leadership trends and fads, and time-consuming “time-proven” techniques is instantaneous adjustment.

That translates into what Grandpa always used to say was the most desirable of all business traits: “being able to turn on a dime.” Of course Grandpa ran a five and ten-cent store and could hardly have known that in 2012, no one would much care about a meager dime. It won’t even make a phone call or (Thanks to Starbucks) pay for a cup of coffee anymore.

Only by being able to ‘turn on a dime,’ or ‘shift gears quickly,’ can a business adapt to rapid market changes without skipping a beat. This, of course, may not be so critical an asset for an insurance broker, as for a retailer… or for a repair shop, as it might be for web design or writing services, as just a couple of examples.”

Nonetheless, all the big-time, extravagant methods that corporate muckity-mucks use to justify their existences with overkill assessment processes –from weeks worth of focus groups to statistical analysis paralysis— don’t add up to anything close to what can be achieved with the entrepreneurial respond-adjust/trial-and-error method.

This is not to suggest that all leadership decisions should be seat-of-0the-pants, knee-jerk, shoot-from-the-hip reactions. It is rather to say that the amount of time it takes to plan and analyze every step tends to be proportionally related to failed decision making.

Leaders lead by leading.

No one was ever a successful business leader who spent inordinate amounts of time and energy studying past actions and events, and then planning and worrying about the future.

What separates entrepreneurial success from corporate lethargy is acting out possibilities on the spot, making adjustments on the fly, taking reasonable risks, and living most of the time in the present, here-and-now moment.

Entrepreneurs are invested in making their ideas work, instead of covering their butts and justifying decisions.

Trial and error may produce some black and blue bruises along the way, and probably a great many more than your big-business counterpart will encounter while slogging along through the white shirt and tie quagmire. When the focus is here and now, there’s no time to dwell on errors or worry about where you’re going.

Flexible goals? Yes! Stifling long-term plans? No! . . . Think it. Try it. Do it. Adjust it. Do it again. Make it happen.

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Hal@Businessworks.US Thanks for visiting and God Bless You! 

Powerwash Your

Business Deck!

Now’s as good a time as any to clear out the cobwebs, mold, and dead bugs. Get your powerwasher out, hook up the hose and start waving that magic wand! But, aaah, you’re a free-swinging entrepreneur and all of a sudden the reality hits that to make a powerwasher work requires methodical and determined action–not exactly your modus operandi, eh?

But taking a methodical approach to cleaning is really the only way to make things clean, whether it’s a room, a carpet, the shower, or your business enterprise. Start by taking a hard look at the messages your business is communicating. Are you saying what you truly want the rest of the world to associate with you and your products/ services/ name/ reputation?

I’ll address human resources, operations, finances and other entrepreneurial concerns in subsequent posts, but first and foremost, small business owners must always be reassessing their brand and theme line. These are the most important tools a business has, and neither can remain stagnant. Change is what today’s business world is all about.

The horizon is constantly moving.

Targets, objectives, and goals used to be stationary, but no more. You need to be checking up on yourself at least once a month because what you were aiming for twenty or thirty days ago could be long gone by now. Don’t think you’re immune. It’s not just computers and smart phones running rampant . . . it’s people’s attitudes. TEST where you’re going.

Your customers and prospects THINK differently today (and faster!) than they did a year ago, a month ago, a week ago. The pace of life is more frantic. The business of building a business is more hectic. The messages your business is sending out can be obsolete before you even get them printed or onto Twitter. How will you know? Diligence and your powerwasher!

Force yourself to add quick-fix reviews of your branding efforts to your monthly lineup of checklist tasks. Put it right next to assessing your cash flow. If it’s time for a change, consider professional marketing writer input. Sometimes the fix is as quick and simple as changing just a word or two. Other times, a whole new strategy is needed. Professionals do both daily.

Struggle with revisions and updates yourself if you like, but you may want to ask yourself if you might be more productive focused on sales or operations or investor funding? Oh, and outsiders bring fresh perspectives to your table.

What’s important is your vigilance.

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116