Sounding Important

Counts For Nothing!

     Yes, even in this “knee-deep-in-muck” economy, when smart people are being more innovative and more customer conscious, there are still pompous idiots floating around the business world with no backs to pat except their own. One would think that at least a sliver of reality might have set in, but there they go, parading by in all their ornamental pomp and ceremonial circumstance: The EGOpreneurs.

     Know any?

     Maybe I’m just imagining things when I check out an online business profile and read about how many years of great experience will come to play when a needy (and the suggestion is, incompetent) business owner is smart enough to engage this person’s consulting services instead of (the only suggested alternative) floundering around on her or his own.

     The consultant of course chooses to completely disregard that Mr. or Ms. Business Owner just happened to have succeeded at bringing his or her business this far to start with. But that’s not important if you’re smart enough to hire this guy because Mr. Egopreneur Consultant here has worked with some of the biggest name companies in existence. Aren’t you impressed?

     Hey, “20+ years” of being a “revenue generation strategist”  is nothing to sneeze at. (He figures out ways to make money; it’s not likely he knows anything about how to implement the strategies but, well, he figures that’s what you’re good for.) Besides, you might want to give Wonder Boy some slack because he’s so highly trained to fit your needs.

     The exampleI cite boasts of degrees in religion and political science (oh, and a minor in anthropology). Hard to imagine anyone not succeeding with that combination. I mean first you can rip people off, and then pray for them when you dig up their bones in a few years. C’mon, relevance and track-record are what count. As the old sports agent movie made famous: “Show me the money!”

     Yes, I have preached long and hard to business owners and sales professionals that you only get one chance at a first impression. The point though is that the best impression anyone can make is the one that doesn’t TRY to make an impression. Proven performance speaks louder than words.

     AUTHENTICITY is the word that comes to mind . . . along with: GENUINENESS (skipping the BS). TRANSPARENCY (no hidden agendas; you see what you get). EMPATHY (putting oneself in another’s shoes). REALITY (not living in or talking incessantly about past or future fantasylands). FLEXIBILITY (being ready and able to avoid expectations and go with the flow).

     These six important qualities are the intangibles that define the difference between success and failure, and that point up the separation between people you choose to do business with over people you choose not to do business with. Use all six to weigh the conviction of your involvement with others.

     If you want to make a difference with your business, in other’s lives and your own, steer clear of EGOpreneurs. They give entrepreneurs a bad name, and all their talking counts for nothing.

Comment below 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!

You just wanted

to work in your

underwear,

that’s all.  

     Remember the reason you decided to start, and run or manage your own business? Odds are it had more to do with what you wanted for a lifestyle than you probably recall. And I’ll bet your decision was accelerated by the lifestyle conflict you were having with the person you reported to or the organization you served . . . likely it was both!

     Just the fact that you reported to anyone was probably grounds enough for you to want to set sail into uncharted seas. How do I know that? I’ve spent most of my life being an entrepreneur, coaching entrepreneurs, and teaching entrepreneurship. We share common distaste for indulging in organizational details and for respecting authority.

     Sometimes the lifestyle issues involved in choosing to work for yourself are as innocuous as wanting to wake up late and work late, or wear sweatpants and shorts and t-shirts to work (or, wear nothing . . . “WRITE NAKED” urges an old promotional poster I saw from Writer’s Digest magazine). 

     The point is that whatever the reasons you decided to pack in corporate or government America and set out on your own, the flip-side of those reasons is what you used, to cornerstone your startup venture. Is it still a cornerstone? If you’ve let this one get away, you may be missing out on enjoying the very reason you elected to be your enterprising self.

     You may even be sliding (slithering?) back into the hole from whence your business owner career was born. There’s nothing wrong (and probably everything right) with becoming more conservative in your fiscal and political choices as you get older and wise up as to what makes genuine realistic sense in America’s society, but dragging conservative thinking into how you run your business puts you on the road to premature business death . . . not a happy place to be.

     You started with innovative ideas and energetic drive and a pioneering spirit.

     If you’ve been successful, you may well be at a point where those traits, qualities, values, instincts, characteristics –whatever you want to call them — have started to dry up, and you’ve either got itchy feet to again get on with something else, or you’ve slowly absorbed the “corporatitis” investment in status quo.

     If you’ve not been successful, you may be wondering why you chose this path when you could be working 9 to 5 and collecting big benefits and enjoying weekends. Ever feel like that or am I imagining things? Perhaps you’ve just been busting your butt and success is simply not happening, but you’re not willing to give up what you started.

     The truth is that it doesn’t really matter what’s going on with you right now EXCEPT that if you’ve somewhere lost your enthusiasm and business ownership has become a full-time struggle, you must do whatever it takes to get back your startup energy, and that means you need to put more fun in every day.

     ONLY by having fun with your business will you have a more sunny disposition and will your business achieve the results you seek. Fun means something different to everyone. Make a short list of what’s fun to you. And yet another of what’s fun to those around you. Then start to make some of those attitudes and events take place. Have fun! 

# # #

Comment below 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!

Yes, “quirky” works.

Save that tablecloth!

     In between rocket-blasting stints with Madison Avenue’s two biggest and most successful ad agencies in history, I once worked as new business director and assistant to the chairman of a rather inconsequential yet highly profitable New York advertising firm. My boss was the number one guy out of three partners. The other two hung out and acted important. My boss was the one who made the sales and brought in the money.

     I never learned much from him except that it really is possible to be successful even when you have no obvious success traits or qualities, as long as you are a stupendous listener, and can be totally quirky. The old man had no redeeming characteristics to speak of but he was both quirky — accentuated by a cartoony voice and over-the-top animation that seemed to ooze incongruously out of his 3-piece suit — plus he was an outstanding listener.

     Three or four days a week, I found myself in the arguably envious position of getting fat by being his sidekick at exorbitantly expensive lunches he hosted at the best restaurants in Manhattan. He invited clients and prospective clients as guests. I was his Boy Friday but he actually encouraged me to talk up agency credentials and experience, setting the stage for his “pitch” at dessert time.

     What he had to say was always on target, but it came only after intensive listening, interspersed with squinty-eyed questions from over the tops of his reading glasses, and requests for examples and diagrams. He made copious notes with marker pens . . . on the tablecloth! 

     In between courses’, he would engage the help of a waiter or two to turn the table covering, drip spots and all, clockwise so he’d have clear writing space for each part of the meal. When lunch ended, he would tuck a $20 bill into the Maitre D’s hand and neatly fold the tablecloth up, tuck it under his arm as he did all the handshake/smile stuff and head for a cab that I would have waiting at the curb.

     When we got back to the office, his secretary would unfold the tablecloth, tack it on the wall over her workspace and type out everything he had written, rising periodically to turn the cloth and re-tack it (lots of pinholes in the wall!). She would enlist one of the designers to recreate any diagrams. The Boss would prioritize items on her draft and identify them as Objectives or Strategies or Tactics the have a final version typed up.

     The typed copy was distributed to all who had any experience with or interest in the business being courted, followed by a meeting, and a summary returned to the lunch guest reiterating the key points, tying them of course to sales points. Often this document became the “working bible” for developing the advertising for an existing client for a full year or more, and often it won new clients.      

     Should we all run out and start writing on tablecloths? Maybe, but the point is that whatever you do to be better at running your business doesn’t have to be something that’s considered “normal” by others, and you need not worry or care about what others say if the system works for you. Someone else I worked for routinely cell phone called his desk from the golf course to leave himself message reminders of sales prospect conversations he would follow up on the next day.

“Quirky” Works.  

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! 

The Cyberspace

World Bank 

is saving our

beat old posts

for just the

right occasion! 

     Maybe it’s too late to count ourselves out of the award-running for the World Cup of Stupid Internet Comments, considering how dumb that snippy-snappy email or website post was that we angrily tossed off a couple of years back when we were more irate and quick trigger-fingered . . . but we don’t have to have it start an avalanche.

     Remember that comment we posted on some website way back when? You know the one. It went something like:  

“If you knew even the first thing about business, you dumb geek, you’d get out of that garage of yours and get a real job while you return to the college you dropped out of, and furthermore, Billy Gates, if you think I would ever consider hiring you to even sweep my floors you’re sadly mistaken. You’ll never succeed unless you can stop dreaming and finish your education!”

     Like an elephant, Cyberspace never forgets. The comments we make today on mover and shaker sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, BizBrag, Salesblogcast, iSALESMAN, Google, PoorIrishman, TBDConsulting and InterlakenInn are being watched and talked about. But so are the posts we put on downscale, disreputable sites like those commandeered by network media, incompetent government agencies, and porn purveyors — where what we have to say is given no more credibility than what’s said by the hosts.

     Almost all of what we have to say today that has any substance to it, carries with it the promise of coming back to haunt us (if not bite us in our respective butts) ten or twenty years down the road.

     Never before in history have we the people subjected our innermost thoughts and most volatile expressions to such states of accessible public permanence. Today’s passing thought will not land in a ribbon-tied bundle of letters socked away in a shoebox on some closet shelf or in some attic trunk waiting for discovery by distant generations.

     When we hit that email “Send” click, or website “Post” button, we are literally donating our private thoughts and feelings to eternal public scrutiny. It’s taking some time for this to sink in, but the reality of it is striking. Where else in history did people set themselves up to make scathing, heat-of-the-moment remarks only to have them be dissected and subjected to overkill, out-of-context evaluation 24 hours a day, every day for lifetimes beyond their own?

     The trick here is to:  

A) Think before we click  

B) Realize that anything we say, can and will be used against us in a court of public opinion (and having the right to an attorney won’t make a hill of beans difference!) 

C) Trash our computers and never look back! 

D) Overwhelm all of our friends and followers with a tsunami of upbeat messages that even our severest critics can’t help but cry tears of joy at our transformations. (“Kill ’em with kindness!” me mother usedta say.)

So, uh, before you comment below . . .                                                                             

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! 

When you add

a splash of red

to a sea of blue,

people stop

noticing the blue…

     My wife Kathy (God Bless Her!) has been my business partner for 23 years. It takes an extraordinarily special relationship to survive and thrive in the same workspace AND the same homespace. 

     Oh, but don’t thinkI have a limited perspective on this. I’ve worked with every kind of FAMILY business imaginable … from restaurants, HVAC, farms, clothing, sewage, chiropractic services, heart surgery, landscaping, mattresses, trucking, dentistry, lumber, accounting, candy and travel, to manufacturing of computer and rocket-ship parts that fit under your fingernail. And that’s just my tip- of-the-iceberg list.

     Yeah, you might say, but just doing their brochures and websites doesn’t put you in the thick of things. How do you know what it’s really like? As a management consultant, trainer, coach, and counselor, believe me I’ve seen it all. I’ve managed succession planning, rookie coaching, crisis intervention, family foundations, partnership formations, partnership separations, and one fist fight.  

     The biggest problem with family business is family. Family relation-ships are a hotbed of emotions. Consider the statistics that claim every one comes from a dysfunctional family, which means there are an awful lot of weirdos out there. When the dysfunctional types become part of the family business, people see the business as dysfunctional. When you add a splash of red to a sea of blue, people stop noticing the blue.

Only a handful of really smart family business leaders have the good sense to realize a proven professional can help grow the business AND save the family.”

     When high emotions reign in a family business, you can be sure the business will not be a recommended long-term investment. Business ventures can be immensely emotional and supercharged, but keeping control of all that energy requires great leadership finesse, objectivity, and balance.

     Imagine a ship in a stormy sea, with an angry, blood-vessel-on-the-cusp-of-bursting, near-incoherent, screaming captain at the controls. You’d want to be figuring out the quickest route to the lifeboats. Some family businesses keep these stormy sea antics below deck, but they still take their toll.

You’d want to be figuring out the

quickest route to the lifeboats.”

     Here’s the good news: None of it is necessary. Here’s the bad news: Only a handful of family business leaders have the good sense to realize a proven professional can help grow the business AND save the family. The basic principles of anger management, stress management, time management, communication skills (especially effective listening), goal-setting, and leadership transparency are the ingredients of family business transformation and success. Someone who knows how and when to use these tools can help you get the red splash out of your sea of blue, and steady the controls.  

     The more generations involved, the greater the need. The more family members involved, the greater the need. The solution direction is simple. It takes a commitment to want to succeed, a willingness to share “dirty laundry” with an “outsider” (and a sense of partnership and perseverance with that outsider) to combine forces to make a difference.

     Family business growth and development is directly tied to the 4 R’s: Receptivity, Responsiveness, Responsibility and Respect. If those are present, an experienced coach can help them all work for the good of the business, and the good of the family.  

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! 

“Lately, I see a lot of 

wise old hot-shots vs.

smart-ass young

rapper-snappers.  

You?”

The same woman walks into two competing retail stores with age-different sales styles:

“Afternoon, Ma’am, how’s that traffic out there today? You drive far?” greets her at store number one.

“Hi Ma’am. Let me show you to our electronics department. I’m sure you’ll be interested in seeing the new Apple iPad. Can you believe that thing can do…?” is the first thing she hears as she enters store number two.

Disagreements come to a head once again in the professional services business down the street:

“Frank? Pfffft! All he’s got is that dusty old Rolodex thing with a thousand scribbled and crossed out cards. I think we should rent an up-to-date email list and send out a blast announcing our new services; combine that with a big splash on our website and let people download the info pages –like an ebook — on the apps we now offer in exchange for their email addresses.”

“Jaysyn? You gotta be kiddin’— he’s been here for six months, tryin’ to run everything and doesn’t have a clue about customer service. The kid’s got a Black Berry wired to his butt and an iPod growing outta his ear. We need to work our existing customer base to announce the new services, and most of them don’t even have computers, never mind email addresses.”

You own or run the business. It’s your call. How do you keep everyone happy and still keep customers coming in the door? What do you do if the old guy is your brother (brother-in-law, cousin, your father)? What if the young dude is your nephew (your wife’s best friend’s son, your banker’s son, your lawyer’s son, your own son)?

[Just by way of momentary diversion, I’m reminded that it’s often been said that the biggest problem with a family business, by the way, is the family. Lots of stories about that. I’ll save them for another post.] 

So, you have to do — first and foremost — what’s best for the business, right? Can you and the business afford ongoing turf wars? Is it just an age thing or do two or more same-age-range feisty types engage regularly in territorial battles? “I was assigned Westchester County and she was supposed to handle Rockland; now you’ve got her doing Northern Westchester. What’s with that?”

RULE ONE for getting things straightened out: Get things straightened out! Sit down with the people involved and get each to speak her or his piece with no interruptions allowed by you or the opposition forces. Take notes. Ask followup questions and ask for examples with no interruptions allowed by opposition forces.

Make a decision and explain your rationale with no interruptions allowed by opposition forces, then get on with life. Do not put off a decision. Do not waver on the rules on engagement and do not waver on your decision. Once you’ve established this as a procedure (and it may take 2-3 times), you’ll see fewer and fewer disruptive turf battles.

If you don’t see the strugglers taking chill-pills, you will see more and more evidence about which of the warring parties is most out of line and probably least productive. Let go of him or her, no matter who’s uncle or daughter or neighbor is involved. Be nice about it. Offer relocation help. But — for the sake of your business — stick to your guns and “e-li-minate the neg-a-tive”! 

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! 

A week of great sadness has swept through our lives: first I lost a friend and teammate (See three posts below) and now, our joy-filled, spirited little black cocker TUCKERTON (named after Tuckerton Seaport on the New Jersey shore, because we lived nearby when he was born) has passed suddenly in the night.

We have had many dogs in our lives (10 or 12, I believe; 7 in our 23 years of marriage) — and thankfully, still have our 12 1/2 year-old female golden retriever, Barnegat, though her legs are slowing — but Tuckerton is the only one who had a tail that never stopped wagging!

He was happy, even up to his final moments last night, and for all the joy and unsolicited love he delivered, we shall be eternally grateful.

Tuckerton was Kathy’s full-time companion (she called him “T” and “Friar Tuck”) and I think she loved him as she often said, “more than life itself.” He was my favorite office visitor and stress-reliever.

He would bound up and down our flights of stairs like a rocketship … to chase a ball or bark greetings to a visitor. He would snuggle up in my lap, pressing his entire body into my chest, still of course wagging that constantly-in-motion tail.

He was Barnegat’s “little brother” in every sense of the word, following her everywhere, sometimes walking under her, and practically sleeping on top of her in the car. Loud noises sent him scrambling to get behind her. They would shake paws together for treats every night and exchange barks from rooms apart on those rare occasions when they were rooms apart. Barnegat will miss him every bit as much as we already do.

Tuckerton has inspired characters and names in my fiction writing, and his overall happiness literally invaded our every home and office space every day… truly a dog sent from heaven. God Bless You, Tuckerton.

We shall carry your spirit forward with us, Buddy Boy, but we’ll miss you always. # 

THANK YOU FRIENDS FOR THE MANY DOZENS OF NOTES WE’VE ALREADY RECEIVED. IT’S NICE TO SEE THIS SPECIAL DOG WAS SO APPRECIATED.  

If TWITTER

“doesn’t work”

for your business,

maybe you don’t either!

     With cha-ching, cha-ching becoming a  sound of the past, many owners have resigned themselves to “try anything” to lift their businesses up out of the muck, get things back on track, make more sales, bring in more customers, pay the bills, and put some money in the bank again.

     A lot of “old-timers” are even giving social media a try. They’re baffled, but are willing to “give it a shot!” They locate www.Twitter.com, fill in the blanks, set up an account, then put up one feeble 140-character post every week or so telling the world how great their business is.

     They wait. No Twitter-types break down the doors.

     They walk off shaking their heads and vowing never to return. “TWITTER doesn’t work,” they tell people. “It didn’t get me any business, and besides, what do I care if somebody in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Honolulu, or Kalamazoo hears about my little local service business in Pleasantville?”

[Pssst! What works for your business will only work for

your business if you make it work for your business.]

     You wouldn’t run (and pay for) one ad or commercial and think that’s going to produce droves of visitors. Why would a few Twitter “Tweets” (which of course you’d not pay for)  do the trick? And, by the way, why would anyone — even someone who puts posts on Twitter a few times a day — think that telling Twitterland how great a business is, will send the masses stampeding to their doorstep?

[Pssst! You can only make something work for your business

if you work for your business. It’s called “walk the talk.”]

     TWITTER can work wonders for any business that’s willing to put in the effort to make it work. Making the absolute most of 140 characters takes considerable skill; you can’t breeze in and wing it like a car salesman. It takes brains, organization skills and marketing savvy. A psych degree helps. 

     Are the dynamics any different for FaceBook, LinkedIn, or any other social media networks? No. The closer you study these sites and see what makes them click, so to speak, the better your odds for making them be productive for your business. And you can’t beat the price, so the learning curve trade-off is a worthy investment of time and effort.

     Finally, the lame excuse for avoiding social media because it’s worldwide when they only service local customers? Today’s world has shrunk from a basketball to a marble in terms of instantaneous multi-directional communication. Through social media like Twitter and FaceBook and others we suddenly have “friends” we can be in regular daily contact with from our laptop on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, to Greg in Canada, and Pamela in Australia, and Doyle in Dallas, and Jonena in San Diego, and Victoria in Thailand.

     Do you think any of the millions who are exposed to online messages, might have a friend or relative in Brooklyn (or Pleasantville)? Do you think they might refer to one another the same ways you do? So why not be global, even if you are a little local service business. Hey, you really never do know where business can come from. It might even come from TWITTER.   

Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting.

Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!

Life lessons from

an 8 year-old!

     Yeah, I know, I know. Everyone has brilliant kids and grandkids. Just ask; you’ll get an earful, and that’ll probably be accompanied by an accordion photo show from the wallet or purse. The thing is we all talk about how bright kids are, but do we really listen hard to what they say and think hard about what’s behind the words they put out?

     Do you think they’re trying to tell us something?

     Check out the following messages which were bundled together and hand-lettered onto a little wall plaque gift from my 8 year-old granddaughter (who I was astonished to learn, has her own blog!):

Life is a question. No person on earth is your enemy but you. You can’t deside what you were born with but you can deside how you end up.

Being happy is beyond a feeling. Its a way of life. Questions are endless but only one awnser is you.

You can dream without imaganation but you can’t dream without a beleif.

You are who you are and know one can stop you.”

— Gwyn, Age 8 

     Where’s the business message? When times are tough and everyone seems to be struggling to make sales and dig out from under, temptation is great to work harder longer hours and let some family time slip away.

     I cast my vote against that idea. I’ve never known a business growth or sales situation to suffer from working harder, but I’ve seen many lives destroyed by breadwinners working longer hours.

     Of course there are bills to be paid, but there are also children to be raised and family roots to be planted, and nurtured. There’s an age-old excuse that surfaces frequently for the convenience of those who’ve chosen to set themselves up to get sucked into working longer hours.

     They say: “It’s the quality of the time we spend together as a family that counts.” Hard to argue with that, right? It makes sense, right? The trouble is that emotions don’t make sense, and families are all about emotions. Don’t let the sudden lack of financial independence thrust you into a family-distancing role of martyr. The stress alone isn’t worth the commensurate loss of life it cultivates.

     There are always other options.

     One major option is to stop thinking you have to carry the full load on your shoulders. Hold a family meeting. Keep it lighthearted, but discuss financial circumstances openly and honestly. Ask for ideas and input and don’t rush to judgement on thoughts shared that may at first seem empty or naive … like Granddaughter Gwyn’s philosophizing above.

     All well-intended thoughts have a meaningful core or point of origin. Search these out. Give the benefit of doubt. Ask yourself what you can learn from them, what they may cause you to think of. A small business is much more of a living entity than a giant corporation. It’s like a member of the family (and especially if it’s a family business!) so give it the benefit of others’ thoughts as well as your own.

     The more you ask for and listen attentively to input, the more you stand to gain in both respect and sales. The better your odds of achieving by working harder AND smarter without having to work longer.

Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US 

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

What are you waiting for?