Being smart enough to

practice what you preach,

separates leaders

from lecturers.

Lectures are discourses packaged for delivery to “career students,” government employees, and sheep.

None of these needy creatures care about whether a lecturer has lived up to the spirit and letter of the lecture focus, or has actually practiced delivering her or his lecture to a match-up audience in order to gather advance feedback for adjustment purposes. Lecturers rarely indulge in studying themselves or their audiences.

So practice –for the purposes of this post– means doing what you ask or tell others to do, but it also means trying out and rehearsing your presentation of what you plan to say. How else can you make sure it communicates clearly to those you seek to communicate with? Simple enough, yes? But, aha! It’s rarely done, except by leading leaders.

If you’re not in a business emergency or an emergency business, slow down what you have to say long enough to think through what you have to say before you speak, before you hit “Send,” before you release or publish it. . . in person, on the phone, in emails and text messages . . . in meetings, presentations, and marketing.

Regardless of the nature of your business, are you certain your words, and vocal or written tone of voice are effectively communicating the ideas and points you want to convey? Have you tried, tested, and rehearsed the important messages in ways that encourage and generate meaningful and honest feedback? Are you sure?

You know all that stuff about first impressions, active listening, and soliciting effective feedback, but are you doing it? Have you set yourself up to be approachable? Great writers get great readers to review and edit their drafts.

Smart entrepreneurs and business owners often clear subject matter they want to transmit or present with their lawyers, accountants, advisors and consultants, investors, partners and referrers, but fail miserably to get representatives of their target audiences to tune in, understand, and respond productively to their spiels.

If you fail to get direct and primary feedback from your sales team and key customers, for example, on a new marketing direction or branding program or revenue stream, you are likely to fail with it.

It really doesn’t take much to advance-check your facts on Bing or Google.

It doesn’t take much time either to advance-check the opinions and perceptions of those you seek to impact.

The medium is (still) the message — at least half the message anyway.

Professionally-run focus groups and interviews are hard to beat for first-hand qualitative input.

HOW you come across cannot be a random hit-or-miss event when it’s an investor, bank loan, partnership, major customer account, or key employee you seek to influence. Reassurance comes from asking and adjusting, asking and adjusting, and asking and adjusting.

__________________________

“Yeah, but I’m better when I wing it!”

Don’t kid yourself. That’s an excuse to not do the hard work of preparation. You may think you’re a great spontaneous presenter, but you should know that others can tell when you’re winging it!

— —————————-

On top of all this rationale, the icing on the cake, is the intangible but striking value of engaging others in your process. By soliciting others’ opinions and judgments, you are motivating, encouraging, and rewarding those you draw from. You set them apart by sharing a special level of trust with them.

Think about the feelings of importance, responsibility, and confidence you feel when others ask for your input. Leading leaders lead by inspiring enthusiasm, innovation, and entrepreneurial thinking. They motivate others to achieve. Practicing what you preach motivates others to achieve.  

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You can count sheep, but

don’t count your chickens.

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched!” my mother always warned me. As usual, she was right. God rest her soul. Were she still here, she would have been marching around the White House with “SAVE SMALL BUSINESS” placards, and made herself a thorn in the side of the sooo-unbusinesslike Obama Administration.

Mom would have waved her finger at Mr. Obama, and lectured him on the need for the nation to rely on small businesses to reverse our ever-deepening economic quagmire. She would have looked him in the eye and might have said something like:

“Son, you need to know that hope and 

 expectations breed disappointment.

And you just better get on with it!”

Mom knew what the White House fails to know, and that professional practice and small business owners and managers –and, yes, all professional salespeople everywhere know in their heart of hearts (but often forget):

Only by taking steps to get things

done, do things actually get done!

No, she wasn’t a polisci major. Mom quit high school at age 16, when both her parents died, to become mother and father and housekeeper to her three younger sisters and two “good-for-nothin'” lazy older brothers (who grew up to be lazy “good-for-nothin'”‘ uncles). She supported her “sibling family” working at a telephone switchboard.

After marrying my mailman father, she became a full-time homemaker (in the days they were called housewives). Mom knew hard work and tough economic times, but worked through it all with smiles and prayers. Her bottom line advice would be:

“Y’know, the more we sit around and plan and analyze and hope and expect, the less that happens. Because,” she would thump on her kitchen table, mocking my father’s pretend toughness, and say things that you could interpret to mean: “Because the game delays that result from energy expended could instead have been devoted and directed toward stepping up to the plate and swinging the bat.”     

(Mom was a big baseball fan.) 

Regardless of whether you are a photographer, accountant, publisher, undertaker, precision parts manufacturer, pizza parlor franchisee, shoe salesman, crime scene cleaner, mattress retailer, or social media marketing mogul, you can be sure that absolutely nothing works for your business if you don’t make it work. 

So get off your butt, get you glove and get in the game. If you prefer to be hoping and expecting, send in an application to become a monk, or join the White House staff. If you seek results and growth, listen to my mother who would tug your sleeve and tell you “Action speaks louder than hope.”

She would have concluded by saying something like:

“If there’s anything to count after you’re done with sheep and chickens, count your blessings, count your lucky stars, and count ON yourself. You and they (your blessings and stars) are all here and now . . . real. You and they are what you have. Make the most of you and them. And visit again soon.”

Thanks, Mom.

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

As a writer, designer, teacher, 

artist, architect, landscaper,

jewelry-maker, stylist or stage

performer, if you’re not

risking . . . you’re not

being honest!

With special thanks to author Mary DeMuth for the three great words: “Risk being unliked” which were featured in her article, “A Smart Approach to MEMOIR” in the June 2011 issue of The WRITER.

Those of us who create for a living, who own, operate, or manage creative businesses understand immediately what the “Risk being unliked” message is all about. And does it apply to professional selling too? Absolutely.

Whether we create with computers or paint brushes; with crafts supplies, hair, or music; with classrooms or pen and paper, or with the ways we communicate our sales messages, we must –as Ms. DeMuth so aptly puts it– “Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer,” she says, “you have a moral obligation to do this.”

I propose that truth-telling applies to all businesses, even the least creative.

When your focus, your branding, your website, your messages, your employees, and most importantly YOU are all about telling the truth as you understand it, you are setting yourself up to cultivate strengthened long-term high-trust relationships. Those who unlike you for it are not those you want to deal with anyway.

Honesty is (still) the best policy!

I’m not suggesting any limitations here. What’s the best way to express this idea to people who earn their keep with their creative talents? Could there be any greater and more meaningful statement than the following six words from Shakespeare?:

To thine own self be true.

When you believe heart and soul that the line, the dimension, the color, the musical note, the arrangement, the word choice, the emphasis is what your gut, your intuitive experience, says it needs to be, go with it and don’t waste time worrying about winning a popularity contest. People will judge your authenticity, not your masks or apologies.

For ALL business pursuits, not fibbing to or misleading customers, employees, associates, partners, referrers, investors, professional advisors,  lenders, and the various communities you serve is just one chapter of your build-a-better-business book. Leadership transparency is another. Honoring commitments is yet a third. 

Delivering exactly what you say you’re going to deliver –and more– exactly when you say you’re going to deliver it is the standard by which others will continuously measure your business performance.

There’s risk involved in all of this, but as with the mark of true entrepreneurship, the risk is always a reasonable one. We’re not talking about harnessing creative spirit here. In fact, if anything, the suggestion is to set it free, and to recognize that the results produced by an honest free spirit outperform those born of smoke and mirrors.

Don’t throw the tending to details, business conduct, and tight-fisted money management out with the baby’s bathwater simply for the sake of being more expressive in the products, services, and ideas you create. But do stop cowering away from being straight-ahead with your work and with all those you come into contact with every day.

Your behavior is of course your choice. Where do you think your reputation comes from?                                            

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Thank God It’s Monday!

“TGIM” is what separates entrepreneurs and leaders from the “TGIF” corporate suits and government flunkies.

If you’re not excited about starting each new workweek, remember that you’re an entrepreneur. God didn’t put you on Earth and help you get your business to the place it’s in, so you could whine and complain and blame and be a doom and gloom person. Well?

You are doing what you’re doing because:  

A) you have a good business idea (or inherited one) that you believe in, and

B) you have proven time and again in your life that you have the guts and gumption and instincts to make it all work.

So stay on top of it and keep making it work.

Easier said than done, says you? But the economy sucks, says you?

Yes, the economy sucks only slightly more than the narrow-minded, misdirected, inexperienced, pathetically incompetent leaders who have run our nation’s government into the economic quagmire that pulls like quicksand at the heels of every American small business.

The central issues are PRIORITIES and POLITICAL AGENDAS:

• Government preoccupation with globalization over —instead of— shoring up American job-creating entrepreneurial ventures.

• Government preoccupation with all things “green” over —instead of— facing the reality of continually growing unemployment lines fueled by skyrockerting gas prices and the resultant crunch on shipping, transportation, and food prices.

• Government preoccupation with “fairness” to everyone who slides into this country –legally or illegally makes no difference– because those people will be forever grateful and pay back government benefactors with their votes –legal or illegal makes no difference– instead of tightening and enforcing immigration laws.

• Government interference, over-regulation and unmerciful taxation of small businesses runs rampant instead of supporting and encouraging American businesses with meaningful tax incentives to create jobs to turn the economy.

Okay, so American Government leadership is clearly among the world’s worst, but you know what?

You can still make it work in your favor.

Here’s a quick 10-point checklist of ideas that may spark a winning action for you to make your ideas fly:

1. Read Leadership (the book) by Rudy Giuliani.

2. Take a rest day. Do something constructive, but keep your brain and body away from work for 24 hours.

3. Talk with two 70-year-olds and three 7-year-olds about what’s important in life.

4. Take some deep breaths, and build more of them into your daily existence.

5. Pray!

6. Recognize that your every move is a choice.

7. Offer to give a guest lecture or lead a Q & A session on business startup challenges at your local high school or nearby college.

8. Read two dozen assorted one-sentence Twitter posts. Think on them.

9. Take a walk on the beach or in the woods. Pay attention to what surrounds you.

10. Be thankful for all that you have instead of worrying about what you don’t have.

Time’s a wastin’

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Got a killer business?

Get a gumption transplant.

Why do some businesses make it so hard for customers to purchase their products and services? Who knows? Do you know? I don’t know. It’s beyond my ability to even imagine, yet companies that trumpet how “easy” they are –like “NOOK,”  Sirius Radio, Best Buy, cable TV companies– are convolutedly complicated, and user UNfriendly.

• Barnes & Noble makes a big deal of underscoring how “easy” it is to own and operate a NOOK electronic reader, and to be able to order books that are transmitted directly to the device, “easily.” It is not easy. Owning a NOOK requires you to read and agree to more ridiculous overkill statements than it takes to locate a Presidential birth certificate.
• Ordering books (yes, that you are paying for) is like arguing with an umpire. First off, books you do not want and would not order are planted on your new nook whether you want them or not. Secondly, one can only order NOOK books online. And that is a terrorizing experience. After being dragged through waves of selections you don’t want, what you click is what you’ve bought; no shopping cart; just pay! 
• Go into a Barnes & Noble retail store –even with your NOOK and all the legal ownership papers and try to order a NOOK book, you’ll likely get looked at as if you were from Jupiter. Third, I defy you to try spending your money without having to call the 800 number for the privilege of speaking with Customer Service (clueless about serving customers): these are people who can only follow scripts and put you in touch with a supervisor who can only follow scripts.
• And all of this is only IF you’re lucky enough to reach someone who speaks English, who then asks for your zip code, email address, tax records, where you lived when you were six-years-old, and next of kin. Do I sound annoyed? I threatened to throw my NOOK in the brook, so yeah, I guess “annoyed” works. And, yeah, I know I choose to feel annoyed!

Bottom Line: Buy a Kindle.

(And I get no special treatment from Amazon.)

Sirius Radio is equally annoying. Besides aggressive direct mail tactics, Sirius charges obscene rates for a lousy lineup of channels that they keep moving around. A great challenge while driving, trying to find a recently relocated channel.

You might as well be text messaging on the NJ Turnpike in between four 18-wheelers all going 75. Don’t be drinking coffee too!

Best Buy? <~~~ Go here for that story.

Cable TV companies win the “most obnoxious” award. Besides that you can’t even get any kind of supervisor on the phone, don’t try to explain your purchase desire without having to first answer a bombardment of questions about your personal life, your finances, your dog . . .

What’s missing here? Gumption.

Companies are giving up on their customers. They seem to have concluded that it’s more important to nail every customer for database exploitation and to make them jump through hoops to qualify to purchase, and then give them crummy quality for exorbitant prices.

The alternative of course is to simply be a stand-up, straight-ahead business.

What’s the rest of the story? Besides insensitive and unrealistic Customer Service and approaches to CRM, failing and status quo businesses are blaming the economy. If you are among these, here’s a message just for you:

“It’s not the economy , Stupid!”

It’s YOU. Change your attitude. Get a  gumption transplant. It’ll help you to get your glove and get back in the game. Sure, the economy sucks, but getting pulled down and under is your choice!

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Does your website sweep people

into boredom? Does it wallow in

self-aggrandizement?

Does it need a lobotomy?

I run across them every day. So do you — websites that put people to sleep faster than a week of watching C-Span (Okay, the Weather Channel maybe, for those who live inside “The Capitol Loop.”)

I get the feeling that the reasoning for these Hollywood-style overkill sick website productions –from some of the culprits who pay for them and probably close to all of those who produce them (because they get paid more)– goes something like this:

“Hey, it’s free advertising; we should take full advantage by putting in a tab for each of our 26 different color and style shirt buttons (or accounting services, or surgical procedures, or pizza toppings, or . . .)

“And then, when visitors click on any of those tabs, they’ll be delivered to a complete showroom smorgasbord of 472 applications for each of our 26 buttom colors and styles (or accounting services, or surgical procedures, or pizza toppings, or . . .)

“And then, we’ll give ’em our 183-page limited guarantee and return policy (or insurance reimbursement) requirements –in really small type of course, and in a rolling scroll window that’s just an inch high so it doesn’t take too much space and so it will give an instant ulcer to anyone looking to return to earlier verbiage that they may have passed over too quickly.

“And then, we’ll throw in 47 testimonial pages — mostly from cousins and neighbors, but who cares? We should have a few pages on why we’re “green” and some more on our “sustainability” efforts with recyclable buttons. Let’s put in maps and stuff in case anyone wants to find us, and how about a dozen pages on the history of our company since 1762? We could throw in a blog and a weekly puzzle to . . .”

It may be time to take

your reality temperature.

Websites have become burdensome. Many have lost touch with the very markets they seek to impress and influence. Others simply seem to reflect an inability to focus. No one accountant or surgeon or pizza parlor can be all things to all people. So back off. Rethink your message.

What is the one single main product or service message you want your target customers/clients/patients to see and hear? Can you spare visitors the company history that no doubt has great importance to your great great great grandfather’s uncle’s sister’s brother who founded the company. With apologies for abruptness: Nobody cares.

When a business or professional practice has a website that overwhelms, it actually UN-sells people. Visitors typically shake their heads and delete. They don’t want to know that the site sponsor can do everything under the sun. They want to know they’ve found a resource that specializes in what they need.

So, what’s the trick to be able to do that? My advice? Hire a professional writer. Forget about “SEO Experts” who will talk the dollars right out of your wallet, and the web designers who will represent your venture the way they think will win them an award, and don’t burden your staff with it. Get great content written. The rest is easy.

Like a resume, your website just needs to get prospective customers, clients and patients to your door on on your phone or in your in box. Fewer than 5% of all websites actually make significant sales.

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Are you a nice guy?

If you are so savagely money-hungry that you’ve stopped functioning like a human, you may indeed finish first financially . . . but you’ll be wasting away your life in the process. People will split into two camps: those with value to offer who cross the street to avoid you, and those who leach onto you, hopeful of getting their hands in your pockets.

“Happiness,” we’re told,

“runs in a circular motion” and 

“life is just a little boat upon the sea”

(With thanks to ’60s songster Donovan).

Well, acquiring and stashing cash may well be what fuels your fire and keeps you running, but little boats upon the sea capsize quickly if they’re anchored off shore in the middle of a storm, economic or otherwise — especially if you’re sitting below deck rolling your dimes and nickles. (And without a snorkel?) Glub, glub!

“Yeah,” you say, “well that sounds good, but reality is my family’s gotta eat and I have a mortgage and car and stuff to pay for, and if I don’t focus on making money, my business goes down the tubes, then what?”

Someone told me today that she quit smoking “cold turkey” after years of convincing herself “it would be too hard to quit. I finally realized,” she said, “that it would be a lot harder to die of cancer.” You don’t need to be addicted to your business just because you fear bankruptcy. A bankrupt body and a bankrupt family are far worse consequences.

No, I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but–as both an ex-smoker and ex-money-chaser–I can only say that I am happier, healthier, and wiser now than I have been since college athlete days (a  l-o-n-g  time). Money struggles are much easier to contend with when you can make the decision to downsize your lifestyle.

That action alone, in fact, enables some fantastically rewarding experiences that would otherwise never have come by fighting to stay living a plastic existence at the top of the financial ladder.

“Like what?” you might ask. “What benefits can there possibly be from giving up a big-bucks high life?”

Start with drastically increased odds for:

• A much-enhanced family life

• More friends and more meaningful friendships

• Increased numbers and types of opportunities to grow as a person,

• Support systems to be physically and emotionally healthier

• Increased awarenesses that facilitate being able to help others along the way

These are just a few of the hidden benefits. There comes a point where each of us must draw lines in the sand for our SELVES, and decide which roads to take. When that time comes –or when you decide to make it happen– choose your self and your loved ones first.

Money can put you there if you’re here,

but it can’t buy a new you or a new them.

You are undoubtedly a nicer person than you probably give yourself credit for. Don’t be afraid of letting the nice you rise to the surface more. And –since life isn’t football or boxing or war– don’t think for one minute that nice guys finish anywhere except first.

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 931.854.0474

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

An open letter to the President . . .

CONGRATULATIONS, Mr. Obama,

for a job well done.

Now let’s get down to business!

Ah, at last. For what appears to many to be the first time since assuming the Presidency, you have actually acted in what most of the world’s eyes and ears would surely agree to be a “Presidential manner.” You have risen to the task of delivering a non-political Presidential attitude. Thank you. It’s a burst of fresh air.

Your “watch” has brought a piece of justice to America. Thank you!

It is time now for you, personally (and Presidentially), to bring justice to America’s entrepreneurs . . . to recognize and accept that it is SMALL business that ultimately holds the key to turning around this miserable economy, which many small business owners feel your political agenda has been insensitively fueling.

You stated today:

“Today we have been reminded as a

   nation, there is nothing we can’t do.”

Your statement no doubt includes being able to rise above political campaign agendas that have fostered one unrealistic attempt after another to turn the economy around. And I don’t think anyone faults you for trying.

But, clearly, you have not respected entrepreneurial small business and professional practice owners and operators and managers. Your economic recovery pretenses have done nothing except increase taxpayer burdens -especially for small business– and have only served to mushroom the federal deficit.

Your statement would also seem to include being able to follow the footprints of history in stimulating —instead of bumbling corporate giants and incompetent government agencies— small entrepreneurial business startups.

Surely you have the proof of this wisdom. You need look no further than the genuine job-creation pathways carved out by new small business enterprises. It is there that you will find true economic growth.

Americans are universally proud today of the military intelligence and guts it took to destroy the evil leader of the terrorist world.

But we continue to remain hopelessly (and needlessly, many believe) bogged down in this economic quagmire.

We are paying more than we should have to pay at the gas pump. This means that we are having to charge customers, clients, and patients more than we want to for shipping and transportation. And higher shipping costs mean higher food prices. Of course you know this. But you’ve been trying to put out the fire with gasoline!

These are not whining complaints. But the solution –contrary to your recent suggestion– is NOT to get a more fuel-efficient car. It is also NOT to stop using FedEx and UPS in favor of the less expensive (and totally incompetent) US Postal Service. Neither is the solution to eat more junk food because it’s cheaper. 

Many of us who own and run small businesses, Mr. Obama, are overtaxed and over-regulated to the point of bankruptcy. Instead of being free to innovate and lead the way (as in all economic turnarounds), we are forced to follow those who have no business sense, understanding, or experience . . . and who are unwilling to seek it!

Can we now finally sit down and talk about politically-UNencumbered, real and genuine tax incentives that encourage new small businesses to create new jobs and reward them for succeeding?

Can we do this with real small business leaders — NOT the corporate executive-laden SBA, or government Economic Development groups, or professorial think-tanks?

Can we do it now? Are you willing to take a reasonable entrepreneurial risk and sit down with some real small business people? Will you listen instead of defend? Will you process instead of preach? Will you give America’s 30 million small businesses genuine incentives and a free hand to go to work to solve the economy puzzle? 

America loves that the first step behind the promise of rooting out terrorism has at long last been honored. Now it’s time to return the economy–the issue that undermines all others— to the point that allows people to regain their dignity and self-respect without reliance on government handouts and token pats on the head.    

We have earned more than lip service, Mr. Obama.

Can we do it? Can we do it now? 

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Going under

and around

business problems

guarantees no solution.

Unless you tackle troublesome issues head-on, answer questions and respond to your messages promptly, you can be sure they’ll still be around on your next visit, and will no doubt have gathered velocity, weight, and momentum while awaiting your return.

Okay, easier said than done, right? Well sure, if you choose to make it hard on yourself. You can be certain that if you consciously or unconsciously choose for something to be hard, it will be. “Yes, but…” you start to reply. Don’t choose to “yes-but”; choose instead to get on with solving the problem.

Then, no matter which way the chips fall, the next step is to choose to get over it! (Because dwelling on what did or didn’t happen is itself a problem –an interruption– and can become worse than the original.)

There is no time in either life or business to dwell on what did or didn’t happen. We all root for teams that lose, but by mentally and emotionally hanging on to a loss, we actively set ourselves up to be losers ourselves. Wishing and hoping are childhood fantasies that accomplish nothing. Only action speaks.

Only by taking action steps can we expect to have the possibility of a favorable outcome.

“Well,” says you, “I can’t always jump on every problem that comes along. It’s too interruptive. And I already have too many interruptions to deal with every day!”

In case you’ve somehow missed what I’m about to say in response, let me be loud and clear about it:

BUSINESS LIFE . . . entrepreneurship, management, ownership, partnership, counseling and consulting, investing and lending, designing, inventing, innovating, creating, being engaged with any form of business . . . IS: One big interruption after another. But it’s why you get the big bucks!

One big interruption after another. People knock on your wall, waltz into your workspace, call you on the phone, slip notes under your door, send you 347,000 emails a day, throw pebbles (bricks?) at your window. They step up to your breakfast table, lunch table, dinner table, meeting table, and call to you under the bathroom stall.

Sometimes it seems that all of these things are happening at once. It’s your job to separate, sort out, prioritize and respond. And even as you perform these functions, yet more interruptions are bound to occur. This is also why we all need some time away once in awhile.

Small business owners notoriously deal best with turning interruptive problems into productive opportunities. Corporate types expend all their energy analyzing every interruption that comes along. They use all forms of committees and groups and teams to do this, but analysis paralysis is the byproduct.

Got Government? Government sleeps and sweeps stuff under rugs hoping it will just go away, or that someone else can solve the problem at hand so that government can step into the spotlight and take the credit. When everything’s under the rug, nothing is really “interruptive.”  The rug just gets hilly in spots. And productive, it ain’t!  

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

BEING TOO GRATEFUL?

Is there such a thing!

The only person who finds it annoying to hear you say “Thank You” over and over is someone who is too self-absorbed to routinely express appreciation, or just too ignorant to consider it, or who is insecure about speaking up. Many people fear being too “overkill” thankful. There is no such thing.

It’s a well known fact that human beings value and respond positively to “Thank You!” especially when it’s delivered sincerely. Don’t you? Think about it. How much can you say it? It’s never too much. Point to one single instance in the world in all of history where someone has died from being too grateful.

So how can you best cultivate all these positive responses in your personal, professional and business lives?

By letting more people know more often how much you appreciate their efforts on your behalf, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

Besides making them feel good, you’ll get more smiles and better service.

Is there anyone reading this who would not enjoy getting more smiles and better service? Really.

So start practicing when you wake up in the morning. In the bathroom mirror. To your spouse and kids. With neighbors. With fellow commuters, associates and employees, partners, advisors, investors, lenders, referrers, suppliers, vendors, visiting sales reps, OF COURSE CUSTOMERS. (Being continually grateful is the highest form of branding!) Thank the guy who fills your water glass at lunch.

You get it, right? Thank you.

Make it as much of a habit as brushing your teeth and fastening your seatbelt. It really is not hard. Simply prove to yourself how smart your brain is, and just choose it! (Thank you!)

Okay, says you, you’re just looking for work. Guess what’s the fastest way to make a positive impression to give yourself the competitive edge boost in your job search? A prospective employer (or client) takes you to lunch to size you up –to make sure you know where the napkin goes, and that you don’t order whiskey shots with your eggsalad sandwich.

You thank the maitre de or hostess, the waiter or waitress with every table visit, the bus boy who cleans off the table, anyone and everyone. If it doesn’t help you get a job offer, the prospect isn’t worthy of your talents and upbeat personality (Go back to the first sentence at the top of this post to see what you’ve got; be glad for not working there).

Oh, and while thank you’s will certainly not replace raises, bonuses, 401ks, healthcare plans and insurance coverage any time soon, you’ll be surprised how your increased use of them with employees will have the effect of minimizing these kinds of concerns as contentious issues, and there’s no better way to motivate your troops!

Try just 10 more thank you’s a day for one week, and see what happens.

You’ll thank yourself.

Then what?

What’s next?

Hmmm, well maybe think about trying “Please” more often?

. . . Hey, thank you! 

                           

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 931.854.0474

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!