Business Decision Time:

COMPRESSION or EXPANSION?

Sometimes it’s a clear-cut conscious decision. Other times, it’s like deciding to eat more or eat less depending on your mood, the notches on your belt and what’s put on the table in front of you.

But the bottom line is that –in business–  while many factors and variables need to be weighed, too much time is often wasted deliberating, which serves to host that dreaded government disease: “Analysis Paralysis” . . . where nothing ever gets done, or even decided.

When you look carefully at the downside possibilities of either a business expansion or compression option (vs. potential rewards) –and determine that the risk involved is reasonable— AND when you see a clear path for taking a first step: take the damn first step!

If it doesn’t seem to be working as you imagined, make adjustments — to the path and/or your imagination.

Change The Towel!

Are you convinced the direction is right? Whether you answer yes or no (unless you see insurmountable financial or legal odds stacking up), don’t be so quick to throw in the towel when something goes awry. Instead, change the towel!

What do you learn from listening (which needs to be 80% of the time) to what your existing and prospective customers say about the towel? What’s their take on the changes you make in product or service or facility or staff or pricing or value?

Take away what you hear and learn and adjust the size, and/or the shape, and/or the color, and/or the consistency . . . then take a second step.

“Nobody counts

the number of ads you run;

they just remember

the impression you make.”

— William Bernbach, All-Time Madison Avenue Ad Agency Guru

[With special thanks for the reminder and source to @DigitalShawn on Twitter]

And get yourself in stride for what may turn out to be an endless road of adjustments. While government decision-makers (and competitors of the same mindset) assess and evaluate and review and consensus- seek and never move forward, you can be light-years ahead.

Go for it! It’s all a matter of choice. And the choice to stand still, or to shrink or expand your business is always yours! Don’t belabor it. Be FEARLESS! Trust yourself.

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

Why Millennials and salespeople 

need to NOT  start every response 

with “So…” and then– to top it off

— fail to answer what’s asked. If

you’re in the job market, or a sales

presentation, it would be like not

 taking a shower for a few weeks!

Q. Who is your very best friend?

A.  So… Jeremy and Charlie and Kim and Sheila are the people I see most often.

———————

Q. What was your Mother’s most important advice?

A.  So… my Mother always made me eat all my cereal.

———————

Q. When did you leave the house today?

A.  So… I never actually went home last night, y’know.

———————

Q. Where do you work?

A.  So… my company is in the city and yesterday I had to drive in.

———————

Q. Why did you do that?

A. So… I think there are lots of ways people can respond.

———————

Q. How much money is in your pocket?

A.  So… my wallet is in the car.

Go ahead and ask a reasonable fact-fetching question of one of the 80 million people born between 1977 and 2000.  The odds are good that –no matter how specific your inquiry may be– the answer these days often starts out with “So…” and then proceeds to not give a direct answer.

Do these “So…” first-responders imply disinterest? Evasiveness? Insecurity? Incompetence? Un-socialability? Dumbness? Distrust? Early dementia? Lack of self-esteem? Poor listening skills? Disinterest? Societal disconnect? Snobbishness? Perhaps some. Perhaps all.

First of all, according to Jane Solomon’s post on DICTIONARY.com, “So” can be used as an adverb, a conjunction, a pronoun, an interjection, or an adjective. And the “spread” of it into popular use today as a sentence opener, especially among young people, is “probably due to the tech boom” and specifically, “programmers,” according to NPR’s Geoff Nunberg. The GRAMMARLY Blog suggests Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is partly to blame for “notoriously using ‘So…’ to start sentences.”

It’s been suggested that “So…” is the new “Um…” or “Uh…” or “Er…” nervous hesitancy used to fill the verbal air while momentarily thinking about what to say prior to responding, but I am doubtful. “Um” and “Uh” and “Er” are simply sounds.

“So” is an actual word. It is a connecting word. It is not a question/ answer connecting word. It is a cause-and-effect connecting word, and is used to connect a thought, word, or action with a consequence.

A BBC host says that at the beginning of a (non-consequential) sentence, using the word “So” is an attempt “to try to sound important” and “intellectual.” A popular psychologist calls it a “weasel word” used to “avoid giving a straight answer.” Not a good practice for any business, and especially for small business, which is much more vulnerable to “beating around the bush” than corporate types who often seem to thrive on being indirect.

FAST COMPANY says “So…” at the beginning of an answer “Insults your audience… Undermines your credibility… and Demonstrates discomfort with the subject matter.”

Mark Mason in The SPECTATOR, says it’s due to “accommodation” because we try to be part of groups and often simply do and say things that others in the group do and say. It, he says, “spreads like the flu.” He cleverly ends his (“It’s SO Annoying”) post  on the subject with:

“As ye so, so shall ye reap”

So it’s contagious! Some top TV news analysts have begun integrating the (shall we call it) evasiveness into their summary statements. And it’s inching it’s way into the 40+ crowd. Personally, I have no problem with starting a sentence with “So…” unless it’s the beginning of a sentence that is answering a direct question.

Bottom Line: If someone in a job interview or “sale size-up” meeting says, “So, tell me about your (or the product/service) background, you might consider it an endearing attempt to help you feel comfortable, but if you respond (or answer ANY direct question) by starting with “So…” your job (or sale) prospects may very well be doomed. It can easily be received in the same fashion as you folding your arms and staring at the door! Not giving a straight, direct answer can be taken as a mixed message.

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

Don’t trip over your own face!

7 Thoughts to Stimulate Your

Small Business Breakthrough Now

Sometimes in our hurry to the finish line, we become obsessively focused on our destination and crumble into a helpless heap that competitors simply hop or step over as they race past. How can we best avoid this common catastrophe? Here’s some of what I’ve learned:

1. Even if you’re on the one-yard line, STOP seeing yourself dancing around the goalpost. Pay attention instead to your feet. Zone your brain into the immediate breath you are taking, right now, right this very moment of high expectation. Expectations, let us remember, breed disappointment. SOLUTION: Paying attention to your inhale and exhale forces you to concentrate on and make the most of every passing moment AS IT HAPPENS!

2. When your mind is in the “here and now,” there’s no room for dwelling on past attempts that failed or for worrying about future events.There is only the present moment. And that present moment is where you excel! Isn’t it? Of course it is. Think about it.

3. Excuses don’t cut it! Trying to explain your way out of failure that occurred because you lost contact with your present-moment breathing? That simply wastes more present precious-life moments.

4. It doesn’t hurt to constructively review and assess how you went wrong, but it hurts deeply when you choose to let your mind wander off into a place of dwelling on what happened and what you should have done. SOLUTION: Instead, take some deep breaths. Reconnect with the here and now . . . what you are actually doing. And move forward.

5. The pervasive problem with academia thought patterns that all of us are taught from grade school through PhD studies is the enormous resistance to truth and reality — the pursuit of what I’ve often called “analysis paralysis” that so embodies and emboldens the ranting and raving of so many unrealistic faculty ranks that blanket our campuses, and unfortunately tend even to infiltrate elementary school innocence.

6. More time and energy is wasted trying to figure out approaches to problem situations (based on history, available data, Past performances, new analytics, etc.) instead of simply approaching problem situations, recognizing them as opportunities, taking action, and making adjustments. What difference does it make “who did what when” if you’re confronted with the need to survive. Many don’t realize it and many dismiss the reality, but my educated best guess is that most small business enterprises are in a constant state of needing to survive. SOLUTION: Even if you’re not one, think like an entrepreneur!

7. The face of your business is what the world sees. It’s what you show others all day every day. How can you expect to be in touch with the impressions you make on others when you are consumed with what you did or didn’t do yesterday or immobilized by worrying over what tomorrow will bring? SOLUTION: Look in the mirror and talk to yourself more. Remind yourself of the real you — what’s in your gut. Then work harder, not smarter!

Concentrate on what you are doing each moment as much as you possibly can, and work at returning your mind there as often as you can. Deep breathing helps. Being committed to exhilarating customers instead of just “satisfying” them helps. When you pay attention to where your feet are and not the finish line, you’ll achieve more, more often, and avoid tripping over your own face.

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

Peoplepreneurs

Regardless of your career, your career interests, your day-to-day pursuits, your life circumstances . . . regardless of how rich or poor you are, how much or little you are loved, or love, how educated or intuitive or salesy you are . . . regardless of whether you are a small business owner or manager or a government or corporate muckity-muck, and whether you’re a doctor, nurse, lawyer, accountant, grave-digger, tire-changer, astronaut, roofer, artist, teacher, or hamburger flipper:

You need to think like an entrepreneur.

You don’t need to BE an entrepreneur. In fact, most who think they are, probably are not.

Thinking like an entrepreneur translates to taking more reasonable risks.

It means recognizing the expertise you lack, accepting that, and then surrounding yourself with those who can bring those missing links to the table.

It means staying focused on making your ideas work, not on making money. As you get closer to making your ideas work, the money will simply come to you; it will appear seemingly out of nowhere. If you pursue money, your ideas will fail. This conclusion comes from a gazillion tons of experience. Need examples? Try me. Call the number below. No strings attached. I’m happy to share what I’ve learned the hard way.

Thinking like an entrepreneur is taking steps on your own behalf instead of waiting for opportunities to come to you.

Thinking like an entrepreneur requires endless testing of your ideas.

It holds out the expectation that you will fall all over yourself to delight (not just service) your every customer, and that you will constantly solicit the customer feedback you need to adjust, adapt, and adjust        again.

Does it matter if your “customer” is a patient or patient family, a client, someone paying you for a service or   a product, rich or poor, with three eyes or one, old or young? Of course not.

Entrepreneurs, true entrepreneurs, are passionate about everything they do, every day of the week. But they  are also realistic enough to recognize when their passion outstrips the ability to make their ideas work, they will not go down with the ship!

Is this walking a thin line? Not if it’s a reasonable and realistic line to start with (in other words, you’re not  “betting the farm” to get where you want to go). When something doesn’t work, you take away what you learned and start out in a new direction making the most of that experience.

Does that remind you of life? Well, how about that? So, how far away from thinking like an entrepreneur has your brain strayed?

Is it time to be a peoplepreneur?

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

DEAR BOSS:

What can the matter be?

Gallup Research says odds are that your

employees may be costing you a

lot more than you think.

How so?

Fewer than a third of employees , says Gallup, are “Actively Engaged” with their work! (Does that furrow your brow?)

And more than half are “Disengaged” from their work! One out of five is, in fact, Actively Disengaged! (Does that make you snort?)

If you think it’s not true, maybe it’s because some of your people are just good actors! (Does that make you applaud as the cash falls from your pockets?)

But guess what? YOU are the boss. YOU are responsible. You can delegate authority, but you canNOT delegate responsibility.

Bosses who try to “pass the buck” inevitably fail. Bosses, however, who accept full responsibility and who lead by leading instead of by telling, who make genuine ongoing efforts to create a bond with their employees are the ones who help ensure and foster active employee commitment and –in the process– help ensure and foster black ink on their organizations bottom line!

So where do you start?

You start with the decision to start. This is a typically easy and quick step. You either want to be a better leader or you don’t.

Assuming your screen-tapping fingers are still capable of the task, START with a WRITTEN-ON-PAPER-WITH-A-PEN goal of where you’d like to end up, and if your goal statement is ever to work, it MUST be:

Specific       Realistic      Flexible     Due-Dated

If you stick to working through this in any meaningful way and steer clear of attempting shortcuts, this is a typically hard and slow process. But don’t be discouraged, the harder you work at this, the better your odds for success.

Next, review your goal statement at least daily. Sometimes hourly is necessary. Change it as you open new doors, uncover new problems, discover new directions, meet new people, discover new techniques. Remember, a key criteria is flexibility . . . a sudden storm can quickly disrupt a leisurely canoe trip and force a change in direction. Unexpected removal of a roadblock can shorten and speed up a long drive. When you get this far, check out: HOW to make your goals work.

BUT

Believe it or not, don’t share your goals with anyone else who doesn’t also have written goals, or who isn’t working with you on a shared goal. Why? Many people are either consciously or unconsciously invested in seeing others around them who strive to succeed, become failures. Doubt this at your own peril.

Assuming you’ve kept your homework out of the dog’s mouth and actually done what you’ve accepted as necessary, and are getting into the swing of real handwritten-on-paper goals that are flexible, realistic, specific and due-dated, and that you are constantly upgrading them, and carrying them with you all the time and reviewing them as often as you check your wristwatch or smartphone messages, you need to start teaching your people to do the same thing for themselves.

Start them out with a deeeeep breath!

THAT process is a good beginning. But it can only start if YOU start!

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

Cold Calls Jolt Business

With FEARLESS! Reality

Love it or hate it, there is nothing like a bunch of cold sales calls to snap a ho-hum corporate or entrepreneurial business attitude into a realm of FEARLESS! reality. (Sorry, had to sneak in the link to my big project!)

It’s the place where the proverbial rubber meets the road, but typically gets dismissed as trivial, or “jittery” or time-wasting (“Other people are paid to do that!”). It’s oh so easy to wave it away with comments like: “I already did that stuff” or “I’m way past that” or “who needs it?”… or some other lame excuse.

But truth is that –something like a cold shower– it’s a great wake-up experience, a terrific way to recharge batteries, and it will definitely flash you back to what’s really important in business: HOW you communicate with a prospect to turn her or him into a grateful and loyal customer.

This does not happen with marketing automation.

It does not happen via email.

It does not happen on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook.

It doesn’t happen with clever advertising or cataclysmic branding lines.

Those may all be contributing factors that lead up to a purchase decision, but –in the end– it happens in the flesh, in person or on the phone, or through a referral from someone who’s been sold in person or on the phone. It often occurs when an online-generated order is easily and pleasantly placed — or bungled. A prospect becomes a customer when perceived value of your product or service rises to the surface.

If your marketing program is not delivering the sales you believe are possible, lead your support team to the sidewalk and make cold calls. Have them all make cold calls. Be reminded of the importance of listening 80% of the time, of addressing energy to the prospect’s concerns, issues, questions, observations, not yours. If your team needs some refresher points or sales training first, do it. Or bite the bullet and recruit some outside help. A fun/challenge attitude helps!

Then talk about the process, about what happened with each encounter, about the time and effort involved, and start to adjust your sales program and approach to reflect what you and your team learn from the experience . . . 2-3 days of pounding the pavement will be well spent, even as it may seem wasteful.

The best time to put this exercise to work is when things aren’t working the way you think they should. Can you and your team spare the time? The next question is the answer: Can you spare the lost or inadequate sales? Remember when you strip away all the decorations, the reason for being in business is to engage and nurture and please your customers. And even when this consciousness is present, there’s a tendency to overlook street smarts learning.

Cold sales call selling is like an electric jolt reminder. And if you stay open-minded and pay hard attention to what you and others learn from the process, your business will grow.

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

What will you do with

your time this year?

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US          931.854.0474

How to Run a Successful

Coaching Business from Home:

Life Beyond The Cubicle

by Peggy Salvatore

This is re-posted from Evercoach (11/18/15), with thanks to Ajit Nawalkha and the Evercoach team.

Did corporate mergers and acquisitions leave you out in the world to fend for yourself? That’s great! You’ve already got the personal discipline and structure to succeed on your own.

Coaches and consultants fresh from inside a large organization have a lot to offer new clients. You have a depth of experience and knowledge that only your years in the hallowed halls of a corporate enterprise can provide.

This could be the start of something big.

At first, you might find the cubicle-less-ness of your world gives you a feeling of freedom that is more illusory than real. If a large company isn’t imposing a schedule on you, you need to do it for yourself to realize your full potential.

As a self-employed businesswoman, I have been able to garden when the weather is lovely on Tuesday at 10 a.m., take walks at 2:30 in the afternoon just to stretch and enjoy the sunshine, attend school functions in the middle of the day to see my son perform in a toga, go to a yoga class two mornings a week and even disappear for long weekends. So, I’m here to tell you that yes, it’s possible to work from Maui and enjoy the view of the beach as long as you remember you are running a business to pay for it.

Here are 10 tips for running a coaching business

from home that separate the pros from the posers:

1) Set aside dedicated office space

• Make this space every bit as free from personal artifacts as your corporate cubicle. Pics of the spouse and kids are okay, but put the toy box in another room.
• The sooner you can get out of the corner of your bedroom and into a professional room of your own, the better. You can write off your home office space as long as you aren’t using a desk and computer that you share with your kids in the family room; talk to your accountant.

2) Update your equipment and software

• You are your own tech department now.
• Make sure you are running the programs and have the applications that your customers and clients are using. You don’t want to be frivolous with your spending during your startup, but this is a very good place to be investing your limited funds in your home business.
• Consider upgrades as an ongoing business expense. Again, this is the cost of doing business so keep receipts for your accountant.

3) Make a daily schedule and stick to it

• Block out a big, uninterrupted chunk of time each day to do your most demanding and important work.
• Then limit emails to a specific time slot and don’t get sucked into all-day IM sessions with your besties.

4) Get dressed for work

• Nothing elaborate here. You can leave grandma’s diamond earrings in their box, but go to the trouble to put on a clean shirt and jeans in the spirit of dress-down Friday.
• It affects your attitude and reminds you that you aren’t on vacation.
• Your office should be a no-jammie zone to keep your head in the game. (Although I’ll admit I’ve reported to work sick or exhausted in my jammies a few times!)

5) Close the office door at the end of the day

• Take time to enjoy uninterrupted family dinnertime or personal time.
• Physically closing a door defines a mental boundary, too. So shut the door and mentally punch out when your work is through.

6) Network locally

• There’s nothing like human contact to keep you grounded.
• Regularly get out of your home office and stay connected to other professionals. If you work by yourself, make sure you network so you can look into some else’s eyeballs occasionally and to stay current with trends and best practices.
• Take a class. Join a local professional organization. Regularly schedule networking time with colleagues.

7) Connect online

• Attend professional webinars to stay current in your field.
• Join LinkedIn groups or professional forums related to coaching. Connect and learn from other professionals by participating in masterminds.
• The opportunity to learn from other coaches and trainers at the top of their game has never been easier. Take full advantage of it.

8) Hire caregivers

• Hire a babysitter if you are responsible for young kids during the workday. This reminds you that you are at work and earning a living, especially when paying for child care. Extend this to caring for very ill family members.
• As a client, there is nothing more annoying than realizing that the attention, care and time that you are paying for is divided between you and a three year old who wants more Cheerios.

9) Be flexible

• You may have to work 24/7 in the global economy. Restricting your day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your time zone is probably unrealistic if you need to respond to a client five time zones away.
• In the global economy “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere”.
• This rule isn’t in conflict with Rule #5, but an expansion of it. Rules and boundaries are good for keeping yourself on a schedule, but adjusting to your clients’ needs is even better.

I’ve trained online classes with a German company from my home office in the Eastern U.S. and it required some flexibility on my part. I’ve also facilitated classes in a nursing home at midnight because the third shift deserves stress management skills as much- or more!- as day shift. It doesn’t happen every day, but my business calls on me to meet the needs of a global 24/7 workforce.

10) Pay for professional services

• Make a few wise investments in your business by paying for accounting and legal services.
• Accountants and lawyers understand tax rules and good contract language for agreements. In many cases, you will only use their services a few times or once a year, but it is money well spent.
• A good accountant who specializes in small business can tell you about important tax write-offs and help you make good decisions about whether to buy or lease equipment, the best allocation of retirement savings and other advice that will save you far more than you spend. A lawyer can help you write good contract language for getting paid and for defining your relationships with your clients.

Starting your own successful coaching business takes discipline and time to transition from a conventional job. However, with a little planning you will find that it is worth the effort to put some rules and structure around your new enterprise.

When you establish a few boundaries, your personal life will benefit from the freedom you have on your time off, and your clients will benefit from your undivided attention during your working hours.

# # #

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Click on “About Peggy” tab above

peggy@businessworks.US

R  E  A  L   C  H  A  N  G  E

DOESN’T TAKE TIME.

IT JUST HAPPENS!

And the reason for such thought diversity between what small business represents and upholds, and the self-aggrandizing departure words of America’s Speaker of The House today has to do with the same reason small business has been under constant blindside attack by the government since 2008.

. . . our federal government is devotedly invested in management by consensus, where everyone involved must agree at least somewhat with every decision. This approach to problem-solving and getting things done has been religiously adhered to by all U.S. Government agencies. It has infiltrated the management behaviors of many if not most in funding-sponge academia, and in the upper ranks of many if not most failing lethargy-infested corporations.

Consensus-seeking management theory (like other “dead soldiers” e.g., Theory A and Theory Z and group hugs) might have solved problems and gotten things done decades ago in the “Hippy” years of the 1960s and 70s. But they simply do not work any longer in today’s world.

“Entrepreneurialism” and small business innovation –which thrive on maintaining a sense of urgency and taking REASONABLE risks– continue to be the true solution-directions that work. Yet they are consistently undermined by shortsighted government agencies that are relentlessly invested in maintaining the status quo.

Waiting for change instead of making change may have a place in history, but can no longer be tolerated as a modus operandi. There just is no time for such nonsense as waiting. ENTREPRENEURS ARE THE AGENTS OF CHANGE!

We live in a world of impatience.

Forward motion that plods

is backward motion.

When small business and entrepreneurs are punished with over-burdening taxes and unnecessary government rule and regulation intrusions designed to do nothing except further the cause of interventionist government in our lives, it proves itself more inadequate and less representative of the reasons it exists every day . . . in fact, every minute.

As the government continues to prove it’s own inadequacy, misguidance, and misdirection that have led to outright thievery of freedom, to outright undermining of our very economy (and knowing our economy is literally and unarguably dependent on small business growth and development), it is indeed time for change.

But REAL change–the kind that happens now, the kind that makes a difference, the kind that underscores the life/liberty/pursuit of happiness foundation of our country must be encouraged, not squashed, not stepped on, not bidden good riddance. It must be nurtured.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs need to get their heads out of the sand and stars long enough to realize their sand and stars are being eroded by slow, gradual, plodding change fostered by years of government intrusions and restrictions on small business growth and development.

It’s time to acknowledge that staying immersed in the sand and stars actually serves to allow, actually encourage and reward long-term politicking — politicking intentionally aimed at lining political pockets and underwriting meaningless wasteful programs that create greater business, family, and individual dependency. It does this by not paying attention to what’s swirling around the rest of you while your head is focused on business growth and development.

It’s easy to pick your pocket while you’re

bent over, star-gazing through a telescope.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners can no longer afford to feign ignorance or not take action . . . even if it’s simply speaking up and out more to others. Unless some changes happen quicker, our small business-dependent economy is destined for extinction. If you rent your workspace, there surely comes a time when you need to tell the landlord about a water leak or temperature control. Responsiveness is the entrepreneurial key to success. It’s time to step up to the plate and go to bat for CHANGE.

ADDENDUM EXCERPT FROM THIS BLOG (August, 2011 !):

It means taking just long enough to visit or write a couple of letters or emails to politicians about why you think small business matters. Take just enough time to support those who support your ideas about why small business matters. Why? Because small business does matter. And because it matters that we all step up!

Imagine the impact: 

THIRTY MILLION

(Estimated Total U.S. Small Business Owners)

visits and letters and emails calling attention to the economic recovery role of small business and why government must invest in small business –not with more wasted cash handouts– with tax incentives for innovation and tax incentives for job creation.

# # #

Keep your head cool and your feet warm . . . and thanks for your visit!

OPEN MINDS OPEN DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

hal@businessworks.US

Your Role In History As An Entrepreneur

EDUCATION and TRAINING

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY by Peggy Salvatore

Over the last few weeks, we discussed the knowledge worker, the learning organization and human capital. All these concepts are built on this one essential tool which is the basic education and formalized training of yourself and your team.

“Real value” starts with solid foundational learning that begins almost at birth because there is so much to know, and we now finally know so much more about how we learn.

Real physical learning —beyond mother, father, sibling and caregiver learning— usually begins in preschool and is enhanced by formal elementary school or home school teaching of young children. By the time young teens enter high education, their paths are often clear.

In the U.S., as children grow into the teen years, the opportunities begin to splinter into specializations in the forms of publicly-funded magnet and alternative schools –and for those who can afford it, private schools– where education is usually more competitive and tracked toward certain university programs.

Some foundational learning can be had online but most still exists almost entirely in a physical setting or classroom building.

But, aha! Much university learning is moving more online which means that both the entrepreneur and his or her team may have specialized learning opportunities to be shared via a global online university.

Private, for-profit online universities often do not have the rigorous entry requirements of a physical university, but the coursework is comparable.

Ongoing adult learning is facilitated through the workplace, often supported by the workplace (or self-driven) using free, non-degree materials available through organizations online.

Nothing speaks more loudly about the way humans seek fulfillment and self-actualization than the proliferation of for-profit online universities, professionally sponsored educational forums and classes, and private businesses dedicated to providing educational products for personal and professional development.

Many private corporations (like the two examples cited below) have been paving the way in recent years with their own in-house proprietary universities:

• In Delaware — parented by BURRIS LOGISTICS the leader in refrigerated trucking services, BURRIS UNIVERSITY — uses community college facilities near its headquarters to teach courses on personal and professional development (including communication and motivation skills) to regular gatherings of managers from BURRIS offices nationwide.
• In New Jersey — 9-State commercial cleaning industry leader HEITS Building Services www.HEITS.com uses it’s own online HEITS UNIVERSITY curriculum to train and certify all employees in subjects like Eco-friendly customer care, bacterial health cleaning, regulation compliance cleaning and maintenance, and equipment and chemical safety . . . and to reinforce franchise owner coaching programs.

In a knowledge-based economy, workers are lifelong learners and achievers.

As an entrepreneur, you will be a lifelong learner absorbing massive amounts of information coming at you. Some of your education will be used just to give yourself and your organization the ability to sort and curate information coming at you in order to more effectively hone in on what’s relevant for driving your own business forward.

Take advantage of being an educated consumer of lifelong learning. That mindset allows you to intelligently filter and absorb the onslaught of information you need to be a true entrepreneurial leader, and to operate effectively in the New Economy.

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C’mon back FRIDAY 10/16 for Day 29  —

ENTREPRENEURIAL HEALTH & WELLNESS. How’s yours?

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For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

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Hal@Businessworks.US      Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

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