No wonder we feel like

drops in the bucket

with all this

trickle-down spending!

I mean where do we business owner types get our ideas? Sometimes from bits and pieces of what others say and do, and sometimes from opportunities that emerge or smack us in the mouth when we’re not looking. The steady bombardment of media drivel and twisted reports of government greatness can make us stop in our tracks.

We start to think, hey, maybe things aren’t so bad after all. Maybe gas prices will stand still and small business tax incentives for job creation and innovation will actually start to move forward. Maybe there’s more spending power in my bank account than I thought. Maybe tomorrow it will start raining ducks! Maybe I should have hope.

Hope. Yeah, well, that doesn’t accomplish anything. So let’s go back to the trickling action and see what we can learn

From the White House to the State House to the County Seat to the Town Hall, look and learn from all the mindless trickle-down spending muscle-flexing.

I’ve seen people in my town climbing through dumpsters for food scraps, and the mayor and council decide to spend a thousand bucks to buy a town logo and open a mega-million-dollar floodgate of “revitalization.”

Hey, why not? The White House thinks it needs to buy votes so it prints a few million and sends it to the States. The State people think it’s a great thing and that the counties will love them for passing along some of the dough to “green up” the place. The county guys want the poverty-stricken town’s votes, so the town gets a thousand bucks.

The money is spent on a new logo for the town. Next, of course, will be “beautification teams” and landscapers and architects and engineers and street widening and off-street parking and bigger more complicated infrastructure — more fire, police, EMTs, water, electric, sewerage.

But, hey, why not? Easy come, easy go. Spend it now.

Brick walks and old-fashioned looking gaslight fixtures? Go for it. Have fun! After all, you can’t take it with you. Besides, it will spruce up the boarded-up places with broken windows. And why be selfish. Think of your grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Plan ahead for future generations. Spend. So what if the revitalization isn’t needed. Do it anyway. It’ll create jobs, and we need jobs. What does it matter that nobody much cares about beautifying the town except two struggling over-priced restaurants. No one can afford the gas to drive through here anyway.

Oh, and take a guess where that revitalization money will come from. 

There you go. Consider yourself trickled down to! How does that feel? Seems like you need deep pockets and no sense of reality to be successful in politics. Just slap backs, pass out money, and make everything green. “I’ve always wanted a logo” the mayor explained as he railroaded the town council vote through.

Well, who knows? Maybe that’s the kind of thinking we need. A new $1,000 logo for a town where food scavenging and foreclosures and unemployment are almost more the rule than the exception. 

And are you as lucky as we are? I mean we’ve already got mandatory recycling services that we’re forced to pay for even if we want to do our own recycle sorting and transporting. I am NOT badmouthing recycling. I simply want the choice to do my own.

Don’t you just love mandatory stuff?

Well, that should certainly wrap up all the country’s economical and terrorist and natural disaster and devaluation and plummeting national image in one neat tidy package. Isn’t it just exactly the way you would deal with these kinds of problems in your own business?

No?

Oh, right, you know better than to tax and spend

and ignore others’ needs.

Hmmmm. How come you know all that

and our great leadership hasn’t a clue?

Think about it. You have ’til November 6, 2012. Nineteen months to get UNtrickled. Y’think? Well, there ARE 30 million small business owners being trickled on

 . . . as you read this.

Thought for the day: Strength in numbers!

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

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!

The front page lead story on “Unemployment Worst Since 1930s” for your 5/21/11-5/22/11  weekend edition starts out with a qualifying statement about the recession having ended over two years ago . . .

Surely You Jest!

Your paper has a reputation among many businesspeople of  being a highly opinionated medium (vs. a showcase for responsible reporting that probes beneath the surface of what’s printed, that carries an air of integrity instead of marching to the innuendo drums of alarmist and manipulative journalism).

Like the empty stories produced by low-grade tabloid papers and sensationalist TV news programs, yours are clearly the fodder of simpletons. For your paper to survive the long haul, it will need to step up to the complexities of providing information realistically, particularly as it relates to small business.

To be effective enough to grow externally, you must grow first internally, by exercising sufficient integrity to cut the White House puppet strings . . . to actually report the news objectively and honestly.

It’s true that you’re not known for such bold moves, but consider the following:

There are 30 million small business owners in America. (And pardon me for not giving you back one of your little pie charts showing that at least 90% of all new jobs are created by small business, especially NEW small business.)

And we 30 million are not stupid!

Your thinly-veiled suggestive lead-in (one of endless numbers) is trying to say that there is no longer any recession, that the recession is well on its way out of quagmireville.

Not only is that simply not true, it is a misleading and deceptive cover-up for what you well know to be fact:

. . . that Mr. Obama and his free-wheeling taxes and reckless spending have rapidly exacerbated a difficult economy into a catastrophe.

And the truth? The truth is there is no end in sight until Mr. Obama has been replaced. No, I am not some radical conservative on the warpath, or some uninformed run-at-the-mouth businessperson, nor am I interested or capable of running for anything, except in my daily exercise program.

Surely you disagree (I assume you well know where your bread is buttered), so don’t take my word for it.

Instead, take one of your famous surveys. Poll a statistically representative number of the 30 million small business owners and ask them:

• Has the recession been over for more than two years?

• Is the recession over now?

• When will the recession end? (for those who think it’s still here).

• Why is the recession still around? (for those who think it is still around).

The truth is that the recession has not gone away, not even in even the slightest, that it will unlikely go away for another two years after the 2012 election, even if the nation is fortunate enough to unseat the power-mongers that rule the White House . . . Messrs. Obama and Biden have proven themselves incapable of appropriate, responsive leadership and decision-making.

Not only do they fail to understand what small business is really all about, Messrs. Obama and Biden have been doing their best to undermine and squash every attempt by small business to straighten out what the two of them and their union-vote cronies have made crooked.  

History proves that small business is solely responsible for job creation, and has proven itself as the only entity capable of turning the economy around. Government job creation is meaningless and a waste of tax dollars.

Perhaps your writers who opinionate on business-related subjects should be talking with real business people (vs. corporate executives and government flunkies who lack complete understanding of entrepreneurial reality. Perhaps they should do a little research on why entrepreneurial ventures represent the only real chance we have for regaining economic and employment balance, in addition to global dollar value and reputation.  

If I can be so bold as to suggest it, a good starting point is to not react to what’s said here, but to instead respond by taking a meaningful scroll through daily posts made on this blog over the past nearly four years. There’s nothing new here, except the stating of my opinion that your paper’s “news coverage” has far exceeded the bounds of responsible reporting. Maybe that can still be fixed?

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

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!

“Those were the days, my friend,

I thought they’d never end . . .”

Has it ever occurred to you — not only the breakneck speed with which tech developments have impacted the reality of business– that our now instantaneous global communication capabilities and no-longer private existences have birthed many new kinds of businesses?

Well, I don’t often put my head up long enough to contemplate the plight of businesses other than those I’m working with (and most assuredly our new blazing brazen lifestyles have impacted all business), but an incident just took place that prompted me to consider this. 

A major, many-miles-long traffic accident back-up (New Jersey, where else?) that I found myself in the middle of, produced a stop-and-go, inch-along situation for more than an hour. I began paying closer attention to other vehicles than I might usually, and pulled alongside a truck with lots of exclamation-type messages plastered on the sides and back.

The truck signs said:

“We Destroy Almost Anything!”

And, in addition to other bullet points, the signage promised a “Certificate of Destruction” to service customers. The company name was ABSOLUTE SHREDDING, LLC. promising services for the complete destruction of data! The signage promoted accessibility via 865.575.9915 and their website address which is their name and ends in .BIZ (which I have not direct-linked because I haven’t checked it out, by the way).

Who knew?

Entrepreneurs!

Can you imagine –even just a few short years ago– the existence of such a business? (I get no compensation; I never heard of the company–or any company like it–before my stuck-in-traffic situation. And I cannot vouch for their performance being as effective as their ingenuity.

——————————————

• What businesses can you think of that would have had no reason to even exist five or ten years ago?

• What parts of your business can you adjust to accommodate recent or current or anticipated market needs?

• What needs to happen before you actually launch a new solution to an emerging need?

• How can you do this for the smallest possible investment, and without jeopardizing your meat-and-potatoes business?

• Is the risk reasonable enough to justify your time and money investments?

• How soon can you do that? How soon should you do that?

• What’s the roadblock to getting it done?

• How can you get around, under or over that?

• What specific steps can you take this week to get started?

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US   or   931.854.0474

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Short, provocative,

word-crafted questions

with double meanings

that make you smile

 are what sell best! BUT

they’re not waiting

to jump out

of your closet!

At the risk of looking like one of those idiotic email FWDs written by “anonymous,” here are some inspiring examples of great double-entendre marketing theme line questions. . .

• GETTING ENOUGH? (Delaware Sleep Disorder Centers)

• GOT MILK? (Who doesn’t remember the white moustaches?) 

• WHERE’S THE BEEF? (Years later, we still laugh at that one!) 

• ARE YOU BREATHING? (Stress management exercise for businesspeople and healthcare professionals)

• CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? (Verizon has us still saying this with every static crackle)

• IS IT IN YOU? (Yup, Gatorade) 

• MOUSE GOT YOUR WRIST? (Safe-Zone Stop-wrist-pain brace for computer operators)

Add your own favorites: ____________________________________

Yes, fun stuff, and hopefully inspiring. That’s the good news. The bad news is that these short sweet nothings, these provocative, punchy few words of flair do not fall from the sky.

Neither do they get dreamed up by in-house staff people who write coherent emails, business reports and plans, even news releases, church bulletins, or local fundraising flyers (or well-intentioned poetry-writing relatives with Fine Arts degrees who want to save you money).

Great headlines that slam out great short questions are the product of many years of studying and understanding consumer psychology, consumer behavior, emotional buying triggers, and professional advertising and marketing writing. That kind of expertise costs money.

It’s your call! Not every business owner or entrepreneur wants to sell products or services by identifying them and/or the brand name with a custom-created household expression. But if you do, you can’t cut corners. Top-notch sales messages sell. The exceptional ones can literally bury the competition.

Each of the examples cited above took at least a month (and probably longer) of intensive focus and concentration.

Contrary to auto dealership mentality, words that sell are not seat-of-the-pants, knee-jerk, last-minute compositions. Even with a professional marketing writer, substantial time is required to experience a process of what I call “total immersion.”

A record-sales campaign I once produced for Great Western Wine and Champagne came only after a three-month process of picking grapes, working in the winery, giving tourists tours, cleaning the vats (a time-limit situation to avoid passing out from the fumes!), and learning about processing equipment and the aging process..

I met with the glass bottle manufacturers, the cork people, the wire and foil wrapper makers, the label makers, the glue makers; I worked on the loading dock, in the front office, and out in the field with the sales reps; learning the history of wine and how the master winemakers grafted vines together to create varietals.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you she or he can write you sales-winning words without becoming thoroughly engaged with every level of your business. It doesn’t happen, even for a 2, 3, 4, or 5-word theme question or 7-word branding line.

Award-winning author/journalist Malcolm Gladwell is the epitome of this thinking. To write about John Kennedy, Jr’s piloting death plunge into the ocean at Nantucket, he hired a pilot to fly him to the same spot and dive. When you’re seeking big-time copy, find someone with big-time experience who’s willing and anxious to dive!

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

Hal@Businessworks.US

“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!

Is speculation

feeding your doubts? 

 ( With appreciation to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell for popularizing the Ashford and Simpson lyrics in their 1968 hit song, “Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing.” It is used in this post title because it fits the message below and because it was likely to attract more visitors than the headline, “Is speculation feeding your doubts?”) 

You’re an entrepreneur of some sort. You own or manage a professional practice or small business that you started or bought or inherited. You’re pretty sharp about most things, and probably more innovative than the majority of businesspeople. Way more than corporate and government types. Not even an issue.

Management, though, and maybe the finer points of leadership, have never found that comfort zone among your greatest strengths. So perhaps you tend to rely on others for those skills? 

If others are providing the majority of practical, shirt-sleeves back-up support your venture needs in order to allow you the time to pursue sales and financing and creative idea development, you may be putting too much risk into your business.

Even if they’re half wrong, government reports claim 9 of 11 new businesses fail in the first 3 years because of poor management, and that even with good management, that it takes 5 years on average just to break even. You may want to re-read that and digest it before you respond with: 

“Hey, whatever works!” 

Why? Because your reality might speak otherwise. 

It’s your business. When you have doubts about operational or staffing issues, get out from behind your desk or dashboard or computer screen or BlackBerry, or office or garage or kitchen door (or wherever you camp out every day) and check it out yourself. In person. Regardless of when or where. Go to it! Speculation breeds screw-ups!

When you depend on other people’s reports –no matter how loyal or trustworthy they may be– remember that they don’t have your perspective or your personal business interests at stake. It’s not a matter of trust. It’s simply not their business. They do not see things with your sense of vision. Go to the trouble spot.

This is not a suggestion for you to become a firefighter, solving everyones’ problems.

It is a recommendation to take increased responsibility for operational and staffing issues that can impact your bottom line. Others, for example, may have great intentions, but intentions never led anyone to accomplishment or success. Only action does that!

If, for instance, you have reason to believe that your customers or clients or patients are not being handled properly on the phone or by email, become a customer/client/patient and see what you get back. Be your own “mystery shopper.” You can be a detective without acting like one. Ask questions. Take notes. Check resources.

You don’t need to flash your badge, wear a trenchcoat or yell “Aha!” every time you find a clue.

Instead of telling, lecturing, scolding, threatening, or intimidating someone you find is getting it wrong, consider showing her or him by example how you would get the job done. Remember how you once learned something you’re fond of? Remember that your people are your most important asset!

Leave the how they do it part up to them — as long as the task and/or attitude is accomplished on time without compromising quality or results. Food for thought: Everything need not be done your way!  

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

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.

# # #

           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!

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?                                            

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

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’

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

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!

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? 

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

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!

Pretending to enjoy the

Royal Wedding Kiss when you

haven’t even had a hug

since mid-March                                                                                      

Trying to “think green” when there’s none in your wallet. Rooting for the San Diego Padres and Minnesota Twins to finally break into double digit season wins when your own favorite team is tumbling into last place. Thinking that yet another White House-prompted stomp on small business is crushing . . . until you see the tornado devastation.

Laughing with a new puppy and new baby until it’s scoop-up and diaper-change time, or waking up to wailing cries and incessant barking. Thinking that Mid-East violent turmoils are too far away to be concerned with. (Are they?) Struggling to reconcile government reports of climbing unemployment with government reports of growing job creation.

Network media news ends every broadcast with sports, weather and some new medical discovery of traumatizing side effects (including the possibility of, of course, death or extended misery, or both) from breathing air, drinking water, sleeping too long or too short, eating health food, getting check-ups, singing . . . you know the rest.

Gas prices are headed to $8 a gallon, but not to worry; it’s okay, we’re told because gas prices in Europe are even higher and have always been higher.

We’re just starting to catch up with other countries.

Oh, sorry, I should have known there was a good reason to not be upset with having to second-mortgage my house to pay for gas for my car.

Gee, I guess I’ll just take it on the chin that skyrocketing food costs result from higher shipping costs which result from higher gas prices which –advises Mr. Obama– we should just suck it up about, or just trade in our cars to get more energy-efficient vehicles so that rising gas prices don’t become an issue.

Well, of course. Why didn’t I think of that? 

Every human on Earth has a different comfort zone. Physical, emotional and intellectual comfort parameters vary as dramatically as individual personalities. Think about that before you approve the next marketing creation (and accompanying expense) that’s thrown your way. . . especially for misguided online productions: the majority.

Your comfort zone, were you to draw a circle around your body, can vary considerably depending on location, environment, circumstance, and others around you — also where you were born and raised. Human space needed to function comfortably in Hong Kong is far less than that required in rural Texas, or Manhattan vs. Waterloo, Iowa.   

Get outta my face! Get outta my space!

Just how far do you “go with the flow”? How does physical proximity impact personal selling? Presentations and demonstrations? Business meetings and lunches? Golf? Giving visitors tours of your facility? What about the use of space in your ads, banners, direct mail, packaging and labeling, client reports, promotional materials, forms?

Then there’s the past, present, and future comfort zones. We can gain great comfort from reminiscing so it’s easy to get ourselves hooked on thinking about past events, ideas, and people. The future is at least equally compelling to many. And drifting periodically for short visits into both arenas can enhance the present here-and-now moment.

Staying in touch as much as possible with the present moment is what allows us to function best and most productively day to day. It also gives us the internal emotional support necessary to make adjustments that allow us flexibility in our subjective (and generally conditioned) physical proximity comfort zones.

When you sense your comfort zone moving into the “Twilight Zone,” take some deep breaths and recognize the choice to go there or stay where you are, or cut out some new paths, is completely your own.

Your “zone” is your OWN!

# # #

Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed

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!