Having grown up a mailman’s

son, maybe I’m just sentimental

(or simply as stupid as the PO?) 

     On top of their idiotic, money-wasting, survey last December [Click on December Archives in right column and go to DEC 15 “NO MORE ROOM FOR “SNAIL MAIL – Gutless, Incompetent, Greedy, The US Postal Service” for the ugly details], the amazing U.S. Postal Service management team has been making some astonishingly whacko business decisions.

     Since revenues are off, they’ve cut back hours, increased postage prices, increased their elaborate sample mailing campaign to entice more small businesses to do more mailings with (you guessed it) stuff that’s prohibitively expensive to the typical small business to even think about mailing anyway.

     I’ve received two personalized t-shirts, a metal hinged and color-labeled box filled with expensive die-cut printing samples, and the list goes on. And now. Now they’re pulling the blue drop boxes off the sidewalks!

     How utterly brilliant! Hey, nobody’s using them, so take them away. How many things can you think of that those boxes could be used for if YOU had them for YOUR business? I’ll bet there are at least 10,000 ideas.

     Okay, here’s where I’m stupid. I’m going to give away my consulting expertise for free to the U.S. Postal Service. Right here. Right now. Think they’ll take it? Not a chance, but I’m going to put it out there anyway just because they are chewing off their own arms and legs and I hate to just stand around watching them self-destruct.

SO… Here’s what the U.S.P.S. needs to do:

1. Stop wasting time and money and effort on useless dumb surveys. Just listen to your customers!
2. Stop with the radical cost-cutting methods and ideas that only serve to prevent future sales and revenue streams. You can’t make money by turning off lights! Only sales make money!
3. Stop throwing good money after bad with products and services no one wants. Stick to your knitting, and remember innovation is taking an idea all the way to completion! 
4. Take some pages from FedEx and other competitors who train their drivers to go beyond being just drivers and to become account managers– as responsible for promoting and selling and customer servicing as for driving and delivering.
5. Start an Email delivery service (Call me for details!).
6. Learn how to use and promote via social media options. Visit Twitter for two hours!
7. Initiate customer service training at ALL levels. When was the last time anyone got a thank you note from the U.S.P.S. when it wasn’t a thinly-veiled give-me-a-tip-for-Christmas card?
8. Put a P.O. Box in every P.O. Box (Call me on this one too!).
9. Recruit community groups to garden and landscape your ugly buildings (inside and out).
10. SPONSOR community events; get out there and mix with your customers! They don’t bite! Show them you’re (like State Farm) a good neighbor! 
11. SELL AD SPACE ON THE INSIDE OF EVERY P.O.BOX DOOR!!!! 
12. SELL AD SPACE ON STAMPS!!!!
13. Provide shelves for the poor souls with heavy packages standing on lines waiting for the incompetent counter clerks to finish their coffee. 
14. PIPE IN SOME MUSIC!!!
15. Make it “A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE” to go to the post office!
16. How about an occasional (NON-Christmastime) slip in empty mailboxes that the carriers sign that says: “I noticed you didn’t get any mail today, but I wanted you to know I was thinking of you anyway. Have a great week!” 
17. Barter some direct mail advertising for media time and space… other services! 
18. Run direct mail training sessions for small businesses in P.O. lobbies – serve coffee for free! 
19. START A REAL BLOG that actually addresses real customer situations on a daily basis! (If you actually read this far, definitely call me on this one!)
20. Teach small business owners/operators how to tie direct mail to website and other ad and promotion programs.
21. Offer (Put in all business P.O. Boxes) detailed info on direct mail programs with package rates for use of postcards and self-mailers, with sizes and deals and discounts and coupons!
22. Offer quantity discounts!
23. Offer and arrange shared delivery discounts (to same office or building, for example).

     NUTS, huh? Well, I’ll tell you what: If you continue the course you’re on, YOU’RE NUTS BECAUSE YOU WILL END UP KILLING YOURSELF and that would be a terrible waste of assets, resources, some super-nice people who work for you and bring about the demise of a still much-needed service.

     God Bless and Good Night!  halalpiar     

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Assuming it’s 2009

wherever you are…

     “Somethings never change,” we’ve heard, but they DO! Assuming it’s 2009 wherever you are, and  you’re at least vaguely interested in surviving– your business or professional practice development efforts must start to reach out for and embrace UNusual approaches to winning and keeping customers, clients and patients.  

     “Great!” you say, “but what ARE they?” Brrrrraaaaaaaat! Wrong question!

     What you need to know –because every doctor, lawyer and business owner is different from every other doctor, lawyer and business owner– is how to get started figuring out what UNusual approaches will work for YOU.

     The first step is to evaluate what has and hasn’t worked for you in the past. [Even if the business or practice is a new one, you still know what qualities, characteristics, methodologies, approaches and behaviors have worked for you in your life to help you get to where you are; go with those to start!]

     Once you’ve isolated the strengths of your best past messages, make a brainstorm list of new and different ways you can apply those messages. Do not edit or critique your initial list; don’t talk yourself out of putting an idea down, even if it involves using carrier pigeons! Why? Because dumb ideas that you don’t eliminate along the way will lead to sensible worthwhile ones. Take a break. Then return with your critical red ink and eliminate, combine and consolidate thoughts.

     Online social networks like Twitter www.Twitter.com are quickly providing (for FREE) a massive referral base for those willing to invest some budgeted time and energy. www.BizBrag.com allows you (for FREE) to post a free news release about some newsworthy aspect of your business or professional practice every day if you choose.

     BizBrag even lets you set these up so they are emailed to prime customers or clients or patients. Or you can send your own personalized emails out urging your contacts to tune you in (to your releases, or your videos that you can put on www.YouTube.com and other sites). With a webcam, you can produce (for FREE) your own mini-series of lectures or seminars and email them out or post them.

     If you have a website, you probably also have (a FREE) blog capability built into it. And even if you don’t, blog sites are basically free or close to free anyway. No time to write blogs? Hire a professional blog writer who can capture your style and “voice” and represent topics you choose, for you! 

     And blogs need not be great literary works. I know an eye surgeon who’s a wizbang photographer and uses his blog site to show off his photos, along with one-line captions urging check-ups, etc. Another fills blog entries with great motivational quotes and appointment reminders.

     Professionals dependent on referrals from other professionals can develop blog posts (and ultimately deliver bound together printouts) on areas involving their specialties and special interests. An orthopedic surgeon with a special interest in sports medicine can generate referrals with booklets made of blog posts on rotator cuff or tennis elbow treatments and exercises for coaches, trainers and physical therapists. 

     Positive impressions of being an accepted authority can also be made with mailings to personal injury lawyers. All of the above become potential referrers to the surgeon. And there’s not a business alive that can’t stand to do more catering to past and present customers –the best source of business– with UNusual approaches.    halalpiar

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Entrepreneurs Are

Imagination Junkies!

Okay, friends and enemies, enough bitching about the economy. Get out your “imagination sticks.” We’re going to group-beat the recession!

• “You’re a whack-job, Hal!”
• “Y’think?”
• “Yeah.”
• “Well, you may be right, but I also have some news for you. Are you ready?”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Knowledge is limited.

Imagination encircles the world!”

Who was the dumb idealist who said that, Hal? Hey, none other than our dumb old idealist friend Albert Einstein. And I know it for sure because it’s in a frame on the wall at the Delaware Creative Writing Center in the Cape Gazette Building in Lewes, Delaware, and Delaware Creative Writing Center people are very careful about the words they choose to surround themselves with!

So what? Who cares? What does that have to do with me? We’re in a recession in case you haven’t heard. And we don’t have any time to run around imagining things; there’s enough real stuff right here to deal with, besides you’re always preaching to be realistic and stay focused on the here and now, and now you’re saying we should all go off to never-never land with Tinkerbell and Michael Jackson?

Whoa! First of all, I’m not a big fan of either pixie dust or sequined gloves, but let’s look at the realism issue a minute, shall we? Realistically, none (zero, nada) of the world’s great businesses could have survived and thrived in economic problem times without imagination.

Only by fostering, nurturing and practicing the application of imagination to the products, services, ideas, R&D, and processes that launched them or put them on the map to start with, have they been able to make a difference.

Only when you plug imagination into your business’s status quo outlets will you experience the level of electricity that will thrust you into exciting new directions, markets, and revenue streams. Do you think Microsoft and Apple and HARO and TWITTER and revitalized old companies like GE just (pardon the expression) stumbled upon greatness?

Greatness doesn’t just fall from the sky and happen to happen! Greatness is created with imagination. You can build more of that commodity into your daily business activities. Start with some highly structured, tightly-timed brainstorming sessions as the road to expanding imagination!

Remembering that the solutions to any group problem are within the group, start with a group of 3-7 people (sometimes all managers, sometimes no managers, sometimes a mix works best . . . you may need some trial and error efforts to decide; sometimes three different groups tackling the same topics will produce the best results; don’t be afraid to experiment).

Conduct a disciplined 5-minute time period session with the goal of posting as many ideas as possible (on newsprint pages or whiteboard) that address the subject you spotlight. Encourage absolutely stupid and bizarre ideas (because they will trigger better ones!).

NO criticism is allowed during these 5 minutes! NONE!

When that list is done, take 3 minutes to refine it. This is the time to be critical, eliminate the nonsense, consolidate and combine points that seem to fit together, and take a good hard look at what’s left. Odds are you’ll surprise yourself with what you’ve orchestrated.

Many companies hold sessions like this weekly, and in some cases, even daily. The result is that people’s brains get stimulated. Productivity and sales increase. Imagination fuels the fire that heats up the economy. Entrepreneurs are imagination junkies.

Imagination is what made America great to start with. Imagination will do it again. Will you be a catalyst or an observer?

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US    or  931.854.0474

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

What are you waiting for?

“Annnnny-daaay, noow . . .”

The once famous bank commercial mocking out competitors for their loan waiting times seemed appropriate. How much time did you spend waiting today? How much of that time was a total waste? 

WE WAIT AT, AND IN: lines, offices, reception rooms, hallways, cars, trucks, construction sites, showrooms, restaurants, parks, parking lots, airports, taxi stands, bars, elevators, boardrooms, alcoves, bathrooms, meetings, conference rooms, the water cooler, fax and copy machines, roach coach, training centers, message centers, traffic, bridges, trains, busses, hospitals, airplanes, taxi’s, garages, food lines, courtrooms, examination rooms, visitation rooms, toll booths, ticket counters, lobbies, check-out counters, subway stations, ferries, zoos, concerts, planetariums, sporting events, banks, drive-in pharmacies and fastfood windows, doorways, road construction lanes, and 487,000 others.

AND WE WAIT FOR: bosses, clients, doctors, lawyers, co-workers, underlings, salespeople, associates, lunch dates, online connections, conference calls, on-hold, dinner dates, traffic, bridges, trains, busses, airplanes, taxi’s, breakfast dates, coffee breaks, lunch whistles, clocks, scheduled events, calendar pages, waiters and waitresses, deliveries, contractors, news, alarms, prisoners, bankers, seminars, meetings, accountants, patients, families, friends, people who beat us to the bathroom, and 269,000 others.

AND WHILE WE WAIT, WE SUFFER FROM:

• ANTICIPATION.
• ANXIETY.
• WORRY.
• ANGER.
• EMBARASSMENT.
• EXPECTATIONS.
• DISAPPOINTMENT.
• STRESS.
• INSULT: BEING “STOOD UP” OR FORGOTTEN.

     And what do you DO when you’re thrown into that jungle described above? What did you do today in delay? And don’t try to excuse yourself with some haste makes waste explanation because I know that you know that each of the bullet items above is a CHOICE! The only thing that makes waste is waste. Waiting time is valuable.

     HOW ABOUT CHOOSING FOR THE WAITING TIME TO BE HAPPY AND PRODUCTIVE TIME, AND USE IT TO: Write? Take notes? Take pictures? (I met a guy created a complete photo essay while standing on line at the post office, and actually published it!) Text Message? Make phone calls? Plan? Follow-up? Research? Read? Make contacts? Make contracts? Network? Study?

     Can you, in other words, do something more constructive with your valuable time here on earth than to stare like a zombie at some waiting room TV tuned to some negative news network? Just because you have to wait, doesn’t mean you sacrifice your humanity for sheepdom.

     Always carry pen and paper and/or laptop and/or tape recorder and/or camera and/or a book you’re reading and/or a cell phone and/or some luggage to put all that stuff in . . . and don’t forget the umbrella and parachute . . . hey, ya never know! 

     Some action, remember, is always better than no action . . . unless “action” to you means smoking, drinking booze, eating candy bars, snorting or shooting up drugs, punching/biting/kicking, stabbing, shooting, or bank robbery.  

     And you may think, like the song, that “My time is your time,” but it’s not! Because you only ever have NO time or LOTSA time, or ANYtime, or SOMEtime, or have been having a HIGH time for a LONG time. Oh, right, there’s America’s PASTtime, which is a great way to PASS time in the SUMMERtime or SPRINGtime, but seldom in the WINTERtime.

     If all that’s not enough for you, remember that “Time and tide wait for no man.” (No mention of women in that philosophy so it must be because women have “THAT” time), and then there’s “He who hesitates is lost” (which most men are!). Okay? Okay. Later.  halalpiar     

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Are you talking up

your business enough? 

     Do you carry business cards with you everywhere you go?  Two of the most successful businesspeople I know carry laminated business cards in bathing suit pockets and workout gear bags for the one time in a million it’s worth having them.  One, an active sportsman, keeps a couple inside his baseball cap. 

     Do you include mention of your website and blog as part of the signature area of every email you send?  Do you HAVE a website and blog?  I just read that 44% of new businesses do not have a website!  That statistic is beyond comprehension in this day and age.  If you’re in that 44%, stop making excuses; do it!

     Okay, sorry, so you DO have a website.  Do you have a BLOG?  Did you know that most blogs are FREE and many are packaged into websites and only require activation?  Do you have a professional blog writer so that you are not wasting valuable sales time trying to do something you’re not trained to do? 

     In most situations, a blog writer’s time is the only blog expense, and it’s an investment in the bottom line performance of your website!  (If you have questions about this, call me: 302.933.0116)  

     Did you know that blogs are the primary movers and shakers of website rankings?  (Because search engine spiders are out there 24/7 bumping the most active websites up in the search engine rankings, and it’s blogs that generally account for the most frequent activity.) 

     Have you sat down with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends, and told them about your business?  Have you brought them up to date lately?  Have you given them your cards to pass along to their associates and friends and neighbors? 

     Are you –as Thoreau once urged– “Forever on the alert”?  Do you make the most of social occasions to quietly suggest business contacts in the following week?  Do you think and act sales all of the time instead of part of the time or just 9-5? 

     If you dismiss these questions with excuses that you are above it all or you are not a salesperson or you think it’s not appropriate (because you run a “professional practice,” perhaps?), then you are missing the reality boat and you stand a good chance of this economy smothering you!   halalpiar   

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COMPUTER UNDERWARE

I was prompted into a business consciousness stream today by a reference I saw to socio-economic, attitude, and taste divisions between generations having symbolic significance in changes over the years represented by underwear.

I noticed the analogy in Angelique Rewer’s brilliant online publication, The Corporate Communicator www.bonmotcomms.com , and remembered a Time/Newsweek/Sports Illustrated ad I did (over 25 years ago!) for a fledgling computer service company. 

Over an illustrated ghosted assemblage of computer hardware and floppy disks (You DO remember those? They came after carbon paper), the headline said simply:

COMPUTER UNDERWARE

The copy that followed reasoned that “HARDWARE & SOFTWARE CAN GET YOU NOWHERE without COMPUTER UNDERWARE, the ongoing professional training and reliable service support you’ll require to go under your hardware and software . . . “

You’re stunned, huh?  Hey, it was Toms River, NJ, in the early 1980’s.  What did you expect, “I’m Lovin’ it!” or “It’s In You!”?  I could count the personal computer owners I knew on one hand then.  It was strictly an elite IBM and knock-off business market then that was focused on word processors in law offices. 

Take my word for it, for it’s time, my ad was ahead of it’s time.  

Much of what an entrepreneur does in life is ahead of its time. 

I’ve seen (and still have 30 year-old samples of) interlocking plastic bottles that would have revolutionized the shipping and warehousing markets because two cartons worth of bottles could be packed in one carton and cartons could be stacked 2-3 times higher.  Too much, too soon.  Too undercapitalized.   

How about “Clear” windshield wipers?  Spectacular prototypes made everyone oooh-aaah, but not enough funding to break through market monopolies.  3-D motion analysis for physical therapy . . .

On the surface, lack of money to make ahead-of-their-times products and services go, but underneath –the UNDERWEAR—is always lousy, self-centered, self-absorbed, fantasyland day-dreaming management that has great ideas, great intentions, great persistence, and no realistic sense of what it takes to bring their babies into the world and nurture them to maturity. 

Bottom line: Entrepreneurial inventing, innovating, and selling rarely come equipped with savvy management skills – money management, people management, task management. 

If you are an entrepreneur, study management or find management you can trust to work with you.  But don’t keep wasting your time and money and energy banging your head against the wall trying to move forward.  The wall won’t move.          halalpiar 

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The secret of college is

in learning how to learn.

Make your kids work to earn at least part of their college education.  Even if you can afford it, don’t give them free college, especially business majors!  They won’t appreciate it, and no matter how great their grades may end up because they are unencumbered from having to work, the odds are they will fail in business.  Disagree?  Read on.

First of all, this advice is coming to you from a former two-time business professor-of-the-year and student work internship program director who is also an entrepreneur (having helped start hundreds of successful new businesses) on top of solid Fortune 500 corporate experience.

At some point your college-bound son(s) and/or daughter(s) will have to face the reality of the need to gain real-world work experience.  Sooner is better than later.  And, in fact, it’s been my experience that those who hold jobs while attending college tend to be universally better performers both in class and on the job.  

Most college and university internship or cooperative education programs produce vastly superior students AND better workplace candidates.  Why?  Because nothing in any business textbook or computer program can come close to the value of hands-on experience gained on a factory floor, a retail store, a business or professional practice office, a showroom, studio, warehouse, or any form of sales.

Be aware that in today’s and the foreseeable future’s business climate (unless a college graduate is headed toward a career in law or medicine or allied medical sciences), college grades matter to absolutely no one except maybe the students and maybe the parents.

Recruiters and hiring interviews are more focused today on candidate answers to open-end questions.  How someone handles herself/himself on his or her feet (and has shown the ability to apply on-the-job experience to the classroom and vice versa) is light years more important than what an individual memorized in a management course, or than reiterating what is already on the person’s resume.

The truth is most business employers prefer an ambitious 2.5 GPA graduate with good communication and social skills who worked his or her way through college in a sales or office or manufacturing position, than a 4.0 GPA graduate with zero real-world work experience, who mumbles, shakes hands like a fish, and can’t look you straight in the eye.  That shouldn’t be surprising.  Wouldn’t that be your preference too?          

Sorry to burst bubbles here, but the secret of college is not being able to ace tests in accounting, finance, management, marketings, sales, advertising, economics, retailing, promoting, packaging and pricing, public relations, Internet business, etc. 

At least two truisms support this platform: 1) There are no rules in business.  Business moves forward by experience and innovation, not formulas, 2) The secret of college is in learning how to learn.  Subjective teacher ratings are far less important than having learned how to learn.

If you’re sending your kids off to college to learn business, let them prove to themselves that they can earn business learning by working while they learn.  The ROI is better for all involved.  

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HOW  THEY DO IT . . .

“Necessity is

the mother of invention.” 

—PLATO (Between 427BC and 347BC)

This quote drives every entrepreneur, scientific explorer and creative mind on Earth.  It of course holds true as well for military and quasi-military operations, cornered criminals and animals, and most homeless and foodless victims in society.

TODAY, the notion of necessity prompting inventiveness has great significance as a universal entrepreneurial hedge against economic downturn.  Businesses that will survive the existing economic traumas are those that can throw off the cloak of dismay and depression, shake themselves off, and charge forward with positive attitudes that are hell-bent on making the most of every opportunity.

WORKING TOGETHER with other businesses is a major step in that direction.  Networking with others to Barter goods and services should be a first and foremost thought for guiding daily travels. 

SHARING REFERRALS, common space, facilities, equipment, vehicles, furnishings, personnel, training, purchases and purchase discounts, databases, charity leadership roles, advertising, promotion, news release and blog site development and writing, website and online network development and content, are just some of the areas to consider negotiating.

LOOK TO BUSINESSES that are compatible and supportive to yours, or that your business serves.  Check out possible cooperative arrangements with businesses on the same floor, or in the same building, ir same cluster of buildings, or same neighborhood or town, or in the same industry, or that share some common characteristics (online retail as one example, or professional services as another).

TAKE ADVANTAGE of the opportunities to make and save money by working together.  Even competitive businesses can sometimes do this more effectively than standing defiantly alone.  Consider geographical clusterings of antique stores, for instance. 

CONSIDER New York City’s diamond and fashion districts!  Their competition alone in shared physical space/areas serves to boost business for all by bringing customers to centralized, more convenient and more price and quality sensitive shopping areas. 

CAN YOU EXCHANGE SALES LEADS?  Have you considered combining insurance coverage and benefit plans with another business?  Can the neighboring business receptionist do phone or clerical work for you during slow periods (instead of reading paperbacks?)?  Can you combine advertising time and space purchases to qualify for bigger discounts?  Maintenance services?  Supplies?  Conference rooms?

THE SHARED RESOURCES popularized by the old new business “Incubator” and “Conglomerate” concepts still work.  The only problem in realizing true economies of scale and values of barter may be YOU.  If you start with the attitude that it won’t work, it won’t. 

IF YOU START out discounting the ideas, they’ll never be more than ideas.  If you initiate discussions with others, you might surprise yourself with new-found sales and savings that could help you rise above the economic rubble. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Asking “Why?” Breeds Excuses!

“Ours is not to reason why.

  Ours is but to do or die!”

(source unknown, but help me out please if you know it)

     What makes this such a powerful one-two-punch thought is that it is based on the fact that anytime we ask “Why?” we are setting ourselves up for inaction.  We are investing ourselves in maintaining the status quo.  We are committing ourselves to going nowhere. We are on the road to over-analyzing!

     How is that possible?  Scientists are always asking “Why?” things do what they do, or “Why?” things are the way that they are, and their analytical pursuits end up helping all of us . . . hardly the stuff of status quo!  And what about accountants and history teachers?  They earn their livings by questioning “Why?”  And doctors need to check medical histories in order to . . .

Nope! 

Asking “Why?” Breeds Excuses! 

Period.  

     Imagine the range of answers to the question, “WHY were you late to work?”  Are any of those answers NOT a “reason” or “excuse”?  Now imagine the answers to instead asking, “By the end of the day, can you please give me–in writing– three ways that explain HOW you will prevent yourself from being late to work?” 

     Excuses (aka reasons)are responses we give out of laziness, ignorance, lack of self-discipline, lack of sense of reality, or when we seek to rationalize or explain something (like history teachers, archaeologists, sociologists, and accountants whose careers revolve around analyzing the past).

     Oh, and –by the way– the same do-nothing mindset infiltrates the entire vocation of self-proclaimed “SEO Specialists” and “Sales Conversion Specialists” who seem more often than not to simply be experts at smoke-and-mirroring you into a corner.  They LOVE when you ask “Why?”  Guess (ahem) “Why?”  They salivate at the thought of dragging unwitting non-geeks into their dark and mysterious corners of overkill analysis, and charging higher rates the darker it gets! 

     The bigger the organization asking, the more valuable the SEO and sales conversion answers pretend to be, and the results?  Well, the results in big-company cases are both more expensive to obtain AND more readily offered as justification for changes that should have been made on the fly, months or years ago without all the “Why?” questioning in the first place.

     In entrepreneurship training

and coaching, we call it

   “getting tangled up in your underwear.” 

(Not exactly a flattering image!)

     BUT it is this very point that in fact distinguishes entrepreneurs from the rest of the business world.  A genuine entrepreneur will not typically care about “Why” something is the way it is as much as taking trial and error steps immediately to do something about it.  True entrepreneurs believe in themselves!  “Don’t analyze the thing to death; you think too much!” you’ll often hear an entrepreneur say.

     An outstanding American business leader I knew in my second full time job always said that he didn’t ever want to hear problem-centered discussions about who did what to whom or when or why, that he was only interested in the solution, and that there was no better way to find the right solution than to try out what you believe to be right, and keep trying and acting on it over and over. 

     In retrospect, my guy must have been listening to Thomas Edison who disavowed public mockery of his 9,999 failed attempts to invent the lightbulb by simply explaining the attempts as 9,999 discoveries of ways that could be eliminated in his quest.      

     Passive minds do nothing.  Analytical minds exhaust themselves in circles of reasons, rationales, and excuses.  Active minds get things done. 

     Any entrepreneur will tell you that some action is always better than no action, and that the only way to move forward is to move, to act on gut instinct and limited knowledge . . . because, in the end:

Instinct and limited knowledge

     are all we ever have anyway.    

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Shop ‘n drive in peace ‘n quiet!

     What a wonderful thing, the Superbowl, for those who don’t care about it.  You can commandeer the extra TV, take it to the attic or basement and watch anything your little heart desires without interruption.  It’s a great day to go shopping or take a drive because everyone else is not doing either.

     You can go to the ocean and walk on the beach or boardwalk and know that every person you see there thinks the same way you do about this brainless, gorilla sport that attracts more heavy drinkers than athletes, and that can’t hold a candle to baseball or tennis or volleyball for genuine athleticism and mental challenge. 

     No, I’m not calling all football players wimps, or all football fans drunkards.  I’m just saying that football is not a sport that’s notorious for producing literary, scientific and artistic genius’s (geni?), and that –to me– it’s more amazing to watch what companies will spend more than  T H R E E   M I L L I O N   D O L L A R S  on (for less than 60 seconds of sponsorship), than to see the event itself. 

     The commercials are, admittedly, always super themselves.  But that makes me think we should just have a Super Commercial Bowl and skip the football stuff all together. 

     We could root for one beer or car company over the other, buy all their promotional gear, put giant promotional junk in our yards, hold tailgate picnics outside of neighborhood bars and car showrooms, make cute little cookies and cupcakes in the shape of the manufacturer we’re rooting for, and call central phone numbers at a $1.99 a pop to vote on our favorite commercial. 

     The winning company would have TV crews in their locker room after the contest and spray champagne on each other.  Kids could go to school the next day and dis the losers. 

     We could all txt msg our teenagerswith something more substantial to discuss for a change (besides, “Hey, how’s it goin’?” and “Fine” or “Whadya do at school today?” and “Nuttin” or “Where are you going?” and “Out.”). 

     Tomorrow, we could gather round America’s watercoolers and coffee shops and talk about which parts of which commercials we liked best and thought were stupidest . . . Whooooooh!  Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!  I forgot.  We already do most of that already anyway, right? 

     So what do we need football for? 

     P.S. Just heard the news that the most “chicken wings” consumed in the history of the world are consumed on Superbowl Sunday!!! That makes for an awful lot of chickens out walking the streets . . . so be careful!

     I must be missing something.  [;<} But then, what do I know?

I’m just a baseball fan (as if you hadn’t guessed).

Oh well, have a GREAT SUPERBOWL SUNDAY FAMILY DAY!

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