Your Role in History as an Entrepreneur

HISTORICAL BUSINESS

PIVOT POINTS

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY

written and published by Peggy Salvatore

Yesterday, we touched on the idea of Internet business      opportunities being the new $390-an-ounce gold   . . . . . . . and concluded it’s going to go way higher
for “Frontier Pioneers!”

I likened the technological frontier to early Americans who joined a wagon train to head into the Western American frontier in the middle of the 19th Century looking for un-mined opportunities.

All of this set the stage for today’s ancient question:

How can you know where you’re going
if you don’t know where you came from?

In a virtual world, un-mined opportunities are virtual too. If you think about the history of business over the last 500 years in a linear way, it is clear that we are heading into a third revitalization of the world economy as people adapt to new opportunities that technology has opened.

Some have referred to this epoch as “The Third Wave.”

In the first wave of opportunity, after sailors dramatically proved to mapmakers (by not falling off the horizon edge) that the world was not flat, global business opportunities opened up.

A merchant class emerged and dislodged the traditional power centers built around the kings and kingdoms of antiquity. Global tradewinds—in essence—democratized business. Wealth spread to a whole large new group of people willing to take risks.

The establishment of American colonies on a large, undeveloped land mass created yet more opportunities for new political and economic models to be tested safely away from the established old controls of entrenched power.

Merchant mentality spread to the previously disenfranchised masses and –VOILA!—the small business owner was born.

Mom and Pop shops proliferated beyond the old world butcher-baker-candlestick maker paradigm.
Mom and Pops opened banks.
Mom and Pops built all types of small businesses to support the growing manufacturing base built on bigger dollars funded by oil, coal, lumber, railroad and textile tycoons of the late 19th century.
A few Mom and Pops became franchises, and birthed their own corporations as well.

In the 20th Century, opportunity spread down to Everyman. It spread the same way that technology and genetics spread throughout human history–mostly through war–but now more frequently aided by commerce.

Progress through commerce became the late 20th Century model. It started to appear that the world economy would advance by peaceful means. War, it seemed, was becoming an outdated method of trans- ferring knowledge, wealth, power and genetics.

Then in the first decade of the 21st Century, something went horribly awry. War overtook commerce as the global force for economic power.

As we look at the trajectory of history, however, war no longer appears to be a sustainable model for economic power and growth. Let me suggest—crossed fingers behind my back—that war is having its last stand, albeit a very nasty one.

The unrelenting wars of today, threatening huge swaths of humanity and the land on which they live, seem more like the last gasp of a dying paradigm in the face of the Internet and the connectivity of Everyman, everywhere, as the new economy.

How dare I say that? Tune in here tomorrow!

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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

See you here tomorrow 9/11 for Day 4.

———-
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

Thank You for Your Visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

Your Role in History as an Entrepreneur 

INTERNET ENTREPRENEURS

A FRONTIER MENTALITY

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

Building an online business in the new economy? So you’re a “frontier pioneer.” You’ve figuratively hitched your horse to your wagon and joined the wagon train.

Can you imagine yourself in 1840 America, heading west to the new frontier, searching for gold? Time and space have changed, but the challenges remain.

When I started my consulting career 20 years ago, I took a small pro- ject assignment at the University of Pennsylvania helping the develop- ment office build its first website. I took some html classes there as part of the job to write the website content. The Penn Development Depart- ment built the first donor recognition site in the world. In the world. The first.

• As part of the job, I had to investigate whether we could get digital rights to legendary opera singer Marion Anderson’s recording library. I discussed the intellectual property challenges of this endeavor with the Music Department of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, one of the places where these questions were first considered.
•  I talked with attorneys who were still working out how much of a copyrighted work we could republish online before violating the owners’ rights. Seriously. Lawyers were just beginning to entertain those ideas in the late 20th Century.
•  Then sometime around the end of that assignment, we got wind of some amazing new software that allowed me to build the website without inserting the html coding. I saw Windows for the first time. Since we were rounding the last bend of that project, I never actually benefited from these new technologies but we saw the changes coming.

The point is that, at times, I’ve watched the development of the Internet as more than just an innocent bystander. I’ve had some hands-on glimpses of where we started not that long ago. From that vantage point, and considering where we are today, I believe that—as the old song goes—“we’ve only just begun” to develop the new economy.

Are you here? Or are you there?

In the last few years we’ve hit an inflection point that is allowing the Internet to take the world economy in a new direction. People far more Internet savvy than I am are talking about this in much more sophisticated ways.

My purpose here is to encourage.

The online small business entrepreneur needs to go get her or his horse, hitch up, and join the wagon train. Getting into the Internet wagon train business space now is like buying gold at $390 an ounce… you think it can’t go any higher, but you’ll be wrong!

If you are weighing whether to offer your products and services online to a global marketplace from your own virtual storefront, consider it $390 an ounce gold.

Or step back one more historical notch

to where we began this DAY 2 article:

Close your eyes a minute, take a deep breath.
Can you “see” yourself panning for gold from
the back of your Conestoga wagon while your
happy horse camps out by the river?

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When you need some personal, one-on-one coaching beyond the Internet offerings, give us a call. (Direct line numbers on masthead above.) In the meantime, follow us HERE for FREE for the next 28 weekdays to see what others think, and discover some of the surprise findings we have in store for you—new and proven “mental apps” to apply to your own entrepreneurial and business development!

See you here tomorrow 9/10 for Day 3.

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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

Thank you for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

Your Role in History as an Entrepreneur

A FANTASTICAL JOURNEY

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY

written and published by Peggy Salvatore

Watching the world from your computer? Isn’t it a fantastical place? Nimble entrepreneurs in the Internet economy are zigging while major corporations are zagging. Zigging is the new orange.

Anyone still zagging, who is stuck in the old paradigm, is feeling the dislocation and loss. Those who are still trying to restore large, lumber- ing, industrial manufacturing entities, or even trying to keep alive a monetary system based on physical representations of value, are going to feel like things are coming apart at the seams.

So, is the world economy coming apart at the seams?
Nah! It’s just shifting gears!

Customer experience is driving this new economy. Those who are zigging are responding to their potential markets in massively impress- ive ways… from a platform of inquisitiveness that is part of a burgeon- ing online conversation among techies, marketers, leadership gurus and innovators of all stripes. Learning is no longer “one-way.”

This is YOUR Time to Build

[See NOTE FROM PEGGY below]

Internet entrepreneurs are building the new economy with instant responses to real customers on the ground all around the world in real time. Many are brilliant and amazing. Some are even generous.

The “spontaneous combustion” of the New Economy is leaving many in its tracks who don’t know how to run a business. And problems must be solved instantaneously now.

But help IS available, lots of it, online—and much of it for free—including apps and resources that offer excellent education and great content. For the monthly price of access to a service provider, anyone can learn, have, do, or know just about anything or anyone, 24/7.

I used to wonder how that business model will survive. The dot.com bust at the turn of the 21st Century appeared to signal that online businesses could not be monetized. In retrospect, that was wrong. People figured out how to make online businesses profitable. Given motivation, inspired humans will find a way to make money doing anything. Ask PT Barnum.

For the last nine months, I have been studying the Internet economy and many of the entrepreneurs who are building it. My quest started in an attempt to figure out how they fit into a business plan. That began a fantastic journey. I discovered quite quickly that there is a phenomenal amount of highly valuable free information available in the form of extremely well-done training: Free Webinars; Free E-books; Free Podcasts; Free Every-imaginable-kind-of-thing-you-want-to-know!

I dedicated my pursuit to consuming as much information as possible. Online content has led me to a new crop of physical books and seminars as well. So, while it isn’t all virtual, the virtual environment is the glue that holds all the physical pieces together. And here are just some of the disciplines I’ve been exploring:

• Business Development and Entrepreneurship
• Internet Business Structure and Technology
• Personal and Professional Growth
• Markets, Marketing, and Management Leadership
• Blogging, Podcasting, Webinar and E-book development
• Motivational and Spiritual underpinnings of business success

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NOTE FROM PEGGY: WILL YOU PARTNER WITH HAL ALPIAR AND ME? This is just the first of 30 Days’ worth of prompting, provoking, igniting, and seeking YOUR input and ideas for Building the New Economy!

Please join the conversation in the comment section and tell us:

??  What’s YOUR contribution to the New Economy? (Talk about YOUR business pursuits!)

??  What do you think of “Corporate Entrepreneurship”© (Training/Coaching Corporate Executives to THINK like entrepreneurs)?

??  We want to know YOUR part in building a new, integrated, humane world… (On the Internet and through your own business).

??  And what’s YOUR sticking point? (What’s keeping you from where YOU want to go?)

When you need some personal, one-on-one coaching beyond the Internet offerings, give us a call. (Direct line numbers on masthead above.) In the meantime, follow us HERE for FREE for the next 29 days to see what others think, and discover some of the surprise findings we have in store for you—new and proven “mental apps” to apply to your own entrepreneurial and business development!

See you here tomorrow 9/9 for Day 2.

———-
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

“MATTER” Matters!

In just this past week, without even trying, and with minimal exposure to advertising, I’ve seen or heard the following:

• Black Lives Matter!
• Police Lives Matter!
• All Lives Matter!
• People Matter! (Sub shop chain)
• Dog Food Matters! (Pet store chain)
• Your Gums Matter! (Plaque removal products)
• Protect What Matters! (Life insurance company)
• Kids Matter! (Goat farm sign)
• Your Package Matters! (Delivery service)
• We’re There When It Matters! (cellphone service)

And surely Firefighters Matter and EMTs Matter and Doctors and Nurses Matter. And what about animals and fish and birds and trees and plants and oceans and mountains? Can there be any doubt that Children Matter? Or Pets? How about Grandparents? Teachers? Scholars? Boy Scouts? Girl Scouts? Athletes? And then there’s Hollywood people and Politicians? (Wellllll, the jury is still out on those two).

What about Artists, Writers, and Musicians?  And Tan people? Pink people? Albino people? Yellow people? Green people? Polka-dotted people? Purple people? Handicapped people? Poor people? Rich people? Sad people? Happy people? Developmentally-disabled people? Babies?

Where does it end? Or does it?

Will “Matter(s)” be this generation’s buzzword version of “Where’s The Beef?”

Are scientists now gathering from around the world to launch their new “happening” slogan?

MATTER MATTERS!

Do we really want to go back thousands of years and pronounce that Cavemen Matter?

And there is no doubt whatsoever that ENTREPRENEURS MATTER . . . because—without them and their creations—the rest of global society would have very little to point to by way of missions accomplished.

Instead of simply choosing to accept the bottom line– that if you are a human being, a creature or planet creation, YOU matter(!)— it seems we have been instead choosing to lose trust and confidence in ourselves and buy into the implied exceptionalism of which lives matter, with the implication that no others do!

Unfortunately, stampedes are rarely stopped before innocents are trampled. But at some point each of us needs to simply stand tall, look in the mirror, and proclaim to ourselves:

I  MATTER.

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Tune in here starting Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, to read and contribute comments to short DAILY excerpts from Peggy Salvatore’s new book, 30 DAYS TO A NEW ECONOMY for 30 weekdays in a row! Free. No strings attached. Why?
Because YOU Matter!

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

YOUR CLOCK IS TICKING.

ARE YOU?

Get your eyes off this blog post for just ten (10) seconds and look around you! Serious. Turn around! Scope it out! Look at what’s behind you! Go ahead! I’ll wait.

What do you see? And do you all of a sudden hear or smell or taste something you didn’t notice when you had your face buried in your screen? Odds are you hate, or are afraid of, looking behind you. Why? Because doing that puts you in touch with the awful or distant or useless or sad or irrelevant past.

Perhaps your unconscious mind is simply trying to get you to be so busy racing for the finish line, you have a “no-time-for-that” excuse for avoiding intimacy with others, or situations, or your self? So you may be acutely aware (or–the other extreme–) completely unaware of your clock ticking.

But the bigger question is: are YOU ticking? Are you so absorbed in making the most of every minute that you lose track of what you’re actually doing, where you are, what you’re looking at, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling?

Do you spend so much time looking so far ahead of yourself so often, that you forget about eating, or sleeping, or using the bathroom? Do you push yourself to achieve so much that you lose track of appreciating what you have already made happen?

It’s one thing to be independent and self-sufficient and yet quite another to barricade yourself into a brain-numbing tunnel of private pursuits. Some scientists may be . . . but great entrepreneurs are not and have very rarely been . . . hermits. Working in a vacuum makes it hard to breathe.

Besides instinct and all the “hustle” traits we hear about, the cornerstone for successful entrepreneuring is successful networking. Referrals come from networking. Ideas come from networking. Strategic partnerships come from networking. Marketable product and service enhancements come from networking. Investors come from networking. Sales come from networking. The contacts we truly need in our lives come from networking. Hermits don’t network.

No, social butterflying is not the answer. Engaging with and helping others with their pursuits is a great thing but if you don’t make a point of learning from such experiences, you are essentially helping others from a position of weakness, and that’s not much help to you or to those who win your good intentions.

No one can function as effectively by her or him self with running a business, a family, even a career, as he or she can with the support of a network.

Business and professional practice people exchange business and professional practice ideas by email and text messages and on sites like LinkedIn and Referral Key and Merchant Circle to help one another start, grow, expand, downsize, revitalize and re-invent, but nothing replaces face-to-face and telephone-voice-to-telephone-voice for effective networking.

So the solution is simple: Stay grounded in the “here-and-now” as much as possible. (Deep-breathing helps.) Telephone and in-person network whenever humanly possible. The challenge is in disciplining your SELF to build these practices into every day. Three weeks of consistent effort can turn your life around.

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

GOTCHA!

The other day, I received a “How Your LinkedIn Posts Are Doing” email and was curious enough to click it. I was fascinated to learn that YOU (yes, YOU!) are among those who sometimes follow my ramblings, and that when I put all the clues together — I gotcha! I actually know who you ARE.

I examined the subject matter detail lurking beneath the surface of some of my targeted posts and came up with a description of YOU. Uh huh, YOU. (Isn’t this better than your favorite suspense movie?)

In fact, if you’re still reading, you’re certainly getting more revved up from the intrigue of what’s to come than what may have been prompted by news of the latest tech discovery: that a new device can now “read your iris and identify you FROM 40 FEET AWAY!” Good Grief! Do we even want to imagine what’s next?

So back to who YOU are. Let’s start with some good adjectives that definitely describe you, at least in part. Stay with me now. We’ll work up to the good magical stuff in a minute.

Let’s see — by every indication, I have determined (and for the paranoids: no, this is not psychoanalysis!) that on numerous occasions you are: rambunctious, risky, frisky, focused, frenzied, ingenious, inventive, innovative, impatient, volatile, excitable, rebellious, and welcome growth over stagnation. How we doing so far?

Well, if even just some of that sounds familiar, I will venture to guess that you have a strong urge to change things up, but that your forward motion thinking has had a tendency to get somewhat muffled, distorted, stuck, or obscured along the way. Yes? Okay, so it’s get-back-on-track time, or not? Seriously? Of course!

Oh, almost forgot . . .

here’s what I deduct about you:

YOU ARE:

A “FEARLESS” 40-50-something

salesperson (or salesy person)

who’s hooked on SHARK TANK!

You might even be an entrepreneur!

 How’s that? Look at it this way, you likely visited at least part of one or more of the following LinkedIn posts . . .

• You’re 40-50 Years’ Old?  (11/25/14)
• FEARLESS: Broadway-Bound  (1/15/15)
• FEARLESS Creativity Wake-up Call  (1/29/15)
• You’re 40-Something and trapped!  (2/5/15)
• FEARLESS SELLING  (2/17/15)
• FEARLESS Strategic Planning  (3/2/15)
• TANK SHARK TANK  (4/28/15)
• FEARLESS DAMN MARKETING  (5/10/15)

. . . and/or you probably visited one or more of the hundreds of posts at www.BusinessWorks.US on the subjects of sales, salesmanship, entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship.

SO . . . On target or way-far-away? If it’s on target, you are at least thinking like an entrepreneur, and maybe even acting like one. You might actually be one! If it’s way-far-away, you are probably way-far-away too (!), and lack the lightheartedness to even read the last two paragraphs — you might consider just clicking off this post now and finding some calmer, more regimented (like government?) career recruitment site.

You’re still with me? I hope so. Because if you are, you’re also tough and stubborn — great entrepreneurial indicators. Now make it all come together for yourself (that’s “for your SELF”) and make your ideas work! It just takes commitment and acceptance of the fact that your behavior is your choice.

You already have whatever else there is that it takes! Not sure? Throw a few business words in the www.BusinessWorks.US Search Window (Some non-business things like: “Are You Breathing?” work well too!) and check your SELF out! Go for it! Oh, and keep reading my posts, thank you very much.

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

ENTREPRENEUR ON THE FENCE

Like stunned fish floating aimlessly to the surface after an underwater explosion, corporations and colleges lacking entre-preneurial mindsets have been equally lifeless for decades . . . standing on the fence, trying to decide the next move. But, Aha! That is now changing.

UNLIKE entrepreneurial thinkers and doers (who have long known that an “ostrich attitude” only produces a head-full of sand), corporate and campus leaders –for very different reasons– have failed for decades to embrace entrepreneurship as a viable management methodology.

Shell-shocked by a quicksand economy, slippery-sloped job ops, and blink-of-an-eye marketplace changes, big business and academia are now beginning to regain consciousness as corporate and campus entrepreneurship training centers, programs, teams, and projects are rapidly moving front and center.

Reality is that America’s businesses and institutions of higher learning can no longer afford to manage from the “analysis paralysis” platform that requires months of committee meetings to recommend action instead of simply acting and adjusting immediately, then acting and adjusting again.

It takes an entrepreneurial mindset to dig out of the holes corporate managers and academic administrators have found themselves embedded in . . . to be airlifted out by technology-piloted choppers if need be . . . and accept the fact that entrepreneurial ideas, actions, instincts, and traits are yet again tantamount to paving the way for economic rebirth.

As quickly as we once reined in or abandoned Theory X, Theory Y, Theory Z, One-Minute Manager, Quality Circles, MBWA, Just In Time, Empowerment, Assertiveness Training, Anger Management, Lean Management, MBO, BOSCARD Management, and a hundred other such success fad formulas and piecemeal methodologies . . . we have come full circle from the 1980’s to realize we must think like entrepreneurs and act like entrepreneurs to truly make a difference!

CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The perpetual champion of management success, CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP, was billed in 1981 training program promotions by this blog post author, as:

“the new tack in the race for innovative business solutions that work”

— and reinforced by INC. Magazine‘s Executive Editor Stewart Alsop II (in April 1981):

“Entrepreneurship is in, it’s hot . . . a renaissance in American society, especially for entrepreneurs now buried in large corporations.”

Regardless of size, sales, or clout, if your business or academic organization is not already riding the new, revitalized 2015-2020 entrepreneurial wave of “Reality Success” that builds cruise-control managers into enlightened decision makers, you can be sure your competition is!

When it’s time to put more heart, more walk-the-talk attitude, and fewer politics into your business –to  ignite dormant organization spirit and foster more innovative business and market leadership thinking– CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP coaching and hands-on training can be your answer.

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

GET YOUR GLOVE.

GET IN THE GAME!

We’ve all read inspirational quotes from the likes of Einstein, Edison, Disney, Ford, Mother Theresa, Jobs, Gates, Gloria Steinem, Lincoln, Knute Rockne, Billy Graham, Reagan, Oprah, Churchill, Mary Kay, Dyer, Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy, Fritz Perls, Zig Ziglar, Vince Lombardi, JFK, John Glenn, Mr. Rogers, Helen Keller . . .

We’ve read hundreds (thousands?) of different interpretations of “THE” 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 “WAYS” “METHODS” “STEPS” “KEYS TO” “RULES” “COMMANDMENTS” “TIPS” or “BEHAVIORS” we must follow, or “SINS” “MISTAKES” “ERRORS” or “TRAPS” we must avoid “TO SUCCEED.” They headline endless online posts, each proclaiming more author-self-anointed-authority that the next.

We know from our observations of friends, family, and associates that “10 or 20 years of career experience” is often simply one year of do-nothing actions repeated over and over for 10 or 20 years.

And from all of this—and more—we’ve learned to smile and sit up straight, to not “make waves,” to “hold our tongues,” and to “accept the life (and struggles) that have been given to us,” to “be patient and wait out the storms,” and—when in doubt—put together a committee to study the question. Sure, you may feel like you have to play the hand that’s been dealt to you, but you chose to get in the game, and you can choose to get out!

It’s worth remembering that every sunrise—yes, including today and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next—is a wakeup call to action, a new opportunity for each of us to do the best we can do, be the best we can be . . . make a difference with our lives.

And since all humans have imperfections, it’s hard (and probably impossible) to even try to do and be better every day without a daily assessment of where we are at the moment and how (what was the process we used) to get where we are right now.

How can we change what we don’t know exists? Or when we don’t know how it got that way to begin with? How can we get where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been? How many of us can take apart a faulty machine-engineered appliance we have no working knowledge of, repair it and put it back together?

How can we change (Yeah, I know, a link to “10 Steps.” Sorry ;>) something without thinking through the steps of how we got there in the first place (i.e., what are the how-to’s, NOT what are the reasons)? Taking a quick daily personal inventory is one answer. Even heavily-experienced, well-trained pilots review checklists prior to takeoff.

The practice of daily checkups is the foundation for the attitude that drives every entrepreneurial mindset . . . that every problem is an opportunity! Trust yourself!

“Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. . .
If you’re not moving forward,
you’re moving backward.”

– Reid Hoffman, Cofounder/Chairman- LinkedIn (From the 2012 bestselling business book, the start-up of YOU, by Hoffman and Casnocha)

SO GET YOUR GLOVE,

AND GET IN THE GAME!

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

When it’s time to eat grass,

get out of the mud and weeds!

You’ve been bustin’ butt to get where you are, and you can’t even find the tunnel, never mind light at the end of it! That’s the nice way to say you’re feeling spent and discouraged. But the truth is — guess what?– you are CHOOSING to feel spent and discouraged! “Spent” and “discouraged” are behaviors, right? And since all humans are born with free will (although some undoubtedly approach dubiousness), humans (yes, even entrepreneurs) all CHOOSE their behaviors.

So now you think you’re going to get lectured? Don’t choose to think that. Choose instead to enlighten yourself. The choice is just as easy, and it’s light-years  more productive. We make choices every minute of every day — from when to wake up to when to go to sleep, and everything in between. HA! And you thought it was just a matter of eggs or cereal for breakfast . . . or whether to sneer, snort, scowl or smile at someone else who chose to be bitchy.

Nope. No lecture here. Just shared awareness based on being an entrepreneur, and working with 2020 entrepreneurs. The bottom line is that the vast majority of entrepreneurs I’ve experienced haven’t a clue about the right time to make their move out of the weeds and into the sunshine-filled pasture, where healthy grazing beats hanging around in mud and weeds infested with mosquitoes. And I won’t even mention the malaria word here. OMG! So many choices!

So, seriously, where does your business live? When will you choose to move it? Where? How?

Our choices are conscious or unconscious. Sometimes the consequences pop up years later. Goal-setting can spare us a lot of “choice” surprises! Are your goals legitimate? They meet all five essential criteria? They are specific, realistic, flexible, due-dated, and in writing? If they are not all five, you don’t have goals; you have a meaningless, nonproductive wishlist. Why would you choose fantasy when choosing (meaningful, productive) reality is just as easy?

Choosing when and how to get your business out of the mud and weeds is not a matter of betting the farm. Entrepreneurs take only reasonable risks. It is a matter of what I call “Opportunity Vigilance.” When you keep focused on making your idea work and on taking advantage of opportunities that represent growth, you are choosing to put yourself and your business in a position of readiness to head for the sunshine-filled pasture where work becomes fun again.

Unless, of course, you’re a FAKE Entrepreneur?

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

GOT A GENIUS MESSAGE?

GOT GUTS?

FEARLESS MARKETING is not about thumping your chest or flailing your fists wildly about before even stepping into the ring, the key, the batter’s box, or up to the tee, the net, or line of scrimmage.

Neither is it even about performing these kinds of antics after knocking down an opponent, making a slam-dunk, hitting an extra-base hit, sinking a putt, forcing a bad serve, or rushing for a first and goal. Sorry, truth is that you’re NOT Spiderman or Wonderwoman!

Being FEARLESS doesn’t mean being insane! It’s about stepping up and out as uniquely, as wisely yet brashly, and as customer-consciously as possible.

In the mid-late 60s, a creative marketing genius named Tony Isadore –then with the great Madison Avenue advertising agency, Young & Rubicam–came up with what was, at that time, unheard-of, earth-shattering language to headline an all-out media (TV, radio, print ads and transit signs) campaign to raise donations for The New York Urban Coalition, The message: “GIVE A DAMN.”

Risky business for those involved. Many thought the use of “DAMN” would be putting careers on the line. Yet the word happened. And because it was deemed by the public as appropriate for the purpose, it became a resounding success.

There is a time and place for everything, but the trick in FEARLESS MARKETING is to be that one step ahead, to anticipate what will work and how far to go in making it work. This is not to suggest ferreting through lists of prospective curse words to throw into your marketing and branding programs.

It is simply to make the point that when we look just far enough into the immediate future, with the right eyes (!), at the right market, we can almost predict an unusual word choice that will “click” with prospects. “GOT MILK?” and “DO IT!” and “IT’S IN YOU” and “LOVIN’ IT” and “THE REAL THING” all come to mind as two or three-word, double entendre messages that have made colossal sales.

And it’s hard to beat the great social media names (GOOGLE, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) that are in themselves, sales messages, and have even gained acceptance as verbs!

But, ah, be aware that none of these (or I’d venture to guess that any great, short, FEARLESS MARKETING messages) EVER just popped out of someone’s back pocket. Marketing messages that step up and out, that make a difference, that work, typically require re-working, revising, re-thinking, re-writing hundreds if not dozens of attempts, over considerable periods of sleep-on-it time.

So if you’re paying someone to produce the winning combination of words, be patient. Great branding never happened overnight, and if you can think of exceptions . . . you’re going to be wrong 99% of the time! If you think you can produce the perfect words yourself, become a copywriter . . . but don’t give up your day job!

FEARLESS MARKETING is not just the creation of a message. It’s also having the savvy and guts that underscore the message of FEARLESS! (the stage musical), which, applied here, translates to: If the risk involved is reasonable, run the DAMN marketing. FEARLESS MARKETING ignites FEARLESS SALES!

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Hal@Businessworks.US               931.854.0474

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