Archive for the 'Delegation' Category

Oct 06 2011

Honoring Promotional Incentives

 A LIVE CASE

                                   

OF LOST SALES

 

                              

A major global service provider recently sent me a direct mail piece offering a $50 gift card for a retailer I frequent if I sign up for their online demo. Hey, this is a win-win-win, I said to myself. I like the service provider company and imagine doing business with them on behalf of some of my clients. I’m interested in their updated information.

The mailing piece suggested I reply by mail OR by phone or email. I called. The rep at first acted skeptical that I was a legitimate prospect (I don’t think I sounded like a freeloader!), but I convinced him otherwise and he proceeded to put my contact info in for the gift card and schedule a demo for me.

A few days later, I sat in on the demo and Q&A,

Three weeks passed, and a follow-up call from the rep prompted me to ask if, btw, there was some problem or delay with getting the gift card. He said he “had no control of the gift card delivery once the contact data was entered, but it shouldn’t be longer than 30 days fulfillment period.”

Another month later, after an additional follow-up phone message and two follow-up emails — and no gift card!–  I politely asked once more by email reply, underscoring my legitimate interest in doing business, about the $50 card. His response was that those cards were only for people who sat in on the demo, and did I still have the mailing piece.

As luck would have it, I did have the mailing piece in a file folder (along with 12 pages of the company’s service descriptions that I downloaded to share with clients) and emailed him with the mailing piece code number and the exact date of the demo, which I had jotted on the file. I politely asked again for the gift card.

I added the comment that “given the circumstances of not delivering on a promo promise– I am not feeling very confident in your company’s services.”

His response: “I did put in the request. I apologize for it taking longer than expected. But what does a promo gift card have to do with using our services? Don’t let a gift card get in the way of what we can offer your clients. (boldfacing mine)

 Ah, but it   

                                                            

DOES get in the way.

In fact, on the “Don’t” list —

Don’t Promise What You Can’t Deliver!

                                                                     

[Keep in mind that I never questioned legitimacy, or entertained any doubt about this company prior to this failure to honor a promotional deal — and the attitude that accompanied it.] 

                                                                       

The experience made me wonder how many others were deceived. I wonder if the company provides all the services it claims to provide. I wonder if the company thinks so little about $50, what its attitude would be about an invoice discrepancy with one of my clients (or whether they would pad their bill).

The experience made me wonder how true their performance is and whether any of their performance documentation is fudged (there would be very little way to know without hiring a detective). The services they deliver are not always tangible or identifiable. Neither do they always produce accountable results.

Does it strike you as odd that a business (with sales far beyond a hundred million dollars) whose performance is entrenched in trustworthiness, and in the interest of protecting their brand integrity, would balk at making good as promised on a $50 gift card promotional incentive? 

Do you see shreds of bad customer service here?

Or is it just me? 

                                                            

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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!

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Oct 05 2011

Professional Practice Marketing

Lions and Tigers and Bears, 

                                     

and Clients and Patients

                        

and Customers Too!

 

 

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! As different as each creature may be from one another, all are considered equally dangerous, equally entrancing to watch, equally exciting to find in one’s camera lens, equally cuddly, equally threatening, equally enthralling. In other words, sometimes they can all fit the same category.

As marketing targets, it’s often all for one and one for all. Professional practices (doctors, lawyers, accountants, management consultants and trainers) are small businesses with special skills and special interests. They have clients and patients. But clients and patients are customers too. They just have special needs.

All this specialization stuff, however, makes little if any difference in marketing plans, targets, approaches, strategies, or branding programs. Perceived differences matter only to professional practice principals. No one else cares. The bottom line is that we each spend our money to get a product or service.

And each of us wants to know:

“What’s in it for me?”

                                                                     

Whether a product or service is life-saving or life-threatening has nothing to do with whether a client or patient is considered a client or patient — or customer. All that matters is product or service performance, and the integrity and authenticity of the person(s) representing or standing behind the product or services purchased.

The issue, say some, revolves around the concept and delivery of “high trust” vs. “low-trust.” Marketing people will be quick to recite the five criteria of effective programs, campaigns, and messages. Regardless of what name is used to define a target market (customers, clients, or patients), marketing must:

1)  Attract Attention

2)  Create Interest

3)  Stimulate Desire

4)  Bring About Action

5)  Provide Satisfaction

. . . and it really must do ALL of these to be effective.

 

On top of that, the rule of thumb applies to ALL FORMS of marketing — print, broadcast and outdoor advertising; sales; public (industrial, professional and community) relations; promotion; merchandising; pricing; packaging; labeling; website content; social media content ; business and appointment cards; stationery and invoices.

It applies as well to direct mail, bumper stickers and building signage, plus a hundred other uses. It applies to branding themes, logos, and jingles as well as trade and professional show banners and exhibits.

When you want to know how your business or practice is coming across to others, ask. Measure people’s responses and each marketing implementation against the five criteria.

If you’re looking for prime examples of marketing that fails because it fails to deliver all five criteria, you need go no farther than your local hospital. Hospitals breed marketing mediocrity because they refuse to spend money on outsourced creative services and convince themselves they can handle it all in-house!

Most professional practices seem to think in similar terms. The problem is that their products and services are justifiably more expensive than the local coffee shop and must carry messages that appeal to a higher level of audience needs, but that doesn’t eliminate the need to trigger emotional buying motives.

Sophisticated products and services are not sold with dumb slogans or rational, logical appeals that push features instead of benefits. Humans are humans are humans. Market from the heart. Market benefits! Pay attention to corporate advertising for Mercedes Benz.

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Hal@Businessworks.US     931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Oct 04 2011

PUSHING CREATIVITY

Success seldom surfaces

                                         

when creative service

                               

providers are squashed

                       

. . . or does it? 

 

 

Show me a writer or designer who thrives on being torturously pushed and prodded to stressful deadlines, and I’ll show you someone who is likely to be a do-nothing PR agent or brain-dead news media person, but don’t expect to find great advertisers, marketers or creative service people thrive in angst-ridden  pandemonium.

With rare exception, creative development work that’s “rushed” breeds mediocrity (and costs more, which makes the engager a double loser!). Truly remarkable talent, it is said by many, is born of free spirit, and ample time.

Do I know exceptions? Plenty. But exceptional creativity is the product of unconstrained imagination and self-discipline. The exceptions I know –ah, including myself (!)– coulda/shoulda/woulda produced more outstanding creations if they’d (we’d) not been pushed, prodded, intimidated, threatened, and time-pressured.

My best writing has surfaced during both

great duress and great relaxation. So

maybe the rule is an exception?

                                                           

My national boo0k award effort was done at my leisure. Its underperforming predecessor took two years under pressing deadlines. My worst book was written under crushing due dates. My best book –now almost ready to market– was ten years on the drawing board. My best award-winning jingle was done in one all-nighter.

My worst ad campaign took six months to research and justify and another six months to finalize and launch. My national award-winning, record-sales marketing program took three months start to finish. I have a future award-winning children’s book series ready to launch after 40 years in hiding.

And only heaven knows how many hundreds of new business startups have benefited by my rushing attacks on their website content, news releases, packaging, media positioning, and strategic planning. Yet the most successful, sales-productive efforts I have made have come only with major investments of time.

The trouble is that upstart business owners want what they want when they want it and time is not a worthy commodity to offer when they’re sitting on a hot idea and investor dollars.

Neither patience nor perfectionism has ever been a trait of entrepreneurs.

Neither has analysis, which is typically the province of corporate muckity-mucks

                                                           

Okay, so knocking this subject all over doesn’t settle the issue of business time pressures and the creative product. That, however, is the issue. Pushing and prodding and time-pressuring creative people may not always produce the best or most productive work, but it gets the job done.

Depending on circumstances and the marketplace and the economy (and who can depend on the economy?), a judgement must be made about whether you want to win awards or customers. Without a lot of room for awards on the walls of a crushing economy, the bottom line should be to insist on results, not pretty words and pictures.

Design awards only produce sales for designers. Copywriting awards only produce sales for copywriters. You can stop paying for your creative service providers to get more sales by putting some heat on their abilities to perform for you, the client.

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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!

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Oct 03 2011

For better or worse, richer or poorer

 If you’re not going to

                                        

marry your business,

                                     

don’t get engaged to it!

America’s abysmal unemployment situation has inadvertently spawned a burst of fledgling entrepreneurial enterprises. It’s been: “Outta work? So what. Who needs all that aggrevation anyway? I’ll start my own business.”

        ~~~~~~~

If you are caught up in this thinking, un-catch yourself! If you’re telling yourself you can start a little business and still work 9-5 with weekends, sick days, personal days, vacation, and holidays off, you might as well be living on Mars. I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m saying don’t be disillusioned from the start.

Business Ownership

is a marriage.

                                                                           

If you’re not willing to accept the fact that you and your new business venture are going to have to eat together, sleep together and get along with each other 24/7 for a number of years, don’t buy an engagement ring, get down on one knee and pop the question –OR plan the wedding and fantasize the honeymoon–  to start with!

Even if the bantered-around figures that claim 9 out of 10 businesses fail in the first 11 years (and don’t break even financially for 6 years) are only half right, consider your odds for success realistically.

Every new business idea  

is a great idea

before the doors open.

                                                                           

With a super unique product or service and a ton of investment money, with a brother-in-law accountant and an uncle lawyer and your spouse cheering from the sidelines, your chances for survival (nevermind success) are still practically non-existant if you are thin-skinned, hard-headed, inattentive or ungrateful, and that’s just for openers.

The attentiveness to detail, and to every single exchange with every single person every single day, plus the ultimate responsibility for paying every bill and returning every investment (plus a return ON every investment) that were none of your province or burden as an employee rest squarely on every business owner’s shoulders.

Spare yourself the agony of separation and divorce and probable bankruptcy if you’re thinking you can just gloss over or dismiss or delegate stuff and concentrate on sales or production or IT or some other aspect of your dream. The sad truth is that no successful entrepreneur can concentrate on any single aspect and make money.

Successful small business

owners and operators

concentrate on all of

what they’re doing

 . . . all of the time.

                                                                            

Operations, finance, sales and marketing, cashflow, legalities, IT, distribution, partnerships, collaborations, staffing, service,   innovation, creativity, leadership, suppliers, product and service knowledge, and industrial/professional/community relations are all equally important!

So, what was it that grandpa used to say? “Look before you leap!”??? If you’re intent on charging into your own business, do it with your eyes (and ears) open. Reality beats fantasy hands down. For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health . . .

Of course if you’re not ready for marriage (or your hands are already full with the family you have), there’s nothing wrong with using your ambitions and skills to find another, and hopefully better, job than the one you’ve left behind that prompted you to think a business startup would be a piece of cake. It can be if you’re a baker!

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 Hal@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Sep 27 2011

On The Comeback Trail

Every entrepreneur falls

                               

and needs to get back up.

 

 There’s no doubt about it . . .

If you haven’t failed at business,

you’ll never be successful.

                                                                                

Implicit in that bit of wisdom is that you must make a strong recovery after being knocked down. And that takes guts and gumption.

Though some upstarts and some do-nothings may get themselves fired and need to find new jobs, corporate employees know little of this “Comback Trail” pursuit, or what it takes. Government employees? Their heads fall off when they try to even think about reinventing themselves.

But entrepreneurs? That’s what small business is all about. It’s a calling. It’s the excitement and challenge of being successful –making a success of your idea– against the odds! In other words, for an entrepreneur, reinventing yourself and your idea and your business –the action– is a way of life.

Unfortunately, some corporate muckity-mucks and top-ranking government officials who see themselves as voter-mandated, or hand-picked by those who consider themselves voter-mandated are often in the way.

They block entrepreneurial efforts to get back into the free market competition fray by throwing up roadblocks to economic progress under the guise of social reform. I mean hey, remember we’re talking about the same political types who think they need only to change their appearances and messages to make comebacks.

Small business owners know better. They recognize that it takes more than a haircut and flamboyant (or –as long as we’re onto “flam”–  inflammatory) oratory. Business comebacks demand changes that are grounded in substance. Putting a blue spotlight on the outfit doesn’t make it a blue suit. Talk does not cook rice. 

It is more important, say some misguided politicians, to make the whole world wonderful for every living soul no matter how much that state of bliss is earned or not earned, than to encourage small business growth and job creation.

The problem is

that the economy is the problem,

and 

only small business job creation

can solve that problem,

and there’s not enough TRUST

in government to convince

small businesses to create jobs!

                                                                      

And, yes, that problem has to be solved before we can address other world needs from a position of strength.

The bottom line is that there’s nothing wrong with reinventing yourself and/or your business in order to get back up off the floor and revitalize a staggering or TKO’d business venture. The world’s most successful entrepreneurs have all done that repeatedly.

What IS wrong is to make a half-hearted effort at it, or an intentionally deceptive or manipulative one. You’ll never “dance with the stars” or get back up on your feet if you’re wearing cement shoes (an old Mafia saying). To put yourself on the comeback trail, focus your energy on the here-and-now present moment, not the finish line.

A map is useful, but always be prepared for detours. And never give up your ideas, your pursuits of them, or your sense of integrity. The trail you seek is just around the corner. It will all work if you will

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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!

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Sep 26 2011

Your Balancing Act

Operating

                        

a small business in 

                                         

times of personal trouble…

                                                              

 

The most frequent consulting calls I get are from business owners who are experiencing personal emotional trauma, and who are trying to either ignore or bull their way through the upsets without acknowledging them.

Many talk and act as if they’re sizing up my marketing experience, but what they really want to know is if I can help them personally.

They throw little test questions out: “Uh, have you ever worked with partners who don’t always get along?” or “Have you had to deal with older family members who started a business, then turned it over to younger relatives?” or “How would you increase sales in a business where the boss’s wife had alcohol or drug problems?”

Some, of course, cut right to the chase: “I just got out of rehab and still have panic attacks, but nobody else can run the business; what can you do to help?” or “My partner is the money behind this business, and he’s an idiot and we’re on the verge of breaking up; can you help pick up our sales while we divorce?”

I have a little reminder note pasted on my workstation:  Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.” You may have to become as old as I am to really appreciate the truth of this, but if you ARE less than 150, I can assure you that truer words were never spoken.

And there’s no discrimination that disallows business owners. We all carry our own burdens through life. How we strike a balance with the businesses we run makes the difference between success and failure. Dealing effectively with the whole mess, time after time, depends on how effectively we balance our own emotions.

Dismissing, or disregarding the reality of what we face accomplishes nothing, and often makes things worse. Jumping headlong into upsets is a get-screwed-up-quick formula that can wreak havoc on both the business and your personal life. Balance means holding the ship steady through stormy weather regardless of preferences.

In other words, this isn’t football,

and acting headstrong can get

 us sacked on the one-yard line 

                                                    

We need to be able to put aside our emotional attachments; we need to be able to let go of some of the ties that bind. We need to accept that we don’t always have all the answers and be willing to go with the flow when problems overwhelm us. Can it be God or an inner spirit challenging us to rise to the occasion? Is it a test of your mettle?

“If you can get through this, you can get through anything,” my wise old uncle used to say, but he never mentioned that there would be a least hundreds of “this” times.

Life is about challenge. So is entrepreneurship. Just make sure you keep your personal life in balance with your family and those around you. If you stand tall in troubled waters, the business will heal itself. Where to start? Try some deep breathing for openers, and then begin to sort out and prioritize before you take action.   

 

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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!

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Sep 22 2011

METICULOUSNESS

“Detail” Counts

 

Big Time In 

 

Small Business

 

My first employee review in my first real job accused me of not liking or tending to detail. Decades later, I still don’t like it or tend to it, except as absolutely required by clients, the IRS, or a book manuscript or marketing program that demands it. And even then, I still don’t like it.

After all, how can creative spirit flow freely

 with “detail anchors” weighing it down?

                                                                   

And, it seems when I look back, that entrepreneurs and small business owners of every conceivable description, similarly hate having to deal with detail. Yet, meticulous attention to detail is what often makes a small business become a big business. At every level: finance and operations as well as marketing and sales.

By listening carefully (vs. just hearing) to what customers and prospects say they REALLY want, you engage yourself in the world of providing detail, and the better you do at it, the better you will invariably do at not just servicing, but delighting each person and entity that you confront.

Detail –except in word choices and design applications– is not generally an area that commands great attention from those who provide creative services.

Attention to detail is most typically the milieu of those who provide accounting and legal services, intricate products, operational equipment, and safety-oriented products.

                                        

This doesn’t mean you need to be a bean counter, brain surgeon or rocket ship c0mponent manufacturer to justify the need for attention to detail. In fact, the further away from these “expected” areas of business a customer or prospect encounters what you have to offer, the more likely you are to have positive impression opportunities.

Why? Because most people don’t expect a roofer or plumber, or dog groomer, graphic illustrator, a self-proclaimed SEO or social media  “expert,” or shoelace salesman, to be able to support product and service claims with hard evidence and factual findings –details– that boost and solidify the sales message. 

Details are what drive home the emotionally-triggered sale by providing the objective, factual, unemotional supportive features that purchasers use to justify their decisions to themselves, their spouses, their boss’s, their partners, their associates, employees, shareholders.

Details may not always be fun. But –in every sale, they prevail! Do you? Are you supporting claims with facts? Attention to detail means attention to customers and prospects . . . a practice you can never go wrong with!  

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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!

No responses yet

Sep 21 2011

Multi-Tasking

It’s the middle name for

 

 

most entrepreneurs, but

 

 

is it the source of

 

 

real solutions?

 

Multi-tasking —as in walking post haste to the men’s or ladies room, chewing gum, texting your accountant while cell phone conferencing your lawyer and signing off on a major customer delivery form on a clipboard being held by your assistant . . . and all the time knowing that in just a matter of seconds, you’re going to need at least one hand free.

Yes, entrepreneurs live in the fast lane, and yes multi-tasking is a way of life for the small business owner. But does the end always justify the means? Surely you’ve heard more than once from a filled-with-wisdom grandparent type that “Haste Makes Waste!” and have no doubt proven the truth of that to yourself a few times, true?

But now you have passed all recollection of those life experiences into the deep, dark, dingy caverns of your mind and no longer carry the need to heed such warnings anywhere near your front burner, and in fact probably harbor them back in that little storage area that holds memories of a flunked course, a failed romance and poor toilet training when you were three.

Though –aha!– the more you try to do in a hurry, the more likely you are to screw something up. Why? Because it’s been scientifically proven many times over that the human brain (though many protest the thought with what they believe to be contradictory examples) cannot do more than one thing at a time, meaning in the exact same moment.

Unconvinced?

Sit in a chair.

  • Lift your feet off the ground. turn your ankles so your feet make small circles (any direction you like — one in one direction and the other in another, or both in the same direction; it doesn’t matter).

  • Next, get your hands moving in sync by turning your wrists.

  • When you start feeling like a well-oiled machine, try to reverse direction with your hands while maintaining the original direction your feet have been moving. Or switch and reverse foot direction from your hands.

The point is that multi-tasking may look impressive to others who are easily impressed, but don’t expect that any kind of steady diet of trying to do more than one thing at a time is going to produce some miraculous level of off-the-charts productivity to write home about.

It is not better to do half a job well instead of a whole job not well. Doing half a job well simply means the job is only half done. Period. Doing a whole job not well means that effort and determination were present, and that, presumably, something important was learned in the process. Uh, this is true at least for most successful entrepreneurs. The rest? Who knows?

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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!

No responses yet

Sep 20 2011

Rotten Writing?

Books, billboards, news

 

releases, website content, 

 

magazines and magazine

  

articles, posters and

 

displays, newspaper

 

 columns, surveys, signs,

 

 postcards, brochures, 

 

commercials, promotional

 

 emails, direct mail, photo

 

captions, jingles, branding

 

themelines, package labels,

  

training curricula, promo

 

literature and exhibit

 

 materials, webinars, sales

 

presentations, seminars 

  

lyrics, booklets, speeches,

 

 ebooks, blog posts, scripts

 

  business plans, marketing 

 

 strategies, love letters,  

  

manuals, greeting cards,

 

and matchbook covers

  

Ever write any of these yourself? How’d it come out? Did you get the results you wanted? What happened? Are you a skilled writer? An experienced wordsmith? Probably not. If you’re reading posts on this blog site, it’s because you’re an entrepreneur, a small business or professional practice owner, manager, or principal, a student, or a leader.

If you fit any of those kinds of career descriptions, odds are that you are marketing a product, service, or idea (or some combination) and the daily challenges of keeping your business or organization moving forward leaves little room for you to indulge in fantasy of seeing yourself as a talented writer. And you’re smart enough to know when to get help.

One telling characteristic of successful entrepreneurs, in fact, is that they know how to pull their ideas forward while leaving necessary professional services up to professionals they engage — CPA, attorney, management consultant, and more often than not: creative services, especially writers and designers.

Entrepreneurs, after all, are the catalysts of business and the economy, and serve as mirrors of society wants and needs. They alone are responsible for new job growth (not corporations, and certainly not government). As a result, entrepreneurs are also the most sensitive of business people, and the quickest to recruit outside expertise when they see the need.

Small business owners are far more in touch than their big business counterparts who are obsessed with analyzing with what message content and structure communicates best, and sells.

They recognize that one dot or small sweep of a design line, or one word can make the difference between sale and no sale.

They respect and appreciate the value of expertise.

 

So the list above is not just a teaser or composite of writing applications. It is a list of real business-related (yes, even love letters!) writing needs that most entrepreneurs are confronted with at one time or another. It is also a list of writing applications that anyone you hire to write for you should have experience with, at least most of them.

I know. I’ve written all of the above many times over. And I can tell you that a marketing writer who hasn’t written a book doesn’t know how to tell a story, and stories sell. A website content writer who hasn’t written radio and TV commercials has no sense of writing concise, punchy stuff that’s short and sweet, and short and sweet sells.

Someone who’s never written a billboard hasn’t even a clue about how to write branding lines because the discipline is the same:  Aim for 7 words or less and tell a story in those 7 words that has a beginning, middle, and ending . . . and is persuasive. And in direct mail, the more you tell, the more you sell — that means, literally, a blanket of billboards.

Writing emphasis must always be “you” focused (not “we”). It must attract attention, create interest, stimulate desire, bring about action, and deliver satisfaction. All writing –even an instruction manual– represents an opportunity to make a sale and/or create a favorable impression. The writing you have now? Does it work as hard as you do?

 

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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!

No responses yet

Sep 18 2011

TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK-TICK-T

You already know this, but

 

perhaps you’ve forgotten:

  

  You and your business are

                         

here on Earth to make a

  

d  i  f  f  e  r  e  n  c  e  !

 

Does that mean you need to revamp your food business to offer only organic produce, fruits, meats and poultry? No. You may want to consider a direction like that for business reasons, but making a difference for others is not a pursuit that –unlike government bills and riders– has restrictions attached.

Making a difference with your business doesn’t mean you must suddenly be a better Boy Scout or Girl Scout. It does mean holding to a higher integrity, and offering goods and services that don’t inherently harm people. Cigarettes come to mind. Oh, and don’t rationalize with raves about all the tobacco industry jobs and good deeds.

That’s a big business/government style-defense. Drive responsibly, say the alcoholic beverage companies. We grow forests, say the paper mills and logging companies that strip mountainsides bare of trees. You can add your own examples here. Hypocrisy has become a mainstay of corporate marketing, PR, and government control.

You can’t make a difference on Earth

by being two-faced.

(Politicians take note.)

 

And —TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK-TICK— time marches on, so the amount of time you have to improve the business and personal lives of those around you and those who come after you are perhaps a whole lot less than you might have imagined (or maybe never thought about!) when you rolled out of bed this morning.

Bottom line: The time to act is NOW!

 

Start thinking about your legacy as you’re reading this, and take just one step in the direction of putting those thoughts to work by the time you walk away from your keyboard. Carpe Momento!

Recommended guiding words:

The old hit song lyrics from Seals & Crofts —

We may never pass this way again.

 

                                      

“There’s no time like the present,” my father always said. “Time and tide wait for no man,” my mother always said. “DO IT” says Nike. Now, entrepreneurs seem to know this instinctively, but they also seem to limit their hurries to business deals instead of to their own internal missions. Those little voices that point to reality.

What speaks to your ears from inside your gut? It may be different than the words that come from your brain. Words from the brain can be easily over-thought, manipulative, too rational, too unemotional, too logical — the stuff that corporate and government analysis paralysis is made of — What comes from your gut has no limits.

So maybe your gut instinct to meet your down-deep-inside legacy goals isn’t finding a platform in your business pursuits? Then set up something separate to make it happen. A new division, revenue stream, referral channel, product or service line extension . . . something that addresses your true life purposes.

Running a successful business is problematical enough; why saddle yourself with yet another entity? Because if the business isn’t satisfying your inner needs to, for example, help needy people and organizations, a nonprofit charitable or educational family foundation might. What’s the worst possibility?

You start a foundation and can’t make the time to run it? Find someone who believes in your purpose to step in, and you simply provide the guiding light. You start a foundation and the goals or mission become obsolete? Redefine them. You’ve already re-invented yourself and your business at least ten times over. Well?

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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