IF YOU CAN FOLLOW

these 8 sentences, you 

understand how to fix

the economy — and the

White House is puzzled.

(PART 1 OF 2)

     Entrepreneurs pursue ideas. They taste, test, trial-and-error, and explore applications of their ideas. When they settle on a direction, they find or attract enough financial support to do two things: 1) Create an operations process to develop (manufacture, fabricate, enhance) the product(s) and/or service(s), and 2) Design and deliver a marketing program.

     Marketing drives prospects to the door and creates a support platform for sales. Salespeople (or the entrepreneur herself or himself, acting in a sales role) produce(s) sales. Sales produce revenues. Revenues pay operations process and marketing (and perhaps investor) expenses and hopefully generate profits.

     Profits allow entrepreneurs to create jobs.

     Big business really doesn’t create new jobs. Research demonstrates time and again that far more than the vast majority of new jobs created in America originate with small business.

     So— why does the White House insist on avoiding and glossing over small business as an insignificant source of new jobs? Why does the White House pretend to befriend small business, shaking hands with the right hand while stabbing it in the back with the left hand?

     Can someone please answer this? Can the answer please be a real one, and not some convoluted response anchored by union-held political chips or fantasyland corporate moguls riding bailout coattails?

     How do”We the people…” choose to allow narcissistic political arrogance to override the critical needs of our economically-threatened society to stimulate and foster job creation?  Part of the answer is that we have a federal government that’s universally comprised of individuals who have not one iota of business experience, and who adamantly refuse to get the business advice needed for economic recovery from the only source that matters: small business.

     And surely–because, really, no one could be this dumb– the government can’t possibly be thinking that the SBA is the place to turn for meaningful input. (Yes, this is the same Small Business Administration administered by small-business-braindead government employees and stimulus-recipient big business corporate types who can’t even spell entrepreneur, let alone think like one) .

     The message is: WAKE UP AMERICA!  There’s more to this story, and it’s coming tomorrow.

     I hope you’ll return for –as one of my heroes, Paul Harvey, used to say– the rest of the story!

# # #

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Are you playing

with yourself?

. . . business is

a team sport!

     Don’t you just love it when a word older than the Civil War makes a comeback and ends up on top of the heap? Collaboration. It’s the hot new buzz word in business. Who knew? It’s strategic alliance, cooperation, shared interests, communication, interaction, productivity, and teamwork all rolled into one.

     Whoa! And it’s not a legal, structured entity so there are no lawyers involved. What could offer greater promise for success?

     Did you think that just because you run your own business, you no longer need to worry about or deal with anyone else? Did you think “Solopreneuring” would or should render you independent? Did you think when you hung out your solo practitioner shingle, you could function completely on your own?

     No more. Maybe small business hasn’t yet caught up with the giant union-based companies feeding on bailout tax dollars, or the Silicon Valley techies housed in converted warehouses with coed bathrooms, and elevated bunkbeds hovering over their computer workstations. But small businesses ARE collaborative.

     Successful small business owners recognize they cannot withstand today’s economic forces with their incessant coastal flooding and gale warnings simply by hunkering down and having an inflatable lifeboat ready.

     Doctors (including those who directly compete) can no longer exist without other doctors’ referrals. Downtown business membership organizations (including many directly competitive retailers) work together to stimulate customer foot traffic. Online and offline services are sharing services with other online and offline services.

     Many compatible and/or competitive businesses are partnering up for centralized buying services in order to exercise greater clout in winning product and service quantity and shipping discounts. Many others share creative development talents. There are even collaboration website resources like http://www.collaboratingentrepreneur.com for small business owners (which is well worth a visit).

     Business employee alumni associations are cropping up with collaborative applications designed to capitalize on the life and career paths of former (retired or moved on) employees who have maintained loyalty and/or contact since leaving. New revenue streams and solidified client sales have evolved from these collaborations.

A FREE, do-it-yourself, 2-page Business Employee Alumni Association

How-To Guide is available via email to me at the address below.  

     The point is that if you’re playing with yourself (pardon the double entendre), you are living in the dark ages, and you need to come up for air, look around, and see how you can help yourself (and others) by combining forces, interests, and financial pursuits. No contracts, no lawyers, and no money required. Go for it!

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Get it out of the elevator 

and into your pocket!

     The more you recite your “Elevator Speech” — you know, that little one-sentence description of what your business is all about that you would presumably use to tell your whole business story to a stranger during the few seconds of an elevator ride — the better it will get.

     It’s like the repetition of any story: the more you tell it, the more polished you’ll make it, the more effectively it will communicate, the more enticing a spiel it will become. But to make it work, you have to use it over and over and over again (Repetition Sells!): in meetings, at social gatherings and community events, waiting in lines, and yes, even weddings and funerals.

     That sounds distasteful to you? Sorry. It’s reality. No one’s ever really offended by quiet discreet sharing of an information one-liner that’s descriptive, in good taste, and doesn’t require ten paragraphs to explain it.

     If you have your own business — or you’re a sales rep, which means you have your own business — you are expected to be able to say what you’re all about in one clear, concise (and hopefully energetic) statement that you can say comfortably without struggling for breath..  

     “So, hey, Philamena, I hear you run your own business; whadda’ya do?”

     Please don’t tell the guy you’re a EXIF 2.2 expert who consults on compatibility of PIM and PictBridge. You might instead try: “We help individuals and businesses that work with photography to find the  computer printer systems that best fit their needs.” 

     I know it’s tempting to let others know that you’re a CTS PT who specializes in inflamed flexor tendons instead of simply explaining you’re a “physical therapist who helps people with wrist pain from repetitive motion (like computer operation, packing and assembly, or hammering) to not lose time at work.”

     Odds are if you’re new in business, you still need to tend to the polishing up of this “best set of words.” If you’ve been around awhile, you probably recite the same old statement every day to everyone and haven’t stopped to actually think about it for a long time.

     So, whichever situation best describes you, stop and think about it! Ask others around you what they think of your concentrated explanation.

     Remember that you only get one chance at a first impression. With today’s business economy, there’s no room for saying even one single word in your elevator speech that’s wrong, or that doesn’t enhance the communication value of explaining what your business does, or that doesn’t intrigue others. 

     Once you think you’ve got it, get it out of the elevator. Put it in your pocket and take it everywhere with you. Never stop refining it. And keep feeding it to your employees as the words you want them to use to describe the business anytime someone asks them (and hopefully, of their own accord, when no one asks!)

Comment below or Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today it a GREAT day for someone!

Hold your nose

and dunk under

 the wave . . . or 

 ride it to shore!

     Surfers (not the TV channel kind!) are actually smarter than they look. They know enough to take a deep breath and either dunk under a wave to get out of the way, or stand up and ride it onto the beach. When your business cash flow is outbound, it’s time to make that same decision.

     If you choose to dunk under — like leave town, change your name, and disappear into some cave or head for the islands (until your butt’s hauled back to jail) — go for it! But prepare (at least) for a stiff neck from looking back over your shoulder 16 hours a day … maybe work for a chiropractor?

     My guess is that when payables tip the receivables scale into the stratosphere, most of us will opt for survival instead of surrender. Certa Bonum Certamen say the Latins (“Fight The Good Fight”) and giving our businesses CPR is certainly preferable to filing Chapter 11. Rule of thumb: One first aider beats a full house of lawyers.

     Okay, so where to start? Make the unpleasant calls to creditors; beg for mercy; give them (and stick to) payback plans. Stay in communication with them no matter how awkward, uncomfortable or embarrassing it feels. DO NOT borrow money to pay back loans; it will catch up with you.

     Consider reputable debt consolidation services. Fill in staff-cutback areas with interns. It’s true a recent President kind of ruined that idea, but truth is that if you’re willing to provide the proper guidance and leadership, you can literally build an empire on the enthusiasm and energy of young interns.

     The best source of interns (and usually a structured program that keeps students focused and offers employers recourse) will come from your nearest community college, though some major universities have established highly successful internship (often called “cooperative education”) programs.

     Interns will occasionally work for free, sometimes for commission or bonus arrangements, and often for minimum wage or less. They require ongoing supervision. You may have to fill out evaluation forms and meet with a faculty or administrative advisor once a semester. That’s it. If this is something you want to make work, make it work.

     If you’re a one-man-band, ask family members for hours in exchange for breakfasts or dinners out, or periodic sports or concert tickets … i-tune cards? Be creative.

     One boss I know who’s struggling to get his business back on its feet reports getting productive work hours from his cousin’s teenage son in exchange for covering periodontal work (teeth braces) not covered by insurance. He gets six months of work from another relative in exchange for new tires on two family cars.

     Be creative. Make it work. Ride it to shore!

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Arrogance

and obstinancy

are not solutions to 

sales, job creation,

 or healthcare!

     If you’re searching for role-models to run up some business success, don’t waste your time copying what government and union “leaders” practice. Arrogance and obstinancy don’t work. Running roughshod over the public and small business doesn’t cut it.

     Consistently practicing integrity and authenticity (not just talking about it) is what wins sales. Treating every person you encounter with respect, every day, is what wins support.

     Giving genuine help (meaningful tax incentives) to small businesses to create jobs will produce the jobs needed to turn the economy around. This canNOT be accomplished by government plans to use the $30 billion TARP funds that are intended to offset the national deficit. All that that will accomplish will be to dig the economy even deeper into debt by having the 100% inept SBA provide loans for small businesses to pay off other loans. Seems to me that’s the definition of a vicious circle!  

     Union management is cashing in its presidential election chips and driving federal government puppets (with state governments sadly falling into step) into making decisions and spending money that no one has. These are the dynamics that are driving the American economy into the ground. 

     How far do you think you would get if you were legally insolvent and went on a family spending spree — cars, cruises, expensive restaurants and entertainment, new appliances, a vacation home…? What makes that irresponsible behavior acceptable as a government or union path?

     Has anyone asked small business people what they think the best economy solutions are? (No, not the Small Business Administration, which is comprised of corporate and government administrators who have little if any hard-nosed small business know-how or experience.)

     Yet, in the entire history of the United States, hasn’t it ALWAYS been job creation by small businesses that have bailed out sour economies? 

     It’s all about misplaced and misguided priorities. There is NO way to fix healthcare without first fixing the economy. And there is NO way to fix the economy without small business birthing new jobs. 

     The government, and union management,must learn that the solutions they seek will not come about by banging the door harder. A battering ram doesn’t produce progress or better answers. It really is time to listen to those who know best about how to jumpstart small business to create jobs — small business owners and entrepreneurs.

     Surely they will produce more meaningful answers than other politicians or big business union management.

Integrity and authenticity start with genuine respect, listening, and attentiveness. Can we please see some evidence of those behaviors offered to the small business community?

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

If TWITTER

“doesn’t work”

for your business,

maybe you don’t either!

     With cha-ching, cha-ching becoming a  sound of the past, many owners have resigned themselves to “try anything” to lift their businesses up out of the muck, get things back on track, make more sales, bring in more customers, pay the bills, and put some money in the bank again.

     A lot of “old-timers” are even giving social media a try. They’re baffled, but are willing to “give it a shot!” They locate www.Twitter.com, fill in the blanks, set up an account, then put up one feeble 140-character post every week or so telling the world how great their business is.

     They wait. No Twitter-types break down the doors.

     They walk off shaking their heads and vowing never to return. “TWITTER doesn’t work,” they tell people. “It didn’t get me any business, and besides, what do I care if somebody in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Honolulu, or Kalamazoo hears about my little local service business in Pleasantville?”

[Pssst! What works for your business will only work for

your business if you make it work for your business.]

     You wouldn’t run (and pay for) one ad or commercial and think that’s going to produce droves of visitors. Why would a few Twitter “Tweets” (which of course you’d not pay for)  do the trick? And, by the way, why would anyone — even someone who puts posts on Twitter a few times a day — think that telling Twitterland how great a business is, will send the masses stampeding to their doorstep?

[Pssst! You can only make something work for your business

if you work for your business. It’s called “walk the talk.”]

     TWITTER can work wonders for any business that’s willing to put in the effort to make it work. Making the absolute most of 140 characters takes considerable skill; you can’t breeze in and wing it like a car salesman. It takes brains, organization skills and marketing savvy. A psych degree helps. 

     Are the dynamics any different for FaceBook, LinkedIn, or any other social media networks? No. The closer you study these sites and see what makes them click, so to speak, the better your odds for making them be productive for your business. And you can’t beat the price, so the learning curve trade-off is a worthy investment of time and effort.

     Finally, the lame excuse for avoiding social media because it’s worldwide when they only service local customers? Today’s world has shrunk from a basketball to a marble in terms of instantaneous multi-directional communication. Through social media like Twitter and FaceBook and others we suddenly have “friends” we can be in regular daily contact with from our laptop on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, to Greg in Canada, and Pamela in Australia, and Doyle in Dallas, and Jonena in San Diego, and Victoria in Thailand.

     Do you think any of the millions who are exposed to online messages, might have a friend or relative in Brooklyn (or Pleasantville)? Do you think they might refer to one another the same ways you do? So why not be global, even if you are a little local service business. Hey, you really never do know where business can come from. It might even come from TWITTER.   

Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting.

Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!

It’s A Best-Kept Secret

… Among Men.

     From my early days in Madison Avenue’s “Top 10” ad agencies, where I worked for the industry’s two most famous and successful leading ladies, to active roles in women’s rights marches, to a professorship career which led me to ignite a campus women’s program,  followed by group counseling facilitator days with a female partner, I learned I was barely able to hold a candle to the feminine wiles of business leadership.

     I moved into serial-entrepreneur pursuits with a bevy of talented female business associates (the most important and influential of these being Kathy, whom I married 23 years ago), I have always preferred working with women. I can’t speak for many product industries, but to my way of thinking, women have always been smarter about all the things one needs to be smart about in running a service business and dealing with clients.

     And TODAY, I can finally say to all those smirking owners, investors, and VCs who’ve always equated quarterbacks, fighter pilots, and five-star generals with required business leader traits and qualities: “See. It’s not just me who thinks women are better business leaders!”

     The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute has just released new findings that predict women entrepreneurs will create close to 6 million new jobs in the U.S. by 2018, more than half the expected new job total. “That’s great,” you say, “but so what? How does that make women better business leaders?”

     Ah, it’s HOW this new job creation tsunami will occur that’s important. Women entrepreneurs are reported in this research study to be “more customer-focused, more likely to incorporate community into their business plans, and more adept at creating opportunities for others,” according to a report of the findings earlier today by Lisa Pateus Viana in the “Small Business” section of FOXBusiness online.

     Viana says these characteristics are “helping women excel in 1) running a business 2) keeping employees driven and productive and 3) building a loyal customer base.” She goes on to say that the research shows “the only things more important to women entrepreneurs than their customers are family and religion,” and proceeds to make a strong case for the values of something few male counterparts strive for: a sense of balance.

     It seems to me that the only ones who disregard the validity of these kinds of study findings are those who have never learned to accept themselves or be able to respect others anyway. So, good riddance to all those stimulus/bailout-dependent corporate and government muckity-mucks who think entrepreneurship is an irritating business nonevent without promise.

     And let’s hear it for the emerging new stronger-sex business leaders! In fact, if we cut them some slack, they may actually create us some millions of new jobs sooner than later! 

~~~~~~~~~~~Visit Hal’s Recent Guest Blog Posts~~~~~~~~~~~

•  
  • “The SALES Snow Job” @ http://bit.ly/bYHmXx
  • “Got A Sick Website?” @ http://bit.ly/6iYe6g    
  • “Leadership Puzzles” @ http://tinyurl.com/yfsczbk 
  • “What’s Your T-Shirt Say?” @ http://bit.ly/7K0s4a   

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JUST DON’T DARE

TO COME UP

FOR AIR!

     Right when we were starting to think we might be coming close to turning an economic corner, we get slammed with a Healthcare Summit instead of a Jobs Summit!?!

     In addition to extolling the new healthcare plan “affordability,” today’s White House declaration reads: “The President’s proposal puts American families and small business owners in control of their own healthcare.” 

     It does nothing of the kind. 

     First off, if you don’t have a job to pay for healthcare, what makes affordability important? And if you can’t afford it, who cares about control? Adding insult to injury, even if you are employed and can afford it, you are not in control; the federal government is in control.

     We’ve said it here before, healthcare reform can only succeed if it is free-market-enterprise price-competitive, and is run on a state-by-state basis. Citizens of Rangeley, Maine, have totally different healthcare needs than those of San Diego . . . or Dallas, Wisconsin, Kansas, or New Jersey.  

     The federal government, in its continuing resistance to acknowledge and foster the fact that small business is America’s only genuine economic survival lifeline, continues to backstab entrepreneurial leaders while smiling at them and shaking their hands.

     Anyway, whatever you do, don’t come up for air just yet because the minute you open your mouth to gasp, the socialist zealots (who decry its use in terrorist interrogation) are standing ready to waterboard small business owners with yet another obstinate attempt to shove a one-size-fits-all healthcare plan down our throats.

     This latest healthcare runaround does nothing except drain small businesses even more and further prevent them from the essential (and only) economic survival solution of creating new jobs. 

     The White House doesn’t get it. Americans simply do not want what is being sold no matter how it’s packaged and promoted, anymore than they’re rushing off to storm local jewelers to cash in on 2 for 1 diamond deals. When you’re sweating this month’s bills and this week’s meals, the healthcare system reforms someone else thinks is needed hardly matter.

     Jobs are what’s important.

     Bailouts and stimulus money are creating jobs? That’s a myth. Do the research if you doubt it. And funneling $30 billion into community banks will not jumpstart small business job creation either.  Oh, if I dare ask, by the way, where on Earth is that $30 billion coming from in the first place? How will it be used? Loans to pay off loans doesn’t seem like a promising solution. What will be the guidelines?

    Is there even a shred of Executive and Congressional awareness about the realities of small business ownership and management?

     Why have unions and big business locked arms with government to prevent small business entrepreneurs from saving all of our butts? It’s called creeping socialism, political greed and outright stupidity.

     It’s past time to stop buying what the President and Congress are trying to sell to further their own agendas under the pretense that they know what’s best, and to instead get them focused on what the American people really need: genuine and simple job creation incentives to small business.      

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Don’t Trust

What You Remember!

     Unless you are one of the 27 other people in America who has not a shred of interest in football, or who found yourself snowed in and powered out as I was on Superbowl Sunday, you probably missed the emergency portable radio static-filled broadcast of the audio for “60-Minutes.”

     Even as many were trying to remember the Colts-controlled first half of the game as they watched the Colts being trounced in the second half, the “60-Minutes” broadcast was focused on the shortcomings of memory.

     Actually, besides the realization that no one ever listens to portable radios anymore (who knew?), the broadcast was wrapped around a cluster of gruesome news stories involving “100% absolutely positive” witness identifications of individuals as criminals who were not.

     A couple of examples involved innocent people who were wrongly imprisoned for many years (more than a dozen I believe I recall hearing in one case). It was only after a slim-chance break in reviewing nearly untestable past evidence that innocence was proven with DNA studies.

     The point of all the par-for-the-course mainstream media sensationalism was to offer newsworthy, scientific proof that the human memory plays tricks on us… that, no matter how absolutely positive we think we are about something we remember, odds are that we are wrong! 

     Okay, so that’s not much of an ego-flattering thing to have to admit… and especially if it has to do with your business and the ways you think you solved problems in the past, which carries a bit more consequential impact than recollecting who threw what touchdown in the 1987 world series (er, sorry, Superbowl).

     What it might say to us, this little touch of dementia, is that it’s not just professors who are absent-minded and that we could all stand to rely less on what we are sure happened in the past. Big corporations wallow in the past, thinking no doubt it will lead them soaring into the future.

     But if remembering the past produces so many inconsistencies and untruths, what good can it all be? How will it ever move us into the future? It will not. If you disagree, you’ve been hanging around too many history teachers and accountants.

     It is the spirit of entrepreneurship that all business most ultimately adopt if we are to heft ourselves upward and out of this mud-clogged economy. There is a genuine need for business leaders to put the past aside and pay attention to what’s going on here and now.

     The past may be interesting and worth much exploration, but not at the expense of what’s in front of our business faces, because present judgements based on past memories will never lead us forward. Before you bet the farm on what you remember that you’re completely certain of, take a deep breath and look instead to the opportunities that are sitting in your lap… appreciate that times and your memory banks have changed. 

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Business faculties

teach rules,

yet there are

no rules in business . . .

     If you or someone you know is planning to be a smash-hit success in the business world, and the plan has anything to do with getting an under-graduate or advanced degree from a college or university that offers up business programs and courses run and taught by PhDs and MBAs (and earmarked by curricula that’s been infiltrated by rules and regulations), get outta Dodge!

     Unless you have no brain, no ambition, no gumption, and are willing to embark on a career simply to please your father instead of yourself, the kind of pre-corporate career training you’ll get will simply waste your time and money. How can anyone who knows the truth — that business has no rules (except maybe in accounting and maybe some parts of retailing and manufacturing) — think that there’s benefit to be had from coursework filled with teachers who teach rules?

     Before you jump on the disagreement wagon, take a good hard look around at the economy we’re mired in. Where are the biggest mud-heaps? Where’s the quicksand? What’s needed to turn things around? Who’s leading us in that direction? Who’s not? Who’s talking the talk but not walking the walk? We are slogging our way through an economic swamp largely because too much emphasis has been put on the teaching of rules and regulations of business, where none exist!

     Where do you find the kinds of business courses that make a difference, that are focused on reality, that are taught by people who have been there and done that? Try community colleges. Try private training organizations. But if you think for even a blink that some hotshot School of Business MBA will send you skyrocketing to business success in today’s economy, perhaps you should think again.

• It’s not worth your money.
• It’s not worth your time.
• It’s not worth hearing what textbook academia types who’ve coasted through 16 or 18 years of classroom work think about what it’s going to take to do real work in the real world that they’ve never done — that you’re going to have to do once you get out.

     If you really want to learn business, get a job. Use the job to train yourself. Back up what you learn with some solid community college classes run by people who are in business and have learned in business how to be successful in business by doing it, not by theorizing what might be possible.

     There is no better way to learn the realities of business than to work in a small business and pay close attention to what’s going on, and take courses run by entrepreneurs, not PhDs. Business success is measured by your attitude and by how effectively you apply yourself and what you know, not by where you went to school or what PhD taught you what rules. 

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF