Feeling Invincible? . . .

Think Only Wussy Types

Fret Over “What If” Stuff?

Perhaps consciousness of the fragility of life has never struck you or your business full force. Perhaps you’ve somehow managed to escape the anguish, angst, and fears attached to the reality of your own or the life of someone close hanging by a thread. Perhaps you’re too young or too lucky or too blessed to have ever known the stress of having machines do the breathing and feeding and medicating and pain management?  

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If that is even partly true of you, don’t let today pass without giving it at least a few moments of thought. Why? Because just as a business with no sign is a sign of no business, a business or business leader without good health — or a poor-health contingency plan– is the sign of a sick or unhealthy business.

“Nah,” a strong-willed 30-something entrepreneur responded to that idea, “My business is healthy,” he said, “and I have no provision for disaster because I work our regularly and I’m in good shape, we have a long-term lease, our customer base is growing steadily, and prospective investors are standing in line!”

“But surely,” I offered, “you have some kind of insurance coverage? Fire and theft? An office policy? Collision? Life? Health?” He cocked his head as if I’d hit him with an illegal punch, “Sure, but so what? THAT is MY contingency plan. Things go south? I just file claims and collect enough to start something else!”

“That’s good,” I said, “because burglaries and fires and tsunamis and earthquakes and hurricanes and tornados do happen, but I’m talking about catastrophic illness. That happens too.” Ask around. You’ll find plenty of people who’ve experienced sudden ill health, who suffered, and whose businesses suffered because they had no contingency plan.

When that “CLOSED DUE TO FAMILY ILLNESS” sign goes up on the front door (or website), dwindling (sometimes plummeting) customer loyalty and support follow. We live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? society.

Are you ready to face critical damage to your revenue stream and threats to the life support system your enterprise has routinely fostered?

What steps will you take and in what order? Or who will pinch-hit for you? What impact can your suppliers and customers expect, and how –specifically– will they be dealt with to accommodate their needs and to keep things running and moving forward? What gears will need to be shifted? By whom? When?

The time to deal with contingency planning is now, and to re-visit the plan at least once a year. The cost to plan is time. The cost to cope without a plan can be annihilating. It’s certainly true that expectations breed disappointment, but it’s equally true that having no plan is like captaining a rudderless ship.

And then there’re storms . . . 

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

What do workaholics,

delusionists, and grieving

friends and relatives

all have in common?

 Why is it that the people who are most in need of breaking out of their workaholic patterns are the ones most resistant to the suggestion? They’re afraid to let go. Well, logically, it makes sense. Fear is the single most destructive emotion (and sometimes, paradoxically, greatest motivator) in existence.

Letting go is life’s single hardest task.

Workaholics share this infamous platform with those who live in delusion as well as those who grieve the loss of loved ones. Letting go means giving up an important part of yourself in favor of moving on, or back into, reality. Many egotistically, and sadly, are convinced that the world and their business could not survive without them.

“Sadly,” because these same people will almost inevitably drive themselves into cardiac care units… or the grave… using the excuse as a rationale that they “never gave up the ship!” It’s a lot like being mentally retarded (and having a daughter who is, I can say this with some authority). The single difference is the awareness of having a choice!

Never-say-die workaholics

 simply choose not to choose.

They know they have a choice, but feel threatened by the idea of changing horses in mid-stream. So they instead invest themselves in maintaining the status quo at all costs. Or, as world renown family therapist Virginia Satir used to say, “they get dried up and shrivel up.”

And, Satir goes on to ask: “Don’t you think this affects the growth of their families and that of those who work with them?” See for yourself. Status quo seekers are everywhere, harboring pain and misery, and transferring their own inadequacies and choices not to choose to change.

How dim the lights that light these lives. How stagnant the businesses they run. How rebellious the children they raise. Choosing situations and leaders who make the choices for them . . . how unfulfilled the lives they live.

This picture is bleak indeed, and it permeates many corners of the corporate and union worlds and government universe but, thankfully, has rarely become the payoff of hard work and self-sacrifice that many entrepreneurs practice. How is that? Because most entrepreneurs play and sleep as hard as they work.

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Hal@Businessworks.US  

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Practice Volume NOW!

Hi Doc! You’re back? [See yesterday’s post for Part I] Well, that’s great because THIS post will get you started with a practice volume boost agenda that you will never get from a medicine world insider

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“Marketing” is a reflection of society. YOUR marketing is a reflection of you and what you are really all about. So it’s important to keep in mind that marketing is both external (websites, signage, traditional and social media, direct mail and email, promotions, PR events and news releases, and internal.

Internal is the most effective. I refer to it as “Quiet” marketing. It includes such things as the appearance of your personal self–neat, clean clothes and a scrubbed look, your office and waiting room, your equipment and staff, and the manner in which communications are conducted . . . on paper, online, in person, and on the phone.

This means active listening, clear simple speech, using examples and diagrams, soliciting questions and feedback, and applying this attentiveness to not just patients, patient families, staff, and associates — but to other doctors and nurses, lawyers, pharmacists, insurance providers, suppliers, detail reps, even cleaning and delivery people.

Quiet marketing also includes paying careful attention to the frequency and quality of communications with those in your networking resource and referral systems, and to your SELF. Why? Because Quiet marketing success at any level has most of all to do with how you conduct and represent yourself to others!

This translates to how you walk, talk, sit, stand, listen, touch, gesture, and treat everyone around you every day.

These actions add up to the statement you make about who you really are, and why you are trustworthy of the confidences and care of others.

Remember: someone is watching your every move, and noting your every word.

Effective marketing also requires consistency in looks, words, color schemes, traditional and online media use, branding theme identification. [You don;t need an “I’m lovin’ it” slogan or any less-than-professional statement, but some appropriate identity that patients can relate to is essential]

Your marketing messages surface through observations of your interior and exterior office decor, your business and appointment reminder cards, stationery and uniforms, promotional literature, educational talk materials, ads, signs, merchandising items, online content and access to you, newsletters, and news releases.

All of what you do and the message you seek to project must be absolutely and strongly reinforced by your staff in everything they do and say with every office contact, every minute, every day. No exceptions.

Professionalism in the eyes of a patient means more than training and skills. It includes appearances as noted and–most critically– professional empathy and reassurance skills . . . because every patient and potential patient (regardless of pretenses) is literally filled with fear. Fear is very real to 99% of the population.

Perceptions are facts.

What we perceive is what we believe.

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931-854-0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

always Great Healthcare!

[Credibility reference for visiting professionals: Hal is the author of DOCTOR BUSINESS for physicians and DOCTOR SHOPPING for consumers. As a 30-year advocate for both, overlapping his business consulting career, Hal served on national healthcare committees, won national awards and worked with over 1,000 physicians.] 

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We in America are headed down an astronomically-expensive healthcare road of no return for small businesses and professional practices. So NOW may be the best time to share some critical business insights with medical and allied health professionals.

And if you’re in any way involved with sales TO doctors,

stay with this post (and tomorrow’s, and be sure

to check out the link in the next sentence).

First, you do not know it all. Second, if you’ll pay attention to this short post (and tomorrow’s), you will know enough to get you through the leading edge of the oncoming mandated healthcare storm. Third, if the storm can in fact be sidetracked or beaten back, you will gain even more by digesting and using this information now.

Like it or not, the key to your survival and growth is rarely the medical training, skills and experience you offer… these great strengths of yours are merely “features” that patients will use to justify choosing you. With mandated healthcare, there will be no real choices to retain your services, but there may be choices to avoid your services.

More often than not, your success as a healthcare professional is tied to that word you may dread: marketing… but NOT “marketing”‘ as you have come to know it: office popcorn, candy and sub deliveries, event tickets, dinners, golf.  (Effective marketing that creates sales is the only way your practice can keep pace and grow right now!)

Most medical marketing is either noncommunicative because it’s too technical for the target audience or it’s too verbally bland, too visually sterile, and utterly meaningless — like virtually ALL hospital advertising messages!

How does this happen? Most medical skill development is rational, logical, analytical, unemotional left-brain activity based. Most effective marketing (which includes advertising, promotion, sales, and public relations) works because it appeals to right-brain emotions.

To achieve improved musculo-skeletal balance, physical therapists tell us a commitment to training, retraining, and ongoing exercise is required. The same kind of commitment is needed to achieve right brain/left brain balance… the root of stress management, self-control, self-esteem, and trust.

Trust is every patient’s

cornerstone of confidence.

No more than a radiologist is a good first choice for surgery, a technical thinker/writer cannot be expected to write marketing content that triggers emotional buying motives. Though I would hardly endorse the specialty, many cosmetic surgeons get it. They market benefits and results instead of features.

Someone seeking results (and in medicine that almost always means reassurance in some form) is not the least bit interested in what technique or instruments will be used. That person will want that information simply to justify the decision, but it is not what will ultimately “make the sale.”  Having a sense of trust makes the sale.

HOW to market your trustworthiness? Tomorrow. Here. The answers.

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Hal@Businessworks.US

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

The best New Year’s

 message I can share

  with you comes…

 . . . from one of my life’s heroes, Dr. Wayne Dyer.

It’s a 10-Point Pursuit Plan that I’ve dressed up a bit for the occasion, for your business, for your SELF, and to share with your family. If you succeed at making only HALF of these actually work consistently, I GUARANTEE that this coming year will be as happy, healthy and prosperous for you as humanly possible.

DO YOUR SELF, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR BUSINESS A FAVOR and read these ten points aloud to yourself. Write them down. Carry them in your wallet/pocketbook/briefcase. Tape a copy to your bathroom mirror, your dashboard, your computer workstation, inside your desk drawer, your workout bag, your refridgerator, the closet bar that holds your hangers.

READ AND RECITE before you go to bed, when you wake up, and any other time you can squeeze it into your day. You will positively amaze yourself with the results after just 21 days, and it’s FREE!! Go for it!

1. Want more for others than you do for yourself.

2. See yourself already having what you seek.

3. Be an appreciator of everything in your life as much as you can throughout each day, every day.

4. Stay in touch with your own and other positive human energy sources, and laugh as hard and often as you can.

5. Understand resistence, and help yourself and others to go with the flow.

6. Imagine yourself surrounded by the conditions you want to produce.

7. Understand the path of least resistence.

8. Practice radical humility.

9. Be in a constant state of gratitude.

10. You can never resolve a problem by condemning it.

If you think you’re going to give up on this, don’t start it. A little bite will only leave a bad taste.

BUT if you think you have what it takes to get your act together and take it on the road, if you think you have enough self-discipline to follow and practice the behaviors these 10 points suggest, you will positively succeed — even against all odds. Remember these 10 points are all about behavior. Behavior is a choice!

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More FREE insights on

 2012 “LEADERSHIP”?

Come visit me at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s site and comment on my Guest Blog posts:

LEADERSHIP TRANSPARENCY

“I” IS FOR INTEGRITY

and  “T” IS FOR TRUST.  

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but think about

where you are.

We watched a blind man’s yellow Lab thread his master through the parking lot and into the giant retail outlet, through electronic doors and deftly around an oblivious woman who appeared cast in stone, at one with her shopping cart … surely not about to move.

The man and his companion worked their way around obstacles, displays, counters, other shoppers. They passed so briskly and so seemingly self-assured that only a few passerby even noticed just one pair of color-blind canine eyes leading three pair of legs.

But we did. And in a mere matter of seconds after the man’s best friend and the man were devoured by store traffic, my mind snapped to attention from its visual tracking trance and realized we had been witness to a man with no eyes. Mine began to fill with tears. Maybe it was being sad for him, or grateful for me, or simply the season, but …

All my weaknesses, complaints and woes went quickly off into space as I closed my eyes and considered for just a moment what my life would be like without ever or ever again seeing a crepe myrtle in full bloom, the ocean, a blue heron following with its body its spindly silent legs as it creeps along the shore, a laughing toddler, deep woods, a frolicking litter of puppies, snow-topped mountains, my family, a book, works of art, lightening, swooping seagulls, my toothbrush, a roaring fireplace, faces, a Christmas tree…

Who could possibly want a Christmas present who has full use of vision after seeing someone who does not?

So, I am left to conclude

that Christmas is truly not

about either giving or receiving.

Christmas is instead about consciousness-raising, celebration, self-renewal, and setting out once again on our annual trek to make the most of what we do already have, to better ourselves and the lives of those around us.

Christmas is a gentle wake-up call to remember we are here to make a difference on this planet, one day at a time, to focus on making what’s possible happen. Christmas is a time for melancholy, yes, but also for introspection. We remember that we have within each of us the ability to choose the pathways that make existence on Earth as worthy as what lives in the riches of our souls.

Here’s what I’ve learned (often the hard way, mind you) so here’s what I have to share: In both business and in life, watch where you’re going, but always think about where you are. Be grateful for all that is yours, and continue your work to grow your business so you can help others from a position of strength … because the greatest gift of all is love wrapped up in charity.

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Visit tomorrow night for Hal’s annual classic story

Christmas In Ireland

God Bless You One And All

And Merry Christmas To You!

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