Business Lesson #2 from FEARLESS! The Musical . . .

“Yesterday Is Over”

     Song Title From: “FEARLESS The Golden Love Musical” ©2012 Valerie Connelly and Nightengale Media, LLC.

If you own, operate and/or manage a business

or professional practice of any kind,

consider this reminder a kick in the butt!

STOP talking and thinking about what’s more than a minute old. There are only two legitimate exceptions:

When your mind needs to stray for a few moments to take a pleasant relaxing reminiscent journey as a break in your stressful activities.

When you need to tap your memory banks for a quick assessment of what you once did or failed to do that will help an immediate circumstance.

If you’re dwelling on past events, you’re wasting your time, your energy and your money . . . and probably the time, energy and money of others as well.

Anything more than a clock-tick old

is in the past!

When you find your mind drifting into the past for anything other than to seek a relaxing, pleasant memory or to retrieve a decision-making bit of information, pinch yourself!

Zing your brain into accepting that what’s done is done. If something done calls for you to make amends, make amends. Then move on to the next minute.

Now that you’ve had your butt kicked, and you’ve pinched yourself, you have likely increased the odds of being able to focus more on the present. That’s a major step toward maximum emotional stability and good health.

The sign on my wall (since 1970!) says:

“Now is the

only time.

the past

is over;

the future

not yet here.”

And consider that the future, by the way, may never arrive . . . so the only healthy place for your brain and your body and your emotions —AND YOUR BUSINESS AND CAREER GROWTH— is right here, on each of these words, as you read them, here and now, in the present moment as much of the time as is possible each day because all the rest is fantasyland, and. . . because:

“Yesterday Is Over.”

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Business Decision Time:

COMPRESSION or EXPANSION?

Sometimes it’s a clear-cut conscious decision. Other times, it’s like deciding to eat more or eat less depending on your mood, the notches on your belt and what’s put on the table in front of you.

But the bottom line is that –in business–  while many factors and variables need to be weighed, too much time is often wasted deliberating, which serves to host that dreaded government disease: “Analysis Paralysis” . . . where nothing ever gets done, or even decided.

When you look carefully at the downside possibilities of either a business expansion or compression option (vs. potential rewards) –and determine that the risk involved is reasonable— AND when you see a clear path for taking a first step: take the damn first step!

If it doesn’t seem to be working as you imagined, make adjustments — to the path and/or your imagination.

Change The Towel!

Are you convinced the direction is right? Whether you answer yes or no (unless you see insurmountable financial or legal odds stacking up), don’t be so quick to throw in the towel when something goes awry. Instead, change the towel!

What do you learn from listening (which needs to be 80% of the time) to what your existing and prospective customers say about the towel? What’s their take on the changes you make in product or service or facility or staff or pricing or value?

Take away what you hear and learn and adjust the size, and/or the shape, and/or the color, and/or the consistency . . . then take a second step.

“Nobody counts

the number of ads you run;

they just remember

the impression you make.”

— William Bernbach, All-Time Madison Avenue Ad Agency Guru

[With special thanks for the reminder and source to @DigitalShawn on Twitter]

And get yourself in stride for what may turn out to be an endless road of adjustments. While government decision-makers (and competitors of the same mindset) assess and evaluate and review and consensus- seek and never move forward, you can be light-years ahead.

Go for it! It’s all a matter of choice. And the choice to stand still, or to shrink or expand your business is always yours! Don’t belabor it. Be FEARLESS! Trust yourself.

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OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

Don’t trip over your own face!

7 Thoughts to Stimulate Your

Small Business Breakthrough Now

Sometimes in our hurry to the finish line, we become obsessively focused on our destination and crumble into a helpless heap that competitors simply hop or step over as they race past. How can we best avoid this common catastrophe? Here’s some of what I’ve learned:

1. Even if you’re on the one-yard line, STOP seeing yourself dancing around the goalpost. Pay attention instead to your feet. Zone your brain into the immediate breath you are taking, right now, right this very moment of high expectation. Expectations, let us remember, breed disappointment. SOLUTION: Paying attention to your inhale and exhale forces you to concentrate on and make the most of every passing moment AS IT HAPPENS!

2. When your mind is in the “here and now,” there’s no room for dwelling on past attempts that failed or for worrying about future events.There is only the present moment. And that present moment is where you excel! Isn’t it? Of course it is. Think about it.

3. Excuses don’t cut it! Trying to explain your way out of failure that occurred because you lost contact with your present-moment breathing? That simply wastes more present precious-life moments.

4. It doesn’t hurt to constructively review and assess how you went wrong, but it hurts deeply when you choose to let your mind wander off into a place of dwelling on what happened and what you should have done. SOLUTION: Instead, take some deep breaths. Reconnect with the here and now . . . what you are actually doing. And move forward.

5. The pervasive problem with academia thought patterns that all of us are taught from grade school through PhD studies is the enormous resistance to truth and reality — the pursuit of what I’ve often called “analysis paralysis” that so embodies and emboldens the ranting and raving of so many unrealistic faculty ranks that blanket our campuses, and unfortunately tend even to infiltrate elementary school innocence.

6. More time and energy is wasted trying to figure out approaches to problem situations (based on history, available data, Past performances, new analytics, etc.) instead of simply approaching problem situations, recognizing them as opportunities, taking action, and making adjustments. What difference does it make “who did what when” if you’re confronted with the need to survive. Many don’t realize it and many dismiss the reality, but my educated best guess is that most small business enterprises are in a constant state of needing to survive. SOLUTION: Even if you’re not one, think like an entrepreneur!

7. The face of your business is what the world sees. It’s what you show others all day every day. How can you expect to be in touch with the impressions you make on others when you are consumed with what you did or didn’t do yesterday or immobilized by worrying over what tomorrow will bring? SOLUTION: Look in the mirror and talk to yourself more. Remind yourself of the real you — what’s in your gut. Then work harder, not smarter!

Concentrate on what you are doing each moment as much as you possibly can, and work at returning your mind there as often as you can. Deep breathing helps. Being committed to exhilarating customers instead of just “satisfying” them helps. When you pay attention to where your feet are and not the finish line, you’ll achieve more, more often, and avoid tripping over your own face.

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——————-

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Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

DEAR BOSS:

What can the matter be?

Gallup Research says odds are that your

employees may be costing you a

lot more than you think.

How so?

Fewer than a third of employees , says Gallup, are “Actively Engaged” with their work! (Does that furrow your brow?)

And more than half are “Disengaged” from their work! One out of five is, in fact, Actively Disengaged! (Does that make you snort?)

If you think it’s not true, maybe it’s because some of your people are just good actors! (Does that make you applaud as the cash falls from your pockets?)

But guess what? YOU are the boss. YOU are responsible. You can delegate authority, but you canNOT delegate responsibility.

Bosses who try to “pass the buck” inevitably fail. Bosses, however, who accept full responsibility and who lead by leading instead of by telling, who make genuine ongoing efforts to create a bond with their employees are the ones who help ensure and foster active employee commitment and –in the process– help ensure and foster black ink on their organizations bottom line!

So where do you start?

You start with the decision to start. This is a typically easy and quick step. You either want to be a better leader or you don’t.

Assuming your screen-tapping fingers are still capable of the task, START with a WRITTEN-ON-PAPER-WITH-A-PEN goal of where you’d like to end up, and if your goal statement is ever to work, it MUST be:

Specific       Realistic      Flexible     Due-Dated

If you stick to working through this in any meaningful way and steer clear of attempting shortcuts, this is a typically hard and slow process. But don’t be discouraged, the harder you work at this, the better your odds for success.

Next, review your goal statement at least daily. Sometimes hourly is necessary. Change it as you open new doors, uncover new problems, discover new directions, meet new people, discover new techniques. Remember, a key criteria is flexibility . . . a sudden storm can quickly disrupt a leisurely canoe trip and force a change in direction. Unexpected removal of a roadblock can shorten and speed up a long drive. When you get this far, check out: HOW to make your goals work.

BUT

Believe it or not, don’t share your goals with anyone else who doesn’t also have written goals, or who isn’t working with you on a shared goal. Why? Many people are either consciously or unconsciously invested in seeing others around them who strive to succeed, become failures. Doubt this at your own peril.

Assuming you’ve kept your homework out of the dog’s mouth and actually done what you’ve accepted as necessary, and are getting into the swing of real handwritten-on-paper goals that are flexible, realistic, specific and due-dated, and that you are constantly upgrading them, and carrying them with you all the time and reviewing them as often as you check your wristwatch or smartphone messages, you need to start teaching your people to do the same thing for themselves.

Start them out with a deeeeep breath!

THAT process is a good beginning. But it can only start if YOU start!

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——————-

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OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

YOUR MEMORY CAN KILL YOU!

No, huh? Memory can kill? Of course it can!  STOP reading for a minute and recall your biggest life upset… go ahead, but just for a minute. That’s all you need to get the idea.

The more we dwell on past events and behaviors and thoughts, the deeper we dig into the world of neurosis, and the sicker emotionally and physically that we make ourselves.

Memories serve a couple of valuable purposes when they are used productively in the present moment.

• Recalling something pleasant can actually soothe the neurological system.
• Recalling a mistake can help us make a corrective adjustment to a current course of behavior or activity and help ensure greater odds for success going forward.

But when we get ourselves lost in our memory banks, even in the process of engaging positive past experiences, it’s as easy to slip out of the reality of the present moment as it is to take off a glove. The difference is that removing a glove has some conscious awareness attached. Focusing on a memory can easily suck us into a tunnel of no return.

You think this is not about you? Think again. All of us have an inherent instinct to recall past events, thoughts, actions, experiences a few times a day. Some of us are actually paid to do this and build careers around it: archaeologists, CPA s, historians, history teachers, researchers, scientists, therapists, and detectives all come to mind.

And doesn’t everyone fantasize about something that was once great and, conversely, about something that was once terrible?

So what do we do with all this awareness and how does it relate to entrepreneurial leadership?

What we need to do –to be maximally productive at work and in life– is to consciously use past memories as tools for enhancing present moments and for planning future events. And then STOP! When a memory goes beyond present-moment consciousness, it can cause accidents and illness. It’s just like worrying about the future! Both cause stress, actually: DIStress!

Okay, so now that we have that sitting on the table, what do we do to make our memories work for us instead of against us? And how can we help those we are responsible to for servicing with “leadership”?

• Work harder at staying focused and more tuned in to the present moment as much as possible.
• Keep our sights set on what is happening right now in front of us.

And your 5 best “Make Memories Work FOR You” Tools

1) Breathing Deeply (it need not be conspicuous!)

2) Exercising regularly (it need not be strenuous!)

3) Eating foods and food portions with genuine (vs. advertised) nutritional value

4) Sleeping enough to wake up feeling rested and alert

5) Anchoring your soul in a faith-based harbor!

Is that so hard? Well, if we choose for it to be hard, it certainly will be. But since all behavior is a choice, we can instead choose for it to be easy. Think like an entrepreneur about your SELF as well as about your ideas. Be innovative. Challenge. Rise to the occasion. These aren’t just guidelines for building businesses and professional practices. They’re guidelines for life!

Because without a solid foundation of being focused on the here-and-now present moment as much as possible, we will –like an abandoned enterprise– quickly become then-and-there.

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

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Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

If  PINKI-ELLAFONTAY

causes excessive bleeding,

liver or kidney disease, cancer,

congestive heart failure, death or

suicide, be sure to tell your doctor.

Are you kidding? Does anyone out there in pharmaceutical fairyland realize how utterly ridiculous they sound trying to bury imbecilic disclaimer utterances like this in the middle of fantasy advertising film footage of joyful, beach-skipping, pool-jumping, exhilarated couples and families and pets?

Do you overpaid ad agency wackos think the whole world is stupid?

Surely you jest? I mean who in their right mind is going to run out and buy (or request an Rx for) your moronic brand name medication after one-tenth of a second of thought about the purposefully misleading messages you dare to flood the airwaves with? That’s like promising a pink elephant!

In case you haven’t noticed, this is 2016. We are far beyond such childish displays of intentionally deceptive, insulting, brain-wasting messages.

And your market research people are wrong. No one rushes to their pharmacy or doctor (or undertaker) requesting your stupid-named, stupidly-advertised, wildly over-priced brand because they identify with the actors and actresses and phony scripts in phony settings set to jubilant music with schmaltzy-voice over announcers rattling out disclaimer warnings like they were available ice cream toppings.

Let’s get rid of this nonsense in favor of reality and straightforward educational presentations. How about messages that reach out and grab?

Sorry, but I really don’t need to see animated intestines dancing on my TV screen accompanied by threats of death from constipation or diarrhea to appreciate the plights of those who suffer such inhumane ailments.

How refreshing would it be, instead, to see and hear advertising that teaches how to carefully question (and carefully listen to the answers provided by) my healthcare professionals?

It really IS time for pharma businesses to start acting and talking like responsible adults with more concern for the well-being of human beings than for lining their pockets with astronomically disproportionate salaries and for covering their butts with thinly disguised legal jargon . . . just in case their great products should fail. And don’t blame the government. We all know they are clueless. EXPLAIN government-mandated disclaimers. Don’t bury them.

Stop the foolishness. Speak the truth. Teach us. Show us. Educate us. Be specific, don’t gloss over. Use honest true facts, not make-believe charts and misleading visuals. Be the kinds of teachers you’d like to see your children have. INTEGRITY is the word! Now would you like to know how I REALLY feel? 😉

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

     Go back 20, 50, 100 years! Surprise! The names and locations change, but the stories are mostly the same. It will be like missing a week of C-SPAN or THE BIOGRAPHY CHANNEL. Nothing Earth-shatteringly new goes on.

Cold Calls Jolt Business

With FEARLESS! Reality

Love it or hate it, there is nothing like a bunch of cold sales calls to snap a ho-hum corporate or entrepreneurial business attitude into a realm of FEARLESS! reality. (Sorry, had to sneak in the link to my big project!)

It’s the place where the proverbial rubber meets the road, but typically gets dismissed as trivial, or “jittery” or time-wasting (“Other people are paid to do that!”). It’s oh so easy to wave it away with comments like: “I already did that stuff” or “I’m way past that” or “who needs it?”… or some other lame excuse.

But truth is that –something like a cold shower– it’s a great wake-up experience, a terrific way to recharge batteries, and it will definitely flash you back to what’s really important in business: HOW you communicate with a prospect to turn her or him into a grateful and loyal customer.

This does not happen with marketing automation.

It does not happen via email.

It does not happen on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook.

It doesn’t happen with clever advertising or cataclysmic branding lines.

Those may all be contributing factors that lead up to a purchase decision, but –in the end– it happens in the flesh, in person or on the phone, or through a referral from someone who’s been sold in person or on the phone. It often occurs when an online-generated order is easily and pleasantly placed — or bungled. A prospect becomes a customer when perceived value of your product or service rises to the surface.

If your marketing program is not delivering the sales you believe are possible, lead your support team to the sidewalk and make cold calls. Have them all make cold calls. Be reminded of the importance of listening 80% of the time, of addressing energy to the prospect’s concerns, issues, questions, observations, not yours. If your team needs some refresher points or sales training first, do it. Or bite the bullet and recruit some outside help. A fun/challenge attitude helps!

Then talk about the process, about what happened with each encounter, about the time and effort involved, and start to adjust your sales program and approach to reflect what you and your team learn from the experience . . . 2-3 days of pounding the pavement will be well spent, even as it may seem wasteful.

The best time to put this exercise to work is when things aren’t working the way you think they should. Can you and your team spare the time? The next question is the answer: Can you spare the lost or inadequate sales? Remember when you strip away all the decorations, the reason for being in business is to engage and nurture and please your customers. And even when this consciousness is present, there’s a tendency to overlook street smarts learning.

Cold sales call selling is like an electric jolt reminder. And if you stay open-minded and pay hard attention to what you and others learn from the process, your business will grow.

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!