Helping the needy 

doesn’t mean

competitors will 

eat you for dinner

  In fact, quite the contrary. When you slow down or stop your business-wheels long enough to reach off your merry-go-round and help some of those who can only afford to stand off to the side and watch you calliope-music your way around in circles, you are investing in your community . . . and ultimately in your own business, if you’re smart enough to make it newsworthy.

“Charity starts at home” isn’t just a sarcastic jab at humor.

But most businesses either fail at trying to make newsworthiness out of nothing, or at thinking that efforts to proclaim newsworthiness out of acts of generosity somehow taints the integrity of the charitable offerings. Both are wrong. First of all, the public is not stupid. People can see through thinly-veiled acts of self-proclaimed greatness with one eye shut and both hands behind their backs.

Don’t invent situations in order to gain favorable news exposure and publicity. Editors typically reject such self-serving efforts, and even when something does manage to slide by and end up getting attention, the public sees it for what it is.

But when your business does something heartfelt to help someone or group of someones, don’t be overly timid about spreading the word. Why? Isn’t that too much like bragging? Doesn’t that rub people the wrong way to be tooting your own horn?

The truth, since you asked (okay I asked for you) is that the more exposure your business gets for having sponsored an employee fundraising for some worthy organization or situation, the more you will have primed the pump to prompt others to follow suit. Then what? Then you will have shoe-horned (have you ever seen a shoehorn?) in even more helpful acts than your own.

The soft side of business — whether it’s charitable fundraising, or giving an employee or supplier or community family the support it needs to get through a crisis, or sponsoring a neighborhood clean-up project, or donating products or services or time, or providing technical or administrative back-up to a local or regional nonprofit organization — can work wonders for business reputation.

People (your customers, clients, patients, and prospects) BUY reputation! Connect the dots.

You haven’t time for all the solicitations at your doorstep? That’s like saying you haven’t enough time to learn time management. Ask for someone in your organization to follow a criteria list you hand off to screen applicants and make periodic recommendations for situations that fit inside the annual or semi-annual or quarterly budget you set and insist on.

When the tax-deductible budget is spent, solicitors go on a waiting list, or apply again next year. Make sure arrangements are made for news release announcements before and after (at least) every event, with content that’s always focused on the benefiting individual or organization, and always urging others to get on the bandwagon (or your merry-go-round!).  Soft is good.

 Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops 

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Been Tweaked? 

     If  you haven’t had a professional examine the words you’re using for your business — to communicate, explain, describe, sell, plan, promote, publicize, print, email, broadcast, and blast across the Internet — you’re missing great potential sales, revenues, and profits.

     And you may be adding untold hidden expenses every day, even every hour.

     You could very well be the best at what you do, but if you’re not trained and experienced as a skilled professional business marketing writer, it won’t matter.

      It takes only one slightly wrong word to UNdo all your years of hard work, to UNdo the strength or promise of your customer or investor bases, to UNdo your employee, supplier, and community relations.

     But here’s the best kept secret of successful businesses and practices in your industry and profession:

They’ve all been tweaked! 

     Every highly profitable revenue-charged business and professional practice is measured by its leadership, reputation, productivity, and the words it uses.

Research proves time and again that what your business says (and the ways that your business says what it says) makes the difference between success and failure

. . . on the Internet; in emails, news releases; promotional, ad, branding and marketing campaigns; mission and vision statements; employee and sales training; supplier, investor, and referrer motivational programs

. . . on the front lines and telephone lines with customers, clients, patients, and prospects.

     How does one get her or his business “tweaked”? Where do you start? You start by submitting rough or revised drafts for professional review and input. The finished product is the revised return of a polished document, ad, release, web page, branding theme line, business plan narrative, layman translation from technical material, ebook, training outline, whatever.

It’s a process that raises your ideas up a notch

and puts you ahead of the competition!

     The good news is you need NOTspend a fortune to get tweaked. Many mid and large size companies that use internal Tweakers, also hire outside firms to tweak and prepare their messages (often at outrageous fees of $10,000 to $20,000 a month!). But this is SMALL business. And no one else can represent your business ideas as well as you.

     You don’t need high-priced outside service firms to tell you what to say. You need a budget-conscious, experienced, professional Tweaker who can take what you’ve done and put it in the right language and context for the market you want to target.

     Some, like having preventive maintenance visits, get a “Tweak Cleaning” twice a year. Some are happy with an annual “Tweak Insurance” Review. Still others want “On-Call Tweakability.” Oh, and if you’ve read this far, you must be interested. So yes, I tweak.

# # #

Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

     The best business consultants, advisors, coaches, trainers, and counselors base their fees on what they’re able to accomplish, not on how great they tell you it’s going to be.

 YOU’RE PAYING TOO MUCH IF:  

1)  You’re paying ongoing fees and can’t see any ongoing results.

2)  You’re paying any kind of “retainer” fee, and you’re not sure of what it is that you’re “retaining.” 

3)  You’re paying for dead-end training, coaching, or counseling support that assures you of new and improved leadership/team-work . . . or communications, or customer relations, or sales . . . but that doesn’t produce noticeable change in 21 days, and that doesn’t then keep it going with meaningful, targeted, personal follow-up long after scheduled sessions are completed.

4)  You’re paying for outside services that continuously blame your inside services for stalling/blocking/obstructing/interfering or foot-dragging and/or lack of commitment.

5)  You’re paying for professional expertise exclusively because of long-term relationships and because that individual or group has maintained all your records for a long time. Would you not go to a medical or legal or financial expert you know has the ability to heal you just because your present advisor was hired by your father (or grandfather) and has your complete history in his files?  

6)  You get billed for every breath taken on your behalf. Outside experts unwilling to invest a little extra time and effort on your behalf as an expression of their customer / client relationship management are not worth the invoice postage or email review time. They are easily (and happily) replaced.

     There are a gazillion qualified groups and individuals out there who will deliver ongoing attention and ongoing results. In case you think you haven’t enough time to go shopping for the kinds of outside experts who breed authenticity, consider how much money you’ve been (or are presently) wasting  by not finding more honorable replacements.

     Even hiring someone else to shop for you – with your criteria of course – will probably still end up being a financially-smarter and more performance-rewarding move than avoiding the issue.

     The hardest thing any of us have to do in life – and consequently the hardest thing any business owner or manager has also to do – is to let go.

     Letting go of anything that we own, command, raise, invent, enhance, fix, inherit, create, design, develop, build, or even just think about, is like giving up a piece of our existence. How big of a piece determines the amount of anguish and reluctance and hesitation and whining and complaining that is sure to surface.

     And you’ve already been around long enough to realize that the total of all the upset added together multiplies according to how much time, money, and effort has been invested. So, the time to act is now. Clean house. Find experts who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work with you, who will act like partners, not leeches.   

# # #

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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!

“THANK YOU

FOR YOUR SERVICE

TO OUR COUNTRY!”

AIN’T NOBODY

WRITES

NOTHIN’ NO MORE!

     For those of you out there who can still actually write with a pen and paper, consider yourself in possession of a unique skill (even if your handwriting resembles the scrawl of your favorite nearby brain surgeon, or your neighbor’s cocker spaniel . . . probably can’t tell them apart! Uh, the writing).

     And you can be assured your handwriting is a skill that’s underused, especially if you own or manage a business or are in professional sales. I lump those entrepreneurial and sales careers together because if you own 0r manage a business, you sell. And if you’re in sales, you own or manage a business.

     So here’s the thing: AIN’T NOBODY WRITES NOTHIN’ NO MORE.

     Don’t believe me? Just look around and what do you see? PCs, Laptops, Cellphones, BlackBerries, Strawberries (Oh, sorry). You really have to search to find a pencil behind some one’s ear anymore, and fountain pens? That’s like discovering a pygmy tribe living in midtown Manhattan.

     Think about the times in your life when you’ve seen business people step up and do something unique, something different for their business or their customers or their employees or their suppliers, and you think to yourself: Self! That’s an idea I wish I had though of first because no one else is doing it.

     Well, here you go — a great new, FREE idea for you that I GUARANTEEwill make you stand out from your competition, regardless of whether you’re a farmer, a rocket scientist, a realtor, a proctologist (okay, well maybe not a proctologist), a website designer, an undertaker or wedding planner, an accountant, a lawyer (though I don’t distinguish much between a lawyer and a proctologist), a retailer . . . you get the idea.

     Dig out that old pen you forgot about; find some nice (unlined) notepaper that’s been collecting dust in the back of your desk drawer. Practice a few freehand swirls of ink on your local newspaper, which is not much good for anything else these days, and get ready to fire off some genuinely appreciative notes to present and past customers/clients/patients who have been particularly supportive of you or who are especially interested in you and/or your business products and services.

     You will get more attention and more mileage out of 100 personal handwritten notes, than you will out of 500 emails or 1000 text messages, or 5000 Tweets. I won’t even bother to waste your time with a visit to the dim prospects offered by US Postal Service incompetence no matter how great you think your direct mail campaign is.

     Do I guarantee these numbers? Of course not. But I absolutely guarantee — given the exact same message — a handwritten, personalized, hand-addressed and hand-stamped note will outperform all the solicitation glut that’s pouring out of our computerized lives. All you have to do is think of what to say, then say it in your own scribble. Oh, and Hallmark cards don’t do it either. Their commercials make you cry maybe, but their words are not your words, and they are machine-printed.

     Besides that no one else in your marketplace is doing it, what makes this idea so outstanding? People like real. Spill on the ink and it will smear. If your writing is great, great! If it’s crummy, great: what other messages do your customers actually work at trying to read? Say what you think. Say what you feel. Keep it short and sweet. But DO it. I promise you’ll be amazed at the responses you get!   

 Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

The farther apart we go,

 the closer we need

to be.

     As time and technology continue to stretch the great divide they’ve created between human beings . . . and personal relationships become less personal . . . the importance of common sense and common courtesy rises to the surface with more pronounced impact than ever before.

     The HR and sales management rule of thumb, “Praise in public and criticize in private” has — for example — no less common sense meaning now, with increased communication reliance on emails and text messages, than it did in the days when every encounter was a personal face-to-face experience. In fact, the integrity of that “Praise and Criticize” guideline is even more important today.

     Why is that? Because today, we rely more on short, concise, written notes, and every communication is traceable. When someone is praised by email for exceptional performance, everyone in the ranks should get a Cc. When someone is criticized, and Bcc’s are flying around, poor judgement is being exercised, and hidden agendas overwhelm integrity.

     If you run your business on a need-to-know basis, and that works for you, then stick to that and don’t entertain exceptions. If you have a broader interpretation of management transparency and practice across-the-boards openness with all your people, and that works for you, don’t drift into occasional closed door sessions or transmissions. Consistency is what builds business success because it’s what fosters customer, employee and supplier loyalty.

     Customers, employees and suppliers all like to know where they stand. They appreciate business policies, procedures, and approaches that are predictable, and that — even if they disagree with them — they can be assured of no surprises!

     Common courtesy of course is most evident with every exchange, in writing and electronic transmission, in person and on the phone. It is so evident because it is so simple, takes so little effort, but works wonders for every recipient: “Please” and “Thank you!” may sound like dumb old customs to some in this day and age, but nothing else has ever risen in all of history that accomplish more than those three words. [And at-home applications are as important as on-the-job.]

     People are hired and fired, sold and unsold, respected and disrespected by the subjective measures of others as to the genuineness with which these three words are expressed, and if, in fact, they are expressed at all. Those who let “Please” and “Thank you!” flow freely (yes, even when the waitress puts your silverware down or pours you a glass of water, even when a delivery person brings you something you don’t want!) are the people who spread positive attitudes and who will achieve the most success.

     No need to take my word for it. Simply observe those words in emails, hear them in person and on the phone and — assuming they’re delivered with some sense of authenticity — judge for yourself what your impressions are of the person using these expressions of courtesy vs. those you observe and hear who don’t. It’s your call. Thank you for your consideration! 

 Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

“First Things First!”

     I never figured out why my father always shouted this statement, but I guess it was because he was always in a dither when it occurred to him. Most of us don’t think much about prioritizing until we’re feeling overwhelmed with no place to turn. It’s kind of a “force your hand” type of response. OMG, I’ve got 3 hours to do 27 hours worth of tasks and then the world ends. Right. I’d better prioritize. 

     Here’s the deal: Let’s work backwards at this. One of the life-goals most of us share (beyond not having any IRS surprises!) is to avoid last-minute panic situations and 11th hour rush jobs, right? And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in; that’s an unspoken priority for most of us who are not earning a living by participating in extreme sports. So, okay, the target here is to be –and stay– organized. 

     Establishing priorities means, first and foremost, that you have a busy agenda, or that maybe you’re too busy to even have had time to put together an agenda (which makes me suspect of why you’re even stopping to read this, but nice to see you all the same). Either way, implications are that what you really need to address as Step One is to do a Quick Risk Assessment.

     Nothing magical here. Simply list all the burdensome tasks on one piece of paper (or txtmsg2Urself) and then run through each item with a 1,2, or 3 ranking. It’s a 1 if you just stepped in something brown and gooshy on your way into a building for a big meeting. It’s a 2 if your shoelace broke. It’s a 3 if you just realized your socks don’t match. Determine the relative risks.

     What on your list absolutely positively cannot wait until tomorrow (or the end of the day, or next week, etc.)? Each of those items gets a 1 assigned to it. Let the rest fall by the wayside for the moment and focus 100% of your time and attention and energy on getting your number 1 issues resolved before even looking at the rest of the list to decide if the remainders are 2s or 3s (many will migrate up to a 1 ranking by the time you finish the immediate 1s).

     When a couple of someone else’s have both “assigned” tasks that are battling for THE number 1 position, go back to those someone else’s(bosses or customers or lawyers or spouses or whomever) and ask them to talk with each other to sort out what exactly you need to put next on your runway for takeoff because there’s only one of you to go around! Hand the responsibility for deciding back to the sources!

     Restaurants may be in the food-service business, but cleanliness has to always be Priority One or there may not BE a food-servicebusiness if food poisoning prevails. Maybe you’ve been focused on a date for printing materials for a client when the reason for the materials is more important . . . having finished documents ready to travel with for an out-of-county trade show, needs to dictate the prioritizing for print preparation schedules.

     The undercurrent throughout the prioritizing process is that you need to have a grip on time management (and never get into the position of not having enough time to do time management!) and — aha! —  Our old friend: stress management take some deep breaths!

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

Entrepreneurs are alive

and well (but fading)

in corporations. 

Many of today’s more progressive corporate entities still house an exuberant universe of entrepreneurial movers and shakers (Corporate Entrepreneurs © I call them), but the numbers are fading.

This is not a good signal to the business world because the giant companies that are hunkering down and cutting corners and holding desperately to their belongings are the same ones that were thriving with these freewheeling innovators just a couple of years back.

It’s as if these small-business-minded agents of change have had their rugs pulled out from under them. Our inept federal government has seen fit to replace the entrepreneurial energy they couldn’t harness — and surely could never understand — with government bailout dollars attached to CEO promises to toe the line and tighten the belts.

Like one big ugly Harry Potter fantasy trip, shareholders have responded by retreating into the evil “Do Nothing Abyss” of Status Quo Land. Too bad. A lot of the nation’s more spirited corporate enterprises have been reduced to rubble in the process.

The transition has served to move the center of the business world into the cyberspace pursuits of high technology because that’s proven to be one of the last remaining protective and nurturing bastions of corporate entrepreneurial fallout.

Entrepreneurs and Corporate Entrepreneurs must join together and rise to the occasion of voting out those who think that running a lemonade stand business means giving free lemonade to everyone who passes by, whether they want it or not, and then charging only those who are thirsty and rich enough to afford the unannounced mark-ups to $20 a cup . . . so that those revenues can pay the bills and keep the “free faucet” running.

Then, when the tank runs dry, give ’em more cash and make ’em raise their rates to pay it back.”

What’s next? The torch of innovative thinking and doing is getting passed back to it’s rightful owners: small business. A great deal needs yet to happen for small business owners, operators, and managers  in order to ensure clear passage to economic resurgence. The burden of righting the ship rests squarely on the shoulders of government.

Only government has the wherewithal to clear the path, provide meaningful (meaningful) incentives to small business to create real jobs and attract innovative leadership to their ranks.

No! . . . creating make-believe jobs inside government, and with and for government contractors, is not the answer. It never has been. Those jobs are a long-term drain on taxpayers. They are neither real nor meaningful and simply cannot have a positive influence on the economy.

Entrepreneurial business leaders need to step up. Our existing government leadership needs to step down. The first of these challenges is ready to happen. The second of these will never happen voluntarily because politics runs thicker than blood.

Entrepreneurs and Corporate Entrepreneurs must join together and rise to the occasion of voting out those who think that running a lemonade stand business means giving free lemonade to everyone who passes by, whether they want it or not, and then charging only those who are thirsty and rich enough to afford the unannounced mark-ups to $20 a cup . . . so that those revenues can pay the bills and keep the “free faucet” running.

Then, when the tank runs dry, give ’em more cash and make ’em raise their rates to pay it back. That mentality will not restore our economy. Competitive marketplaces will. Competitive marketplaces turn on innovative entrepreneurial spirit, not handouts. Corporate Entrepreneurs have the car keys. It’s time to get behind the steering wheel!

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US  931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Shhhh… it’s Quiet

Authenticity.

     Charging onto the battlefield on horseback with swords swishing and guns blazing is the Hollywoodized image many have when the word “Leadership” is mentioned. Of course many others draw from contemporary examples of visualizing a lecturing orator telling all how great things are and will soon be.

     But truly effective leaders are not bursting into battle, or on front page stages or the 11 o’clock news. Because they’re quiet.

     The greatest business and healthcare and educational leaders I have known, and I’ve had the privilege of knowing many, have been quiet leaders. They universally avoid shouting, bullying, pushing, complaining, intimidating, prodding, game-playing, undermining, and hidden agendas in favor of what I call 3-D Leadership.

3-D Leaders DESIGN, DEVELOP,

AND DELIVER.

     Strong leaders invest themselves in preventive maintenance, in defusing and sidestepping the nonproductive contentiousness of those who would draw lines in the sand at every opportunity. Yet most, it seems to me, as they “walk” Teddy Roosevelt “softly” also follow his philosophy and “carry a big stick”. . . not unlike Thomas Jefferson’s quest for “eternal vigilance” noted at the close of my blog posts, or Henry David Thoreau’s motto to “Be forever on the alert.”

     Leaders who practice 3-D Leadership are women and men (and yes, some special children) who are consistently tuned in to getting the task at hand done while staying alert to what’s behind the door, around the corner and up the road vs. dwelling on issues that have gone by the boards, or on promising to deliver undeliverables.

     3-D Leaders influence, inspire, and motivate others by demonstrating . . . by setting examples and sharing knowledge and experiences. They communicate clearly. They know just the right amount of information to offer and absorb at just the right times vs. too much or too little too soon or too late.

     To be a DESIGN/DEVELOP/DELIVER-focused leader requires a large and rare repertoire of skills, talents, instincts, values, belief systems, and human qualities that all add up to authenticity. Leaders who put authenticity first in their own lives and in their affiliations are those who exude transparency. There is nothing to hide.

     These are people who are true to themselves and instinctively seek the positive and the good in others. They thrive in 3-D opportunity environments. It’s invigorating to be one, though few who are, I believe, tend to realize they are. It’s invigorating to follow one. And this I know because I have been fortunate enough to have followed a few.

     If you seek to achieve the ends I’ve described, I can only applaud your ambitions, wish you great open mindedness, and suggest you start by being true to yourself as much of the time as possible with every passing hour in your life. When you get there, call me and let’s do lunch.

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops 

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Could Your Family

Or Business 

Get To 2011 Without

A Budget?

So what makes Congress think America doesn’t need one?

     We The People — the business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs and sales professionals — of the United States of America need to vent!

     We would like to understand how it could be possible that you, the Congressional Representatives of the geographic districts that our business interests occupy, are at the doorstep of foregoing a national budget this year. PLEASE explain.

     For the benefit of those not yet up to speed on this issue because you’ve been struggling with your own budgets, The Hill newspaper has just proclaimed that Congress may fail to even try to pass a budget this year because the Congressional majority claims that “they’ve pushed too many tough votes through the House to force another one before Election Day.”

     Rarely do I have much good to report coming out of organizations like the SBA, the BBB, the NFIB, or the C of C, but I just saw a copy of a letter from US Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Bill Miller that deserves three cheers from all of us. He challenges that feeble excuse quoted in The Hill with the following:

Tough votes? You mean like bending the rules and twisting arms to pass a flawed healthcare bill that America doesn’t want and can’t afford?

Or like rushing a vote on a financial overhaul bill that would create one of the largest bureaucracies in American history?

Giving up the budget process is their choice. It’s politics, plain and simple. And we deserve better… if Congress fails to pass a budget, it will show that it is simply unable to govern

… No budget equals failure. And right now, that’s something our country, our workers, and our employers cannot afford.” 

     How is it even possible that ANYone, even a politician, could imagine a budget-less organization — let alone a national government– being able to arrogantly continue charging forward while sinking deeper into the depths of economic quicksand?

     With continuing misplaced priorities and increases in frivolous federal spending, we — the business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs and sales professionals — are being driven aimlessly into the face of an all-powerful global economic storm… and not even a budget on the horizon?

     How would our own businesses do with no sense of financial direction or planning? One need not be a rocket scientist to see that our national and state economies are on shaky (to say the least!) ground in the midst of turbulent times.

     Yet we have elected politicians who have no business skills,  knowledge or experience, no sense of how to turn this mess around. All of us with small businesses already know that more spending of more money we don’t have, with no plan, is not going to do it!

     The only answer is:  A) To push members of Congress (with emails, letters and calls) to do the jobs our tax dollars are paying them to do and pass a budget we can afford, then B) VOTE THEM OUT IN NOVEMBER before they destroy all of our businesses.  

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!