Reported today on satellite radio news . . .

Nearly 20% of all U.S. income

now comes from the

government!

Why bother working

anymore?

WITH GRATEFUL (Cough! Cough!) APPRECIATION FOR GROWING THIS PREDICAMENT INTO A FULL-BLOWN SMALL BUSINESS QUAGMIRE . . .

• THANKS TO: Our never-ending bad economy that we’ve been hearing for two-and-a-half years has repeatedly “turned the corner” and is “getting better” (uh, do politicians ever fill their gas tanks, notice foreclosures, or artificially-inflated unemployment rates?)

• THANKS TO: The complete absence of decisive leadership in the White House (which serves among many other things, to facilitate the evaporation of America’s world leadership posture and respect, and actually set us on a track of anxious retreat in the eyes of emerging nations). 

• THANKS TO: Mr. Obama’s incessant efforts to create boundless dependency on government incompetence (dramatically marked by government’s ever-present lack of business sense, business experience, businesslike conduct, and entrepreneurial spirit . . . the same entrepreneurial spirit that made America great to start with!).

• THANKS TO: The reckless government spending sprees that embrace idealistic socialist agendas at the expense of citizens losing their jobs, their homes, and their dignity (and front and center is the utter insanity that’s responsible for continuing efforts to ram a cataclysmic-ally extravagant and dibilitatingly expensive healthcare plan down the already constricted throats of small business).

Now you perhaps know more than you want to know, but –ah– what’s behind this leading of lambs to slaughter?

Could it possibly be that we have a government intent on gaining voter control by making all citizens and businesses beholden and grateful for the survivalist handouts that ooze out of wasted government programs?

And how do we initiate a great escape? How do we ever return to the solidity of national purpose and world respect and the high human standards this nation has been built on?

The answer, my friends, is NOT “blowin’ in the wind.”

The answer is NOT in redistributing the wealth, nor in providing safe haven to all illegal immigrants, nor taxing small businesses –literally– to death.

The answer is in taking action now. The answer is in standing tall for your small business enterprise and ambitions. The answer is in voicing your objections to increased and increasing government control and over-regulation. The answer is in doing the very best you can possibly do every day to strengthen and anchor your business interests.

The answer is to fight corruption and politics

with integrity and heart,

The answer is to light your own fire and keep it burning in the minds of all those who support you and the work you do — your employees, customers, suppliers, advisors, investors, and the geographical communities where your business lives.

The answer lies within the purpose of your business soul.

Take your opportunities and run with them.  

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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!

ALL THERE IS

FOR CERTAIN

. . . IS YOU!

Becoming an entrepreneur is not like becoming a corporate guy or (thank heaven) a politician. In Entrepreneurville, there are no rules about how to think, or operate, or create, or market, or finance.

All there is for certain is you!  

Why is that different from corporate life? You may have your own team, but you’re not part of somebody else’s.

All there is for certain is you!

And surely you haven’t the time or inclination to indulge in the under-pinning of all corporate existence: analysis paralysis. By the time your corporate counterpart initiates some market study, you could introduce your product, service or idea, take it back, adjust it, re-introduce it and be making money!

What makes entrepreneurship different from politics? For openers, winning popularity contests seldom has any value. And, for closers, truly successful entrepreneurs only win by exercising consistent integrity. In between the openers and closers is a vast wasteland of propaganda, distortions and outright lies embedded in every election.

It’s making your ideas work that counts. It’s finding ways –channels, roads, avenues, strategies– to get from where your ideas are now, to where you want them to be.

Sometimes that “finding” process needs the help of others. But if you’re an entrepreneur with great ideas and no ability to engage and manage others to provide the help you need, you’re not likely to ever get where you want to be.

The number one reason for new business failure is “poor management.”

So start at the beginning. Realize that having great ideas, and being driven with burning desire to achieve results with them is paramount. But knowing how to manage things, people, systems, and operations to get your ideas on the launchpad is an equally critical challenge.

Spare yourself false starts.

When you jump the gun, rush to judgment, make assumptions, take shortcuts –even though these steps might be well within your comfort zone because you’re an action-oriented kind of person– you are setting yourself up to take huge (and probably expensive) unreasonable risks.

True entrepreneurs take only reasonable risks! 

It is the utmost and arguably most important of all reasonable risks for an entrepreneur to take: to expend the time and energy to gobble up every available shred of information about how to communicate clearly with and motivate others . . . how to be a leader and exercise productive leadership that’s followed eagerly.

Of course there are many behavioral and personality traits associated with entrepreneurial instincts, and those are not to be underestimated for the values they bring to the table, but genuinely successful entrepreneurs are historically those who cut out and apply big chunks of management expertise and leadership know-how.

If this subject matter gives you queasy feelings, or you start to hear your knees knocking when someone suggests that a management psychology or professional growth and development or therapeutic group experience might serve your entrepreneurial pursuits big time, take that road less traveled. It pays the biggest dividends.

All there is for certain, you know? 

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 931.854.0474

 “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!

HAPPY EASTER AND

HAPPY BLOGBIRTHDAY!

For you who have been with this from the beginning (April 24, 2008), and those who have joined and visited along the way, thank you so very much! I hope you will continue to visit, comment, subscribe, and urge your business, personal, and professional growth-minded friends and associates to stop by. And please comment or email me anytime: Hal@Businessworks.US. Following is an updated version of a post from April 24, 2009.

— ————————————-

“I am me. In all the world,

there is no one else

 exactly like me. 

I am OK!”

–Virginia Satir

     Run your own business? Post the above 18 words on your dashboard, mirror and refrigerator . . . Why? Because even entrepreneurs need reassurance, and especially when economic uncertainties have a way of making us all feel like too many things–often including our selves–are sometimes NOT okay.

     Have you ever felt like that, or am I just imagining it? Have you felt like that more in recent times than in the past? Do you sometimes think maybe the news media is trying to sink your ship by heaping negative economy stories on your already overburdened shoulders?

Does it start to feel suffocating?

Do you step back every once in a while and start to question your own self-worth?

Get out of it!

Rattle your cage!

Change the channel!

Shut down the news!

     Do you really need to take the murders, muggings, accidents, freaky and bizarre incidents and people, and the incessant dwelling on negativity to bed with you every night? Do you really need to wake up with it every morning? 

     What would happen if you shut it all down for a few days and used the time instead to relax your brain and remind yourself how truly special and unique you are? Do you really think you would miss much? If you have doubts, take a quick trip (to the library or on Google) through past newspaper headlines.

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 General Hospital.

Nothing new goes on.

     As a sort of sports version of the old expression to do reality checks by pinching yourself, I don’t recommend the method former baseball slugger Bobby Bonilla used to practice, but the idea worked for him; every at-bat, he hit himself on his helmet with his bat just before stepping up to the plate. You can be sure it helped him focus his attention.

     SOMEthing that only you know about can be a “focus trigger” for you. Take a minute and think about that one thing. What snaps your awareness back when your mind starts to drift? Figure it out and use it more.

     Snap your brain back to the reality that YOU ARE UNIQUE. That awareness, and following the path of reality that it conjures up, is discovering that YOU are your own best Small Business Stimulus Package.

     In other words, get yourself cranked up, and keep yourself cranked up. It’s catching, and others –internal customers (like associates, employees and vendors) as well as external customers will respond in ways that bring you more business.

     Remember that what you love doing best is what you do best, and appreciating your self more will help you succeed at doing what you do best. Now THAT’s a stimulus package!  

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 “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!

As a national book award-winning author, a national marketing award-winner, and two-time university Professor-of-the-Year award winner, I can deliver the sales you want. 

Don’t believe it!

But if I tell you that I’ve created client programs that have delivered over $1 billion in sales, believe it! (Actually, all of the above is true. But if it’s sales increases you seek, “sales produced” is all that really matters, right?)

I am a writer so (for more than thirty years) I read approximately 1.5 books a week. Fiction. Nonfiction. You name it. I have my favorite books and authors, but I am always trying out new ones.

I rarely if ever choose to do any kinds of “reviews” on this blog, but —and I really should know better by now as I look back at bogus past big-name “Prize” recipients like Carter, Gore, and Obama-– when a Nobel or  Pulitzer Prize winner of any kind comes along, I am still (unfortunately) mainstream-media-conditioned to snap to attention.

Hence, to make a business point at the conclusion of this post, here is my 100% subjective review of Pulitzer Prize-winning book TINKERS by Paul Harding, MFA (who taught writing at Harvard and The University of Iowa):

First of all, considering that the speed of reading this meager (183-page) book could be equated with underwater page-turning, and that the torture of the story offered –which literally tells you how a clock is made when you simply want to know what time it is– Water-Boarding might have been a more fitting title.

If it doesn’t put you to sleep, or drown you in the author’s sweat (which he surely poured forth trying to polish and perfect every overkill shred of every word), it will make you so thoroughly depressed you’ll want to run to the nearest cliff to swan dive into the rocks below.

Even if your genes have been handed down from Socrates, you’ll be bored to tears at this writer’s heart-wrenching effort to draw you into a totally unremarkable story of death and dying.

If, by the way, the subject intrigues you, look up Elizabeth Kübler-Ross for a real education minus all the fluff.

But my advice? Don’t waste your time with TINKERS (or your $14.95/$16.95 in Canada) unless word craftsmanship and belabored descriptions get you excited.

If it’s a great read you’re looking for, you may rather want to go directly to Jed Rubenfeld, Nelson DeMille, Cormac McCarthy, Kent Haruf, or E. Annie Proulx.

Now, why is this like business? What does this have to do with entrepreneuring?

Lots of business service people out there sport big-name awards. But the odds are pretty good you’ll never relate to their missions. And, even if you do, they’re not likely to produce sales for you!

It’s probably a best bet to disregard what business elitists think, and direct your needs to those providers with real-life performance track-records.

If you’re brave enough to ask, I’ll be happy to tell you endless tales about creative groups, ad and PR agencies, marketing firms, management consultants, SEO “experts,” website designers, media moguls, and incompetent but well-intentioned relatives who have won major awards, charged a fortune in fees, and produced nothing!

Generally speaking, the classier and slicker the presentation (or book cover), the more award-conscious (as opposed to sales or productivity-conscious) a given provider tends to be.

As a business owner or manager, this translates to:

• Exercise extreme care when hiring outside consultant or service providers to make sure they are more committed to producing what you need than to serving their own pursuit of awards.

• Be careful about appearances. They are rarely what they seem.

• Ask for samples and examples. Put genuine effort into the screening process.

• Remember that awards of any kind are (like my review above) totally subjective. Sales are real, tangible, and measurable.

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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!

Businesses, like people, get

their faces locked in to 

negative expressions  

You think those who are considering a purchase of your goods or services are not paying attention to how the “package” of your business facade is wrapped? You think it doesn’t matter?

You think” the face of your business” has no power of suggestion? If you’re engaged in professional selling (who isn’t?), do you think no one notices your facial expressions? (You do of course know they’re contagious?)

Try this one.

I’m going to give you a single word that sums up my total customer experience at a business I visited recently. It was something that the receptionist did.

And you will likely do the exact same thing the minute you read this word, which should –all by itself– be a  clear enough demonstration that every business “face” communicates.

My guess is that odds are within one minute, you’ll be hooked.

You will prove to yourself that the power of suggestion is far from imaginary. Are you ready? Okay:

Read the following word and think about it for five seconds. 

Ready?

Here it is: YAWN 

Think about the word now for five seconds.

Well? If you didn’t yawn yourself, did you at least feel that queasy little tremor in the corners of your jaw where upper and lower teeth come together?

No? Well, maybe you just woke up, or just took some amphetamines or someone just put some ice down your back.

How about this word?: SMILE

                                                              

Who is “the face” of YOUR business? 

Does that person pass along smiles or stretch and yawn most of the day? (And, no, this is not intended as a corrective action seminar for air traffic controllers . . . who, by the way, it’s worth noting, get paid $160,000 a year to NOT sleep on the job; it’s stressful and requires special skills? So what! What about truck-driving and mothering!)

Similarly, a health food store clerk or medical clinic is hardly well represented by even the most smiling individual if she or he looks like a walking billboard for some local tattoo and body-piercing parlor. The face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

Credibility registers in the eyes of the beholder in less than ten seconds. There are no second first impressions.

So you get the WHO part of this, what about the WHAT part? What is “the face” of your business? I know of a physician’s office with an absolutely filthy-beyond-belief office front door. You need antiseptic wipes just to touch the handle. One pint of paint and a teaspoon of metal polish would do the job. It’s been that way for many years.

It probably goes without saying that this doctor is not considered the town’s gift to healthcare, and has been struggling financially for probably as long as the door has been hinged. The face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

If you’re in construction or landscaping and pull up to a prospective customer in a disgusting truck full of muck, don’t think your slightly lower estimate will land you work. The truck tells people that you’re a slob. People don’t hire slobs. The face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

Computer techies who can only communicate with their thumbs and say little more on the phone (if they answer it at all) than  “Uh” and “Huh?” OR who rattle out stuff about SEO and Mashables and Tweets to another business owner who doesn’t want to know how to make a clock when she asks what time it is, will not get hired. 

In this case —on the phone or on the screen– the face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

You have the key. It’s in your head. It’s called consciousness. Open minds open doors! 

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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!

Like Nero with Rome,

Obama Fiddles

While America Burns

And not unlike one of Aesop’s Fables, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, mainstream media talking heads reported once again today that the U.S. economy is on the road to recovery. How nice. Do YOU believe it any more?

Some of these feeble excuses for “reporters” need to talk to the plummeting dollar, soaring fuel costs, unemployment lines, and some of the Americans I’ve felt saddened to see rummaging through fastfood and convenience store garbage pails and dumpsters for food scraps.

Has your business been interviewed? 

We have of course heard this type of hype (floating somewhere between make-believe and outright lying) every day since Mr, Obama moved into the White House.

Checked the gas pumps lately?

I mean, really folks. First of all, we who visit this blog are small business and professional practice owners and managers. We are entrepreneurs. We are professional salespeople. We represent the leading edge in business, technology, education and healthcare.

We–to use Mr. Obama’s own “words of the week”—are not stupid!

$4 a gallon and rising? 

Even IF gas pump prices were simply a fuel-for-our-vehicles issue, we might live with it. Unfortunately, it’s Dominoes! Skyrocketing fuel costs mean skyrocketing delivery costs and skyrocketing food costs and skyrocketing travel and airfare costs. All these “burstings in air” and it’s not even July 4th!

And to top it all off, the grand tsunami of costs that are tangled up with “Obamacare” will be paid by small business for decades to come, providing free healthcare for those unwilling to earn it, including (unbelievably) illegal aliens!

If you’re trying to figure all of this out, think politics. Reality is that we do not have a national leader who understands or practices or even cares about leadership. He fiddles while our nation’s reputation and respect dissolves away. What would happen if you tried to get away with that in your business?

He fiddles while his reckless socialist agenda spending disregards the lives of small business owners and managers who work hard for a living, who contribute most to society to begin with, who have the most promise to offer for real economic turnaround. Why? Because he doesn’t care and he doesn’t get it. All that matters is politics . . . 

Voter dependency delivers voter votes!

(Listen to his speeches. They are A~L~L campaign speeches. A~L~L.) 

The more that government continues to intercede in our lives and businesses, the greater the dependency on government that’s created.

The more dependent on government we become, the more beholden we become for what government decides to give us, the more we vote for government generosity in order to live.

Is that sick or what?

Sorry, fellow business owners, but I doubt this is why any of us are in business. Lured by The Great American Dream, and the rights granted us as “We the people” by the Constitution of the United States –and as one nation under God– we are in business to help ourselves, our families, those for whom we can create jobs, and our communities.

We are in business to create opportunities to give back to the communities that support us from the only place that makes sense — from a position of strength. 

Our present government seeks to be THE ONLY source of strength.

Frustrating? Inconceivable? This is why I will not let go of these issues. They are at least as important for each of us to deal with as our our own employees, customers, balance sheets, income statements, brands, operations, revenue streams, and innovative leadership. Our federal government is over-stepping its bounds every single day.

Isn’t it time to step up to the plate and make your voice heard? There are 30 million small businesses in America. Just imagine what’s possible if each of us would just speak up . . .  

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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!

Is your business on thin ice, 

racing around in circles,

bashing competitors in the

teeth, and getting nowhere?

If your answer to the headline question above is “YES,” then it’s probably time to pack up your puck and hang up your skates, or look for a different sport for your business.

The problem is not how you got where you are, nor is it –at this point– knowing where you’re going. Like extracting an accident victim from under a car or caved-in roof, concern one needs to be: How to get yourself out.

Entrepreneurs often dig themselves into holes (especially financial ones) while they have their heads down and are charging forward trying to make their ideas work.

The tendency is to grasp desperately at the first straws offered by the first investor who comes along and seems willing to plunk down enough rolls of quarters to post bail and get the new business venture out of the penalty box. Oh, sorry, back to hockey. (I never did like fighting with sticks, and on skates no less.)

The point is that jumping at an expression of interest from a venture capitalist, who may want to own 51-75% of your business is never a good idea . . . unless you’re a serial entrepreneur and looking to get in, make a quick killing, and then get out. And even then, it may not be a wise move. S~L~O~W yourself down. This is marriage.  

Venture capital (VC) deals are particularly risky if you know down deep that the business is teetering (no, not Twitter Tweeting) on the brink of bankruptcy (which is not always evident on the surface . . . and which many entrepreneurs refuse to accept or think about even when it’s staring them in the face!). 

First off, most VC professionals don’t make a practice of investing in incipient bankruptcies, so –even though our unprofessional federal government has proven that it thinks nothing of throwing good tax-dollars after bad business operations– a floundering business startup is not likely to see any real bailout options come along.

Unless money comes from an “Angel Investor.”

An Angel Investor might be Uncle Louie or Auntie Oprah or some recently re-acquainted long-lost college or Army buddy, or a wealthy next door neighbor who’s been watching the business take over the garage and who figures he can always foreclose on your property if a loan isn’t paid, and become a serious land-owner.

Before a struggling venture surfaces long enough to search for financial relief of any kind, it makes the most sense to look first INSIDE to see if overhead and/or operations can be trimmed or scaled back first without sacrificing the essence of the business’s product or service offerings. Note the word “essence.” (“Quality” and “Value” are variables.)

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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!

If what’s inside

isn’t shining outside…

your business is in trouble.

You’ve known this since you were a kid and first became interested in business. Your lemonade and comic book stands sold more when you gave that missing tooth smile. Well, you might still be missing a tooth or two, but hopefully you haven’t allowed yourself (chosen) to get lazy about wrapping your bright light around your venture.

I’m not going to lecture you about taking stock and personal inventory and making the most of your charm and all that other stuff that I’ve already printed here at one time or another. You can find it with a couple of the links here and in the search window. I AM going to tell you that there’s no room in entrepreneurship for (choosing) laziness.

If you’re not feeling charged up every day when you jump out of bed, something is not right. 

Have you lost touch with your mission?

With reality?

With those who support you?

With why pursuit of your idea must outweigh your pursuit of money?

Have you become (chosen to be) sidetracked with issues that pull you away from the burning desire you once had to make your ideas work? A family situation? Health problem? Staffing upsets? Investor edginess? Sales failings? Equipment not performing? Well, hey, you got trouble, right here in River City.

Now you can see why “poor management” is the number one reason for business failure? Why, sure: management of personal life, management of employees, management of financial support, management of marketing, management of operations. Trouble is only YOU can fix the ways you deal with any of these issues. And that takes focused energy.

You can never start a fire with a magnifying glass as long as you keep moving the magnifying glass.

Neither is it likely you’ll start a fire by keeping the magnifying glass fixed on a huge fresh-cut tree trunk. Your grip and wrist will give up first. Keep your focus steady. Keep it on paper or kindling and gradually build your fire by adding more and bigger pieces of wood or coal, a little at a time. Keep your energy channeled. Use patience.

Entrepreneurship –contrary to popular belief– is not about leaping wildly from one fire to another. If you could ask Ford and Gates and Oprah and Edison and Jobs and Carnegie, you’d be reminded that they each succeeded by: 1)staying focused, 2) by taking one step at a time, and 3) by believing in themselves!

Can YOU do all three of these things consistently, tenaciously, without giving up on yourself?

If you can–and here’s the simplicity of it all– you will succeed. Period. If you cannot (or are not willing to choose to), don’t whine and cry. There’s plenty of good space for you in government work, and with corporations, where loyalty and CYA behaviors are rewarded over innovation and taking action. Weird, isn’t it?

It’s weird considering America runs (with apologies to Dunkin’ Donuts) on Entrepreneurship, and we have a White House that doesn’t get it. Ah, but less than 19 months left to change “the change.” As for changing what you’re dealing with right now, choose forward motion, then take a step. Now. You can, you know.

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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!

Not “Wealth” — It’s 

OPPORTUNITY that needs

to be redistributed!

It seems most everyone in the business world agrees that Mr. Obama needs to take an economy lesson from the world’s leading retailer.

Wal-Mart today announced it will be cutting consumer costs across the boards to increase revenues and stimulate some genuine deficit relief. 

Congratulations again, Wal-Mart. It’s no wonder you’re on top. You think and act like a business even when many in government would wish for you to roll over and give up.

Oh, but Mr. Obama, why would you who has dragged America feet first into a socialistic state, and almost necessarily into a companion state of incipient bankruptcy along the way, have any regard for a business solution?

After all, you’ve been doing everything humanly possible to make small business enterprises  (America’s ONLY hope for REAL job creation and economic turnaround) go away.

That is correct, isn’t it? (In fact, if you could just once admit this truth, we could move things forward quicker and much more productively — just get the politics out of it!) 

You offer nice sound bites and token funding through do-nothing federal agencies that duplicate efforts for extra (tax-dollar) pay! — just get the politics out of it!   

Nonetheless, Wal-Mart has got it right. Mr. Obama continues to get it wrong.

We have a man whom many believe falsified his way into the White House (If he didn’t, why has he spent a reported $2 million to cover up his true birth information? Regardless of what’s true, does that make any sense?).

It’s simply further proof of the pudding that questions of propriety have been back-seated to those of political pursuit at all costs. And in the process, business thinking has been relegated to “the kid’s table.”

But that’s what happens when ignorance runs incompetence. 

We have in Mr. Obama, a man who hasn’t a single clue about how business works, and who –adding fuel to the fire– appears utterly incapable of even understanding the need for having a business sense of urgency.

For the sake of all businesspeople everywhere in the U.S. and on the rest of the planet, and for all Americans, let us hope we have learned enough about talking the talk (instead of walking it) that we exercise some damage control and nip his political pursuits in the bud.

The notion that redistributing the wealth is a worthy goal is a mark of total naivety. Redistributing opportunities to those who create the wealth of our nation is where the federal government focus needs to be.

Only by supporting America’s small business growth can America support itself because coming from a position of strength is the only meaningful way to be able to afford to help others to grow.

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 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

TXTMSGS

NEVER GET IT RIGHT!

The time it takes to clarify, undo, correct, revise, elaborate on, understand, and check on business information communicated via texting–in order to “get it right”– is greater by far than the amount of time it takes to exchange the correct information in person or by phone.

If you’ve been using straight-on texting to build your business, start over before it’s too late!

Why? Text messages simply fail 100% to communicate anything of value besides numbers, and even those are rarely accurate. And don’t try convincing anyone that LOL or ;<) or I <3 U convey enough emotion.

How words are expressed may be unimportant to teens and pre-teens, but are of major consequence in business, and especially sales (and aren’t ALL small businesspeople salespeople?):

Can you tell from a text message whether the person writing it is paying attention? You can always tell if some one’s paying attention in person. You usually can on SKYPE. And, you can on the phone more often than not. Emails? Probably 50/50.

Text messaging may have a place in the world of communications technology for snappy factual exchanges, and maintaining ongoing contact whenever that’s important.

But texting shouldn’t be relied on for more than that, and –other than some life or death emergency applications– should never be used as the basis for any emotionally-based decision, such as a purchase or personal commitment.

Because?

Because text messages by their very nature are incapable of giving you the whole story, or of communicating the focus or attitude or response/reaction of either the sender or the receiver

— and these indicators are at least as important if not more important than the actual words that are sent or received.

By contrast at the very least with emails, for instance, intent and emphasis is possible with various font treatments. Think of texting as a kind of interactive slide-rule. “Just the facts, Ma’am,” said the impatient detective. 

Though I shudder to have to mention the long-lost word, even a FAX (Yowza! Who ever heard of that?) is more communicative than a text message because it allows the sender to include diagrams and use spatial relations to make a point.

Here’s the bottom line:

Good, clear, accurate communications requires time and effort.

In business, to achieve via texting what’s possible by phone or in person would surely start an epidemic of broken thumbs, and probably a new TDD (Texting Deficit Disorder) neurosis. 

“And your insurance provider IS . . .?”

Clear communicating requires two-way transmissions that include feedback and paraphrasing (e.g., “If I understand this point that you’re making correctly, you are saying . . . “ kinds of check-up statements to make sure you got it right).

Clear communicating facilitates question and answer exchanges — sometimes on an interruptive basis to help facilitate understanding of the whole picture, along the way!

So go ahead and use texting. Over-use it at your own peril. Recognize that it fails miserably to give messages their intended meaning, and that it’s no substitute for facial expressions and/or the human voice.

But 4 some of U, there R’nt any better <~~>s 2 go that could B as GR8, so go 4 it . . . but visit or call if you want to give or get a meaningful response!  

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

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