Thirty years of 

selling services 

proves nothing sells 

like free samples

Take a page from PRODUCT manufacturers, marketers, distributors, and retailers. Food products are a good place to start. 

The restaurant gets free food product samples from manufacturer sales reps, and in turn will often give you an extra pickle, complimentary, and usually with a smile. You get sample slices of cheese or lunch meat handed across the deli counter, complimentary, and usually with a smile. The supermarket often serves up a variety of taste samples, complimentary, usually with a smile.

Doctors give away sample drugs they get from detail reps who want the doctor’s Rx business. Airlines offer free upgrades to frequent flyers. Car salesmen will tear the shirts off their backs to get your signature on the contract. Every one loves free sample products! 

What are you giving away?

Yeah, I know, your smile! (and I’ve heard it’s a great one, so pass it on!)

You’re no doubt throwing your hands to the sky and proclaiming you’re in the  S~E~R~V~I~C~E  business, so you don’t have a warehouse or storeroom full of goodies to non-chalently flip at prospective buyers. (Oh, and sure doctors provide healthcare services, but doctors are doctors and –WOW!– who balks at free drugs?)

It doesn’t matter that you sell consulting services, design services, writing services, accounting services, legal services, tech services, cleaning services, entertainment or travel or hospitality services. It doesn’t matter that you deliver packages or newspapers, or that you broker real estate or insurance or market bank loans or investment services. Nothing sells like free samples!

If you’re soliciting a prospective client to engage your services, start providing the services you offer as part of your solicitation.

“You know, I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and I would need some more time to confirm this, but I can’t help but think that it would be very much to your advantage to consider strengthening your media relations efforts (or building an email list, or developing a training initiative for your drivers, or putting your cash flow analysis on a monthly report basis, etc., etc.).”

                                           

Start BEING the consultant

(lawyer, accountant, bookkeeper, web

designer, SEO specialist, etc.)

that you want the prospect to engage.

Give ’em a taste for nothin’! Show people a sample of how you would work with them. Don’t worry about telling them too much for free; just tell them. Of course, don’t go too overboard with information, and be respectful and certain of your points before you make them.  

Oh, and stop thinking instant gratification. These days, a sale takes 5-6 attempts to close before the sale is made. And the real sale –especially for S~E~R~V~I~C~E~S  begins AFTER the sale is made.

In the meantime, toss the dog a bone! 

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www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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!

America’s small business

community is 30 million strong.

On one issue —the economy— we

stand shoulder to shoulder

with one voice:

The economy can only be saved by new job creation.

New jobs come —only— from small business.

(Check history!)

It’s time to face the fact that America’s small businesses drive America’s economy. Period.

It’s time to step up to the plate, Mr. Obama, and exercise the kind of domestic leadership you were elected to provide.

Without a strong economy, there is nothing else you can provide. Your social agenda will continue to dissolve. Our nation’s image will continue to deteriorate. Your support will continue to erode. And the kind of legacy you surely pursue will become more elusive each day.

But you can turn the tide.

You need only to choose to stop being driven by fear of losing face and votes, and show the world the leadership you appear to be capable of.

Bottom line, Mr. Obama:

Stop being an under-achiever!

Your “pulling up short” behavior simply doesn’t do justice to the promises you represent. Surely you can do better than that?

Instead of:

• Blockading and berating small businesses at every turn, and catering to big businesses that are over-run with lethargic 9 to 5 attitudes and disreputable union leaders . . . corporate giants entrenched in maintaining the status quo.

• Creating artificial government “jobs” that simply add to the deficit . . . how many people does it take to fill a pothole? (A State issue? And where do the states take their lead?) 

• Making lots of PR sound-bites and photo ops to illustrate your administration’s dedication to business (and setting up token programs through the pathetic SBA and other smoke and mirror entities to try to look good to voters). . . I served the SBA Advisory Council for two, two-year terms; it’s a farce run by corporate giants. 

  . . . how about trying a bold new tact?                                           

What, for example, could happen if you actually threw Federal support behind small business development by providing genuine tax incentives for job creation?

What, for example, could happen by introducing genuine tax incentives for meaningful small business expansion, and for the creation of entrepreneurial and innovative new revenue streams?

Will you please set the stage for entrepreneurial input by taking the high road? In other words:

• Can you start to genuinely demonstrate a more receptive attitude toward small business owners?

• Can you show a little entrepreneurial spirit yourself by taking the reasonable risk of rolling up your sleeves and setting to work with non-politicized teams of America’s great entrepreneurs? (This includes looking past just those who have worked with and on your various campaigns.)

• Can you put political ambition aside long enough to recruit some active “straighten-out-the-economy” participation by small business? (This means doing far more than just dispatching small armies of researchers and interviewers and surveyors into consumer, industrial and professional marketplaces to “report back.”)   

So far, it seems to ALL of the hundreds of small business owners I informally communicate with regularly, that your administration has done everything humanly possible to alienate entrepreneurs and small business owners and operators and managers, instead of tap into their experience and knowledge, and embrace their spirit.

Small business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs know how to be productive.

They know how to turn on a dime.

They know how to create and manage marketplace opportunities.

They know how to do whatever it takes with a passionate sense of urgency.

They know how to make things happen.

It’s hard to know the source of numbers that have crossed your desk, but reality is that there are indeed 30 million of us who are tired of being stepped on, over, under, and around. And many of us care more about turning things around than we do about making political points.

We truly want the opportunity to work with government to turn things around, but there must be an ongoing and mutual sense of purpose and respect coming from the White House. There has not been so far. 

Just say you’re willing to try, Mr. Obama, and let’s get started! Yes, it’s that simple.    

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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!

How loud or quiet are

your community relations?

LOUD (high profile) community relations development counts most for:

• Educational and healthcare-based facilities and organizations (e.g., schools, hospitals, libraries, rehab centers)
• Professional practices (especially doctors, dentists, therapists, lawyers, and accountants).
• Retailers of every variety, size, and description (from restaurants to auto showrooms to department stores)
• Real estate professionals and all affiliated services
• Religious-based organizations
• Consumer transportation and shipping businesses)

These entities and individuals need to make positive community involvement impressions because their business interests are community-involved in direct consumer ways. They can achieve this by designing PR programs that support those communities that support their business and professional interests.

It’s called “enlightened self-interest” and it’s a good thing.

It means “enlightened” as to the perceived needs of key communities, neighborhoods, and regions, and taking a leadership posture that will produce good deeds which will ultimately produce some return on the investments of time, money and energy.

This is not the same thing as opportunism.

There is no selfishness involved.

Enlightened self-interest simply means following the awareness that the more good a business can do for the communities it serves, the more that appreciation for those good works will surface, and the more return can be realized, which ultimately allows the business to channel and contribute even more.

It’s all about demonstrating a sense of charity and coming at it from a position of strength which, in turn, makes even more charity possible. It’s hard to give meaningfully from a position of weakness. There’s nothing at all wrong with doing that; it’s simply limiting.

QUIET (low profile) community relations development counts most for:

• Manufacturers, fabricators, and distributors
• Home improvement services
• Online businesses
• B to B services (except media)
• Personal and family services (e.g., counseling, funeral homes, home care)
• Industrial and professional transportation and shipping businesses

These types of businesses have less need for public exposure in the community relations efforts they undertake, but no less of a need to be actively involved.

Both LOUD and QUIET community relations serve important purposes for all involved.

They can be achieved by ongoing and consistent efforts of groups, teams and individuals engaged in activities that benefit the welfare of others through guidance and participation in events, programs, sponsorships, news releases, and public stances on community-benefit positions.

There is never any shortage of needs your business can provide. Set budgets and terms for participating with matching dollar donations . . . and/or contributions of cash awards, products, services, time, facilities, contacts, equipment, and leadership.

# # #

931.854.0474 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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!

The Answer IS . . .

ASK QUESTIONS!

Whether you’re looking for better grades, improved cash flow, an investor, a loan, new customers, repeat customers, a new employee (or  job), new revenue streams, the exact right set of words for a branding themeline, or some trace of your ex-mother-in-law who changed her name and left town with the contents of your wall safe . . . your odds of success increase dramatically when you:

ASK QUESTIONS! 

You might think that’s pretty basic advice, but my experience is that it least happens when you most expect it –especially with headstrong entrepreneurs.

It isn’t that business owners strut around with a know-it-all cockiness; it’s that they don’t want to waste time and it can often seem more productive to step out of a meeting, seminar, webinar, conference call, txtmsg exchange, or cocktail party, than to suck it up and stay there and have to ask questions (when time is perceived to be better spent, instead, taking action).

Does that ring a bell or am I just imaging things?

Entrepreneurs (and most men, it seems) have to be on the verge of total mental meltdown before they’ll ever stop to ask anyone for driving directions. It used to be the threat of embarrassment for being so dumb as to have gotten lost. Now. it’s more like cringing at the thought of getting a reply like: “Hey, man, you mean you ain’t got no GPS or MapQuest thing?”

Here’s the bottom line:

If you don’t ask for what you want,

or what you want to know, 

you don’t get it!

(Always? No, sometimes we get things by accident.) 

Oh, and asking questions is completely useless if you forget the answers. Write them down. Stop with all the excuses about how much time it wastes to write things out by hand on paper (assuming you actually still own a pen and can find some paper, and remember how to write ;<)).

When you write things down, you get them out of your head, create more think space, and deal better with the inevitable interruptions that occur within seconds of getting your question answered. Note taking is not only smart insurance that you’ll walk away with an undistorted idea of what you heard, it also communicates that you value and respect the source of the responses you get.

The answers to questions

are at the root of all progress.

If you’ve been focused on secondary research sources (like books, reports, and the Internet) as your primary decision making tools, you may want to get yourself out into the real world and ask real people real questions once in awhile. There’s nothing can compare with asking real customers what they really think, really listening to their answers, and really writing down what they say.

Formal focus groups? Perhaps. But just plain old informal questions (without rebuttals, defensive reasons, excuses, or “yes, but’s”) will serve the purpose just fine. You will walk away feeling gratified, maybe astonished, and definitely enlightened. So???  (That was a question.)

# # #

931.854.0474    Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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!

Can I forget everything

I know up until now

. . . right now?

This is the question we must ask ourselves, and answer, if we are to thrive in leadership roles with our businesses and the communities we serve and that support us.

It is not a suggestion to wipe out memory banks or get a lobotomy, or set off toward early senility. It means: Can you let go of what you know long enough to shed some new light on the issue or person or group involved?

Can you let go of all the preconceived notions you have about someone or some group (or idea), give the benefit of doubt, put aside your beliefs, suspend your biases and prejudices, be truly non-judgemental, and see and hear the next three individuals or groups you encounter (or the next three times you examine the idea on the table) as if it were the very first time you ever met?

                                                           

Can you forget, in other words, everything you know about her/him/they/it from past experience?

Why? Because you’ll see that person or group or concept in a revealing new light and he/she/they will see you with a fresh outlook too! That happening alone will prompt new levels of receptivity and innovative thinking. 

When you can put the mental and emotional baggage of the past aside, and look at some one or some group with new eyes, you are in effect removing barricades to productivity. By initiating this way of thinking, you help others (and yourself) to rise to the occasion of dealing most effectively with the task at hand.

Every decision to pursue an intense focus on the present moment is typically met with resistance from those parts of your brain that seek to drive past and future issues to the foreground. Trying to disregard past associations, relationships, experiences, or what you know or think you know about the individual(s) you are meeting or conferencing or communicating with can be exhausting.

If you choose for it to be exhausting.

When you decide, for example, that it can really be simple and invigorating and worth it to turn around an historically difficult partner, customer, client, investor, key employee, or whomever, your odds are substantially increased when you can wipe the slate clean.

By responding only to what is communicated –and not to prior conclusions, reputations, beliefs and behaviors you have attached to the source– you establish a new ground for new possibilities to surface. Great leaders do this routinely. You can too. It may take a few tries, but three times on the runway will serve you well as preparation for takeoff. Have a nice flight!

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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!

Why is it so hard to just

  shut up and do what’s right? 

An awful lot of nonsense gets carried over into the business world from society and the media. But I guess that’s to be expected. After all, business is simply a mirror reflection of society’s needs and wants. And the media makes a living by attracting attention with lies and sensationalism that “play off of” society’s needs and wants.

Lies and sensationalism attract attention and create interest. That, in turn, sells newspapers and magazines and draws TV and radio audiences. Media lies and sensationalism boost Internet website visits.

The higher the numbers get, the bigger the demand created for businesses (especially big businesses with multi-million-dollar advertising and marketing budgets) to purchase message time and space. The more message time and space purchased, the more media is incited to lie and sensationalize. A vicious circle.

Bottom line?

There’s a lot of noise out there!

What I find particularly disconcerting is what appears to me to be a growing pervasiveness of leadership reliance on chatter instead of on listening.

The American public has (hopefully) had a two-year-long lesson in the societal strangulation that occurs when you make a great orator –with less than minor league leadership skills and experience– into a national leader who clearly does not know how to listen.

Not listening is by itself an unforgivable offense for any leader. Openly espousing a socialist (Marxist, some even say) agenda that literally flies in the face of America’s Constitution adds fuel to the leadership fire.

One compounds the other by pulling the rug out from under small business’s ability to reverse direction of our ever-plunging economy. It is small business, and only  small business, that can create new jobs. Small business doesn’t fit a socialist agenda. Connect the dots. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And so, we are now also seeing a long trail of energetic young entrepreneurs moving into business leadership posts. But they have nothing much to guide them except the seats of their pants and the role model they naively swept into the White House.

The ugly thought alone of a nation of outspoken, brash young business “leaders” preoccupied with presenting instead of listening is frightening to say the least. Pep rally speeches can get people excited, but they don’t get the job done. 

And as disheartening as it is for me to even use this blog as a place to address concerns like this, I can’t help but think that America has brought herself to her knees . . . and that now is the time for every leader of every business entity to 1) get up, 2) stand tall, and 3) listen carefully to what others are saying:

customers, partners, employees, investors, referrers, lenders, suppliers, vendors, service providers, advisors, geographic and industrial and professional communities served.

We cannot just “hear” them.

We must actively “listen” to them.

We might even learn something

about not only doing what

works…but about doing

w h a t ‘ s    r i g h t !   

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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!

You flaunt it or you bury it.

  It’s a primary differential in determining business success.

Consider for a moment that government and corporate employees have little if any of it. Mothers, entrepreneurs, great athletes, great sales-people, and most detectives –on the other hand– are loaded with it!

Instinct, says Webster, is a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse or capacity . . . a tendency to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason.

If you own or run a business, you’ve got it!

“Good heavens, man!” most town, county, state, and federal employees, and most low-tech, no-tech, and medium-tech corporate suits would exclaim, when challenged to get to the point without analyzing stuff to death.

You’ve either got it, or you’d better get it!

We are rapidly becoming a global business community that’s triggered and managed by instinct. This proclamation is –particularly for those in white shirts and ties or pantsuits and heels (or perhaps both on alternate days?)– probably a source of indigestion, even irritable bowel syndrome because it threatens their programmed response to every situation, to study it endlessly.

The great oil spill wrought such havoc with both the federal government and the corporate giants involved that they all chose to gasp and cover their faces with their hands, while peeking between fingers, only to settle (after WEEKS passed) to send people to the scene and “to STUDY it!” What was that comment from a couple of paragraphs back? “Good heavens, man!”

Whatever happened to taking action? Oh, right, that’s an entrepreneurial instinct, and entrepreneurs are, after all, a reckless bunch charging from one risk to another. Well, those who are entrepreneurs know this couldn’t be farther from the truth. We also know that today’s economic crisis would never have happened if entrepreneurial instincts had been unleashed to address the issues at hand.

Anyway, the oil spill and economic catastrophy are only symptomatic examples. The point is that you got into business and kept it going through thick and thin because you made decisions based on instinct instead of analytical studies. Well, guess what? The way out of the darkness is to resurrect that quality you’ve hidden away in fear. Take it back out and run with it. Make things happen!

What’s the worst case scenario? How reasonable is the risk? What will it take to jump start your ideas? Your people? Your customers? Your suppliers? Your investors and lenders? Your referrers? 

Why are you wasting time over-thinking when you can be taking step-at-a-time, trial-and-error action the same way you used to a few years back?

It doesn’t have to cost money you

don’t have to test and try ideas.

Cash is short? So what? It’s always short. Do you want to be still sitting there wallowing in worry a year from now just because you don’t have barrels of cash to work with? Seize the day? Seize the moment!

You have your mind. You have your experience. You have your skills and knowledge. And hopefully, you’re smart enough to step up to the plate and pray for a fastball right down the middle. (Praying will help you avoid the curves and spitballs!).

You have your instinct. Use it more. 

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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! 

30 MILLION STORIES.

Does that sound like

the stairway to heaven?

No, the other kind of 

stories, as in tell me a…

It’s been widely reported that there are an estimated 30 million small businesses in the United States. This number includes sole proprietorships (which the government refuses to acknowledge as small businesses, and which therefore account for a smaller small business total in Washington’s eyes, though interestingly, not out of IRS sight!).

Why should this matter to you?

There’s barely an entrepreneur alive who doesn’t know that new small businesses create virtually ALL of the new jobs in this country –and always have– and that job creation is the ONLY solution to reversing this still plummeting economy (which, all the great funeral service and State of the Union campaign-style oratory cannot cover up with political blankets).

Just look at skyrocketing gas prices,

unemployment, and boarded up storefronts 

for proof of the still plummeting economy.

Every business that’s alive and breathing today has avoided shutdown and rollover by owner, manager, and employee guts and gumption.

Discovering and pounding away at a unique product or service differential; consistently thinking and acting beyond creativity into the gravitational pull of innovative orbits; delivering value, integrity, and overkill customer service is what spells s~u~c~c~e~s~s!

This means, among other things, that your business has a story. With 29,999,999 other stories floating around out there (not counting government and corporate media dominance and control), your business story may seem small and insignificant. But it is not. Your small business story is that you are here . . . and how you got here, and where you’re going. And that story is real and valuable.

YOUR story needs to be told. Do it yourself, or get someone to do it for you, but don’t shovel it into obscurity. Part of your value on this planet is to inspire and motivate others by sharing what you’ve learned along the way. If you don’t believe this, you shouldn’t be wasting your time on this site. You need not be Bill Gates or Oprah before giving something back. Teach by telling your story.

In the process of growing your business, what is it that you’ve learned the hard way . . . what do you wish someone had clued you in on before the eve of destruction?

What would have made a difference for you to hear when the going got tough?

How hard is it for you to choose to reach out to others in your family, your company, your industry, your community, and share some of your ups and downs in a way that might help someone else? Have you offered to teach a local high school or college or adult education course? How about initiating a business round-table group or discussion series at your church or community center?

(Practicing such enlightened self-interest, by the way, can only enhance your own business reputation in the process.)

Have you called a local school (or trade or professional show program director) and asked if you could arrange a guest talk, or guest lecture, or guest workshop, or seminar participation? (Some of the world’s best employees are also recruited at such sessions.)

What’s holding up your call? Are you thinking you have nothing important to say? If you are where you are, you have important things to say about the process that got you there. OR that didn’t get you there — What are some NO-NO’s you’ve learned? People DO want to know these things. You did yourself at one time. Remember?

 # # #

Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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! 

Trying to run a small business

amid today’s world turmoils is 

like trying to do your tax return

 at a Chucky Cheese

birthday party!

CIA people will tell you that you really don’t want to know what’s going on in the world 24/7. Global terrorist threats and attacks are literally nonstop across the entire planet, all day and night, every day and night.

We hear from off-the-deep-end-tree-huggers (so described as to separate them from genuine environmentalists) that Al Gore’s “global warming” warnings were not so “warm” and were actually intended to focus more broadly on “climate change.”

Whew!

We should all be relieved to know that the man didn’t have the warming warning thing any more wrong than his claims to have “invented the Internet,” and that he really meant to say “climate change” from the outset.

Oh! Okay.

And we all know about gas prices, and the federal government’s bungling of the economy. [See my 87 gazillion posts about how to turn the economy around with tax incentives for job creation to new entrepreneurs — instead of tax-dollar handouts to incompetent corporate giants, thieving unions, and socialistic reform programs that simply add to the crushing deficit burden.]

Now I know this next statement will send 14,000 PETA members picketing me and no doubt some threats from civil liberties lawyers, but by way of meaningful advice to small business and professional practice owners, operators, partners and managers:

When a horse throws you,

get up, brush yourself off,

punch the horse in the nose

and climb back on!

(Ask any horse trainer)

Right, says you, but how do you concentrate on your own business when all the walls around you come tumbling down? First, all the walls around you are not tumbling down.

It’s cold in lots of places where it was always warm. People riot in the streets and get killed every day of the week in some town or city in some country. That doesn’t make it right, or even alright, but it should be enough to convince you that you need to stay alert while keeping your shoulder to the wheel. Stick-to-it-tive-ness is one of the great entrepreneurial traits.

The economy? The only thing that will turn that around — realistically speaking — is new national leadership that values and understands the contributions of small business, that responds to small business, and that rises to the occasion to nurture entrepreneurship with more than tokenism, empty promises, and babble.

So the bottom line is that you need to send your star rising on your own. There’s no place left to lean. Challenge yourself and your people to innovate, build high trust, exceed customer service expectations, and market the truth.

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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! 

STEP RIGHT UP . . .

Step-sister, step-brother, step-father, step-mother, step it up, step up, step down, step back, step forward, step across, step into it, step in it, step on it, step over it, step under it, step around it, get in step.

If you have all four of the first four of these, let’s pray you’ve been fortunate enough to also have any or all four care for and love you and tend to your needs. If you do the other 13, you are compliant and evasive. (I know, I should start writing horoscopes!)

And then there’s my magnificent granddaughter who’s engaged in active ice rink competition as a member of the worldclass synchronized skating team named The Capitol Steps, based (where else?) in Washington, DC.

You know what? I love my granddaughter beyond description, and The Capitol Steps performances are remarkable in the team’s applications of  hard work, skill, spirit and discipline (5AM practices!), but I could do without all the other kinds of magical “steps” being pushed down the gagging throats of struggling business owners.

Well, okay that was a rather long way around, but you are still reading, right?

Ah, yes, some will click off here because they think there’s nothing more sensible coming.

Oh, how wrong they may be, like tossing a lottery ticket to the wind because the first number doesn’t match.

“Patience,” my mother always said, “is a virtue.” Of course my father’s credo was “He who hesitates is lost!” (Notice my father spoke with exclamation points.)

I have read The 9 Best Steps to This, and The 9 Best Steps to That; 10 Steps to Success; 3 Steps to Great Wealth; 12 Steps to Happiness; 16 Steps to Great Leadership (I guess it’s harder to be a great leader than to gain great wealth); 20 Steps to Make Your Man Happy (from Cosmo); The 7 Steps to Highly Effective Behavior Stuff, and only heaven knows all the other secret formulas.   

When I was younger, and eager to advance my career, I used to try them all. My legs got tired. Now, they actually have “Step Class” sessions… I guess to limber you up for taking all the mystical steps that promise greatness.

Here’s the point:

You own, or operate, or manage a business or professional practice.

Somehow, you have managed to keep the doors open and stay out of jail.

You already know what steps to take and which ones to avoid. You don’t need anyone else’s hocus-pocus “Steps” to take.

You need only to trust yourself more. You need to trust your own judgment. It’s what got you here and has kept your business breathing.

Sure, you can do better. But you will only do better by being true to yourself and following your heart as well as your mind.

You are on the way to making a difference in this world.

Don’t let anyone or any book or video or orator or feature story or “outside” influence prompt you to step sideways into someone else’s spotlight.

You will be wasting time and energy and money, and moving away from the strengths of your own insights and your own depth of character. Be true to yourself. 

Try new ideas, but stick to what you believe. And keep believing in you.    

  

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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!