Decide what you

want to do.

Decide what you

can do.

Decide what you

will do.

     When you determine what you want to do, what you can do, and will actually do INSIDE . . . then go OUTSIDE.

     Too many small business owners start out thinking too big on the OUTSIDE. They march into major marketing and ad agencies, PR firms, media and branding service and management consulting companies, waving investment or borrowed money to engage services they not only can’t afford, but don’t even need to begin with.

     Here’s where common sense gets lost in the shadows of egos.

     You own, manage, operate a business or professional practice. You don’t need outsiders coming in and telling you what your vision or mission statement should be or how to manage your customers or employees or suppliers, or how to sell or maintain your operations.

     You already know how to do these things and nobody else can do these things like you can.  

     You are the heart of your business.

     What you see and hear and think and feel about it is your unique perspective. You can pay outsiders to pretend they get it and pretend they know essentials that you don’t. But they don’t. Until your business grows to mid-size, the only genuine and justifiable outside assistance you’re likely to need (besides perhaps technical website design and maintenance)  is with creating, developing, and delivering the words you use.

     Crafting your communications messages and approach is best done by a proven wordsmith who can demonstrate ability to capture the essence of your business and your “voice” (the ways you express what you think and feel about your business) and put it into appropriately persuasive language. 

     Your branding theme-line needs, for example, to explain what your business is all about, what you do and what you provide, tell a story with a beginning and a middle and an ending, be memorable and/or clever . . . and use seven words or less!

     That kind of writing takes a special skill. Making applications of that theme-line work positively in news releases, brochures, websites, social media, direct mail and other traditional advertising forms takes a special skill.

     For a small business, thinking OutsideIn —hiring a large marketing or PR or advertising agency or consulting group to attack tasks like these–  is a dangerous practice. It is typically a colossal waste of money, time and energy. To make matters worse, the likelihood is that any such efforts will only succeed at winning industry awards for the “team” you recruit. Rarely if ever do these arrangements produce real sales.

     Make it your first line of defense to always work your business from the InsideOut

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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! 

WHAT SPORT IS

YOUR BUSINESS?

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

When was the last time you dribbled across the infield and took a jump shot from 2nd base? Or slam-dunked a hockey puck over the goalpost? You went curling and used a nine-iron instead of a broom?

I once heard a corporate executive describe his company as roller derby because “all we ever do is race around in circles, bashing each other in the teeth, putting on a good show for our public, but nothing ever seems to get done or go anywhere.”    

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

     If you own or manage a business, you sell! If you’re in sales, you undoubtedly equate the sales field with the football field, and see youself running around right end, punting, passing, tackling, huddling, and occasionally at the 11th hour and the 50-yard line “Hail Marying” your way to a sale/no sale decision.

     Football legend Vice Lombardi spent years making motivational training films for salespeople because he saw how direct the sales and football analogy was. A full court press may force a basketball turnover, but cost game-losing vulnerability in many other sports. Are you playing the same sport as your customers? Your competitors? Your vendors?

     So, what sport is YOUR business? ASK AROUND. Other’s answers may surprise you.

     Your honest answer gives important clues about your business strengths and weaknesses, as well as about your business image, reputation, and uniqueness. And those clues establish business patterns which point to professional and financial growth and development opportunities.

     Many family businesses fail to row the same boat in the same direction, or are busy ducking one another while playing ping-pong with golf balls. (Ouch!) 

     Is the sport you choose to best represent your business a team sport? Do people act like teammates? Any team spirit? Cheerleaders? Playmaker? Coach? Go-to guy?

    OR is the sport you most identify with a superstar sport? One person makes all the decisions all the time about everything, from trash disposal methods to sales and marketing and financial management and customer service and answering every phone inquiry?

     In the boxing ring there is but one fighter doing battle with another. The rest are support people. Very high competitive risks for very high potential payback, with the possibility of being rich and brain dead. Well, you could always be a politician . . .

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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!

Happy Mother’s Day,

Mother of

Invention!

That’s YOU, Boss…

     If you work anywhere in that vast SEA OF (government or corporate giant) INCOMPETENCE, click off here and visit some other website. If you’re running or managing your own business –real parent or not– read on: YOU are the “Mother of Invention.”

     Now, Peter Drucker, who’s referred to as the “Father of Management” may not like that idea, but–I would challenge him–when did “Mother” ever lose to “Father”?

     Today, in other words, is also a day to celebrate being your business’s parent.

     First off, anyone who works for you sees you in a parental light. You are looked up to for guidance and leadership. You are a role model. You may not like providing inspiration or being thought of as something special, but you ARE.

     Face up to it and make the most of it. You’ll be helping your staff, your self and your business to grow.

     Don’t just provide leadership. Provide leadership by example; people want to learn by watching and trying and doing.

     Don’t just provide leadership. Provide leadership that’s transparent. Keep all your business dealings clearly defined and out in the open. Forget you have a Bcc setting on your emails. Stop closing doors. Share information freely.

     If you’ve hired good people to start with, you’re only toying with risk levels that are reasonable. If you’ve got a bad apple or two, your open-and-above-boardness will flush them out.

     In other words:

Give everyone a chance to give you a chance for your business to have a chance to succeed.

     Now, Mothers and Fathers, let’s look at that “Invention” word that you’re parenting. If you’re not CONSTANTLY creating and inventing and innovating . . . coming up with new ideas, ways, methods, designs, plans, steps, contacts, messages . . . EVERY DAY, then you are investing in the status quo.

     Keeping things the same, not rocking the boat, and “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” are the prevalent notions anchoring most stagnant corporate giants, every government agency, and all unsuccessful small businesses. 

     Business owner Job One is to stay out of that trap. Don’t let anything interfere with your daily birthing of inventive thinking. It’s how you started your business. It’s what’s carried your business. It’s what will will make the difference between your business surviving and your business thriving in the months and years ahead. 

     This doesn’t mean every lightbulb that goes on over your head needs to light up the world, or even that little dark corner of your workspace, but it does mean that you and your business cannot afford to pull the plug on that open socket; keep trying out new bulbs; follow up with some and discard others. [Edison made 10,000 tries before inventing the lightbulb!]

     Innovation, remember, is taking the rarest of those good ideas and seeing them all the way through, every specific step of the way, to their final destination markets — even if only on paper or the computer screen. Together with your business itself, it’s those parented ideas that become the inventions that you mother and nurture into adulthood. Happy Mother’s Day!     

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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!

You just wanted

to work in your

underwear,

that’s all.  

     Remember the reason you decided to start, and run or manage your own business? Odds are it had more to do with what you wanted for a lifestyle than you probably recall. And I’ll bet your decision was accelerated by the lifestyle conflict you were having with the person you reported to or the organization you served . . . likely it was both!

     Just the fact that you reported to anyone was probably grounds enough for you to want to set sail into uncharted seas. How do I know that? I’ve spent most of my life being an entrepreneur, coaching entrepreneurs, and teaching entrepreneurship. We share common distaste for indulging in organizational details and for respecting authority.

     Sometimes the lifestyle issues involved in choosing to work for yourself are as innocuous as wanting to wake up late and work late, or wear sweatpants and shorts and t-shirts to work (or, wear nothing . . . “WRITE NAKED” urges an old promotional poster I saw from Writer’s Digest magazine). 

     The point is that whatever the reasons you decided to pack in corporate or government America and set out on your own, the flip-side of those reasons is what you used, to cornerstone your startup venture. Is it still a cornerstone? If you’ve let this one get away, you may be missing out on enjoying the very reason you elected to be your enterprising self.

     You may even be sliding (slithering?) back into the hole from whence your business owner career was born. There’s nothing wrong (and probably everything right) with becoming more conservative in your fiscal and political choices as you get older and wise up as to what makes genuine realistic sense in America’s society, but dragging conservative thinking into how you run your business puts you on the road to premature business death . . . not a happy place to be.

     You started with innovative ideas and energetic drive and a pioneering spirit.

     If you’ve been successful, you may well be at a point where those traits, qualities, values, instincts, characteristics –whatever you want to call them — have started to dry up, and you’ve either got itchy feet to again get on with something else, or you’ve slowly absorbed the “corporatitis” investment in status quo.

     If you’ve not been successful, you may be wondering why you chose this path when you could be working 9 to 5 and collecting big benefits and enjoying weekends. Ever feel like that or am I imagining things? Perhaps you’ve just been busting your butt and success is simply not happening, but you’re not willing to give up what you started.

     The truth is that it doesn’t really matter what’s going on with you right now EXCEPT that if you’ve somewhere lost your enthusiasm and business ownership has become a full-time struggle, you must do whatever it takes to get back your startup energy, and that means you need to put more fun in every day.

     ONLY by having fun with your business will you have a more sunny disposition and will your business achieve the results you seek. Fun means something different to everyone. Make a short list of what’s fun to you. And yet another of what’s fun to those around you. Then start to make some of those attitudes and events take place. Have fun! 

# # #

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

When you undertake

to organize, manage,

and assume the risks

of owning and running

a business…

. . . you are not just taking a leap of faith.

You are taking the leap with a full plate in hand.

Imagine a waiter balancing a tray full of dinners on one hand and carrying a “table jack” with the other, while deftly jumping across a six-foot moat into a flame-edge-bordered room packed with ravenously hungry people, and no idea of who ordered what.

     Whew!

     Well, if the guy is the owner of the restaurant, odds are the right people will get the right food, others will get some complimentary food with appreciative remarks and everyone will end up coming back.

     If it’s a giant chain restaurant, the wrong people will get the wrong meals, nobody else will be acknowledged and the only ones who return will be coming back for the cheap prices only. 

     It seems appropriate on National Prayer Day (yes, that’s today in case you forgot to say some) to be addressing leaps of faith, even if it is in conjunction with a business focus. Entrepreneurial enterprises are, after all, among some of the world’s greatest benefactors of prayer and leadership faith.

     Most small business owners do most everything that needs to be done by themselves. They sell; they finance; they organize; they manage; they innovate; they manage and serve customers and clients; they market, promote, and publicize. Entrepreneurial “personalities” rarely if ever match corporate counterparts (and most would agree there really are no direct counterparts anyway).

     Entrepreneurs tend to be entrepreneurs because they simply don’t fit the orderly, entrenched, established, procedural, authoritative and controlling mindset that corporate muckity-mucks seem to thrive on. Corporate guys are invested in the status quo. Whoa! Don’t make waves!

     Senior executive vice presidents and directors of anything are up to their you-know-whats in burdensome and tedious reliance on planning and analyzing . . . activities that are viewed by upstart business venture principals as paralyzing behavior.

     By contrast, entrepreneurs thrive on innovation, action, and high enthusiasm. When a small business owner consults with her market research department, she is talking to herself as she cruises through Bing and Google.

     Okay, so right about now, I know there are a smattering of grumbling corporate people (mostly, it seems, brothers-in-law of entrepreneurs!) who are punching their monitors and yelling that times have changed and big business is now leading the way in innovation and brand loyalty and new market development and communications and high-level training. Bull.

     Automakers? Banks? Pharmaceutical giants? Oil companies? Mainstream media? Consumer product manufacturers? Need we go further? How many of these do you see taking leaps of faith?

     The monster donut-maker guys may think America runson their junk food, but they’re dreaming (their coffee’s not even good!).

     America runs on small business and entrepreneurial spirit, on Mom and Pop Stores, basement and kitchen table and garage businesses, one-man-band services, farm families, commercial and residential contractors, and techies in bathrobes working out of their bedroom closets. 

     That’s what we’re all about. That’s what will turn this economy around. That’s who we need to be remembering in our prayers today and every day. Small business and entrepreneurial pursuits are the foundation of America’s past and the keys to America’s future.

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

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

“Is what I’m doing right

this minute, leading me 

 to where I want to go?”

I kept this sign above my desk for many years. It helped keep me focused. It prompted staff and visitors to think twice about how we were using time. It’s hard to justify much water cooler chit-chat while appointments, online research and paperwork pace around your workspace awaiting your return.

Running a business is a balancing act to begin with. The mercilessly ticking clock demands even more. Business owners and managers are only as effective as their ability to manage and productively use time.

Mail carriers sort, doctors triage, retailers catalog, military personnel classify, librarians alphabetize, and the rest of us stumble through –organizing, arranging and categorizing– as a preamble to prioritizing.

The process of taking what you have and organizing it, combining appropriate interests along the way, then ultimately determining the rank order of importance is a lifeline to action! It sets leaders up to attack the first most important task first, and the second most important task second, and so forth. All good, logical, rational thinking here.

Unfortunately, unless you’re an accountant, life is not logical and rational. Stuff inevitably happens that pushes all the logic out the tenth floor window. If you’re not prepared for such uproars, you’ll get dragged out with it. And ten floors is not enough time to open your chute, but enough free-fall to play smash-face.

If your past solution approach has traditionally been to start listening to your LED watch and –as if it was a doomed rabbit– giving it violent hound dog shakes with a startled look on your face, you may want to consider some alternative that involves a booster shot of proactive planning.

Motivational guru Brian Tracy tells us that for “every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution.”

Planning is only a waste of time if you choose for it to be and fail to follow the path you cut out, or fail to adjust it to best fit the circumstances.

One major key to planning and time management success is to always have a contingency arrangement thought out. Why? Because you can almost bet there will be interruptions, and often unexpected emergencies. Just as fire drills have often been credited with saving lives, contingency plans often save businesses.

  In other words, stay tuned in to what’s happening in real time, but always be prepared to be sidetracked. Thoreau once talked about being “forever on the alert.” Not bad advice all these many years later.

# # #

931.854.0474    Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

DREAMERS DREAM

AND TRYERS TRY,

BUT DOERS

GET IT DONE! 

     A “Vision Statement” addresses the ultimate objectives or finish line of your business pursuits, and can serve to point your business in a meaningful direction.

     A “Mission Statement” underscores commitment to move toward that finish line, and usually suggests or outlines the pieces of strategy your business needs to follow to get where you want to go.

Great, right? Business owners need all that stuff to pump up the troops and prompt droves of prospects –like Clark Kent peeling off the suit and glasses to burst on the scene as Superman– to run to the cash register and become instant paying customers, right?

Here’s how I size up my own training/coaching/consulting prospects: those who gush forth their vision and mission statements at every turn need my help; they are like kids with new toys, caught up in the moment and oblivious to the fact that what’s important in business is getting things done, not talking about getting things done.

These wannabe visionaries who can readily run amuck with their pocketsful of guiding light statements, often seem to get themselves preoccupied with communicating their aspirations to the rest of the world (in their emails, ads, blog and social media posts, websites, promotional literature, phone messages, and news releases).

They need instead to simply redirect that energy into taking realistic steps for achieving the dreams they’ve verbalized. Somewhere along the way, some company got the idea that the public really cares about the details of their goal pursuits and future plans. Reality check: They don’t.

Generally speaking, small business owners and managers will do best to keep their vision and mission statements to themselves and their employees (and perhaps investors). Hopeful and strategic business thinking are usually best shared with the world-at-large when the world-at-large recognizes the brand as a household name.

To spew private small business goal-focused messages out to the public with the hopes of surreptitiously soliciting, exploiting, and rallying business is like using a shovel for a hammer; sometimes it might work, but it’s not what shovels are intended for.

Anyway, these are the kinds of clients I can easily impact; they are already doing something and simply need to channel their energies more productively. It takes only a few forward thrusts of action to start to make things that really count begin to happen.

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Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

J & J Leadership

Lessons

 Go Far Beyond

BandAids!

     We are witnessing now one of the world’s worst oil leak disasters. It could have been drastically minimized with immediate action. 

     Instead of responsiveness, however, we had eight days of Presidential foot-dragging in order to be preoccupied with more important issues, like trying to push Goldman Sachs over the edge of the political cliff without toppling in over them, and hosting a reception for the New York Yankees, among other such critical demands.

     Ah, but after eight days, when the White House finally did decide to step up, determined to save a token pelican or two, some key federal-titled muckity-mucks were actually “dispatched” with orders to report back in 30 days.

     Right, 30 days! How long would it take anyone you know who lives on a coastline to tell you that on top of 8 days of hundreds of thousands of gallons a day worth of leaked oil, we are destined to inevitably see that oil along the Eastern Shore? How about 30 minutes?

     WOO HOO . . . a little too little too late! Imagine taking this approach to respond to a business problem. You’d be out of business. Or, you’d be big-time up to the tops of your hipboots in debt with expensive apolgetic and advertising media expenses. Ask Toyota.

     Either way, the problem multiplies exponentially when responsiveness is not present. Without a sense of urgency built into your leadership position, your business is only as strong as the last time you took swift positive remedial action.

     The classic textbook example was, of course. when Johnson & Johnson handled “The Tylenol Scare” of 1982. They acted poste haste and authoritatively.

     J&J management breeds leadership. It doesn’t matter that you might have a mom and pop grocery store (are there any of those left?) or a 3-person home-based business, there is much to be learned about crisis management from the way J&J dealt with this potential disaster:

• Apologize immediately and completely.
• Act immediately.
• Tell ALL.
• Follow up.
• Stay invested in the solution and be transparent.

     Bottom line: RESPONSIVENESS.

     When you tackle a major problem head-on and immediately, the biggest risk you run is being accused of being over-zealous. What’s that compared to lost lives, lost environment, lost trust, lost credibility? The important distinction to remember here is the difference between reSPONDING and reACTING.

     When you reACT, you run the immediate risk of OVER-reacting, and that puts you out of control. When you reSPOND, you are acting with control, and you are ensuring increased odds of success. Seeking a practical control tool? Take some deep breaths!

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

MONEY

DOESN’T GROW

 ON YOUR BOSS’S

TREES EITHER.

(SETS OF WORDS TO CHERRY-PICK FROM AND ADAPT AS NEEDED)

     DEAR EMPLOYEE: I know you are a basically honest person or you wouldn’t still be employed where you are, doing what you do. And I greatly appreciate your loyalty.

     This message is intended in the spirit of seeing the business you work for, and your own career pursuits –both– experience unprecedented success in the months and years ahead.  

     You should, first of all, know that –as the Boss– I am working for myself and my family, and for you and your family, and for everyone else involved, to provide the best possible product and service quality for the best possible dollar value to our customers.

     I am doing this when we’re closed as well as when we’re open. There’s hardly more than a few minutes ever pass, day or night, that I am not thinking about ways to improve our business, and ways to provide more opportunities for growth to employees, suppliers, and customers.

     I am writing this to enlist your increased support in attitude and productivity. I can only feel comfortable in making this request because you have proven yourself capable, and you have demonstrated your ongoing commitment to sustain yourself and your family by being conscientious and by working hard.

     Now I am going to ask you to accept increased responsibility without increased compensation, but with the increased assurance that when your extra-effort help starts to kick in, I will be certain to see that you are appropriately rewarded with corresponding job security. The more effort we get from everyone, the more opportunities will surface for participating in management leadership teams. 

     The product of our combined extra efforts will lead to more productive and more protected jobs with greater compensation.

     For me to hold up my end of the deal, I need you to start now acting like more of the leader and teammate you have demonstrated you are capable of being. When you observe personnel, system, or equipment breakdowns that you know how to deal with, step in and deal with them. When you are not sure about what to do, come ask. Sweeping problems under the rug only produces bigger problems.

     When you are aware of someone padding their hours, not honoring the terms of their employment, acting lackadaisical or disinterested, filching supply items, or treating equipment abusively, you are doing this business and your own career a disservice by looking the other way.

     I am not urging risky confrontation or that you play “tattle-tale,” but I am suggesting you consider that avoiding the reality of what’s going on is akin to avoiding your responsibility to do the best you can do to help your own family. Only by protecting and nurturing the interests of this company, can your career here be expected to grow and thrive.

     You see, I am not made of money any more than you. You may look at how I live and conclude that it’s like cruise control compared to all your hard peddling. I assure you, the hidden stress makes it a no-contest situation.

     Dealing with the banks, investors, lawyers, bill collectors, insurance agents, the landlord, over-the-top government controls and regulations (and all the accompanying paperwork) is not fun and games. I have no complaints. It’s what I do.

     But for us to get out of this economic crunch, I am going to need you to pull more than your usual share to help me help us to turn things around so that all of us can enjoy greater freedom. Are you with me? What three things can you do this week to help us get this renewed mission started?      

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Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! 

When times get tough, 

the tough get going,

but they also

inventory their staffs!

     It’s easy to do, costs nothing, takes almost no time, and can produce an avalanche of valuable sales and business contacts. Pass around a short survey every six months that asks the people who work with you what they’ve been learning lately outside of work, who they know, what activities they choose for family fun, what kinds of careers family members have… 

     With a little prompting on your part, and some representative examples you can offer to promote useful responses, you may learn nothing of value . . . but you could be astonished! And until you flat-out ask, you’ll never know. Your administrative assistant may have a brother-in-law who runs a company that’s a perfect fit with your business mission.

     Your operations manager’s sister might be married to a board member of a neighboring business you’ve considered courting for shared marketing expenses.

Maybe your shipping clerk or receptionist is active in the same church as a key supplier who’s been giving bigger discounts to your competitor, but you’ve never had enough of a shared personal connection to feel comfortable enough to approach her about it.

     Why wouldn’t you know things like this already? Most people who are not running a business, or in sales, rarely think about networking, or have experience in the qualifying question process that’s usually needed to uncover valuable connections. It’s human nature to not volunteer “personal” information.

     You have a goldmine of untapped resources under your thumb. Start to draft your survey page.

     Avoid probing personal questions. Unless you have more than a hundred employees where processing answers could start to get unwieldy, avoid multiple choice or yes/no/maybe questions. Keep things open-ended and “optional” so no one feels you’re poking around to get in his or her closet. Explain that good business contacts can come from stretching awareness of existing resources, and that you would be very appreciative of any information shared, even if the respondent didn’t consider it valuable.

“Who do you know in your neighborhood, or your family or immediate circle of friends that might have some work or career connection with our three major prospects/customers?

Would they mind if you or someone from your organization contacted them or used their name to make contact with that prospect/customer to help open up a channel for dialogue about the services/products we offer?

What would it take for that to happen?”

     A question flow like this will of course get answered more enthusiastically and more thoroughly when you can provide some reward — a bottle of champagne, a day off, a charitable donation in that individual’s name, a percentage of potential sales commission, a small piece of some resultant new revenue stream that a connection produces. Use your imagination here.   

     The bottom line is the old reminder that you never get anything if you don’t ask for it. And when you do ask, you may be pleasantly surprised. What’s the worst thing could happen, the questions produce no contacts? At least it will serve to get people thinking.

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

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!