The sky is falling!  

What is this,

Chicken Little?

     Enough of this doom and gloom crap, already. 

     The only ones out there who are doing their jobs successfully are the two-faced mainstream media alarmist exaggerators!  And they have become so effective at brainwashing public opinion that they’re making the rest of us look like fools! 

     U.S. business owners and managers everywhere are walking face down with slumped shoulders.  They’re tsk-tsk-tsking the same people they had been rah-rah-rahing to build their businesses just a few short months ago. 

     What is this, Chicken Little?  The sky is falling? 

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Time, Newsweek, and majority of other U.S. propaganda news publications . . . plus ABC, CBS, NBC, TNT, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and majority of other propaganda news broadcasters have been doing their damnedest to paint our lives bleak and hopeless. 

     They have made every manipulative, conceivable effort to create unrest and depression.  Why?  It’s in their best interests; it serves them well: 

1. They’ve made the public hungry to find out more about this economic monster that’s crushing in around us on all sides, which sells newspapers and grows broadcast audiences (which attracts advertisers and commands higher rates).

2. They’ve made us search desperately for light so they can rally us to overcome the odds and revel in the brightness they think they can lead us all to, from out of the dark shadows they’ve created and wrapped around us.  (This is also designed to build sales, increase rates, and attract advertisers.) 

3. It helps them justify their years of relentless attacks on a President they despise, and pave the way for their annointed savior next month.  Unfortunately, nothing in their optimism could be more pessimistic.  (And this bit of shortsightedness may actually cost them money!)

4. Nothing (nothing) could be further from reality than the strategic roads they ride, but reality doesn’t sell newspapers or build viewer and listener bases — that command higher rates and sell more advertising. 

     What these great mind-bending institutions have failed to realize, however, is that they can never take away our freedom of choice.  And what we need to realize –to rise above the din of narrow-minded defeatest thinking that mainstream media representatives would have us wallow in– is that we CAN think and behave as we choose. 

     We can choose to simply reject all the nonsense the media would have us associate with their “recession” drumbeats.  We need only to look inside ourselves as business owners and managers, as key pieces to the business and economy turnaround leadership puzzle. 

     Finding fault doesn’t find the path out! Cutting budgets doesn’t create sales! 

     We need only to exercise our own intestinal fortitude as a nation of entrepreneurs, as a nation of businesspeople driven to achieve.  We are believers to the core.  We are people who exercise universal charity, who reach out to help the downtrodden back up onto their feet.  We see problems as opportunities. 

     We business owners and managers inspire by doing.  We do not accept the negative values that the media or others try to put upon us.  As a nation, we strive to be winners.  By charging forward to scale the heights, and by reaching beyond where others think is possible, we brighten the lights that bring hope to this planet.  halalpiar         

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  Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

And the time to turn on

                                               

that front burner is now. 

     Necessity, you’ve no doubt heard, is the mother of invention.  And I’ll bet you could pop off a few quick examples, right?   

     Surviving a stressful economy requires businesses to do things differently.  We can’t all, arguably, qualify for government bailouts, so we’re backed into corners.  Because we know from life about logistic concepts like “strength in numbers,” we may of necessity end up choosing to combine forces with diverse, even competitive entities. 

     But that’s not a bad thing when it comes to, for example, sharing marketing expenses — unless your egotistical needs to run your own show are too big for you to justify teaming up with others.  That is a bad thing.

     By joining forces, a great deal more becomes possible in terms of both stimulating sales results and saving promotional dollars. 

     One of the most successful regional advertising campaigns I ever produced was for a major lumber company (that also sells a great deal of hardware), which featured wholehearted advertising and promotional endorsement exchanges with a major hardware store (that sold a little lumber) that was located a block away. 

     The two family-owned entities had battled one another for generations, but the advent of a giant home center moving into the area (that would sell both lumber and hardware) prompted the odd bedfellows arrangement. 

     The two retailers combined advertising dollars, and alternated sponsorship messages that always featured testimonials from the other.  Both businesses increased sales and, by working together, both were able to cut marketing expenses.  Each successfully reduced spending totals by one-third while gaining one-third more exposure than they each started with. 

      The home center backed off to a more distant location.

     Contractors, physicians, lawyers, accountants, and others commonly share customer, patient and client referrals.  Online companies engage in cooperative ventures literally every minute of every hour.

     Print and broadcast media often swap space for airtime, and will often barter advertising packages for products and services that they can use as give-aways and contest prizes to gain readership and listenership and viewers.      

     So it’s nothing new.  What’s new is the economic squeeze that pushes considerations of cooperative business marketing efforts to the front burner.  And the time to turn on that front burner is now.  A little receptivity and a lot of responsiveness are the prime ingredients to make combined efforts be productive.  Surely you can muster those? 

     My Father always used to say, “He who hesitates is lost!”  And my Mother always added something about “A word to the wise . . .”     halalpiar

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This is the time

  between waves. 

     Have you ever noticed the utter serenity of the sea in between waves? 

     How much is that like your life and the work you do? 

     Thanksgiving visits and family were here in a tidal wave (perhaps more like a tsunami for some), and gone . . . tiny stones and shells aclatter, scamper down the beach in withdrawal as the tide turns low. 

     Business activity slows incrementally to more of a crawl each day between now and New Year’s when it all grinds to a halt.  Ah, but not for entrepreneurs or manufacturers!  Not for writers!  Not for retailers!  Not for emergency personnel!  Not for those forced out of work by economic uncertainty.   

     This is the time between waves. 

     Now is when small business owners and operators and manufacturing enterprise management can finally take a breather from the year-long pounding of phones, faxes, mail deliveries, media broadcasts, meetings, conferences, emails, text messages, trade shows, endless travel itineraries, and industry reports, and get some real work done.

     Now is when their attentions shift to strategizing, planning, scheduling, catch-up reading, assessing, courtesy-calling, audits and inventories, and getting ready for the next big wave in January. 

     Writers?  Yup!  Now is when writers can drop back from their day-to-day discipline and actually review what they’ve done; this time between waves is the perfect time to edit and polish and prepare to get the manuscript or feature story done, to get an agent, get a publisher, get a direction for developing more freelance work. 

     Retailers?  Let’s not even go there.  This between waves time is “make it or break it.”  No time even to think. 

     Emergency personnel?  We all know that emergencies never stop and, if anything, they increase dramatically during the holiday season . . . and afterward, especially during the depression-heightened month of January! 

     So holidays mean relaxing business ebbs for some, and ulcerous anxieties for others.  Where are you right now?  You’re definitely not a retailer or EMT or ER nurse because you’d never have time to read this. 

     So since you are reading this far, it might be useful to remind yourself to make the choice to take full advantage of being between the waves.  It’s easy to get caught up in nonproductive activities, but you won’t get this valuable “down time” back until –maybe– the end of next year!  DO relax, but don’t fade away.        

     If you’re out of work, don’t count yourself out and head for the bridge.  You have the ability to pull yourself back up, kick yourself in the butt (a bit tricky, but not impossible for most!), and propel yourself forward back into the job market. 

     Remember that every problem that a company has is an opportunity for you to find the job that’s right for you, either in that company or another.  Stop beating yourself up.  Get focused.  And go for it!  Make it happen!  You can do it if you really want to.  All behavior is a choice.  Choose to make it easy

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Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

SPIT IT OUT,

ON PAPER!

Literally?  Well, not unless it’s a tissue, or maybe a paper towel or napkin.  Figuratively, then?  Hey, you may be bright enough to stay employed after all.  Are you being a wise-guy?  Of course, this is a blog, isn’t it?  So what’s your point? 

     Unless you’re in a high-stress, time-crunch job location like the ER, the battlefield, the deck of an deep sea fishing trawler, an air-traffic control tower, or the floor of the stock exchange, anything that’s important enough for you to say is important enough for you to say in writing. 

[P.S. If you’re a tree-hugger worried about your green reputation going down the tubes because you use too much paper, stop reading here and have a nice day!] 

     Once you get your basic thoughts down, edit them carefully (sleep on them if possible), then deliver them in writing (or printout), on paper (or occasionally, online via email)! 

     Now, wait a minute, I’m just a landscaper; the only paper I handle’s a time sheet, and my brother says his company makes all decisions by email! Ah, all the more reason to carry a pen and pocket pad.  How many times a day are you interrupted?  How much of where you were, do you remember after a series of interruptions?

     Every minute that you spend taking notes on the boss’s instructions and putting your ideas down on paper is an investment in your self-success, and the success of your business.

     You simply won’t believe this until you do it consistently for 60-90 days.  But that time period will make a believer of you. 

     As for your brother’s email-crazed company, and my note earlier that occasionally online communications work, is not a condemnation of email.  It is a warning flag that when you email important ideas, you are suggesting they are not so important because you’ve presented your thoughts in the mad rush, snap decision making “delete/save/file/reply” environment that emails breed. 

     Even when an important communication is carefully constructed and edited, it can fail because it was zipped off without enough attention to proper subject line wording, or careful thought given to the who’s who of Cc’s and Bcc’s, or just because the use of email can give the impression that the contents are not well thought out and have been shot from the hip. 

     Sometimes being more personal is better.  I hand deliver proposals to clients when possible because I can be there to see their faces and judge responses they may not express in an email reply or even a telephone discussion.  

     You can read and hear words in a response, but when you can’t see the facial expressions, the posture and the attitudes involved, you’ve only got half the answer.  How confident would you be of making a sale the customer agrees to while hand signaling or winking derisively to a co-worker as you’re babbling away to them on their speakerphone.  And emails are even more distant.

     Whether you’re a contractor making a mental “punchlist,” a law enforcement officer reconstructing an accident scene, an engineer struggling with an architect‘s lack of reality, an administrative or salesperson working with other’s deadlines and expectations, or a physician explaining a procedure to a patient, put it in writing! 

     By writing out what you observe, hear, think or propose, or by drawing a diagram to explain yourself you are taking giant steps toward improved communications.  Improved communications win job promotions, bonuses, customers, comeraderie, industry and professional attention, and management (and, yes, even family) support.  halalpiar

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These networks,” the doctor continued, “and the borderline-Marxist viewpoint candidates they ushered into the spotlight, have managed to captivate and control your brain!”  

     “I’m sorry to tell you this, my friend, but you,” the doctor leered cynically over the tops of his reading glasses as he shifted his stethoscope from his neck to his shoulders and frowned parentally, “you have a severe case of NMD, and I’m going to recommend you go directly to the hospital for some immediate transfusions.  I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

     “Aaaaah, NMD?  Twenty minutes?” 

     “Well, yes, Network Media Disorder, and, yes, I can squeeze one more patient into my insurance-company-alloted 12-minute maximum-per-patient examination time period, and still have eight minutes to get to the hospital, which is ten minutes away, but I drive fast!”

     “Er, no, Doc!  I’m needing a little bit more explanation from you than that before I go racing over to the ER for this mysterious transfusion that you seem to have prescribed just a little too quick for my liking.  Am I going to die within the next half hour or what?”

     “No, nothing like that.  It’s just that you need immediate attention or –it’s possible within any given hour– you may find that you have allowed yourself to be brainwashed  beyond repair!” 

     The good doctor tugged at his shirtcollar, took a deep breath and proceeded, “You see, by the time the election ended last week, you had already built up a rampaging attachment to CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, TNT, and MSNBC (and MSNBC all by itself is a rather astonishing attachment considering only seven people in all of America actually watch it!).  

     In the process, your dormant benevalence greeted these screaming liberal radical networks with open arms and you were rapidly transformed into a wild-eyed supporter of electing our nation’s most management-inexperienced, Disneyworld-fantasizing team of candidates in all of history. 

     “These networks,” the doctor continued, “and the borderline-Marxist viewpoint candidates they ushered into the spotlight, have managed to captivate and control your brain.  It was not easy, but with at least $650 million in mysterious campaign donations lining their pockets, they could afford to take some bold and assertive thrusts into your skull, and convince you that change was the answer to the world’s problems, and that the candidates they supported were the second coming of the agents of change.

     “. . . and you, my friend bought into it.  Now you must pay the price of setting yourself up to be thoroughly brainwashed.  It’s either a lobotomy or a transfusion of the fair and balanced FOX network, mixed with some Rush and Sean and Michael and Mark and Laura and Greta, and a few other saviors of society.

     “You need these transfusions before the newly elected dictator attempts to disarm talk radio with his backer’s so-called Fairness Doctrine (it could not possibly be more inappropriately named!) . . . an extraordinarily sick platform if you ask me.  So that, in a nutshell, is why I want you to hurry on over to the ER.  The longer you wait, the more these talking heads will infiltrate your brain, the more you become a sheep, and then we will have some truly major medical challenges to face!”

     “Well, it’s true, Doc, I have become addicted.  I mean Wolfe and Katie and the rest really have welcomed me into their network families and I am afraid of missing even C-Span at this point.  I suppose a little re-balancing wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  I mean, I do rotate my tires, even.”        Halalpiar 

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My brain is drained. 

My French is fried. 

Thank God this week coming is the last of the last!

     I am SO sick of politics.  I really don’t care anymore about who did what to whom under what circumstances however many years ago.  I resent the 24/7 bombardment of my senses . . . radio, TV, lapel pins, newspapers, bumper stickers, Internet, emails, road signs, telephone calls, even dog bandannas!  AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaakkkKKKKKKK!!

     Enough already!  My brain is drained.  My French is fried.  And into the home stretch, the lies get bigger and the assaults more ruthless. 

     Worst of all, there doesn’t appear to be any let-up until Wednesday morning.  Oh, yeah, we have another three whole days ahead of yelling and screaming and senseless accusations, charges and counter-charges. 

     Why does everything in America have to reduce itself in the Eleventh Hour to a ridiculous free-for-all mixed-martial-arts contest with everyone beating each other to a pulp? 

     What does it accomplish? 

     Who among those of us dumb and dumbers have not yet made up our minds about who to vote for, that some last minute fringe lunatic tidal wave of pronouncements is about to sway? 

     Tell me.  I’m really wondering about this.  How many votes do you think will jump on some bandwagon at the last minute because of some astronomically important statement being made that we’ve never heard before?  How many?  Tell me.

     Here’s what we need, people!  We need a three-day moritorium where no candidate says anything to anybody and no media reports of any candidate or issue are allowed.  We need a three-day retreat of peace and quiet to collect ourselves and our thoughts and allow ourselves to heal and become sane again . . . BEFORE we vote!

     Given the opportunity to stimulate our neurological systems with increased oxygen flow and relax our muscles with increased blood flow by taking lots of deep breaths and long stretches, and by temporarily withdrawing from the franticness and fanaticism of the outside world, WE WILL CAST A BETTER BALLOT!

     Oh, yes, and wouldn’t this fit right in with the lunatic taxation spread-the-wealth fringe element in society that’s focused on all things green and peace-symboled and artsy-craftsy and tree-hugging?  Even those folks would welcome a three-day peace period!  Besides, it might give them cause to reassess the candidates they’ve sold out their faith to.

     So, let’s see . . . how do we do something like this?  We get our elected representatives to introduce legislation.  Right.  I knew something this valuable to us, as human beings, wouldn’t be so simple.  It requires a campaign.  Something like a 24/7 bombardment of radio, TV, lapel pins, newspapers, bumper stickers, Internet, emails, road signs, telephone calls, even dog bandannas!     Halalpiar    

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HOW DOES MLB

GROW FANS FROM KIDS

WITH LATE NIGHT GAMES???

     Y’know, we just saw the whole big greedy mess that slammed NY football fans, and we say Tsk, Tsk, what a shame, and the big-money-sports steamroller continues to flatten our already shrinking wallets. 

     Now it’s baseball.  (Or maybe it’s always been baseball, and I haven’t been paying enough attention; but now, with the league championships rolling out their carpets to the World Series entranceway, it’s a whole lot more obvious!) 

     First of all, will somebody please explain to me how Major League Baseball (MLB) proclaims incessantly how commited it is to cultivating young people as fans, and then runs playoff games too late at night for kids to watch (or even listen)? 

     I would really like to hear that explanation. 

     Am I daffy?  Is this request like asking our nation’s leaders how they will solve the economic crisis that they started? 

     Why doers this seem like bang-your-head-against-the-wall material? 

     I know, I know, you’ve heard a million “when I was a boy . . .” stories, but when I was a boy, league championship and world series games were played in the daytime, or at least early evening so kids could engage themselves and their energies in the sport. 

     But, no, the networks decided nights were better.  (Note we’ve come full circle here back to the slimeball mainstream media that is intent on destroying not only the moral fiber of this country, but the very fabric of our national pasttime, not to mention the integrity of the U.S. presidency and the absolute core and essence of those who pursue it in the name of conservative balance and fiscal responsibility.)

     The networks decided nights were better because prime time advertisers would pay them more if they scheduled the events later (and the hell with the kids they pander to . . . it’s sick really!). 

So the delimma we’ve been boxed into is whether we encourage young people to be interested in sports and play them for fun and exercise and identify with heroes (like Cal Ripkin, for example) who represent the heart of what sports is supposed to be about,

OR do we encourage kids to pursue the business of sports with its untold billions of dollars to be had,

OR do we dissuade children from sports (and the grasps of greedy media moguls out there) and suffer the consequences of the kids turning into thumb-punching texting zombies who hear nothing in life beyond i-pod tunes and eat junkfood into oblivion? 

     What’s going on here?  Do these thoughts bother you?  Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe I’m just getting old and irrelevant.  Maybe nobody else gives a damn about how this next generation is growing up (or dwarfing down?)? 

     I think there must be something parents and grandparents and others concerned about the destruction of sports can do to bring about change.  Do you?  What do you suggest?  Put a comment or two below.  Anything you think is okay.  Some action is always better than no action.        halalpiar   

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We just won’t hear about

                                                    

what’s good, because it’s

                                                                                    

the media’s job to tell us 

                                                                                            

what’s bad.   

     When I was growing up my Father used to sing-song, “We ain’t got a lotta money, Honey, but we gotta lotta fun!”  It was his way of saying that when the chips are down, keep your chin up. 

     It was a family joke to laugh at a postcard we’d pull out of the desk drawer that had a suffering cartoon cow who hadn’t been milked, with one hoof stepping on her overstretched udder and the caption that went something like, “So you think you’re having a hard time?”

     A favorite old college teacher friend of mine once told me that his sacred book, the Torah, said that God once brought everyone in the world together and asked them to put all of their problems into one big pile.  They did.  Then, my friend said, God asked each person to come to the pile and take away with him or her whatever problems that he or she wanted to keep.  Everyone took back their own problems.

     I’ve heard some people talking with panic-stricken voices that the nation’s financial mess was on the brink of doing them in personally, or something to that effect.  Well, you know what?  If you choose that path of thinking, you will no doubt be done in! 

     The point is that we remain the strongest nation on earth and our economy is NOT falling apart.  Positive indicators (increased housing starts, lower gas prices, higher service sales, and more) are all around us. 

     We just won’t hear about what’s good because it’s the media’s job to tell us what’s bad.  The more bad news the media can crank out, the more people get sucked into watching and listening to and reading the news. 

     It the same principle and dynamics as “rubbernecking” on the parkways when thousands of cars filled with human nature curiosity are compelled to slow down, often stop, to see what’s going on with a minor fender-bender in an opposite oncoming traffic lane! 

     The more that people get sucked into the bad news, the more that media people can charge advertisers and the more advertisers they can sign up, and the more profits the media companies can make.  So of course the media thrives on creating havoc and spreading bad news–true or not–and exaggerating and sensationalizing, and undermining. 

     We can’t even trust a media-appointed “nonpartison, objective” moderator chosen to oversee Thursday night’s VP debate:  she’s just authored a strongly pro-Obama book!  How many millions of voting viewers will never know about this flagrant conflict of interest?  How hard would it have been to pick an independent moderator?

     But you know what, America?  It’s not the sky falling.  It’s the cow with the swollen udder, and it needs only to get relief by someone choosing to milk it!  And someone will, because (and if you haven’t traveled enough to know it, believe me) we don’t want other country’s problems: our own problems that the media beats us with night and day, pale by comparison! 

     Someone who represents your district or State who wants to get re-elected will make that choice to rise above the relentless bombardments of the greedy media moguls.  All you need to do is make some noise that you want the crap to end and the cow milked and the media to go home. 

     But you DO have to make some noise!     halalpiar      

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