Welcome to the world’s first SMALL BIZ Alphabet Series of blog posts!

 Your Advisory Board

includes a lawyer, 

an accountant, your

rich uncle, and

your pastor?

Nope.

Well maybe one or two of those types do actually hold court with you once a quarter or twice a year and offer trusted advice and opinions about where your enterprise appears to be headed . . . and maybe you listen, and maybe you don’t. And maybe they’re helpful. And maybe they’re not.

After all, typically, they’re not paid. And you do remember that someone once told you you get what you pay for? Ah, but a good advisory board is usually made up of people who have a physical or emotional investment in seeing you succeed. And that trumps paying a fee for services. 

No compensation? Well, maybe some coffee and donuts — or fruit, cheese, and crackers, depending on your level of health-nuttiness. Wow! So now you’ll read a little further?

Advisory Boards, generally, are a good thing for most small business ventures because –when they include a small group of diverse, talented people who like and care about you– they can shed light on your darkness and provide enough reassurance or guidance to afford you to step back and observe your brainchild firsthand.

Advisory Boards provide a sense of reality you might not otherwise solicit or be exposed to.”

Okay, you’ve got all that. And it either sparks an idea, or it just lays there flat on its back, rolling its eyes at you! Well, here’s a definite sparkler:

Start a Rotating Teenage Advisory Board.

Huh? Why? Why not? When did you last waltz a thirteen-year-old boy or girl through your place of business and ask him or her for observations?

I promise you he/she will see things you never noticed, and maybe never even thought about. Does it matter that your business makes products or delivers services for nursing homes (whoops, how un-PC of me: long-term care facilities)? Or nursing mothers? Or male nurses? Truck drivers? Scuba divers? (It rhymed!) No it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you regularly host small groups of teens through your office, plant. store, or worksite, and that you non-judgmentally LISTEN to what they have to say, and keep a journal or take dated notes of key comments. Pay careful attention to the questions they ask (and how they ask them) before trying to answer them.

It’s true that teenagers (as when each of us were) are different, weird, and aloof.

They are preoccupied with texting, handheld electronics, and each other.

They may seem the least unlikely to contribute anything of value to a non-teenage market business.

Yet –refreshingly– they lack developed prejudices.

They are naive and breed a rare perspective of business innocence.

You can learn more and spark more ideas from one business visit by a youngster, or two or three than you are likely to from ten top industry or profession muckity-mucks who will surely carry competition chips on their shoulders, and be more inclined to maintaining a political edge.

One business I heard of makes a practice of gathering small groups of teens from the local middle school and high school (pre-arranged of course with the parents, but not with school administrators who would tangle up the process) and rewarding them with praise, snacks, juice, and bookstore gift cards for bright ideas offered.

The owner has translated teen visitor input into new product launches, line extensions, and revenue streams, that produced enough income to allow some scholarship funding in return. What can you get? What can you give?

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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! 

Guess what today is?

It’s Wedsssdaaaaay!

Wednesday is business panic day.

The orders, checks, and promises that haven’t yet appeared need to be nudged to get them in before the weekend and the house will be crawling with friends, neighbors, and in-laws all weekend so Friday is dead-in-the-water day on the job, which means –YIKES! –the orders, checks, and promises have to be in by tomorrow.

Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

So what’s the short story version? If you’re the typical entrepreneur (I know, there ain’t no such thing, but there are typical entrepreneurial behaviors), you have been running by the seat of your pants (or skirt) so long that you get yourself under water without a snorkel because you simply skip over that ugly time-consuming task of planning.

Then midweek brings crisis . . . brainfreeze without a Slurpee . . . om top of the usual Wednesday collision course, there’s also that REALLY important project you’ve been putting off that needs desperately to get done, and now it has to stay on the back burner for another week. Will there ever be enough time?

Truth? No. There’ll never be enough time. 

And my best educated guess is that most small business owners and operators would almost rather have a tooth pulled than have to sit still for more than 10 minutes to map out a plan for the week every week. But, y’know what? Y’gotta!  Those who take a deep breath, settle into a comfortable chair and plan the week . . . win.

Think of it this way: If your competitors do weekly action plans, and you don’t, they win. If you both do them, you keep the playing field level. If you do them and they don’t, you take the lead. If neither of you do the,, someone else at your heels  surely will, and will surely win.

Ah, but where to start? Start with the old stuff that’s already in the hopper. Hit on it hard as you come out of the box on Monday morning. Make the calls, write the emails, motivate and inspire. Once the old stuff is moving, jump to the new tasks, contacts, ideas that are presently in the works and that need to get pushed into the spotlight.

Save the unexplored concept stuff for last. Yes, you may never get to that last category, but, hey, y;gotta eat, right? As the current Administration in Washington has conclusively proven, hopes and dreams don’t put food on the table. Let the experimental new ideas simmer. This is not the time to back away from what’s in your face.

Keep focused on the here and now as much as possible. List and combine (but chunk up) “to do” items, then prioritize them in order of immediacy. Cross them off with a highlighter (so you can return to see what was completed) as each task gets done. These pages (dated) are worth saving (like a journal), even for tax records.

Fast-paced status report review meetings are best held (with agendas distributed Friday afternoon) as early as possible on Mondays to help map out the week. (Friday is the worst day for this for a hundred reasons). Oh, and if you’re not both feet into the tech business, do it all in writing on pads. Laptops and handhelds distract attention. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.    God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Planned and run correctly,

meetings are invaluable.

All the rest suck eggs!

Dear Boss, Please stop dragging people into meetings in order to give yourself an audience. They hate it, and you’re wasting their time as well as yours! Not to mention that time is money. Unplanned-for, slipshod-run meetings produce the exact opposite of what you need. They discourage and de-motivate. They frustrate and result in costly dumb errors that lose customers and antagonize suppliers.

All meetings? Of course not.Just the ones with no time schedule, no agenda that’s been circulated in advance and posted in the room, inadequate meeting space and supplies, no facilitative leadership, and no follow-up. That’s all. Just those. Aaaah, but wouldn’t you know it? That’s probably the majority of meetings worldwide. Now. Tomorrow.

Well, so that makes it okay because most other businesses and organizations are winging it, right? Not on your life. Not in this ever-deepening quagmire of an economy. Not in this day and age. There is no time to waste. This ain’t the good ole days! You can’t sit around with your feet up and a pot of coffee and brainstorm jokes for a couple of hours.

Meetings must be well-planned, executed, and filled with high energy. Good meetings ignite positive, problem-solving mindsets. Long-distance online meetings from Skype to Go-To-Meeting-type options can be effective tools. So can good old-fashioned teleconferences. Texting? No. Facebook chats? No. Tweets? No. Instant Messages? No.

First, hand pick participants according to what each can contribute, who has a need to know the subject matter, and whom you want to know more. Forget about titles, rank, age, or how busy people are. For long, status report or job/task review type meetings, stagger participants to come and go according to topic relevancy.

If you anticipate a meeting turning into a political firestorm, check this bit of enlightenment.

Everyone doesn’t need to be part of every discussion. When you think it through ahead of time, it’s more work and takes longer to plan, but the results will be dramatically improved, and more productive (both time and dollar-value-wise) for participants. Better-planned and led meetings can positively impact your bottom line as well. 

The single most important meeting tool and most often overlooked is the agenda. It needs to be carefully planned. It can’t be too overwhelming (more short meetings beat fewer long ones). Chunk it up! Some even attach time in minutes to each topic. Circulate it ahead of time and ask for input. Reproduce it poster-style in the meeting room.

Follow it. Do not allow anyone to not follow it. Politely thank people for off-topic comments and ask them to save them for the next meeting or include them on a separate agenda. You cannot stick to a time schedule if people sidetrack the agenda items. Be a clock watcher until it becomes second nature. Always honor start and stop times.

Hidden Agendas? Try this information on for size!

For a period of time when I had some major talker-types involved in weekly meetings, I had all the chairs removed or covered with boxes. It didn’t take long to get everyone focused on moving the agenda along quickly when they had to stand. Whatever you do, give meetings more attention. The ROI can be pleasantly surprising.   

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116 

  Open minds open doors. 

 Thanks for visiting and God bless you. 

   Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Do I understand you

  correctly to mean…? 

 Can you give me

an example?

When you’re not 100% sure that you fully understand the meaning and intent of someone’s words, ask paraphrasing-type questions

. . . and ask for examples.

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

Asking these two questions is evidence of quality leadership. Because true leaders listen. Paraphrasing and asking for examples are key indicators of effective listening. The responses clarify. The responses help ensure accurate two-way communications, and they help prevent errors and misunderstandings.

Simply by posing these two questions (plus this one), leaders can help agitated people (e.g., upset employees, irate customers, impatient investors) to jet down. The asking alone serves to build trust, loyalty, teamwork, and promote open innovative exchanges. It also, by the way (but not unimportantly), reassures, flatters, and compliments.   

Used correctly, paraphrasing is equally effective in personal life as well as business. Business partners, employer/employee and parent/child relations, teacher/student, married and unmarried couples and family relationships can all benefit by using paraphrasing.

It is, in effect, a clarification checkpoint practice that works. 

What does “used correctly” mean? Process. Dynamics. The process and dynamics of asking the questions — the how, when, where, and circumstances; the nature of the people involved; the nature of the actions to be taken or tasks to be done– all have a bearing on the value of the outcome. How you ask. Your tone of voice. Your posture.

Yes, some could see this kind of attention to communication detail as a lot of unnecessary work. Those people are choosing to feel threatened by the intrusion of having to expend extra energy and time (yes, it will take more time that “normal” for a meeting or phone call or e-exchange) to get stuff right the first time instead of on a re-visit.

If you’re not presently building these kinds of questions into your daily practice of leadership –business, home, professional practice, community organization, classroom makes no difference– put it to the test. You will find, inside of just three weeks, major improvement at many levels, including increased receptivity.

You can greatly enhance the prospects for yourself to succeed with this challenge by adding note taking to your listening time. If you think it makes people feel good to be asked if you’ve understood something correctly, or to provide an example, wait ’til you see their faces when you start jotting down what they say.

Back to the agitated communicators, when you can also ask someone: “Would you mind please slowing down (or repeating what you just said) so I can make some reminder notes for myself to be sure I don’t miss any of the important things you say, I will appreciate it. Now if I understand you correctly to mean…?” You defuse the upset.

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Hal@Businessworks.US  

  Open minds open doors. 

 Thanks for visiting and God bless you.

   Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

When you carry a grudge

. . . there’s no room to

carry your business!

The old Dutch proverb and German expression,“Vee grow too soon oldt, und too late shmart” sums up much of why we fail miserably to fully understand and effectively cultivate relationships. Our seeming inability to let go of the angry feelings someone close to us once provoked has toppled many business ventures, even entire empires.

                                                                                       

But, ah, the ability to forgive and forget those who crossed us up is a choice. 

And the consequences of making or not making that forgive-and-forget choice are the differences between:

• Having peace of mind, plus the energy to pursue both business and personal success–because by letting go and moving on, you are marshaling your energy and exercising control of you, captaining your own ship.

VS.

• Suffering a permanent or recurring headache that’s potentially terminal to you and your enterprise– because by holding on, you are wasting energy and choosing to subject yourself (and ultimately your business) to someone else’s control.

Carrying a grudge is

what leadership is not!

Many of us carry more grudges than we are probably conscious of. We keep them in our throats, and they come out as guttural utterances when certain names or circumstances surface. We keep them in little invisible knapsacks in our brains that send a flood of upset feelings into our nervous systems whenever they’re unzipped.

Some people get tight chest muscles (love relationships), tight shoulders (related to responsibility), backaches (associated with memories), stomach flutters, fists, headaches, leg pains, shortness of breath, indigestion, diarrhea, constipation, toothaches . . . it’s called being over-stressed, and it’s debilitating. For an entrepreneur, it can kill.

Ask any cardiologist.

Stress is both physical and emotional. It can be good (like the stress that keeps you sitting up straight in a chair), or bad (DIS-stress!), like the level that produces symptoms such as those in the earlier paragraph. Carrying a grudge, having revengeful feelings, like uncontrollable anger or road rage, can be a self-destruct path of no return.

Recognizing that letting go is a choice may not make doing it any easier, but that –itself– is also a choice. You can choose to make it easier. You can also ease the process by practicing more deep breathing and/or by taking a yoga or meditation program. Doctor-sanctioned serious exercise, like daily jogs and brisk walks can also help.

Think of it this way–

Every minute of your life that’s consumed by harboring angry or frustrated or disappointed feelings about another person (even, and perhaps especially, family!), or entity or event or policy is a minute you will never get back, and it’s a minute that you are choosing for someone or something else to reach inside your brain and control your thoughts.

And you are facilitating that impossibility to happen. After all, no one else can really control what you think and how you behave, except you . . . unless you choose for that to happen.

Now, why would you want to do that?

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Hal@Businessworks.US 

  Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting and God bless you.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

It’s not all about the numbers . . .

How you time your

purpose and your passion

 determines your success.

“Life is timing,” says a man commonly reported to be one of the world’s top 20 motivational speakers: Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, author and editor of nine business and personal life and leadership books, including one with over two million copies in print in 12 languages.

When you want to demonstrate some proof to yourself of the importance of timing and being able to make timing adjustments, go find the nearest batting cage; swing at a round of fastpitch baseballs; then take some deep breaths and swing at a round of slowpitch softballs. (Do them in the opposite order if you really want to challenge yourself!)

Hey, sometimes it’s the little things in life, like baseballs and softballs that can humble the best of us.

The reality though is that there’s much to be said for “being in the right place at the right time,” Of course saying and doing “the right thing” is what makes the difference. Just as adjusting one’s swing to the pitch is what makes a great hitter, adjusting your purpose and passion to the circumstances is what makes for great business success.

And it’s not all about numbers!

The answers to your marketing needs, e.g., will not come out of statistical analysis of market research. Leave that stuff for the corporate and government types who need to juggle and analyse numbers to cover their butts. You have a small business to run, and there’s no time for that. You try things. They don’t work. You adjust them.

Marketing is not a rational, unemotional, objective, cut and dried, black or white series of numbered quantifiable events. It’s an art. It’s a psychological-based creative art form. It requires substantial experience with and adaptations of psychology. It seeks to impact peoples’ minds with a message. Every person’s mind is different!

What about how you conduct yourself? What about leadership? Good timing and making good timing adjustments means there are some important “Don’t’s” to guide you as you step up to the plate:

• PLEASE DON’T say one thing to an employee, customer, associate, consultant, referrer, supplier, sales rep, investor, lender, and then do another!

• PLEASE DON’T promise any of those people what you can’t deliver.

• PLEASE DON’T promise what you won’t deliver.

• PLEASE DON’T ask for meeting options, and then change them when you get them.

• PLEASE DON’T set meetings or appointments (note especially, professional practices) and then keep people waiting without some definite, reasonable, truthful, and on-time explanation. Acknowledge people waiting in line! And, by the way, a visiting sales rep should be treated just as importantly to you as your best employee or best customer.

• PLEASE DON’T host a meeting and then interrupt it with non-emergency cell calls or txtmsgs that really could wait.

• PLEASE DON’T call for a meeting and then change it on the fly at the last minute.

This is all starting to sound like a reminder list for exercising integrity? HA! YES!

HOW you time things, HOW you time your purpose and your passion is what others measure you by. It’s your own yardstick that you create. So, yes, integrity it is. Sizing up when and where to swing your bat counts alot. HOW you swing it counts most! 

Drive your imagination forward with reality.

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! 

What you see is what you get,

and with Txt Msgs,

you see nothing!

In-person meetings are most telling. Phone calls? At least you can “hear” a smile or gasp or snort. And, if you’re paying attention, you can usually tell if the person on the other end is paying attention. Even emails give you a clue. Texting? Fuggetaboudit!

According to my friend Jeff Banning, president of award-winning third-party logistics provider, Trinity Logistics, Inc. in Seaford, Delaware:

“effective communication is only 7% verbal. 38%, is (transmitted) by your tone of voice, and 55% is through non-verbal body language.”

Are you taking note, sales professionals?

In other words, more than half of effective communication is not spoken!

With hundreds of employee “teammates,” Jeff oversees more than seventy successful offices across the country, so I believe what he says.

Because we are humans (or is that too presumptuous?), we get fooled sometimes. But we all know instinctively that we are less likely to be fooled when we can take stock by looking someone in the eye.

Eye contact of course is hardly within the realm of txt msg textability.

. . . Or emails. Ah, but emails at least do provide us with some clues . . . I’m not referring to the chit-chatty ones or quick one-sentence back and forth emails. I mean significant emails — ones with proposals. reports, attachments, outlines, strategies, plans, applications, etc.

Someone who doesn’t use spellcheck, for example, or avoids greetings and sign-offs, or who clearly never takes the time to read what she or he wrote, and specifically to read it out loud to her or himself (which all great writers do, by the way), tells us the sender is likely rude and/or insincere.

How can you tell when someone is lying? Teasing? Taunting? Smiling but angry? In a superiority mode? Anxious to leave? Eagerly interested? Tolerating? Bored? Ready to explode? Thoughtfully considering? These and other responses are right in front of you, staring you in the face. The “eyes” (with apologies to Parliament) have it!

This doesn’t mean you must always be in some one’s physical presence in order to “read” the meaning or intention of his or her messages by checking eye movements and facial expressions.

If you’ve read enough of my blog posts over the last few years, you know when I’m kidding or serious. You know when I’m sad or angry or frustrated by the words I use and how I present them. You can generally discern other people’s “tone of voice” even when you can’t physically hear them.

But when situations and/or people involved are important, nothing beats the unspoken messages that come from other peoples’ eyes. Yes, like the song, there are indeed “Lyin’ Eyes,” but paying careful attention (not staring or glaring, mind you) to what you see in the eyes of a speaker or presenter will minimize being taken advantage of.

The only way on earth that you can be effective at “reading” others is by keeping yourself grounded, and focused on the here-and-now present moment as much of the time as possible. Aside from monitoring your pulse or heartbeat (which can get a bit awkward under some circumstances), this no-fail approach is worth your one-minute review.

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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!

Going under

and around

business problems

guarantees no solution.

Unless you tackle troublesome issues head-on, answer questions and respond to your messages promptly, you can be sure they’ll still be around on your next visit, and will no doubt have gathered velocity, weight, and momentum while awaiting your return.

Okay, easier said than done, right? Well sure, if you choose to make it hard on yourself. You can be certain that if you consciously or unconsciously choose for something to be hard, it will be. “Yes, but…” you start to reply. Don’t choose to “yes-but”; choose instead to get on with solving the problem.

Then, no matter which way the chips fall, the next step is to choose to get over it! (Because dwelling on what did or didn’t happen is itself a problem –an interruption– and can become worse than the original.)

There is no time in either life or business to dwell on what did or didn’t happen. We all root for teams that lose, but by mentally and emotionally hanging on to a loss, we actively set ourselves up to be losers ourselves. Wishing and hoping are childhood fantasies that accomplish nothing. Only action speaks.

Only by taking action steps can we expect to have the possibility of a favorable outcome.

“Well,” says you, “I can’t always jump on every problem that comes along. It’s too interruptive. And I already have too many interruptions to deal with every day!”

In case you’ve somehow missed what I’m about to say in response, let me be loud and clear about it:

BUSINESS LIFE . . . entrepreneurship, management, ownership, partnership, counseling and consulting, investing and lending, designing, inventing, innovating, creating, being engaged with any form of business . . . IS: One big interruption after another. But it’s why you get the big bucks!

One big interruption after another. People knock on your wall, waltz into your workspace, call you on the phone, slip notes under your door, send you 347,000 emails a day, throw pebbles (bricks?) at your window. They step up to your breakfast table, lunch table, dinner table, meeting table, and call to you under the bathroom stall.

Sometimes it seems that all of these things are happening at once. It’s your job to separate, sort out, prioritize and respond. And even as you perform these functions, yet more interruptions are bound to occur. This is also why we all need some time away once in awhile.

Small business owners notoriously deal best with turning interruptive problems into productive opportunities. Corporate types expend all their energy analyzing every interruption that comes along. They use all forms of committees and groups and teams to do this, but analysis paralysis is the byproduct.

Got Government? Government sleeps and sweeps stuff under rugs hoping it will just go away, or that someone else can solve the problem at hand so that government can step into the spotlight and take the credit. When everything’s under the rug, nothing is really “interruptive.”  The rug just gets hilly in spots. And productive, it ain’t!  

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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!

BEING TOO GRATEFUL?

Is there such a thing!

The only person who finds it annoying to hear you say “Thank You” over and over is someone who is too self-absorbed to routinely express appreciation, or just too ignorant to consider it, or who is insecure about speaking up. Many people fear being too “overkill” thankful. There is no such thing.

It’s a well known fact that human beings value and respond positively to “Thank You!” especially when it’s delivered sincerely. Don’t you? Think about it. How much can you say it? It’s never too much. Point to one single instance in the world in all of history where someone has died from being too grateful.

So how can you best cultivate all these positive responses in your personal, professional and business lives?

By letting more people know more often how much you appreciate their efforts on your behalf, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

Besides making them feel good, you’ll get more smiles and better service.

Is there anyone reading this who would not enjoy getting more smiles and better service? Really.

So start practicing when you wake up in the morning. In the bathroom mirror. To your spouse and kids. With neighbors. With fellow commuters, associates and employees, partners, advisors, investors, lenders, referrers, suppliers, vendors, visiting sales reps, OF COURSE CUSTOMERS. (Being continually grateful is the highest form of branding!) Thank the guy who fills your water glass at lunch.

You get it, right? Thank you.

Make it as much of a habit as brushing your teeth and fastening your seatbelt. It really is not hard. Simply prove to yourself how smart your brain is, and just choose it! (Thank you!)

Okay, says you, you’re just looking for work. Guess what’s the fastest way to make a positive impression to give yourself the competitive edge boost in your job search? A prospective employer (or client) takes you to lunch to size you up –to make sure you know where the napkin goes, and that you don’t order whiskey shots with your eggsalad sandwich.

You thank the maitre de or hostess, the waiter or waitress with every table visit, the bus boy who cleans off the table, anyone and everyone. If it doesn’t help you get a job offer, the prospect isn’t worthy of your talents and upbeat personality (Go back to the first sentence at the top of this post to see what you’ve got; be glad for not working there).

Oh, and while thank you’s will certainly not replace raises, bonuses, 401ks, healthcare plans and insurance coverage any time soon, you’ll be surprised how your increased use of them with employees will have the effect of minimizing these kinds of concerns as contentious issues, and there’s no better way to motivate your troops!

Try just 10 more thank you’s a day for one week, and see what happens.

You’ll thank yourself.

Then what?

What’s next?

Hmmm, well maybe think about trying “Please” more often?

. . . Hey, thank you! 

                           

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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!