Hey!

Did j’hear the one about…? 

# # #

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

A Wandering Mind

Gathers Much Loss

Every minute of every hour of every day, conscious and unconscious negative influences are fighting for your attention.

You own, run, manage, just bought, started, are planning to buy or start, or inherited a business. The last thing on your mind is your mind. You cast away all those inspirational quotes on Twitter and in church, and those gems of wisdom from your six-year-old.

You have no time for the “You become what you think about” writings and teachings of Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, Wayne Dyer, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, or the hundreds of other thought leaders. Yeah, you’ve heard the “As you sow, so shall you reap” line from the Bible. In fact, you have your own been-there-done-that style version: “What goes around comes around.”

But without being consistently grounded in this thinking, you run the risk each day of your thought-stream leading you down an unhealthy path. In fact, you can be obsessed with negative thoughts that create business loss and not even be aware of it.

Taking inventory might be a good suggestion. How can you find out if your mind has slipped over the top without you knowing about it? Try this illuminating exercise:

Ask some friends, associates and family members whose opinions you value to tell you what animal, what musical instrument and what song they most closely identify you with, and why.

They’ll probably laugh. Simply say you are doing a study and explain no further.

• Be clear that you’re looking for their straight-out opinions.

• Do not interrupt except to ask for clarification.

• Do not refute, rebuttal or defend. Just listen, and take notes.

• If you’re not sure you understand, ask for examples.

• Whatever you get back, take it on the chin.

When you have the input of five or six people, decide if there’s any pattern or overlap. For example, do four of them think you most remind them of a snake (or wild boar?), and a kazoo, and a song like “Angry Eyes”? Well. Organize the input you get to see if it makes any sense. Prioritize. Evaluate. Decide how to get more positive stuff and less negative stuff.

Feeding on daily TV show lineups can produce a steady stream of negative-related people and situations which can take a toll on  behavior and prompt offerings of defensive reasons and excuses for every action. Dr. Andrew Weil has been known to prescribe “No News” for a week to some distressed patients.

If all your mind does is think about cancer, or your weight, or your age, or your bank account or bills, you are going to (like rolling a snowball) generate more of that kind of thinking.

When some one’s thoughts are preoccupied with having an affair, it will be hard to pay attention to their spouse. A new baby or puppy in the house can drain your ability to stay focused.

Behaviors. Behavior is a choice. A negative mindset is something we bring on ourselves. Directly or indirectly (and often obscurely), we make lousy behavior choices. Regardless of the who, how, why, when, and where, if you’re feeling misery, failure, or frustration, accept that you are choosing it.

Take some deep breaths and choose instead to change the channel in your brain. Self-control leads to leadership control. The world’s greatest leaders are masters of self-control. Self-control means exercising compassion as well as passion, and being focused on the journey –not the destination– as the source of achievement.

When your mind is healthy and you’re concentrating on something, it –like a spotlight illuminating the outer edges– will be fully aware of what’s going on around you as well as what you’re targeting in front of you. You can do it. Choose it. Practice it. Keep choosing it! (Yes, you can call me for a little coaching!)

If you work at it sincerely and haven’t experienced remarkable change in three weeks, I’ll be astounded. Yes, after thousands of success stories with zero failures, I will be astounded!

~~~~~~~~

931.854.0474   Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Is what you’re doing

right this very minute

taking you to where

you want to go?

You run your own business, or a number of businesses. You know who you are. You know you’re an entrepreneur but you don’r readily admit it. (Why? Maybe it just sounds too fancy-pants?) Anyway, what matters right now is that you step back for the couple of minutes it takes to read this, and pat yourself on the back!

What’s the backpat for? You deserve to appreciate yourself for believing in yourself. And you should probably get a medal for keeping your ego in check enough to engage the “missing ingredient” help you need from those with the expertise to excel at the tasks you never mastered.

You haven’t been squirreled away this winter assessing your past business moves and decisions and carefully figuring your next game-plan strategy for the rest of 2011. 

I know this because I know if you are truly the stuff entrepreneurs are made of, these are things you ordinarily do weekly, if not daily or hourly. 

While others (government agencies and corporate types) are racking their brains with strategic planning exercises, you are just charging ahead — testing and trying new ideas and new twists on old ideas. You do this trial and error thing all year long because there’s just not enough time to take your advisory board on a retreat weekend, or lock up in some hotel room for days of chit-chat. 

That’s time that could be spent doing stuff, right?   

In fact, odds are you hate to think about or planning anything farther out than about 60-90 days. You prefer not thinking past 30! And you’d rather get in and out of a convenience store with breakfast to eat while you drive than sit down in a restaurant for more than 15 minutes, or –unless you’ve a home-based business– have to gulp coffee ‘n egg sandwich at home and then waste time cleaning up! 

Shopping trips you actually enjoy are probably limited to Staples, Office Max, Lowes, and Home Depot. I say all this just to let you know I get it. I got it. And, you, as independent a cuss as you may be, are not –surprise!– alone. I’ve been working with entrepreneurial whack-o’s like you most of my life because I love the challenge, high energy, enthusiasm, and turn-on-a-dime response level.

What’s important to know is that YOU,

and others who fit chunks of this profile

I’ve outlined, are the catalysts in society

that in fact make the world go around. 

If it was not for you and other dreamer/doers we would surely no longer be a (at least partly) civilized nation on this fragile planet. There simply would be no industry or marketplace or culture or technology to speak of.

Now with all this positive fluff floating around, it’s also important that –to be and remain successful– you maintain a balance with reality. This means you need to be forever vigilant about  recognizing one extremely critical entrepreneurial business factor. 

The foundation of your business rests squarely on shifting sands, and the stability of your enterprise is only as strong as your ability to remain flexible enough to shift when the sands shift. 

Those who entrench themselves thrive only in corporate environments that lack this balance and awareness. And you can only maintain your own ability to go with the flow by staying focused on which ways the moving targets move. 

Is what you’re doing right now with your business growth, development, and presentation of itself (how it communicates its messages) keeping a step ahead of the pace within the universe of business you’ve chosen? 

In other words: Are you making the best possible, most-in-demand kinds of (for example) pizzas, with the best possible ingredients, for the market you most want to capture? Are you presenting them at the price and service level that will usher in the sales you need to generate the profits you want? What do you need to do differently?  

REMEMBER:  Shifting sands work just fine when you’ve got a four-wheel drive vehicle, can deflate and inflate your tires according to how packed the surface is, have a couple of pieces of planking with you in case you get stuck, and are constantly monitoring wind, tide and precipitation (where appropriate), temperature and other weather conditions.

Stay alert.  Don’t get hurt.  Build bridges, but don’t burn them.  Make sure the risks you take are “REASONABLE.”  Always imagine a “worst case scenario” before you act. 

Your energy and the people around you in your life are your most important assets. 

Protect them by keeping on top of your stress, not under it!

~~~~~~~~

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 Know someone looking for work?

Send this post along as a 

reminder of HOW to look.

As editor of a 100-page JOB HUNTER Action Guide for outplacement counseling, and a former professor of career development, I have three critical observations to share with today’s desperate job search market:

1. Learn what you have to about yourself, and about how to manage your stress (take some deep breaths) effectively enough to not allow others (anyone, really) to pick up on your desperation feelings.

No one wants to refer or hire a person who’s busy scraping and scrambling to stay alive.

So even if scraping and scrambling is in fact what you’re doing, pack it away when you start each day. Keep your mind on positive thoughts even when you’re staring negativity in the face.

Surround yourself with positive people and positive experiences every chance you get. This includes the TV shows you watch, the music you listen to, the emails you send and FWD, the room(s) you live in, and the things you read.

2) If you’re not on Twitter, figure it out. Do it. It will force you to be concise, think on your feet, and be responsive. It will provide job connections and opportunities you won’t find in your local newspaper or even in key industry publications. If you keep your Twitter account (which is free) and activity focused on getting a job and on being social without over-indulging in chit-chat, there IS payback.

When you go back and forth on Twitter, and gain confidence that somebody out there loves your comments (called Tweets), you will simultaneously be training yourself to think and communicate in resume terms.  Your resume will get tighter and more impressive as it gets Twitter-streamlined.

Twitter’s 140 character per Tweet limitation is like boot camp for your job hunter brain.

Your interviewing process will likewise benefit by the 140-character discipline habit because you will start getting to the point of what you are trying to express quicker, and more simply. Bosses want responsive, uncomplicated job candidates. Long-windedness and fat vocabularies are great if you’re looking to be a politician or librarian, but send out the wrong signals otherwise.

3) No matter what your background or skill set, and no matter what the job you seek is all about, you must recognize that you and you alone are –in the end– the one who has to land the job. No resume writer or career coach or counselor can do that for you. That means one thing: You must learn and practice everything you possibly can about marketing because you are marketing yourself!

Your resume needs to accomplish one task only. And more than one page (unless you’re seeking a professional position requiring a CV) won’t cut it!

It must get your foot in the door. It must land you an interview.

More than one page says you don’t know how to be concise and you don’t know how to prioritize, and you don’t know what’s important. Most interviewers throw these out without a glance.

You need –like a professional marketing program– to play out EVERY contact, THANK every contact, and focus on AIDAS: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, Satisfaction . . .

• ATTRACT ATTENTION (with your demeanor, not flamboyance)
• CREATE INTEREST (by HOW you present yourself –format, as well as WHAT you present –content)
• STIMULATE DESIRE (by demonstrating your own desire for the challenges and opportunities, not the salary and benefits)
• BRING ABOUT ACTION (by asking for follow-up, a test period)
• PROMPT SATISFACTION (by providing follow-up; this can be tricky; consider consulting a professional career coach)

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

931.854.0474 or 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!

When expectations

breed disappointment

(and they always do!),

expectorate them!

Better yet, when you see planning start to cross that ever-so-thin line into expectations a little too often, you may want to consider working harder to not have any expectations to start with.

They overwhelm and underwhelm at the same time. They are the stuff that emotional upsets, frustrations, and another “ex” word –exasperations– are made of.

Dwelling on the past and worrying about the future are self-imposed, self-destruct avenues (sometimes “erringly” made into missions!). Herein lies the key to big-time sales! 

Most people can see that dwelling and worrying are not healthy pursuits that can lead quickly to far worse consequences than a headache. But few seem to realize that expectations can be just as damaging to one’s well-being.

Expectations can quickly lead us out of the present moment. Anything that takes our minds off of our work when we are at work and “on the job,” can be a genuine (and sometimes permanent, even all-pervasive) threat to productivity.

Lost productivity = Lost revenues = Lost profits.

. . . an increasingly difficult path to reverse

in an increasingly difficult economy.

Staying tuned-in to each passing “Here and Now” moment as it occurs may not always be easy, but it is always a choice. So why choose misery?

It’s been said that Einstein only used 10% of his brain. Where does that leave the restof us? Scientists further make a strong case for humans who could use 100% of their brains being able to separate molecules and walk through walls.

Hmmm, that conjures up a thought or two. Presumably, if we could live in the present moment every moment, we would never have illness or accidents.

Well, that sounds great, and knowing it’s a choice thing really rubs our noses in it, doesn’t it? But as truth will out, consider that being in the here-and-now as much as we possibly can, offers us greater protection from accidents and illness.

Imagine the implications and possibilities for business. For leadership. For teamwork. For building long-term business relationships?

I don’t know about you, but it seems (and, personally, has proven time and again) worth the effort to minimize expectations by increasing focus on the present moment. The potential rewards far outweigh the expenditure of effort.

Where to start? Try some of the direct links noted throughout this post, and punch words into the search window! Because they are generally more diligent and and constantly active than other senses, be aware that staying tuned-in has more to do with what you take in through your eyes and ears than anything else — except, most assuredly, your breathing. take some deep breaths.

Of course, suddenly smelling a dead skunk, or touching something hot or cold or sharp, or experiencing a great or foul taste can all have a jarring effect. But touch, smell, and taste generally need to be triggered for us to start paying attention. Bottom line: work at sharpening all of your senses.

Realize that you can stay alert without having expectations. You can anticipate without having expectations. You can be prepared without having expectations. And, get this: you can even expect something without having expectations! Give that one a little thought.

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

931.854.0474 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Tense situations with

unpredictable outcomes

not just in sports and politics!

“Coming down to the wire” (an expression that originated, with apologies to Neil Young’s song, in horse-racing) in the completion of a major event or decision to be made, is clearly a hate/love situation.

It can often be so stressful that we tend to become consumed with the impending results and implications, to the point of ignoring the present moment… in business, as well as sports and politics.

It’s understandable if you’ve run a marathon –mental or physical– that thoughts of the finish line might flood your consciousness in the last mile or two. A winning run, goal, set, knockout punch, or touchdown being within reach can likewise dominate one’s mind to the exclusion of other awareness’s… in business, as well as sports and politics. 

Yet, it is in these final days, hours, minutes, and ticks of the clock, that most victories are lost to the shifting sands of one’s mind . . .

The doctor’s report. A sales closing? Membership acceptance. The monthly cash flow analysis? The stock market bell. The punchline of your presentation? Test results. A loan application? The required signature. News coverage? The merger. Union demands? Graduation. An industry award? Tough new customer specs. Add your own here _____. You get the idea.  

HOW to avoid last-minute meltdowns, and rise above the temptations to think too far ahead (which may be less than one minute’s worth of time!) at the exact point when we need most to pay close attention?

# # #

BREATHE IN THE PRESENT. You’ve heard this from me incessantly–because it works! I’ll spare you the details if you’re an elite athlete or are taking yoga. But, for everyone else, please follow this link and please take some deep breaths. 

Many hundreds of former college and university students and management training program participants have reported (voluntarily) that this was the single most valuable skill they ever learned in their lives!

It’s free and it will take only one minute of your time to put it to work. It will soothe your neurological system, enhance your performance, increase your self-control, and make you feel better. You could ask for anything more?

# # #

FOCUS ON THE PRESENT. Pinch yourself! Quietly reach for your heart or check your pulse as a reminder of the most immediate thing happening in your life right this very minute (in addition to breathing, of course).

Have you a watch or mobile device you can set to chime at appropriate reminder times when you might ordinarily drift off? If you turn your wristwatch inward, you’ll need to make more of a conscious effort to check the time. Devise your own ways to trick yourself. A miniature reminder sticker on your watch or mobile device can be a mental face slap.

# # #

SELF-TALK THE PRESENT. Send messages from your brain to your body to keep your hands flat on the table and your feet from jittering. Remind yourself to stop playing with hair, moustache, paperclips, pens, pencils, cellphone, rubber bands …remind yourself to smile and be attentive, to listen more and talk less, to take notes even though you don’t think you need them. The act alone of taking notes will keep you tuned in.

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

HELP SAVE THE ECONOMY. . . Support those who endorse free market competition healthcare and REAL job creation tax incentives for America’s entrepreneurs! 

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

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

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

WHASSUP, DOC?

Dear Doctor –

When I wrote DOCTOR BUSINESS© (the book, a 5-star Amazon selection), it was six years before the 9/11 that changed the world. It was at a time when medical and surgical skills were measured by case experience and mortality numbers, not “patient volume.”

Having survived the struggle to be allowed to practice medicine gave you what many called a “license to steal.” 

In the mid-90s, and before that, where you did your internship and residency actually mattered. Public outcries for better bedside manners were surfacing more frequently. The extent of your family’s wholesomeness or dysfunctionality was a much-admired or maligned affair. Your vacations were flamboyant.

With whom you played golf on Fridays was a measure of your community prominence.

You stuck up for other doctors even when they were wrong (and even those you didn’t like). Because doctors then were doctors. And while everyone around you watched and listened to you, even when you least knew it, and whether they liked you or not, you were never disobeyed.

In short, you were God. 

But all that has changed. Now there’s computerized rigmarole, electronic record-keeping, patient emails and texting, Google and Bing. There’s supposed to be less, but it seems now there’s more paperwork.

Your liability insurance premiums could choke a horse. Society’s contentious mindset chews up your precious time (you have no inventory, right?) in legal tangles.

And the bumbling federal government hasn’t even a clue about how to run healthcare, or the need for nurturing free-market competition in order for healthcare to survive as a profession.

Your professional practice and what’s left of your personal life are so dictated by know-nothing politicians that there’s not much room to wiggle free, except onto a shrink’s couch or into an early grave.

                                                            

Let’s face reality.

Like professional sports, medicine has become big business. The difference is that professional athletes have agents to handle their business needs. You have you, and you never learned business.

Maybe you’re entrepreneurially-minded, but it’s highly unlikely that you ‘ve developed enough expertise in finance, marketing, human resources, management, and customer service in addition to medical skills to make the final cut as a businessperson. Yet you are a businessperson. You might hate it, but it’s who you have to be in order to survive as a doctor.

This means you need to rely on others who are probably not as reliable as you. (Medicine does, after all, teach reliability.)

Here’s the bottom line:

You can find qualified and proven lawyers and accountants and marketing (practice development) experts (and, no, these are not people who deliver subs and popcorn and ethnic luncheons to referring physician offices!), and you can find a good leadership manager type to be your office manager or practice administrator, but if your grasp of human resources and human relations and customer service isn’t working, none of the other business helper arrangements will work.

Concentrate your business learning on strengthening your communication skills.

You don’t need to run for office. You need to facilitate having others run your office for you.   

HELP SAVE THE ECONOMY . . . Support those

who endorse free market competition healthcare 

and job creation tax incentives for entrepreneurs! 

____________________________________ 

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

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST!

•  Gutless, Incompetent, Greedy: The US Postal Service  

•  Having grown up a mailman’s son

•  Not just tech triumphs, the PO is a self-fulfilling sinking

•  Stuff Always Gets Worse Before it Gets Worse

And NEWSMAX reported this week . . . 

          “The U.S. Postal Service is close to maxing out its $15 billion line of credit with the Treasury and could run out of operating cash by the end of the year. But its contract with the postal unions is preventing the USPS from implementing the cost reductions it needs to get its finances under control.

          “Labor accounts for 80 percent of the USPS’s costs— the Service has the second largest civilian workforce in the nation, behind only Wal-Mart — and 85 percent of workers are protected by the collective bargaining agreement. “The unions have become a giant anchor on an already sinking ship,” Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the Cato Institute, wrote in an article appearing on The Daily Caller.

          “Last year the average postal worker received about $79,000 in total compensation, compared to $61,000 for the average private sector employee. But the union contracts “inhibit the flexibility required to efficiently manage the USPS workforce,” according to DeHaven. He cited the “no-layoff” provisions that protect most workers, which forces the USPS to lay off lower-cost part-time and temporary workers before it can fire a full-time employee.

          “Union contracts also make it difficult for the USPS to hire part-time workers, which could result in savings and give managers flexibility in dealing with fluctuations in workload. Only 13 percent of USPS employees are part-time, compared to 53 percent for UPS and 40 percent for FedEx.

          “Despite the USPS’s difficulties, the American Postal Workers Union — which represents more than 200,000 workers — is in contract negotiations with the Service and union chief William Burrus insists a pay increase for his members is an “entitlement.” He said the union wants “more money, better benefits.” DeHaven concludes: “The postal unions are likely betting that in a worst case financial scenario for the USPS, policymakers will tap taxpayers for a bailout. Unfortunately, if recent history is a guide, they’re probably correct.”

You gotta be kidding!

If you own or operate a small business, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re an entrepreneurship student, if you’re anyone in business with half a brain, your bowels should be in an uproar about the five paragraphs above.

It’s not only over-the-top insulting to all American businesspeople that –in an economy where business survival is more talked about than business profits, where unemployment, bankruptcies and foreclosures continue to plummet– that ANYone could think like this.

Why haven’t the postal unions stepped up to the plate and taken a responsible attitude and a leadership role in fixing the problem instead of trying to launch it into a death spiral, which will inevitably defeat their own existences as well as others?

And because of  self-serving greed, we stand on the doorstep of incompetence feeding the incompetent with still more government bailouts using tax dollars to save yet another catastrophic failed government business effort.                                                                      

Please remember    

to vote Tuesday, November 6, 2012 

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

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

When you attack

a person’s self,

there can be no resolve.

One of life’s hardest lessons for every business owner and every manager is to always criticize behavior, never the person at fault.                                                        

“I don’t like the way you handled that customer and here’s what I suggest . . .” is a lot more productive and easier to swallow than “You moron! Why did you send that customer to our competitor? I can’t believe you’re so stupid!”

The assumption here of course is that because you and/or your business is invested in every employee, it’s important to help keep those investments on track and growing.

Step ONE is to nurture and protect and ensure the individual human being that lives inside the employee facade or uniform. You will never achieve these ends when you are critical of the person.

It is indeed true that this process is not necessarily an easy one, particularly when you may be dealing with a hostile, or relatively incompetent individual, or someone who has just committed a colossal screw-up.

But keep reminding yourself that your behavior –as well as the one you criticize– are both the result of a conscious or unconscious choice.

You can, in other words, choose to make the situation a difficult, stressful and nonproductive one

. . . or choose for the approach and the outcome to produce a win-win for both parties 

But –again– if the employment investment is worth protecting, then you need to bite the bullet, take some deep breaths, and accept that your role must be as a calming influence, a patient and understanding teacher. Hand-holder? No! Warm, fuzzy pardoner? No! But not confrontational either.

Taking the middle road need not be a torturous trek. And, in fact, it can be a learning experience for both you and the person whose behavior you need to address. 

Look at the prospects of confronting some unwanted behavior as the unique opportunity it is to help a valued employee become more valuable and to notch off another credit level on your human relations resume.

Ask not WHY something occurred. Instead, focus the person involved with improving her or his process. Deal with WHAT can be done and keep it specific, and hand the problem-solving back to the problem-creator.

“What three things can you write down for me on  a piece of paper before you go to lunch that you think will be the best steps you can take to avoid this kind of behavior in the future?  

Oh, and keep the ALWAYS RULE in your back pocket: ALWAYS praise worthy employee behavior in public, and ALWAYS criticize unwanted or unworthy employee behavior in private.

Go to great lengths to insure this ALWAYS RULE and you will quickly gain or enhance the kind of reputation that will increase sales and business growth (yes, even in a bad economy!)

 # # #

Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Tough or Tender?

You know what 100% of meat-eaters prefer, and what most lovers prefer, but when it comes to running a successful business in a near catastrophic economy, there’s little room for being tender. Is it like reaching the point with a drug addict to abandon “Tough Love” tactics?

Killer economy business owners have to be tough to hold on.

They also have to be tough to let go.

Either way–unlike government and corporate life or professional sports– there’s no one else to blame.

There’s no one else to step in and take over, and nobody else to pick you up.

Gloomy, huh?

Sure, there’s always the lottery, but real entrepreneurs don’t gamble because the risk is not reasonable. So what’s a struggling business owner to do, fire yourself? Maybe. Maybe not.

You probably won’t accomplish much by firing yourself, but you might accomplish a great deal by –instead– taking stock in yourself. Start with the assumption that you have what it takes to make things work. After all, you’ve already gotten this far, right?

1. Take back that attitude you had when you first started your business. Remember, that one where you relied on your SELF? You did whatever it took to nurture your ingenuity, persistence, gumption, stick-to-itiveness, determination…and all those other qualities?
2. Realize and accept that you can only rely on your SELF when you keep yourself in touch, day-to-day, with your own personal strengths and weaknesses. Be constantly on the alert to what they are and how they change. Adjust them and your SELF to fit changing times and situations, and to prompt opportunities to rise to the surface.
3. Remember that you have an important responsibility on Election Day to vote — and before that, to promote others to vote — for the kinds of sweeping changes nationwide that are clearly required and called for to recognize small business as the key to economic survival.

The current Congress and Administration most assuredly do not have your best interests or those of our national economy at heart. It does not require brain surgery expertise to see that small business creates probably close to 90% of all new jobs in the U.S.

Collectively, however, our political leaders lack business experience at every level, and have recklessly misspent and misappropriated billions of tax dollars in attempting to shore up misguided corporate entities, and bolster a social agenda that’s frivolous at best considering the continued plunge of unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure rates.

These destructive measures have been at the expense of a balanced budget, at the expense of the vast majority of Americans, and in the face of small business owners’ attempts to make things work. We need to get back on track –swiftly– with REAL tax incentives to small business for job creation (not SBA tokenism buried under reams of complex paperwork).

Your role in this is much more important than you may have thought.

Exert your influence to bring people into office –regardless of party affiliation– who will stop the tax and spend mentality in its tracks.

America needs representatives who will appreciate the sacrifices and values of small business ownership, and use that appreciation to see that jobs are created  . . . to begin to own up to the realities of what needs to be done to turn the tide of this devastating economy.

# # #

 931.854.0474 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!