Cocky professionals,

headstrong business

owners, and

fantasizing gamblers

are doing it

as you read this!

     For many, running a business or professional practice gets too easily entangled with subliminal ego-based behaviors. There’s a tendency for many owners or senior partners to take the road of self-importance because — short-term — it’s easier and more gratifying.

     These are the nonproductive avenues that surface when business and practice leadership is mistakenly equated with micro-managing. Inevitably, as doomed attempts to prove micro-management hunches are correct, dollars are often nonchalantly tossed on the table.

     Do feelings of control breed expressions of unrealistic self-confidence? 

     Well, yeah! Just take a good look around you. How far away is the closest boarded-up business? Same town? Same neighborhood? Same street? Same building? Have you checked out what happened? Guaranteed that the more you sift through the rubble, the more likely you’ll come up with the reason being poor management. Period.

     Underfunded? Poor management. Not enough sales? Poor management. Too many non-productive employees? Poor management. Not enough innovation? Poor management. Ineffective customer service? Poor management. Marketing that didn’t work? Poor management. Lousy economy? Poor management’s ready excuses.

     Whatever, whomever, wherever, however, whenever the blame, judge and jury will find “Poor Management” guilty on all counts.

     There comes a time in the maturity of business life when reality strikes and says: “You know what? You really don’t know it all. Not only do you not know it all, but IF you keep throwing good money after bad and taking UN-reasonable risks, you’ll need only to know where to find the unemployment line!”

     Hopefully this kind of wake-up call comes early enough in life to avoid having to board up the windows or take loans to pay loans.

     True entrepreneurs— whether retailer, manufacturer, distributor, online geek, doctor, lawyer, or Indian Chief — only take REASONABLE risks. Hollywood portrayals aside, true entrepreneurs don’t bet the farm or give away the store. They don’t bluff at cards because they don’t play cards. They don’t buy lottery tickets or bet on horses. None of those risks are reasonable.

     This isn’t to suggestthat business owners and professional practice principals need to be Scrooges, tightwads and cheapskates. It does suggest that all business owners and managers can stand to be reminded to exercise greater caution with the ways they choose to spend their hard-earned money . . . jnstead of allowing business road rage to take over!

     It means finding and surrounding themselves with proven, qualified, experienced people who can be trusted. Easier said than done. Absolutely! But nobody said entrepreneurship was easy. 

     It means letting those people do the work they’re best at, and accepting that not everyone is cut out to be Donald Trump or Thomas Edison or The Lone Ranger. Leadership, in the end, is all about managing and motivating and inspiring others to get the work done that the leader needs done.

     It’s about not throwing more money on a table that’s been losing its legs to random chopping and sawing. Besides, unlike baseballs, footballs, basketballs, and the bull, money is not for throwing.                             

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

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

God Bless You and America and Our Troops. 

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

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

Tonight’s blog post is dedicated to my friend Ernst Dannemann who died yesterday as he approached his 89th birthday.

I have been fully absorbed in writing Ernst’s memoir for the past year, and finished the text just a couple of weeks ago. A truly remarkable man I admire and respect, Ernst arrived –out from under Hitler– in NY Harbor at age 15 (with minimal English), graduated high school and signed into the Army in response to Pearl Harbor, became a decorated soldier and a U.S. Citizen, courted a Holocaust survivor for 60 days and ended up married to her for 60 years, started as a chicken farmer and built a highly successful 6-state retail fabric chain.

Ernst worked his way up to be trusted advisor to 6 governors, close friend to a U.S. President and contenders, and a U.S. Vice President and contenders, as well as many nationally prominent senators and congressional leaders.

For his volunteer work and his Brotherhood Award from The National Conference of Christians and Jews, Ernst won the highest honor given to a civilian in the State of Delaware. Many will miss him dearly. He was a true gentleman as well as a great father, grandfather and great grandfather in every sense of these words and titles. . . and, I believe, Ernst, though never a Scout, could have easily been the poster boy for the 12 principles embodied in the “Boy Scout Law”:

A Scout is trustworthy, 

loyal, helpful,

friendly, courteous, 

kind, obedient, 

cheerful, thrifty,

brave, clean, and

reverent. 

     Okay, so put aside everything you know for a minute and evaluate your business performance as it measures up against what we should have learned as Boy Scouts (or, sorry, Girl Scouts, but I don’t know their “Law”). Can you 1-10-rate yourself and your business performance against each of these twelve points and come away with a hundred points?

     Can you figure out your strengths and weaknesses in matching or not matching each of these qualities. Does your customer service mission sound anything like this? Do you have employee policies, written or simply understood, that come anywhere close to the elevated level of these twelve behavioral traits?

     Where are you short? How can you bolster that up? What steps can you take tomorrow morning to boost even one of these and make it a shining star for your business? What’s preventing that? Is it attitude? Is it what others think? Is it too hard or time-consuming? Is it just something you feel you’re stuck with? Are you remembering that behavior is a choice?

     Are you remembering that you can choose to make these values ring throughout your business everyday and that all you have to do is decide to do it and keep deciding to do it, over and over? Hmmm? Imagine. Imagine what else we can learn from our youth that can work for our business growth now? Maybe it’s worth visiting a local troop meeting to learn some leadership skills long forgotten? 

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

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

Please excuse me

for not looking up,

but I am listening

carefully… BULL!

It’s the unconscious “game” we all play every day and most vehemently protest when we’re caught red-handed.

Some who recognize the fallibility of its practice at least have the courtesy to acknowledge the shortcoming at the same time that they practice it in your face. Others just play dumb when you call them at it.

Don’t let employees pretend they’re listening to you while they’re reading or writing or surfing the Net or watching TV, or –and here’s the biggy–  driving a car! It’s been proven conclusively time and again that the human mind simply cannot concentrate fully on two things at the exact same time. If the answer to your question, “Are you driving right now?” is “Yes,” set a call-back time and hang up!

Yes, concentration can alternate rapidly, but there are no double-barrel brainwave tunnels that facilitate thought process focus on more than one item, idea, situation, person or place at any given split second. 

You can’t do 2 things at the same time!

So what does this mean if you own and/or manage a business or part of a business? It means when there’s important information to share, you need to flat-out tell distracted employees — like many assertive classroom teachers tell students — that you will wait to speak until you have their full attention.

By the same token, you need to return the behavior by facing the person who’s serving as a news source to you. (No, not network TV news anchors; most of them deserve less attention than a bad car commercial)

It means you need to teach others around you — by example. It means you need to subtly demonstrate (preferably without making an issue of it) that good back and forth eye contact (not staring or glaring) enormously improves the accuracy of communication and also reinforces self-esteem.

It means you could do no greater service to the elimination of errors by consistently paraphrasing (repeating in your own words what you understand others to be saying, as a way to check accuracy points with them). “Do I understand you correctly to mean __________?” is a highly effective verbal tool for that.

It means that both you and the information source will benefit enormously in pursuing common goals and thought processes by asking for diagrams and examples.

Ask the speaker to stop or slow down until you can take notes. Not only will this force a more careful explanation, and help prevent errors, it’s also a flattering and ego-boosting technique.

Sure this all takes more time. Of course it’s more effort. But the results will launch your rocket quicker, safer, and more productively than those who trip over themselves rushing to light a fuse that may not even be connected.

 Just ask yourself if you want the job done right the first time. If the answer is yes, take the extra time and effort to communicate the who, what, when, where, why, and how.    

302.933.0116    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!

Ask Any Writer . . .

“That honorable stop.”

– Shakespeare

“Leaving a few things

unsaid.”

– Elbert Hubbard

     Call it what you like, but having a mature sense of judgment, restraint, prudence, or tact is one of the world’s greatest measures of effective leadership.

     On a day when world news hovers over a General and a President who both apparently lack this quality, we are once again left to our own devices for finding leadership examples in our own businesses and industries and professions.

     We are bombarded today by many “progressive-minded” management gurus, trainers, coaches, consultants and self-proclaimed “evangelists,” with the need to practice “Leadership Transparency.”

     The notion is being hard-sell marketed that business owners and managers must emulate the open-door characteristics of Leadership Transparency in order to make a difference in this world.

     Advocates also suggest that the word, “transparency,” and transparent actions, need to take the high road of fostering full time open-and-above-boardedness.

     Yet it’s no secret that moderation in the form of exercising discretion will almost always cut us out a better, more productive, less hurtful path to take, than one that is completely and 100% clear.

Being able to see through leadership

can often limit its very ability

to produce meaningful results.

     It’s an instinctive behavior unique to human beings (and especially to all of us “Men Are From Mars” types) to indulge in analytical pursuits at literally every turn in the road.

     When management leaders spill their guts (beans? milk?) and put everything out on the table, they leave no room for analyzing alternatives. Analyzing alternatives paves the way to innovative thinking.

     Economic growth comes from watering and fertilizing and casting sunshine onto innovative thinking.

     One need not be a brain surgeon to qualify for having the awareness that businesses that nurture and encourage innovative thinking are those that survive and thrive. Those that don’t, don’t.

     Leadership effectiveness is dependent on the ability to motivate. Motivating others requires the right mix of challenges and opportunities. How challenging is it to provide complete access to clear open-door directions? Is that action dishing up an opportunity or quietly investing in the status quo?

     Exercising discretion amounts to holding back a little . . . giving followers their own openings, providing the chances to innovate and excel.

     Nobody said leadership was easy, but do we really think we’ll have booming success stories on our hands when we encourage everyone we work with both inside and outside our businesses to know everything that’s going on all the time?  

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

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

“Like talkin’ to

  a brick wall!”

     Remind you of anyone? No, not your teenager or your grandfather. How about that one unresponsive boss, customer, prospect, investor, referrer, supplier, associate, employee? You know. The one who specializes in unanswered calls, unanswered emails, unanswered questions, unanswered charges, and unansdtxtmsgs. 

     Besides that these inactions ring out unprofessional and unbusinesslike behaviors, they just don’t cut it! They insult, frustrate, and aggravate those on the delivery end of the questions that cry out for answers, and the messages that call for some form of acknowledgement.

     Thank heaven most entrepreneurs maintain a sense of urgency in most of what they do. They may be a little rough around the edges by elementary schoolteacher standards (typically measured with “warm and fuzzy” yardsticks) or too gruff or brusk for many country-clubbers (who expect at all costs to be treated like royalty; “Thank you, dawlink!”), but at least they respect the need to get things done.

     What stands in the way of most entrepreneurial instincts to act (instead of just talk about acting, ala America’s empty suit sea of politicians) is the modus operandi of those who choose to think that no response is the best response, and that avoidance makes things go away. These folks, by the way, absolutely hate when someone doesn’t disappear, and continues to pursue an answer.

     Do those who practice shutting down and standing still for a living think they could possibly be cultivating business or making friends by sitting on their thumbs? Do they harbor some idiotic belief that others will gravitate to their aloofness? Probably, they just don’t care, or they’re just plain ignorant. 

     For the benefit of those who may be thinking about printing out this post and are leaving an unsigned copy conspicuously exposed on some unsuspecting culprit’s desk, or dashboard, or nightstand, you may want to save ink and paper and just use the following bulletpoints:

• Your lethargic, uncaring, ambivalence is a disruption to life and work . . . and so beneath the integrity of those around you . . . If you don’t plan to respond to someone, say so! If you don’t have or know the answer to something, say so! If you need or want more time to reply to a request or question or message, say so!

• Here’s why. In case it hasn’t occurred to you, most of the world operates in some kind of time zone, and most people will at least nod their heads when spoken to. The fact that you receive a message in writing or voice recording doesn’t mean that it is any less important to acknowledge than face-to-face deliveries.

• Oh, and if you are, by some miraculous conception, some type of business executive or representative, you may want to give some thought to the fact that “outsiders” (which cer-tainly includes endless prospective customers, clients, or patients) will instantly identify your business attachment as THE business itself.

• In other words, to the outside world, you ARE your business. Do you really want potential customers, employees, suppliers, investors, referrers to think your business is unresponsive? Of course they will. Don’t even go there. Instead, step up to the plate and start acting like a human being. It’s called respect.

     Trainers, coaches, consultants and creative types can do wonders for businesses by tweaking one thing or another, but tweaking bricks (even for those from Brick, New Jersey) can be a painful process. Let the bulletpoints do the job for you. If you still seek a tweak, however, you may want to explore more of how to . . .

Get TWEAKED at www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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!

When the going

gets tough,

many Realtors grasp

at straws!

     A post on yesterday’s edition of the vibrant and proactive leading newsletter for Realtor professionals, the ActiveRain Daily Drop was entitled “How To Brand Yourself an Expert and Build a Six-Figure Real Estate Business.” The heading alone represents much of what is  wrong with many Realtors today who seek to quick-fix instead of innovate.

     And the guts of the article drag us deeper into a state of malaise.

     First of all, the posted article was nothing more than a thinly-veiled sales pitch to urge our nation’s poor beaten-upon real estate agents and brokers to rise from the rubble of a collapsed housing market by signing up for and attending a “virtual class” starring a TV “Apprentice show winner.”

    Though favored by Donald Trump himself, this winner may indeed have the “commanding knowledge of investment real estate” that the article proclaims, but my best guess is that this individual doesn’t know any more than anyone else who has ever bought, sold, or brokered real estate.

     Clearly, the enrollment spiel is clueless about branding. Those who understand branding know that you can’t “brand yourself an expert.”

     Branding is all about earning a reputation for authenticity. Self-aggrandizement hardly captures that flavor of genuineness.

     Being viewed and respected as an “expert” is something that comes from others, not from yourself.

     Granted that real estate as a business may host a fair share of egocentric types, but offering self-declarations of expertise is not a practice that most people find to be particularly endearing . . . certainly not property buyers and sellers who I’m quite sure prefer humility and low-profile sales attitudes. Assertiveness does not require aggressiveness. 

     Oh, the fantasy TV show winner also apparently has a book for sale (tell me you’re surprised!) which would seem likely to be implausibly unrealistic if it cornerstones the thinking that what sells best — and makes the most money — is for Realtors to (as my father used to warn against) “toot their own horns.”

     If you’re in real estate sales, and you’ve been fighting to survive this sucky economy, the last thing you need to do is follow some self-serving, self-proclaimed expert into the arena of thinking that you can do the same thing and make untold fortunes. All you’ll make are enemies, and enemies don’t help you make sales.  

     Those who succeed at making a living in real estate sales are those who recognize and appreciate the opportunities they hold in their hands to make a difference in this life by nurturing their matchmaking abilities. They are catalysts of change. Realtors are the entrepreneurial leaders of American small business precisely because they DON’T run around telling everyone how great they are.

     They let their people talents, and their communication and organizational skills speak for themselves. Satisfied clients who brand these real estate pros as experts will advance their reputations light years beyond the kinds of competitors who beat their chests, shout their names from the rooftops, and sign up for quick-fix seminars run by questionably-qualified people seeking to sell books!

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’re out of customers. You’re out of money. But you’re not out of guts. So go get your glove and get back in the game. There’s been a lot of moaning and groaning lately from business owners who sound like they’re looking for reasons to throw in the towel. There is no reason to throw in anything unless you choose to quit! It’s a choice! 

Take it on the chin and move on if that’s what you really want. Better yet, show some of the gumption you had when you started your business. Remember that day? week? year? Were you a tiger or what? You wouldn’t even listen to people who told you to forget it, right? Why? Because you believed in yourself and your ideas. Because you knew in your heart you could make things work. 

Where did that go? POOF! You somehow chose to let it go. Your conscious or unconscious mind made a decision that the challenge was greater than you wanted to handle. Is it? Do you really want to chuck it all or have you just been looking for an excuse to pack it in and stop living on the edge. Maybe get a fastfood or convenience store job? (or worse, work for the government!)  

That doesn’t sound like the you that brought your life to this point. You were never a quitter. Why now? Because the economy sucks? Because the competition is too cutthroat? Because your neighbor seems happier working 9-5 for a big company and having weekends off?  

So things didn’t turn out the way you had hoped. Do they ever? For ANYbody? Maybe you’ve been pretending the grass is greener on the other side of the fence because you don’t know what your neighbor’s life is really like, and you’ve just been building up this big make-believe image of it and trying to measure your own life against it? 

Can we measure our lives against others? Really? Maybe what’s needed is to measure our lives against ourselves and realize that nothing is too great for us to accomplish when we put our minds to it. Maybe we need simply to remind ourselves that, hey, we really DO have what it takes to turn things around, and start using all that whining energy to get things done. 

Whadda you think? Is this just imagining? Are you ready to decide about the rest of your life in favor of you! Are you rolling up your sleeves as you read this? Good. Go for it! You can do it. You can make a difference with your life in this world. Do it now.     

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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!

People today only buy

what makes sense.

 Don’t believe it!

Excerpted from comments by Hal Alpiar published in today’s issue of  COMMUNICATION EXPRESSWAY ISSN: 1544-8312 Better Business Communication Judy Vorfeld – www.ossweb.com March-April-May 2010 – Issue # 74

     Assessments surfacing about today’s consumers being more savvy, more rational-minded, more interested in authenticity, and less susceptible to some of the more trite expressions that have long passed their days of influence is – in most entrepreneurial minds — 100% correct.

     Where business owners and managers need to depart though from what is being said is that these kinds of comments tend to lead owners and managers down the path of focusing their business marketing messages on rational, logical, unemotional, product and service features alone (i.e., ingredients, warranties, greenness, discounts, etc.) when — in fact — every consumer purchase has been repeatedly proven to be emotionally-triggered.

     That is not to say that price is not important or that features and rational chunks of sales pitches and marketing pieces should be abandoned or sidetracked. This kind of information is required by consumers as justification for their purchases — and more so today than ever before because of speed-of-light information access, and an economy that demands closer dollar-value scrutiny.

      Case in point (which, in concept, applies equally to every conceivable product or service purchase) . . .

      You probably tell everyone all the reasons that you buy a particular vehicle: it gets great mileage; it is ranked among the top in safety tests; the manufacturer is reliable; the warranties are among the best available; parts are easily and inexpensively replaced and service is readily available. And monthly payments? They’re at an all-time low. Sounds great, right? Kind of makes rational, unemotional, authentic mouths water? (Or at least drool a little?)

     The truth is (which you would never own up to in public) that the real deep-down reasons you bought the vehicle are that you think you look good driving it, and that the salesperson wasn’t pushy.

     These dynamics, by the way, are the same for seemingly rational purchases like insurance policies, accounting services, a can of beans, or the daily newspaper.

     So, the bottom line is that while rational, logical information needs to be presented as a marketing cornerstone, it’s always going to be an emotional trigger that makes the sale. But we shouldn’t abandon one approach for the other. They need to work in tandem. It’s what makes great marketing so challenging, and why so few really understand how to do it effectively.

# # #

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

The farther apart we go,

 the closer we need

to be.

     As time and technology continue to stretch the great divide they’ve created between human beings . . . and personal relationships become less personal . . . the importance of common sense and common courtesy rises to the surface with more pronounced impact than ever before.

     The HR and sales management rule of thumb, “Praise in public and criticize in private” has — for example — no less common sense meaning now, with increased communication reliance on emails and text messages, than it did in the days when every encounter was a personal face-to-face experience. In fact, the integrity of that “Praise and Criticize” guideline is even more important today.

     Why is that? Because today, we rely more on short, concise, written notes, and every communication is traceable. When someone is praised by email for exceptional performance, everyone in the ranks should get a Cc. When someone is criticized, and Bcc’s are flying around, poor judgement is being exercised, and hidden agendas overwhelm integrity.

     If you run your business on a need-to-know basis, and that works for you, then stick to that and don’t entertain exceptions. If you have a broader interpretation of management transparency and practice across-the-boards openness with all your people, and that works for you, don’t drift into occasional closed door sessions or transmissions. Consistency is what builds business success because it’s what fosters customer, employee and supplier loyalty.

     Customers, employees and suppliers all like to know where they stand. They appreciate business policies, procedures, and approaches that are predictable, and that — even if they disagree with them — they can be assured of no surprises!

     Common courtesy of course is most evident with every exchange, in writing and electronic transmission, in person and on the phone. It is so evident because it is so simple, takes so little effort, but works wonders for every recipient: “Please” and “Thank you!” may sound like dumb old customs to some in this day and age, but nothing else has ever risen in all of history that accomplish more than those three words. [And at-home applications are as important as on-the-job.]

     People are hired and fired, sold and unsold, respected and disrespected by the subjective measures of others as to the genuineness with which these three words are expressed, and if, in fact, they are expressed at all. Those who let “Please” and “Thank you!” flow freely (yes, even when the waitress puts your silverware down or pours you a glass of water, even when a delivery person brings you something you don’t want!) are the people who spread positive attitudes and who will achieve the most success.

     No need to take my word for it. Simply observe those words in emails, hear them in person and on the phone and — assuming they’re delivered with some sense of authenticity — judge for yourself what your impressions are of the person using these expressions of courtesy vs. those you observe and hear who don’t. It’s your call. Thank you for your consideration! 

 Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

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!