Entrepreneurs are alive

and well (but fading)

in corporations. 

Many of today’s more progressive corporate entities still house an exuberant universe of entrepreneurial movers and shakers (Corporate Entrepreneurs © I call them), but the numbers are fading.

This is not a good signal to the business world because the giant companies that are hunkering down and cutting corners and holding desperately to their belongings are the same ones that were thriving with these freewheeling innovators just a couple of years back.

It’s as if these small-business-minded agents of change have had their rugs pulled out from under them. Our inept federal government has seen fit to replace the entrepreneurial energy they couldn’t harness — and surely could never understand — with government bailout dollars attached to CEO promises to toe the line and tighten the belts.

Like one big ugly Harry Potter fantasy trip, shareholders have responded by retreating into the evil “Do Nothing Abyss” of Status Quo Land. Too bad. A lot of the nation’s more spirited corporate enterprises have been reduced to rubble in the process.

The transition has served to move the center of the business world into the cyberspace pursuits of high technology because that’s proven to be one of the last remaining protective and nurturing bastions of corporate entrepreneurial fallout.

Entrepreneurs and Corporate Entrepreneurs must join together and rise to the occasion of voting out those who think that running a lemonade stand business means giving free lemonade to everyone who passes by, whether they want it or not, and then charging only those who are thirsty and rich enough to afford the unannounced mark-ups to $20 a cup . . . so that those revenues can pay the bills and keep the “free faucet” running.

Then, when the tank runs dry, give ’em more cash and make ’em raise their rates to pay it back.”

What’s next? The torch of innovative thinking and doing is getting passed back to it’s rightful owners: small business. A great deal needs yet to happen for small business owners, operators, and managers  in order to ensure clear passage to economic resurgence. The burden of righting the ship rests squarely on the shoulders of government.

Only government has the wherewithal to clear the path, provide meaningful (meaningful) incentives to small business to create real jobs and attract innovative leadership to their ranks.

No! . . . creating make-believe jobs inside government, and with and for government contractors, is not the answer. It never has been. Those jobs are a long-term drain on taxpayers. They are neither real nor meaningful and simply cannot have a positive influence on the economy.

Entrepreneurial business leaders need to step up. Our existing government leadership needs to step down. The first of these challenges is ready to happen. The second of these will never happen voluntarily because politics runs thicker than blood.

Entrepreneurs and Corporate Entrepreneurs must join together and rise to the occasion of voting out those who think that running a lemonade stand business means giving free lemonade to everyone who passes by, whether they want it or not, and then charging only those who are thirsty and rich enough to afford the unannounced mark-ups to $20 a cup . . . so that those revenues can pay the bills and keep the “free faucet” running.

Then, when the tank runs dry, give ’em more cash and make ’em raise their rates to pay it back. That mentality will not restore our economy. Competitive marketplaces will. Competitive marketplaces turn on innovative entrepreneurial spirit, not handouts. Corporate Entrepreneurs have the car keys. It’s time to get behind the steering wheel!

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US  931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Could Your Family

Or Business 

Get To 2011 Without

A Budget?

So what makes Congress think America doesn’t need one?

     We The People — the business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs and sales professionals — of the United States of America need to vent!

     We would like to understand how it could be possible that you, the Congressional Representatives of the geographic districts that our business interests occupy, are at the doorstep of foregoing a national budget this year. PLEASE explain.

     For the benefit of those not yet up to speed on this issue because you’ve been struggling with your own budgets, The Hill newspaper has just proclaimed that Congress may fail to even try to pass a budget this year because the Congressional majority claims that “they’ve pushed too many tough votes through the House to force another one before Election Day.”

     Rarely do I have much good to report coming out of organizations like the SBA, the BBB, the NFIB, or the C of C, but I just saw a copy of a letter from US Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Bill Miller that deserves three cheers from all of us. He challenges that feeble excuse quoted in The Hill with the following:

Tough votes? You mean like bending the rules and twisting arms to pass a flawed healthcare bill that America doesn’t want and can’t afford?

Or like rushing a vote on a financial overhaul bill that would create one of the largest bureaucracies in American history?

Giving up the budget process is their choice. It’s politics, plain and simple. And we deserve better… if Congress fails to pass a budget, it will show that it is simply unable to govern

… No budget equals failure. And right now, that’s something our country, our workers, and our employers cannot afford.” 

     How is it even possible that ANYone, even a politician, could imagine a budget-less organization — let alone a national government– being able to arrogantly continue charging forward while sinking deeper into the depths of economic quicksand?

     With continuing misplaced priorities and increases in frivolous federal spending, we — the business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs and sales professionals — are being driven aimlessly into the face of an all-powerful global economic storm… and not even a budget on the horizon?

     How would our own businesses do with no sense of financial direction or planning? One need not be a rocket scientist to see that our national and state economies are on shaky (to say the least!) ground in the midst of turbulent times.

     Yet we have elected politicians who have no business skills,  knowledge or experience, no sense of how to turn this mess around. All of us with small businesses already know that more spending of more money we don’t have, with no plan, is not going to do it!

     The only answer is:  A) To push members of Congress (with emails, letters and calls) to do the jobs our tax dollars are paying them to do and pass a budget we can afford, then B) VOTE THEM OUT IN NOVEMBER before they destroy all of our businesses.  

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!

Are you rounding

the turn,

up against the rail,

or (Aaah!)

headed for the

home stretch?

     Have you ever equated owning and managing a business with being in a race? Aren’t most of us in fact so busy galloping over, under, and around the 37 zillion entrepreneurial business obstacles-to-success, that we seldom make the time to assess our own progress? When did we even come to appreciate what market position we’re in, let alone what racetrack we’re on?

     I was reminded yesterday by the simultaneous running of The Preakness (horse race), and The Dover Downs (NASCAR) Race Weekend of how rare the occasions are that we business owners race around and soundly outperform our own and others’ expectations.  How evasive that winner’s circle can be when we just charge forward with our heads down!

     Don’t we ALWAYS outperform ourselves the half-hour before lunch? The hour before closing? The days before vacation? The week before a holiday weekend? The days before a major sales or service event? The days before retirement? The days before the end of the month? The quarter? The year? 

WE EXCEL IN THE HOME STRETCH!

     Who doesn’t run fastest between third base and home plate? Between the 20-yard marker and the goal line? Or in the final lap of a race of any kind? And why is this? Okay. Here’s the place to insert all that profound motivational and psychological reasoning we all carry around on the tips of our tongues:__________________________.

     It seems to me, though, that when all is said and done, each of us protects the need to preserve some level of self-proclaimed legacy. Down deep inside, we want to make a difference! We want others to say “WOW!” and “Whew!” and “HOLY #%&*!” and be impressed and astonished with our performances.

     But why oh why do we have to punish ourselves by limiting our exceptional performances to occur only when we’ve reached some mythical last hurrah, when we’re at a point where every thing’s on the line, or the proverbial eleventh hour is upon us?

     What prevents us from thinking and acting at maximum productivity EVERY day, all year long? Why is some artificial prompt necessary to justify and prompt exemplary performance? Can’t we simply CHOOSE to have this winning attitude NOW? Today? Tomorrow? Everyday? Isn’t it a choice? Of course it is. SO . . . HOW to make it happen is the question.

     Try falsifying our calendars. Let’s put some major event that demands extraordinary production results in the third week of May. Why wait ’til two days before Memorial Day weekend to get cranked up? What about pretending our vacation is a month before it’s actually scheduled? Can we trick yourselves into believing that we have only a week (vs. a month) left until departure day?

     Our kids could do this in a flash. Maybe we can learn something from them about how to loosen up and be flexible and do stuff now that we may have thought we were not ready to do . . .?  

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!

“Whaddaya, nuts?

My business

is shrinking.

What’s to expand?”

In the “Flower Power” 60’s with psychedelic drug influences on music, clothes, and lifestyles of people who’d grown up with the Lone Ranger, there emerged what had to be the greatest name for its time for a music group that I ever heard. I haven’t a clue about anything they recorded, but I always thought they earned the gold medal of rock group names: TONTO’S EXPANDING HEAD BAND.

     I thought of this name today for some reason, and was prompted to address the subject of business expansion in a still-rotten-and-getting-rottener economy where most businesses are tucking in their tails, cutting corners, and consolidating at every opportunity. Withdrawal, though, is not always the most advisable action to take when the competition heats up and pickings are slim.

     “Yeah, but our budget is slim too, and the last thing we can afford is to expand what’s already suffering; it’ll just create more suffering!”

     BRRRAAAAAAAAT! (That’s a basketball court sound.) Time Out! As truth will have it, if indeed you really think you need to be bailing out the boat instead of adding a swim platform, you are probably:

1. working for the government (probably the dead and dying Postal Service; but, then, you wouldn’t be reading this), or 
2. a major corporate executive (probably a hospital administrator type who’s big on efficiency and outcomes; but, then, you wouldn’t be reading this either!), or 
3. a small business owner who’s lost sight of how you got started, and you may have gotten so beat up by the A and B guys above, that your entrepreneurial spirit has risen on up into the Ozone, and left you struggling to survive. Sound familiar? No? Good! But if it does . . .

     Guess what? You still have what it takes, and so does your business. Remember the sports training we got as kids? The best defense is an offense . . . stop blocking punches and start swinging!

     To effectively expand your business in an economic choke-hold, you need first to allow your brain to expand, and you’ve probably been pulling in the reins on your innovative thinking in order to pay the bills. Reality is though that there are plenty of ways to expand while others are shrinking, without murdering your finances!

     You need to look harder at what you’re doing. How can you offer more to customers without spending more? Instead of 9-5, can you stagger work hours and stay open instead from 8-6? Or re-think coverage possibilities for Saturdays and/or Sundays?

     Can you hand out free appetizers to customers who have to wait for dinner? (You don’t run a restaurant? This example applies to EVERY type of business. Consider how some version of it might work for yours!)

     How about expanding your marketing efforts with a service like www.BizBrag.com that allows you free website postings of your news releases and promotional flyers, and then sends them out to your target email list besides (also free!)

     Shall I go on or will you just counter with excuses? Are you choosing to seek new pathways or choosing to simply settle for excuses about why new pathways won’t work? Hard times mean survival of the fittest. Hard times also mean that those who choose to step it up, make waves, and expand their horizons by expanding the the ways they do business, will thrive.

     What can you do better or more of tomorrow morning than you did today? Money need not be a growth issue.

Expand your mind to expand your business.    

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!

“I see your true colors

 shining through . . .”

                                                                                                                                                          — CYNDI LAUPER

      Is your workspace the drab morning dove gray of a typical stock brokerage or mortuary? (This two-pronged question is, of course, not to suggest any business commonalities.)

     Perhaps, on the other hand, your business screams the vibrant emotional red of casinos and fast food restaurants, or the deep green (“GO” and “MONEY” subconscious associations) of endless bank office and lobby carpets?

     Then there’s always the Caribbean blue that many travel agencies splash around as wall coverings or carpeting or (Awk!) both. How about that maroon and gray at your doctor’s office (presumably because someone thought doctors who are always gray and dealing in blood couldn’t be more appropriately coordinated)?

     Oh, and right . . . we won’t even bother to address the hidden meanings in black and brown law offices.

     Is there some kind of color scheme logic to your workspace or is everything just random?

     How about your product and service “packaging”? The baby stuff? Right, we got that with oinky pink for baby girls and powder blue for baby boys and yellow for unknown and neuter babies!

     You do know of course that even after all that’s happened in recent years, and in spite of political overthrow attempts: red, white, and blue are still the best selling colors in America?

     Did you think there was no method to the madness of TV scene backgrounds, website pop-up colors, ad and brochure uses of color? Has it occurred to you that wardrobe and make-up people on film and video broadcast sets choose certain colors and fabrics and shading and backdrops and patterns and designs for a reason?

     Do you choose what you wear and what you put on your skin everyday according to your schedule? “Dress down Fridays” have become “Dress Down Everydays” in many businesses. What colors do you “Dress Down” to? Why? Are you arware that pinstripes are supposed to communicate sincerity, that Navy blue is seen as authority, tan as neutral.

     You may dismiss all this as nonsense, but if you’re trying to make a major sale or sail through a job interview, wouldn’t it be foolish to not taske advantage of every possible tool at your disposal?

     Why would you want to dress or present your products and services in overpowering colors when you’re trying to schmooze powerful prospects? An over-the-top flashy power dresser is not likely to sell many premium luxury cars because prospect profiles are of well-to-do, powerful people who want to control their shopping excursions. [They’re looking for tan pinstripes.]

     Get employees and customers and suppliers to tell you what color they most associate with your business, and why. No rebuttals or defensiveness; just take it in, write it down, and summarize what you learn.

     Then do some online and/or library research on the one or two colors that you hear most. Are you on the right color path for the image you seek for your business? What can you improve? How? What minute can you start?

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! 

“When Push

Comes To Shove,”

Keep Customers

Out Of The Way!

     Protecting your customer base at all costs needs to be Priority One. When people have purchased your products or services in good faith, they are putting their confidence in you and the business you own , manage, or represent. If you screw up that relationship and lose their trust, you have lost a great deal more than a customer or two.

     Long-time idol of mine, Roy H. Williams, Chief Guru of Roy H. Williams Marketing, Inc., and author of what may arguably be the best two essay collections ever written on the spirit of advertising in the universe of American business. The two book set. The Wizard of Ads and Secret Formulas of The Wizard of Ads were published in 1998 and 1999 respectively by Bard Press, Austin, Texas. 

     In his Secret Formulas collection, Williams quotes study findings from Technical Assistance Research Programs of Washington, DC, that you should know about. Chew on these highlights for a couple of minutes:

• For every customer who complains, 26 more will not.
• Each of these 27 unhappy customers will tell 16 others about their bad experience.
• Do the math: Every negative complaint you hear represents 432 negative impressions.
• By the time you hear a particular complaint 3 times, the problem has been mentioned to 1,296 people.
• It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it costs to keep an old one.
• 91% of your unhappy customers will never buy from you again.
• But a focused effort to remedy complaints will get 82% to stay with you.

     Williams concludes this 2-page revelation with the three questions  to ask unhappy customers (calmly, genuinely, and without a defensive attitude) that he says (and I agree) “will bail you out every time”:

1. WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
2. WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED?
3. WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE IT RIGHT?

     I might add that the best customer service businesses are those businesses without customer service departments and personnel. When all (every single) employees are trained to put themselves in the customer’s shoes, there should never be a need for the expense and excess baggage that a customer service group tends to burden a business with.

     Bottom line: When you accelerate arguments and draw customers onto a battlefield, you lose. Even if you win, you lose. Can your business afford all the negativity attached to your or your staff members’ short fuses? A little stress management works wonders and keeps customers coming back.

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! 

When you undertake

to organize, manage,

and assume the risks

of owning and running

a business…

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

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

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

     Whew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

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

Complacence.

Ambivalence.

Indifference.

And the worst

of these in

management is . . .?

• Complacence: Self-satisfaction, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.
• Ambivalence: Uncertainty as to which approach to follow.
• Indifference: Of no importance or difference one way or the other. Unconcerned. Not caring.

     So which gets your vote for worst? If you think about it for more than two shakes of a lamb’s tail, you’d have to go with (Ta-Ta-Ta-Tah-Tah!): Indifference. After all, isn’t indifference the worst of all human traits on the emotional spectrum, management or otherwise?

     Granted, nobody likes a complacent boss. Is smug another way of saying this? And certainly an ambivalent boss is what my father would have called “a weak sister.” Not having confidence in the pursuit of a solution or innovative approach is generally the mark of a losing leader in any arena.

     We seem to grow up thinking that LOVE and HATE are opposites and we tend to pack our collective feelings up and move them to one side of the continuum line or the other: LOVE at one extreme end and HATE at the other extreme end. And all kinds of empty space in between. And, BTW, isn’t this also what politicians and governments and nations do as well?

     Incorrect weird interpretations we experience –even at a universal level– become so ingrained that they become the rule rather than the exception. We (The People) go about loving and hating and thinking that we are light years apart by every measure when — in reality– we are really VERY close indeed.

     How is that possible?

The true opposite of LOVE is not HATE. It is INDIFFERENCE. LOVE and HATE are actually quite close emotions.

The true opposite of HATE is not LOVE. It is INDIFFERENCE. HATE and LOVE are actually quite close emotions.

INDIFFERENCE is at the extreme far end of the emotional spectrum from both LOVE and HATE.

     So what? Who cares? What’s it matter in running a business? At an employee confrontation level, keep focused on the fact that what’s expressed as extreme opposite viewpoints are — all things considered — probably very close.

     Sometimes the boss needs only to point this out. A line drawn on paper with “always/in every case/extreme” positions marked at opposite ends of the line and two warring staffers asked to put an x on the line where they see themselves in relation to the two extremes. The distance between the two X’s is the area of disagreement, not the entire line. 

     Almost always, when disagreeing employees can physically see (on a line) that the differences they thought were astronomical, are truly only moderately significant, they are much more likely to work things out, to the betterment of themselves and the business.

     You don’t need to be a counselor, shrink or hand-holder to make this work. I’ve seen construction team foremen and deep-sea fishermen pull it off in less than one minute, and never lose a beat with the work at hand. Next time someone draws a line in the sand, have her or him show you the extremes and where exactly he or she stands. 

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 for someone! 

J & J Leadership

Lessons

 Go Far Beyond

BandAids!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     Bottom line: RESPONSIVENESS.

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

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

Click Here to work with Hal 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 because “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day! 

“LIFE IS GOOD!”

says the shirt.

What says you?

“Bah, humbug!”?