If you’re not rattling cages,

reserve your business

headstone now!

                 ~ ~ ~                  

C’mon, Hal, the Halloween season gettin’ to you?

Waiting with tricks instead of treats?

Not me. I rattle cages.

But what about you? Are you depending on others to scare up some new business? Maybe you’ve seen too many stun-gunned tongues (say that five times fast!) and zombie axe murderers on late night TV? Too many ghoulish retail displays? Maybe you almost died?

If every chainsaw you see reminds you of a massacre, maybe you’re running on (or from?) fear? No? Well if you’re not shaking up your business every week, it may be that you’re running on ambivalence and, in turn, leading the county coroner to your business doorstep.

Investing in the status quo with your business is a no-action action that –depending on how secure your finances are– will either provoke a knife plunge into the heart of your enterprise or cause business death by potato peeler. If 2015 means continued business life, it must also mean continuing dramatic action at every level.

If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway.

Stop being afraid of stirring up the competition. The most successful retail businesses are those located in the same geographical areas as their competitors. Competition stimulates consume traffic. Your website’s not up to snuff? Bite the bullet; get some cash out from under the mattress, and pay a professional to polish up your act!

Can’t afford the advertising you want? Stop advertising. Go to (free) Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn instead. Start doing (free) public relations instead — newsworthy news releases, captioned newsworthy photos, special events (e.g., charity-based, combined with other businesses, educational programs).

Are your employees, suppliers, referrers, investors, community supporters challenged enough? Are you putting out strong motivational incentives to get the (free) word-of-mouth going? Are you running contests that provoke fun and prompt action? (Hint: No need for elaborate or expensive prizes if enough imagination is exercised).

Shake it up!

Have you given presentations at local colleges, high schools, community centers, and then promoted them and followed up with news releases and unusual photos? Have you compiled a media “hit list” of appropriate editors and writers and publishers who would have a natural interest in your business and business pursuits?

Do you have an “elevator speech”? Do you carry business cards and a notepad with you at all times? Do you ask questions 20% of the time and listen to answers (and jot them in your notebook) 80% of the time? Have you collected email addresses everyplace you go? Are you using them to send worthwhile info out?

“Business As Usual” means inactivity, nothing changing, no excitement, no hustle. It will take you straight to the business burial grounds up in the sky (or somewhere?) and you might want to stop off at your lawyer and accountants’ offices on the way to fill out bankruptcy papers. This economy has no mercy.

If you’ve got guts and gumption, nurture them. Stimulate them. Ignite them. Explode them. Make them work for you.

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Small Businesses Once Again Ignored . . .

Financial Expert Reports 

of “Economic Rebound”

Grossly Exaggerated

 I had occasion yesterday to hear parts of a Baltimore radio broadcast that featured an on-air personality we will call Mr. Advisor, a man who proclaims himself a seminar presenter, radio and TV host, book author, and one of America’s top-ranked financial advisors.

I like this station’s programming. Most of the hosts are challenging, provocative, and informative. I try to tune in whenever I can.

I liked the overall theme of Mr. Advisor’s message which suggested that worrying about money gets us nowhere. As you know if you’ve visited here before, I have taught for more than 40 years that worry about ANYthing accomplishes nothing. Neither does dwelling on the past.

The past and future are fantasyland,

and generally not good places for

nurturing entrepreneurial minds.

So, if I am as I say, a present-moment, here-and-now thinker, who’s taught this mindset as the key to life success in management training sessions, college classrooms, books I’ve written, and this blog — what’s my issue? Part of my issue is with Mr. Advisor’s use of this awareness to quell economy fears as a bridge to selling his services.

I have no quarrel, in other words, with any effort to get people to focus more energy on the here and now because that is what life is really all about. I take exception with Mr. Advisor because after laying this groundwork, he proceeded to rattle off bogus interpretations of government and corporate statistics to make his points.

New housing startups and manufacturing indicators, he says, signal a rebounding economy . . . major corporate proclamations of sales and revenue increases and expansion plans add up to additional support, he says. Actual statements made were either misleading or naive. Considering his credentials, naivety is doubtful.

He tells his audience to not worry so much because things are looking up and that we can’t let fear of the unknown get in our way of making prudent investments. So do advisors who misrepresent reality.

Certainly, we as human beings do ourselves great injustice by fear of any unknown, but reality here has nothing to do with Mr. Advisor’s careful layering of reason to support his sales pitch.

The bottom line is that:

A)  The economy positively cannot rebound –no matter what government and mega-corporations do– until new small businesses begin to create new jobs.

B)  This is simply not going to happen with Mr. Obama in the White House because Mr. Obama has proven he is NOT a Democrat. He has proven, in fact, to be a Socialist who doesn’t believe in or accept the world of small business and free enterprise competition that built America (and the Democratic Party, I might add) to begin with. 

C)  It really makes no difference what big business and government try to accomplish if it’s without the support of small business.

(And, it’s here that Mr. Advisor goes astray. He seems –not unlike Messrs Obama and Biden– to forget and discount that there are 30 MILLION small business owners in the United States! But perhaps these are not prospective investors for Mr. Advisor?)

My point here is that Mr. Advisor is correct about the need for Americans to stay focused on the here and now, and not worry about what hasn’t come yet and may never come, and the unhealthiness of dwelling on the past that’s over and cannot be changed anyway.

These are mentally and emotionally sound ways to be thinking, but they are not portals to prudent investing. Neither are they any cause for a rebounding economy.

The economy is NOT turning around. Ask any of the 30 million small business owners out there. The economy is NOT rebounding because small business owners have no reason to trust a government that seeks to undermine, over-regulate and over-tax at every turn.

The issue, Mr. Advisor, is TRUST, and the fact is that this White House has failed to inspire any confidence or reason to believe. And as you surely know, Mr. Advisor, credibility is what drives market growth.

Why should small businesses create new jobs and then get slammed with major new taxes and regulations that end up costing them even more than a no-new-jobs economy is costing? Because Obama says that that won’t happen? HA! November 6, 2012. Be there.    

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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!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, 

and Clients and Patients

and Customers Too!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! As different as each creature may be from one another, all are considered equally dangerous, equally entrancing to watch, equally exciting to find in one’s camera lens, equally cuddly, equally threatening, equally enthralling. In other words, sometimes they can all fit the same category.

As marketing targets, it’s often all for one and one for all. Professional practices (doctors, lawyers, accountants, management consultants and trainers) are small businesses with special skills and special interests. They have clients and patients. But clients and patients are customers too. They just have special needs.

All this specialization stuff, however, makes little if any difference in marketing plans, targets, approaches, strategies, or branding programs. Perceived differences matter only to professional practice principals. No one else cares. The bottom line is that we each spend our money to get a product or service.

And each of us wants to know:

“What’s in it for me?”

Whether a product or service is life-saving or life-threatening has nothing to do with whether a client or patient is considered a client or patient — or customer. All that matters is product or service performance, and the integrity and authenticity of the person(s) representing or standing behind the product or services purchased.

The issue, say some, revolves around the concept and delivery of “high trust” vs. “low-trust.” Marketing people will be quick to recite the five criteria of effective programs, campaigns, and messages. Regardless of what name is used to define a target market (customers, clients, or patients), marketing must:

1)  Attract Attention

2)  Create Interest

3)  Stimulate Desire

4)  Bring About Action

5)  Provide Satisfaction

. . . and it really must do ALL of these to be effective.

On top of that, the rule of thumb applies to ALL FORMS of marketing — print, broadcast and outdoor advertising; sales; public (industrial, professional and community) relations; promotion; merchandising; pricing; packaging; labeling; website content; social media content ; business and appointment cards; stationery and invoices.

It applies as well to direct mail, bumper stickers and building signage, plus a hundred other uses. It applies to branding themes, logos, and jingles as well as trade and professional show banners and exhibits.

When you want to know how your business or practice is coming across to others, ask. Measure people’s responses and each marketing implementation against the five criteria.

If you’re looking for prime examples of marketing that fails because it fails to deliver all five criteria, you need go no farther than your local hospital. Hospitals breed marketing mediocrity because they refuse to spend money on outsourced creative services and convince themselves they can handle it all in-house!

Most professional practices seem to think in similar terms. The problem is that their products and services are justifiably more expensive than the local coffee shop and must carry messages that appeal to a higher level of audience needs, but that doesn’t eliminate the need to trigger emotional buying motives.

Sophisticated products and services are not sold with dumb slogans or rational, logical appeals that push features instead of benefits. Humans are humans are humans. Market from the heart. Market benefits! Pay attention to corporate advertising for Mercedes Benz.

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Hal@Businessworks.US     931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Success seldom surfaces

when creative service

providers are squashed

. . . or does it? 

Show me a writer or designer who thrives on being torturously pushed and prodded to stressful deadlines, and I’ll show you someone who is likely to be a do-nothing PR agent or brain-dead news media person, but don’t expect to find great advertisers, marketers or creative service people thrive in angst-ridden  pandemonium.

With rare exception, creative development work that’s “rushed” breeds mediocrity (and costs more, which makes the engager a double loser!). Truly remarkable talent, it is said by many, is born of free spirit, and ample time.

Do I know exceptions? Plenty. But exceptional creativity is the product of unconstrained imagination and self-discipline. The exceptions I know –ah, including myself (!)– coulda/shoulda/woulda produced more outstanding creations if they’d (we’d) not been pushed, prodded, intimidated, threatened, and time-pressured.

My best writing has surfaced during both

great duress and great relaxation. So

maybe the rule is an exception?

My national boo0k award effort was done at my leisure. Its underperforming predecessor took two years under pressing deadlines. My worst book was written under crushing due dates. My best book –now almost ready to market– was ten years on the drawing board. My best award-winning jingle was done in one all-nighter.

My worst ad campaign took six months to research and justify and another six months to finalize and launch. My national award-winning, record-sales marketing program took three months start to finish. I have a future award-winning children’s book series ready to launch after 40 years in hiding.

And only heaven knows how many hundreds of new business startups have benefited by my rushing attacks on their website content, news releases, packaging, media positioning, and strategic planning. Yet the most successful, sales-productive efforts I have made have come only with major investments of time.

The trouble is that upstart business owners want what they want when they want it and time is not a worthy commodity to offer when they’re sitting on a hot idea and investor dollars.

Neither patience nor perfectionism has ever been a trait of entrepreneurs.

Neither has analysis, which is typically the province of corporate muckity-mucks. 

Okay, so knocking this subject all over doesn’t settle the issue of business time pressures and the creative product. That, however, is the issue. Pushing and prodding and time-pressuring creative people may not always produce the best or most productive work, but it gets the job done.

Depending on circumstances and the marketplace and the economy (and who can depend on the economy?), a judgement must be made about whether you want to win awards or customers. Without a lot of room for awards on the walls of a crushing economy, the bottom line should be to insist on results, not pretty words and pictures.

Design awards only produce sales for designers. Copywriting awards only produce sales for copywriters. You can stop paying for your creative service providers to get more sales by putting some heat on their abilities to perform for you, the client.

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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!

Turning prospects

into customers

means leading

with your soul

. . . not your mouth.

Not a whole lot happening with accounts receivable, eh? Welcome to the cusp of The Great Obama Depression. As many business owners keep stumbling along, muttering to themselves that they’ll vote for the Aflac Duck if he can beat Obama (and, hey, who knows?), many others have given up wallowing in self-pity, in favor of enlightenment.

What exactly does this mean? There’s a new found awareness that prospects are not whipping out their wallets just because you tell them how great you are or how great they are, or just because you map out all the logical, rational features of your products and services.

People have not stopped buying with their emotions just because incompetent government, union thugs, and big corporations are heartless and have no clue about how to create real jobs, and really restore our economy.  

Every purchase

–including those that 

seem most rational–

is emotionally triggered.

It’s human nature to want to be sold, to want to have someone show you how what you want is what you need. But you can’t accomplish this with the words you say anywhere near as effectively as you can with the actiojns you take. As a writer, I hate to admit that, but words can only lead someone to your door. Actions make the sale.

What kinds of actions? Authentic ones. Sincere ones. Actions grounded in genuineness vs. sound bites and photo ops and slaps on the back. It’s called “leading with your soul” which means that when you effectively put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and see things from the prospect’s perspective, you are practicing empathy. Empathy sells.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?  When you buy something from a sales representative, odds are overwhelmingly in favor of you actually buying into the rep’s attitude. And, in fact, the more you keep hearing kiss-up statements, the less interested you become in purchasing, at least from that platitude attitude. Instead, you go down the street!

Who needs a salesperson filled with pandering, patronizing remarks and preoccupied with ticking off product or service features? You want someone to show you passion and conviction and authenticity.

You need only to have

an emotional buying motive

trigger pulled to justify your

wallet on the counter or

your pen on the dotted line.

So surely you don’t think you’re any different because you own or run a business? That’s exactly the point. You ARE no different. Everyone is unique, yet we are also all predictable when it comes to what happens psychologically when we make a purchase. Our egos get pumped up. Even a can of beans is an emotional purchase.

Emotional buying motives are ignited by exceptional and sincere service and by positive (and contagious) attitudes. So, how do you think you come across to prospects? When did you last ask one? Is your ego keeping you from learning more about yourself and what it takes to be enlightened and exuberant?

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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!

When you think 

you’re communicating

just the right amount of 

information, you’re not!

How do I know? Because you are the boss. And the boss rarely if ever gets it right the first time because what the boss thinks is “too much” or “too little” information is not what employees think, but are often afraid to ask about or say so. And when it’s not what customers think, they won’t ask or say so either; they’ll just go somewhere else.

Okay, I know it’s making you crazy. So what does the blog post title ROTFLMBOAFOYCTBPSSOHLT mean? You should know, first of all, that this “message” actually appeared on the screen of a Fortune 500 company employee, sent by a departmental teammate. Even the recipient had no clue  

It stands for: Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Butt Off After Finding Out You Caught The Boss Playing Spider Solitaire On His LapTop. The acronym is obviously an example of a text messenger gone amok and, of course, far too little information to be understood.

Sending a convoluted message is

  like telling a joke that nobody gets.

Misunderstood verbal and written one-way messages have ended in disasters, explosions, shootings, robberies, suicides, addictions, bankruptcies, firings, lost confidence, and lost sales. Even when the message receiver has perfect hearing, perfect vision, three college degrees, twenty years of experience, and is sober, confusion happens.

You already know all the little rules about not assuming things. You’ve learned the hard way that communication can be either verbal and/or nonverbal and that both of these forms have many signals, styles, applications, modes, and inferences. You have a general sense of when you’ve said or written too much or too little.

BUT — the recipient of your communication is the only one whose sense of what’s too much or too little really counts. If a receiver on the football field cuts right instead of left and the quarterback launches a picture-perfect pass to the left, it doesn’t much matter how great the pass looked. Your message is all about the receiver.

The only insurance you have for being clearly understood is to check on what’s written or said or agreed-to with the receiver, to confirm delivery, to paraphrase statements, to request feedback. I just received an important piece of mail from three weeks ago, from a neighbor who’s been away for three weeks, who got my mail by mistake.

Horror stories run rampant through the halls of shipping, transportation, and delivery companies worldwide every day. Wrong addresses, wrong times, wrong account numbers, and on and on. Your small business cannot afford communication screw-ups. This doesn’t mean harping away and repeating things.

It means accepting the reality that others do not have the same ways of thinking as you, and that getting it right the first time will take you longer and be more work than you would like. YOU must take the responsibility to ensure that the messages people get from you are indeed the same ones you intend them to get. Work at it. It pays.

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

“That’s me! That’s 

just the way I am!”

Yup! and that’s also a choice — to avoid telling the truth or avoid offering an explanation that feels awkward. 

Do we hear this kind of excuse with regularity, or am I just imagining things? It almost doesn’t matter what the question is that triggers this response. Asking why a person did something, or failed to do something can be equally responsible for getting that shoulder-shrug, palms up answer. Because it’s an easier “out” than admitting an error.

Notice, btw, that the keyword that sets off these (“That’s me,” “That’s just the way I am,” “Hey, whadda I know?”) kinds of retorts is WHY?

“Why” is a terrible word for anyone except a scientist.

All it does is provoke excuses.

“Why were you late to work the last three days?” will get you “My car broke down” or “My dog has been throwing up a lot” or “I had to give my neighbor’s kid a ride to school this week.”

Entrepreneurs don’t spend their energy analyzing.

It wastes too much time.

Better to use “HOW?”

How? forces excuse-makers to deal with reality. It begs the question of process. What specific steps can be taken, in other words. “How can you avoid being late beginning tomorrow?” Effectively followed by: “Please give me a 3-point list of specific steps (HOW?) you will take to be on time/restore the dog’s health/leave earlier for school?” 

“That’s me. That’s just the way I am”

. . . is the classic response from those who are lazy, yes, but more telling than that: from those with low self-esteem. Today’s society is literally plagued with low self-esteem. Children are not taught that they are okay. Parents rarely reinforce what they believe is obvious. Employers have stopped back-patting.

And social media is nothing more than an avalanche of token compliments and empty promises.

Many have come to accept social media exchanges so readily that they convince themselves that their 14,000 Twitter Followers are actual friends, and that their Facebook Friends are far beyond acquaintanceship.

Self-esteem reality is being dwarfed by ego fantasy.

I find this trend disconcerting because I (and many psychologists) believe success in life and in business has more to do with a person’s sense of self-confidence than almost any other factor. Self-confidence is a by-product of self-esteem. When someone feels good about her or himself, he or she becomes confident in her or his pursuits.

Of course there are exceptions to the above, but generally speaking, the best thing we can do for our loved ones (especially for the malleable minds of our children and grandchildren), and for our employees and associates, is to plant and nurture as many seeds of esteem-building words and actions as possible, as often as possible.

The return on investment can be enormous, and there is nothing more self-satisfying you can give to others than your sincere compliments and encouragement. Try looking for opportunities to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative” (a song my father used to sing). The more it works, so will your business, and your life. 

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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!

“Detail” Counts

Big Time In 

Small Business

My first employee review in my first real job accused me of not liking or tending to detail. Decades later, I still don’t like it or tend to it, except as absolutely required by clients, the IRS, or a book manuscript or marketing program that demands it. And even then, I still don’t like it.

After all, how can creative spirit flow freely

 with “detail anchors” weighing it down?

And, it seems when I look back, that entrepreneurs and small business owners of every conceivable description, similarly hate having to deal with detail. Yet, meticulous attention to detail is what often makes a small business become a big business. At every level: finance and operations as well as marketing and sales.

By listening carefully (vs. just hearing) to what customers and prospects say they REALLY want, you engage yourself in the world of providing detail, and the better you do at it, the better you will invariably do at not just servicing, but delighting each person and entity that you confront.

Detail –except in word choices and design applications– is not generally an area that commands great attention from those who provide creative services.

Attention to detail is most typically the milieu of those who provide accounting and legal services, intricate products, operational equipment, and safety-oriented products.

This doesn’t mean you need to be a bean counter, brain surgeon or rocket ship c0mponent manufacturer to justify the need for attention to detail. In fact, the further away from these “expected” areas of business a customer or prospect encounters what you have to offer, the more likely you are to have positive impression opportunities.

Why? Because most people don’t expect a roofer or plumber, or dog groomer, graphic illustrator, a self-proclaimed SEO or social media  “expert,” or shoelace salesman, to be able to support product and service claims with hard evidence and factual findings –details– that boost and solidify the sales message. 

Details are what drive home the emotionally-triggered sale by providing the objective, factual, unemotional supportive features that purchasers use to justify their decisions to themselves, their spouses, their boss’s, their partners, their associates, employees, shareholders.

Details may not always be fun. But –in every sale, they prevail! Do you? Are you supporting claims with facts? Attention to detail means attention to customers and prospects . . . a practice you can never go wrong with!  

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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!

It’s the middle name for

most entrepreneurs, but

is it the source of

real solutions?

Multi-tasking —as in walking post haste to the men’s or ladies room, chewing gum, texting your accountant while cell phone conferencing your lawyer and signing off on a major customer delivery form on a clipboard being held by your assistant . . . and all the time knowing that in just a matter of seconds, you’re going to need at least one hand free.

Yes, entrepreneurs live in the fast lane, and yes multi-tasking is a way of life for the small business owner. But does the end always justify the means? Surely you’ve heard more than once from a filled-with-wisdom grandparent type that “Haste Makes Waste!” and have no doubt proven the truth of that to yourself a few times, true?

But now you have passed all recollection of those life experiences into the deep, dark, dingy caverns of your mind and no longer carry the need to heed such warnings anywhere near your front burner, and in fact probably harbor them back in that little storage area that holds memories of a flunked course, a failed romance and poor toilet training when you were three.

Though –aha!– the more you try to do in a hurry, the more likely you are to screw something up. Why? Because it’s been scientifically proven many times over that the human brain (though many protest the thought with what they believe to be contradictory examples) cannot do more than one thing at a time, meaning in the exact same moment.

Unconvinced?

Sit in a chair.

• Lift your feet off the ground. turn your ankles so your feet make small circles (any direction you like — one in one direction and the other in another, or both in the same direction; it doesn’t matter).

• Next, get your hands moving in sync by turning your wrists.

• When you start feeling like a well-oiled machine, try to reverse direction with your hands while maintaining the original direction your feet have been moving. Or switch and reverse foot direction from your hands.

The point is that multi-tasking may look impressive to others who are easily impressed, but don’t expect that any kind of steady diet of trying to do more than one thing at a time is going to produce some miraculous level of off-the-charts productivity to write home about.

It is not better to do half a job well instead of a whole job not well. Doing half a job well simply means the job is only half done. Period. Doing a whole job not well means that effort and determination were present, and that, presumably, something important was learned in the process. Uh, this is true at least for most successful entrepreneurs. The rest? Who knows?

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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!