Is this new

Alert System for you?

Tonight’s post summarizes some of the highlights of a new Business Terrorist Alert System devised by small business owners for small business owners.

The aim is to keep terroristic employee chatter to a minimum, productivity to a maximum, and provide advance warning of all levels of problem issues to all who work in and with your business.

System design serves to prompt increased awareness levels of suspicious behavior with need-to-know reporting access which includes direct communication transmission to the FBI, the CIA, The United States Secret Service, The Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, and Judge Judy.

[Is your tongue in your cheek yet?]

When your employees approach the entrance to your work site each day –whether a construction location or fancy office building, or your garage– they will see a brightly-colored flag designating the level of terrorist alert you want them to adhere to.

–————————————-

RED, for example, relates to the most potentially threatening category: market competition. It may indicate an impending price war or that quality control invasions have been incurred overnight, that “bad press” mass media sound bites and photo ops have been unleashed, or that UFOs or crop circles have been sighted in the immediate vicinity of your business.

An ORANGE flag signifies that information overload has occurred sometime between the departure of your last work shift of employees and the present arrival of this (orange-flagged) shift. Generally, when some combination of 63,000 emails and a full tape-machine of voicemails has accumulated overnight, you got trouble! Orange flags are an automatic distress call for your business’s Spam Management Team to kick into high gear.

A GREEN flag at the front door or worksite entrance usually indicates some internal catastrophe regarding faulty operating equipment or systems, or the recording of budget excesses, lunchroom maintenance or menu irregularities –or suddenly discovered unaccountable inventories– have surfaced overnight. It could also represent a database collapse or information overload memos are presently sitting at every workstation.

A PINK flag means pink slips. Serious downsizing is in order, and substantial outsourcing is in progress. It may additionally indicate that HRD recruitment programs are presently being conducted to solicit lower-cost replacement personnel from nearby prisons, psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and terrorist training camps from far-away deserts.

Any time one of these flags is displayed together with a BLUE flag, it is done to warn unsuspecting employees and visitors that alarmist situations have risen to a fever pitch and that these events are typically accompanied by the installation of telephone, conference room, and men’s room listening device bugs; a de-bugging equipment room; hallway or worksite ceiling (or tree-mounted) mirrors; a beefed up security department; armed sentry positions; hidden satellite cameras; the installation of quirky receptionists on a rotation schedule; and new back-up tire-puncture plates in each parking space.

————————————–

If NO flag is flown on any particular day, you and your employees can consider yourselves fortunate. You have somehow made it through the last 24 hours without incident or serious threat. Thank your lucky stars. But don’t let down your guard. Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow knows. Hahahahahahahahahhaha.

It seemed like as good a time as any for you to break from serious business stuff, just for a day! ;<) Have a great weekend ahead. See you back here with “KILLER BUSINESSES” on Saturday night!

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Does your website sweep people

into boredom? Does it wallow in

self-aggrandizement?

Does it need a lobotomy?

I run across them every day. So do you — websites that put people to sleep faster than a week of watching C-Span (Okay, the Weather Channel maybe, for those who live inside “The Capitol Loop.”)

I get the feeling that the reasoning for these Hollywood-style overkill sick website productions –from some of the culprits who pay for them and probably close to all of those who produce them (because they get paid more)– goes something like this:

“Hey, it’s free advertising; we should take full advantage by putting in a tab for each of our 26 different color and style shirt buttons (or accounting services, or surgical procedures, or pizza toppings, or . . .)

“And then, when visitors click on any of those tabs, they’ll be delivered to a complete showroom smorgasbord of 472 applications for each of our 26 buttom colors and styles (or accounting services, or surgical procedures, or pizza toppings, or . . .)

“And then, we’ll give ’em our 183-page limited guarantee and return policy (or insurance reimbursement) requirements –in really small type of course, and in a rolling scroll window that’s just an inch high so it doesn’t take too much space and so it will give an instant ulcer to anyone looking to return to earlier verbiage that they may have passed over too quickly.

“And then, we’ll throw in 47 testimonial pages — mostly from cousins and neighbors, but who cares? We should have a few pages on why we’re “green” and some more on our “sustainability” efforts with recyclable buttons. Let’s put in maps and stuff in case anyone wants to find us, and how about a dozen pages on the history of our company since 1762? We could throw in a blog and a weekly puzzle to . . .”

It may be time to take

your reality temperature.

Websites have become burdensome. Many have lost touch with the very markets they seek to impress and influence. Others simply seem to reflect an inability to focus. No one accountant or surgeon or pizza parlor can be all things to all people. So back off. Rethink your message.

What is the one single main product or service message you want your target customers/clients/patients to see and hear? Can you spare visitors the company history that no doubt has great importance to your great great great grandfather’s uncle’s sister’s brother who founded the company. With apologies for abruptness: Nobody cares.

When a business or professional practice has a website that overwhelms, it actually UN-sells people. Visitors typically shake their heads and delete. They don’t want to know that the site sponsor can do everything under the sun. They want to know they’ve found a resource that specializes in what they need.

So, what’s the trick to be able to do that? My advice? Hire a professional writer. Forget about “SEO Experts” who will talk the dollars right out of your wallet, and the web designers who will represent your venture the way they think will win them an award, and don’t burden your staff with it. Get great content written. The rest is easy.

Like a resume, your website just needs to get prospective customers, clients and patients to your door on on your phone or in your in box. Fewer than 5% of all websites actually make significant sales.

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

An open letter to the President . . .

CONGRATULATIONS, Mr. Obama,

for a job well done.

Now let’s get down to business!

Ah, at last. For what appears to many to be the first time since assuming the Presidency, you have actually acted in what most of the world’s eyes and ears would surely agree to be a “Presidential manner.” You have risen to the task of delivering a non-political Presidential attitude. Thank you. It’s a burst of fresh air.

Your “watch” has brought a piece of justice to America. Thank you!

It is time now for you, personally (and Presidentially), to bring justice to America’s entrepreneurs . . . to recognize and accept that it is SMALL business that ultimately holds the key to turning around this miserable economy, which many small business owners feel your political agenda has been insensitively fueling.

You stated today:

“Today we have been reminded as a

   nation, there is nothing we can’t do.”

Your statement no doubt includes being able to rise above political campaign agendas that have fostered one unrealistic attempt after another to turn the economy around. And I don’t think anyone faults you for trying.

But, clearly, you have not respected entrepreneurial small business and professional practice owners and operators and managers. Your economic recovery pretenses have done nothing except increase taxpayer burdens -especially for small business– and have only served to mushroom the federal deficit.

Your statement would also seem to include being able to follow the footprints of history in stimulating —instead of bumbling corporate giants and incompetent government agencies— small entrepreneurial business startups.

Surely you have the proof of this wisdom. You need look no further than the genuine job-creation pathways carved out by new small business enterprises. It is there that you will find true economic growth.

Americans are universally proud today of the military intelligence and guts it took to destroy the evil leader of the terrorist world.

But we continue to remain hopelessly (and needlessly, many believe) bogged down in this economic quagmire.

We are paying more than we should have to pay at the gas pump. This means that we are having to charge customers, clients, and patients more than we want to for shipping and transportation. And higher shipping costs mean higher food prices. Of course you know this. But you’ve been trying to put out the fire with gasoline!

These are not whining complaints. But the solution –contrary to your recent suggestion– is NOT to get a more fuel-efficient car. It is also NOT to stop using FedEx and UPS in favor of the less expensive (and totally incompetent) US Postal Service. Neither is the solution to eat more junk food because it’s cheaper. 

Many of us who own and run small businesses, Mr. Obama, are overtaxed and over-regulated to the point of bankruptcy. Instead of being free to innovate and lead the way (as in all economic turnarounds), we are forced to follow those who have no business sense, understanding, or experience . . . and who are unwilling to seek it!

Can we now finally sit down and talk about politically-UNencumbered, real and genuine tax incentives that encourage new small businesses to create new jobs and reward them for succeeding?

Can we do this with real small business leaders — NOT the corporate executive-laden SBA, or government Economic Development groups, or professorial think-tanks?

Can we do it now? Are you willing to take a reasonable entrepreneurial risk and sit down with some real small business people? Will you listen instead of defend? Will you process instead of preach? Will you give America’s 30 million small businesses genuine incentives and a free hand to go to work to solve the economy puzzle? 

America loves that the first step behind the promise of rooting out terrorism has at long last been honored. Now it’s time to return the economy–the issue that undermines all others— to the point that allows people to regain their dignity and self-respect without reliance on government handouts and token pats on the head.    

We have earned more than lip service, Mr. Obama.

Can we do it? Can we do it now? 

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Going under

and around

business problems

guarantees no solution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

BEING TOO GRATEFUL?

Is there such a thing!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You get it, right? Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

You’ll thank yourself.

Then what?

What’s next?

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

. . . Hey, thank you! 

                           

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 931.854.0474

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Pretending to enjoy the

Royal Wedding Kiss when you

haven’t even had a hug

since mid-March                                                                                      

Trying to “think green” when there’s none in your wallet. Rooting for the San Diego Padres and Minnesota Twins to finally break into double digit season wins when your own favorite team is tumbling into last place. Thinking that yet another White House-prompted stomp on small business is crushing . . . until you see the tornado devastation.

Laughing with a new puppy and new baby until it’s scoop-up and diaper-change time, or waking up to wailing cries and incessant barking. Thinking that Mid-East violent turmoils are too far away to be concerned with. (Are they?) Struggling to reconcile government reports of climbing unemployment with government reports of growing job creation.

Network media news ends every broadcast with sports, weather and some new medical discovery of traumatizing side effects (including the possibility of, of course, death or extended misery, or both) from breathing air, drinking water, sleeping too long or too short, eating health food, getting check-ups, singing . . . you know the rest.

Gas prices are headed to $8 a gallon, but not to worry; it’s okay, we’re told because gas prices in Europe are even higher and have always been higher.

We’re just starting to catch up with other countries.

Oh, sorry, I should have known there was a good reason to not be upset with having to second-mortgage my house to pay for gas for my car.

Gee, I guess I’ll just take it on the chin that skyrocketing food costs result from higher shipping costs which result from higher gas prices which –advises Mr. Obama– we should just suck it up about, or just trade in our cars to get more energy-efficient vehicles so that rising gas prices don’t become an issue.

Well, of course. Why didn’t I think of that? 

Every human on Earth has a different comfort zone. Physical, emotional and intellectual comfort parameters vary as dramatically as individual personalities. Think about that before you approve the next marketing creation (and accompanying expense) that’s thrown your way. . . especially for misguided online productions: the majority.

Your comfort zone, were you to draw a circle around your body, can vary considerably depending on location, environment, circumstance, and others around you — also where you were born and raised. Human space needed to function comfortably in Hong Kong is far less than that required in rural Texas, or Manhattan vs. Waterloo, Iowa.   

Get outta my face! Get outta my space!

Just how far do you “go with the flow”? How does physical proximity impact personal selling? Presentations and demonstrations? Business meetings and lunches? Golf? Giving visitors tours of your facility? What about the use of space in your ads, banners, direct mail, packaging and labeling, client reports, promotional materials, forms?

Then there’s the past, present, and future comfort zones. We can gain great comfort from reminiscing so it’s easy to get ourselves hooked on thinking about past events, ideas, and people. The future is at least equally compelling to many. And drifting periodically for short visits into both arenas can enhance the present here-and-now moment.

Staying in touch as much as possible with the present moment is what allows us to function best and most productively day to day. It also gives us the internal emotional support necessary to make adjustments that allow us flexibility in our subjective (and generally conditioned) physical proximity comfort zones.

When you sense your comfort zone moving into the “Twilight Zone,” take some deep breaths and recognize the choice to go there or stay where you are, or cut out some new paths, is completely your own.

Your “zone” is your OWN!

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 Reported today on satellite radio news . . .

Nearly 20% of all U.S. income

now comes from the

government!

Why bother working

anymore?

WITH GRATEFUL (Cough! Cough!) APPRECIATION FOR GROWING THIS PREDICAMENT INTO A FULL-BLOWN SMALL BUSINESS QUAGMIRE . . .

• THANKS TO: Our never-ending bad economy that we’ve been hearing for two-and-a-half years has repeatedly “turned the corner” and is “getting better” (uh, do politicians ever fill their gas tanks, notice foreclosures, or artificially-inflated unemployment rates?)

• THANKS TO: The complete absence of decisive leadership in the White House (which serves among many other things, to facilitate the evaporation of America’s world leadership posture and respect, and actually set us on a track of anxious retreat in the eyes of emerging nations). 

• THANKS TO: Mr. Obama’s incessant efforts to create boundless dependency on government incompetence (dramatically marked by government’s ever-present lack of business sense, business experience, businesslike conduct, and entrepreneurial spirit . . . the same entrepreneurial spirit that made America great to start with!).

• THANKS TO: The reckless government spending sprees that embrace idealistic socialist agendas at the expense of citizens losing their jobs, their homes, and their dignity (and front and center is the utter insanity that’s responsible for continuing efforts to ram a cataclysmic-ally extravagant and dibilitatingly expensive healthcare plan down the already constricted throats of small business).

Now you perhaps know more than you want to know, but –ah– what’s behind this leading of lambs to slaughter?

Could it possibly be that we have a government intent on gaining voter control by making all citizens and businesses beholden and grateful for the survivalist handouts that ooze out of wasted government programs?

And how do we initiate a great escape? How do we ever return to the solidity of national purpose and world respect and the high human standards this nation has been built on?

The answer, my friends, is NOT “blowin’ in the wind.”

The answer is NOT in redistributing the wealth, nor in providing safe haven to all illegal immigrants, nor taxing small businesses –literally– to death.

The answer is in taking action now. The answer is in standing tall for your small business enterprise and ambitions. The answer is in voicing your objections to increased and increasing government control and over-regulation. The answer is in doing the very best you can possibly do every day to strengthen and anchor your business interests.

The answer is to fight corruption and politics

with integrity and heart,

The answer is to light your own fire and keep it burning in the minds of all those who support you and the work you do — your employees, customers, suppliers, advisors, investors, and the geographical communities where your business lives.

The answer lies within the purpose of your business soul.

Take your opportunities and run with them.  

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

ALL THERE IS

FOR CERTAIN

. . . IS YOU!

Becoming an entrepreneur is not like becoming a corporate guy or (thank heaven) a politician. In Entrepreneurville, there are no rules about how to think, or operate, or create, or market, or finance.

All there is for certain is you!  

Why is that different from corporate life? You may have your own team, but you’re not part of somebody else’s.

All there is for certain is you!

And surely you haven’t the time or inclination to indulge in the under-pinning of all corporate existence: analysis paralysis. By the time your corporate counterpart initiates some market study, you could introduce your product, service or idea, take it back, adjust it, re-introduce it and be making money!

What makes entrepreneurship different from politics? For openers, winning popularity contests seldom has any value. And, for closers, truly successful entrepreneurs only win by exercising consistent integrity. In between the openers and closers is a vast wasteland of propaganda, distortions and outright lies embedded in every election.

It’s making your ideas work that counts. It’s finding ways –channels, roads, avenues, strategies– to get from where your ideas are now, to where you want them to be.

Sometimes that “finding” process needs the help of others. But if you’re an entrepreneur with great ideas and no ability to engage and manage others to provide the help you need, you’re not likely to ever get where you want to be.

The number one reason for new business failure is “poor management.”

So start at the beginning. Realize that having great ideas, and being driven with burning desire to achieve results with them is paramount. But knowing how to manage things, people, systems, and operations to get your ideas on the launchpad is an equally critical challenge.

Spare yourself false starts.

When you jump the gun, rush to judgment, make assumptions, take shortcuts –even though these steps might be well within your comfort zone because you’re an action-oriented kind of person– you are setting yourself up to take huge (and probably expensive) unreasonable risks.

True entrepreneurs take only reasonable risks! 

It is the utmost and arguably most important of all reasonable risks for an entrepreneur to take: to expend the time and energy to gobble up every available shred of information about how to communicate clearly with and motivate others . . . how to be a leader and exercise productive leadership that’s followed eagerly.

Of course there are many behavioral and personality traits associated with entrepreneurial instincts, and those are not to be underestimated for the values they bring to the table, but genuinely successful entrepreneurs are historically those who cut out and apply big chunks of management expertise and leadership know-how.

If this subject matter gives you queasy feelings, or you start to hear your knees knocking when someone suggests that a management psychology or professional growth and development or therapeutic group experience might serve your entrepreneurial pursuits big time, take that road less traveled. It pays the biggest dividends.

All there is for certain, you know? 

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 931.854.0474

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Like Nero with Rome,

Obama Fiddles

While America Burns

And not unlike one of Aesop’s Fables, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, mainstream media talking heads reported once again today that the U.S. economy is on the road to recovery. How nice. Do YOU believe it any more?

Some of these feeble excuses for “reporters” need to talk to the plummeting dollar, soaring fuel costs, unemployment lines, and some of the Americans I’ve felt saddened to see rummaging through fastfood and convenience store garbage pails and dumpsters for food scraps.

Has your business been interviewed? 

We have of course heard this type of hype (floating somewhere between make-believe and outright lying) every day since Mr, Obama moved into the White House.

Checked the gas pumps lately?

I mean, really folks. First of all, we who visit this blog are small business and professional practice owners and managers. We are entrepreneurs. We are professional salespeople. We represent the leading edge in business, technology, education and healthcare.

We–to use Mr. Obama’s own “words of the week”—are not stupid!

$4 a gallon and rising? 

Even IF gas pump prices were simply a fuel-for-our-vehicles issue, we might live with it. Unfortunately, it’s Dominoes! Skyrocketing fuel costs mean skyrocketing delivery costs and skyrocketing food costs and skyrocketing travel and airfare costs. All these “burstings in air” and it’s not even July 4th!

And to top it all off, the grand tsunami of costs that are tangled up with “Obamacare” will be paid by small business for decades to come, providing free healthcare for those unwilling to earn it, including (unbelievably) illegal aliens!

If you’re trying to figure all of this out, think politics. Reality is that we do not have a national leader who understands or practices or even cares about leadership. He fiddles while our nation’s reputation and respect dissolves away. What would happen if you tried to get away with that in your business?

He fiddles while his reckless socialist agenda spending disregards the lives of small business owners and managers who work hard for a living, who contribute most to society to begin with, who have the most promise to offer for real economic turnaround. Why? Because he doesn’t care and he doesn’t get it. All that matters is politics . . . 

Voter dependency delivers voter votes!

(Listen to his speeches. They are A~L~L campaign speeches. A~L~L.) 

The more that government continues to intercede in our lives and businesses, the greater the dependency on government that’s created.

The more dependent on government we become, the more beholden we become for what government decides to give us, the more we vote for government generosity in order to live.

Is that sick or what?

Sorry, fellow business owners, but I doubt this is why any of us are in business. Lured by The Great American Dream, and the rights granted us as “We the people” by the Constitution of the United States –and as one nation under God– we are in business to help ourselves, our families, those for whom we can create jobs, and our communities.

We are in business to create opportunities to give back to the communities that support us from the only place that makes sense — from a position of strength. 

Our present government seeks to be THE ONLY source of strength.

Frustrating? Inconceivable? This is why I will not let go of these issues. They are at least as important for each of us to deal with as our our own employees, customers, balance sheets, income statements, brands, operations, revenue streams, and innovative leadership. Our federal government is over-stepping its bounds every single day.

Isn’t it time to step up to the plate and make your voice heard? There are 30 million small businesses in America. Just imagine what’s possible if each of us would just speak up . . .  

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Is your business on thin ice, 

racing around in circles,

bashing competitors in the

teeth, and getting nowhere?

If your answer to the headline question above is “YES,” then it’s probably time to pack up your puck and hang up your skates, or look for a different sport for your business.

The problem is not how you got where you are, nor is it –at this point– knowing where you’re going. Like extracting an accident victim from under a car or caved-in roof, concern one needs to be: How to get yourself out.

Entrepreneurs often dig themselves into holes (especially financial ones) while they have their heads down and are charging forward trying to make their ideas work.

The tendency is to grasp desperately at the first straws offered by the first investor who comes along and seems willing to plunk down enough rolls of quarters to post bail and get the new business venture out of the penalty box. Oh, sorry, back to hockey. (I never did like fighting with sticks, and on skates no less.)

The point is that jumping at an expression of interest from a venture capitalist, who may want to own 51-75% of your business is never a good idea . . . unless you’re a serial entrepreneur and looking to get in, make a quick killing, and then get out. And even then, it may not be a wise move. S~L~O~W yourself down. This is marriage.  

Venture capital (VC) deals are particularly risky if you know down deep that the business is teetering (no, not Twitter Tweeting) on the brink of bankruptcy (which is not always evident on the surface . . . and which many entrepreneurs refuse to accept or think about even when it’s staring them in the face!). 

First off, most VC professionals don’t make a practice of investing in incipient bankruptcies, so –even though our unprofessional federal government has proven that it thinks nothing of throwing good tax-dollars after bad business operations– a floundering business startup is not likely to see any real bailout options come along.

Unless money comes from an “Angel Investor.”

An Angel Investor might be Uncle Louie or Auntie Oprah or some recently re-acquainted long-lost college or Army buddy, or a wealthy next door neighbor who’s been watching the business take over the garage and who figures he can always foreclose on your property if a loan isn’t paid, and become a serious land-owner.

Before a struggling venture surfaces long enough to search for financial relief of any kind, it makes the most sense to look first INSIDE to see if overhead and/or operations can be trimmed or scaled back first without sacrificing the essence of the business’s product or service offerings. Note the word “essence.” (“Quality” and “Value” are variables.)

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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