SEE SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT IN RED AT END OF POST

Your Role In History As An Entrepreneur

C R E A T I V I T Y

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY written and published by Peggy Salvatore

Many entrepreneurial thinking-and-doing hardliners are justifiably quick to distinguish between creativity and innovation! They say ANYone can have creative ideas, but the true measure of success in entrepreneurland is innovation–taking a creative idea all the way through to the point of completion.

 

Just dreaming up a new behind-the-knees deodorant, for example, means nothing without also being able to produce accurate cost estimates, ingredient and package testing plans, financing and manufacturing sources, liability issues, distribution/warehousing arrangements and costs, marketing and branding strategies and tactics, etc., etc. etc.

 

That said, we need to be reminded that all of these, and other innovation-based issues, nonetheless begin with a single creative idea . . . the adopted child of every entrepreneur!

Peter Diamandis, President of Singularity University and Founder of the XPrize, is known for promoting “moonshot thinking,” as are the people at Google X. Moonshot thinking, as Diamandis describes it, doesn’t seek to achieve 10% sales but rather 10X more sales. Moonshot thinking is at the heart of the entrepreneurial spirit driving our culture into the New Economy. It is a creative kind of boundlessness that sees where nothing is and imagines what can be, full blown, in color, in 3D.

Entrepreneurs who will succeed well into future decades have a 360-degree view of the world, and it is magnified by a high-powered telescope. When the world was more linear, it was enough for an entrepreneur to see around corners and make an educated guess about where the world, his business and the two were going together. But today, an entrepreneur who merely sees around the next corner isn’t seeing far enough to guide a business into the New Economy.

SUCCESS calls for the kind of vision and creativity

that combines what we know now with what we are

working on– and what we haven’t yet figured out!

It calls for the kind of disciplined creative genius that birthed the light bulb, the airplane, the automobile, the Statue of Liberty, and Superman. It requires the kind of creativity usually associated with the arts . . . creativity that calls into being, something that has no grounding in the present and can’t be imagined by the minds of others . . . David, Mona Lisa,The Sistine Chapel, The Beatles, the pyramids, the Ferris Wheel, space travel, comic strip character Dick Tracy with a 2-way, video wristwatch in 1946 — long before television became a common household device, and very long before cellphones.

Creativity calls forth the left brain (which dictates outgoing, communicative right-side-of-the-body activities and associated analytical, practical, methodical thinking) in concert with the right brain (which dictates introvert-ish, artistic, left-side-of-the-body activities marked by free-spirited and unencumbered out-of-the-box thinking) a rare combination of thinking and behavior not often associated with business decision making.

Internet Joe [See earlier posts] can typically make cross-brain connections. He is wired to think out of the box (“Box? What box? I didn’t see any box!”) and yet to organize it in a way that his imaginings are usable and replicate-able. Viable businesses, after all, aren’t built on one-of-a-kind products or services.

Because creativity pulls in so many different skills and types of intelligence, great products and services are mostly built by cooperative teams. Creativity can and should be managed to result in something truly valuable. Great project managers who understand the creative process and can corral moonshot thinking are essential members of these teams, and every entrepreneur needs a good PM if they aren’t one themselves.

Creativity is a team sport.

Creativity isn’t as lone an enterprise as it might be romantically portrayed, a baggy-eyed, frizzle-haired Einstein sleepless and obsessed. Yes, creative entrepreneurs need to be very creative to envision what’s possible. But speed is often the key to success, and acceleration happens when teams multiply their vision geometrically and when project managers assemble the pieces into viable products and services.

Dream, be agile and connected. And then once the idea is born . . . then: innovate!

# # #
C’mon back TOMORROW 9/24 for Day 13.
Find out if YOUR sense of adventuresomeness measures up!
# # #

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Sign up NOW for NOVEMBER 29th (Sunday Night after Thanksgiving for 2 hours) $99 LIMITED SEATING COACHING WEBINAR: “Accelerating Your Business Growth and Development.”

Get fresh, informed, proven insights geared specifically to your business market, your biggest problems, your biggest opportunities.

With Hal and Peggy’s wealth of business coaching experience, you’ll learn what successful entrepreneurs need to be thinking and doing NOW. Simply call 931.854.0474 Central Time: 11AM to 4PM Monday-Friday for details and to reserve your seat!

———-
For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US      Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Thanks for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

Your Role In History As An Entrepreneur

I  N  T  E  G  R  I  T  Y

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY written and published by Peggy Salvatore

First of all, without integrity, you can stop reading right now. Don’t waste your time trying to lead an organization—or even yourself—because if you do not have integrity in all you do, you cannot perform any of the necessary actions required to grow and lead a successful organization.

INTEGRITY. Is it more than not cheating on your expense account? More than not pocketing stuff in a retail store? More than lying on your taxes or to your partner or associates? Your landlord? Your family?

Integrity is all-inclusive. Maintaining integrity half the time is like being half-pregnant. Integrity has to do with your treatment of all people all of the time.

It includes all of your communications and the commitments you make – written (including texts, emails, blogs, and site content) and oral (including personal meetings, telephone calls, and electronic transmissions).

If you say one thing to one person and another thing to someone else, don’t expect anyone to listen to you or follow you. They cannot follow you because you have proven that you cannot be trusted; if they follow you, they don’t know where they’ll end up.

If there is any incongruity in your actions or words, you will lose the respect and trust of your employees and everyone else who knows you, including importantly (especially if it’s your own business) your customers.

The reality of  this thinking applies not only to all your business dealings, but all your dealings in life.

 You cannot effectively be one person in your public life and another person in your private life.

Without integrity, you have (or will likely end up having) nothing.

An individual with Integrity is one who is wholly integrated. All pieces of that person’s life line up and make sense. A fully integrated person acts from the same core of values in her or his actions, at work with employees, at home with family and friends, at the gym, in the restaurant, on the phone . . . standing in line.

Integrity is about trust and consistency.

When others let you into their world, whether on a screen, or through a product or service, deserve a certain basic level of trust. And people with Integrity are honest in all cases, which is a demonstration of respect for others.

People who are used to treating others with respect can be expected to treat customers with respect, too. It’s a behavior that comes naturally.

People with Integrity have nothing to hide.

What you see is the actual sum of the man or woman. This is important for several reasons. Generosity tends to accompany Integrity. People who are fully integrated are free to be open and that means they are free to share their ideas, their friends, their lives and their resources.

As a corollary to generosity, people with Integrity usually have an abundance mentality. They aren’t hoarders. This openness is a prerequisite to have a giving personality, one that believes there is enough to go around. An open hand gives and receives in a virtuous cycle.

Another quality of people of Integrity is their outward focus. The natural integration of their lives means that their business is a member of the community it serves. In the Internet world, some entrepreneurs have a global focus, so that community can be near or far.

An Internet entrepreneur may be the leader of a company of one as a solopreneur, or may lead a company of hundreds. But the same rules apply. As the leader of your organization, Integrity is the make-or-break personal quality.

Integrity is the foundation of success in any
venture and is particularly critical to
long-term successful leadership
at any level. Entrepreneurship is no exception.

Let’s close this discussion by pointing out that this is not a sermon. None of us is perfect. We are, after all is said and done, humans. That requires us to each have faults. The intent of this post is to serve as a reminder that—as motivational guru Brian Tracy so aptly paraphrases: “We become what we think about most of the time.” Thinking more about integrity helps us to gain more of it. And that’s as good for our businesses as it is for ourselves and for those around us every day.

For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US     

Open Minds Open Doors

Thanks for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

SEE SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT IN RED AT END OF POST

Your Role In History As An Entrepreneur

CHARACTERISTICS OF 

THE NEW ENTREPRENEUR

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY written and published by Peggy Salvatore

Many long-standing entrepreneurial success characteristics remain on the front-lines. Reasonable risk-taking and possessing of some mysterious instincts are but two examples. NOW, as we approach the 2020s, other “quieter” ingredients are gaining traction and emerging as higher level success characteristics. Today, Peggy leads us to four of these: Nimble. Flexible. Responsive. Personal.

About 10 years ago, when my three kids were all in high school, I decided to go back to school to fulfill a dream of earning an advanced degree in economics. Okay, geek alert! Yes,I know that not every girl’s dream is to study what most people have always seemed to consider such a dismal science. But it was mine.

A for-profit online university called Cardean University advertised an MBA with a specialization in economics and strategy. The curriculum was developed by professors from The London School of Economics, the University of Chicago and Stanford. And I reasoned that they couldn’t advertise that fact if it weren’t true.

Yet, I still wasn’t sure of the value of an online degree in the real world. I phoned a friend I thought would know the answer. When I asked her if an online MBA would be akin to getting your degree on the back of a matchbook cover (ah, you do remember matchbooks, yes?;).

Okay, so my friend said the credibility issues I was concerned with were no longer the case, and that in the real world, virtual degrees counted just fine. (Eventually, Cardean was sold so my degree ended up being from a bricks-and-mortar school anyway.)

Here I was, attending classes and studying online, and learning real stuff that I still use.

I had classmates all around the globe — many from private sector corporations like General Motors and others from federal entities like the U.S. Army — which had a value all by itself.

I share this here because the Internet has become and remains a legitimate business and educational channel. Unlike the fly-by-night money order, cash-for-gold side street vendor-type people who open their virtual doors with the intention of fleecing the public or churning cash, and whose daily email bombardments we all readily block or delete, I suggest they will not ever gain credibility among credible people. In fact, it’s unlikely they will ever even get as far as the cash-for-gold fleece-master.

The Internet is designed for integrity. Internet Joe needs to have valuable wares he is exchanging for income. If not, he’ll be sniffed out and escorted out of town. So if integrity is the bedrock of business, the Internet is the place where it is most solid. After all, who among us wants to do business with the fleece-master? On the Internet, you probably have less chance of that happening than you do of winning some big-time cash prize at the carnival coming through town.

For Internet Joe, this is good news. The foundational principle of all business is that the owner must have integrity to conduct business successfully and continually. Nowhere is this more likely that in the place where one star versus five stars. Comment boxes and the online star and thumbs-up reviews are available to everyone.

So, if like me, you are concerned that perhaps a virtual business might be less legitimate than a storefront on Main Street, my friend’s “take” on virtual classes was right. The Internet business playing field is for real, and that means you must be, too.

Besides integrity, Internet Joe has a few other characteristics that ideally suit him for success in a rapidly unfolding New Economy.

Internet Joe is:

• NIMBLE: He assembles the pieces necessary to build an online presence.
• FLEXIBLE: He is working his way around obstacles and making adjustments as the terrain changes daily. Updates that change the way his online meeting service functions? He’s on top of those.
• RESPONSIVE: He is always “on alert” for his customers. Customers get answers from his smartphone on the road, his tablet on vacation, and his home office on a 24/7 global schedule. Internet Joe responds with spontaneity!
• PERSONAL: When his name is out there, his Facebook, Pinterest and far more private information is just a click away. Customers know that.

RETURN HERE TOMORROW 9/22 FOR DAY 11

AND THE TRUTH ABOUT INTEGRITY

# # #

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Sign up NOW for NOVEMBER 29th (Sunday Night after Thanksgiving for 2 hours) $99 LIMITED SEATING COACHING WEBINAR: “Accelerating Your Business Growth and Development.”

Get fresh, informed, proven insights geared specifically to your business market, your biggest problems, your biggest opportunities.

With Hal and Peggy’s wealth of business coaching experience, you’ll learn what successful entrepreneurs need to be thinking and doing NOW. Simply call 931.854.0474 Central Time: 11AM to 4PM Monday-Friday for details and to reserve your seat!

———-
For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US      Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Thanks for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

Your Role in History as an Entrepreneur

Low Cost, High Quality

AND Personal Service

in the New Economy

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY

written and published by Peggy Salvatore

INTERNET JOE has cost and customer service advantages
that elude the big boys. Customers buying from YOU
—the Internet entrepreneur—in the new economy,
enjoy High Quality, Low Cost AND Personal Service.
Purchase from a major corporation yields only one of these three.

1.   HIGH QUALITY: The owner of a small Internet business is often a former employee or consultant with a large organization. That means the small Internet business is run with the same degree of expertise and quality as you get from a major player without the major price tag. When the global corporation laid off or downsized its expertise, that talent found another outlet and became INTERNET JOE.

2.   LOW COST: With a virtual retail storefront, the cost of business for Internet Joe is minimal. So the pricing of products and services through an entrepreneurial Internet business is far lower than the global enterprise that is supporting a huge infrastructure.

In fact, INTERNET ENTREPRENEURING has turned what used to be the price advantage of scale on its head. In the days of large manufacturing dominance, “bigger” meant competitive pricing due to volume. But in today’s New Economy, bigger now means more overhead and higher fixed costs.

NOW
. . . the small business entrepreneur

holds the price advantage.

3.   PERSONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE: When you buy a product or service from an Internet entrepreneur, she or he is very happy to have your business. He or she is running a little virtual store to meet your specific needs. You are his/her bread and butter so—as a customer—you get responsive and agile customer care.

THAT MEANS

. . . as your needs evolve and the Internet entrepreneur sees the evolution by staying in close personal contact, he/she can respond and change with you in lockstep.

. . . due to small size, Internet Joe (as the virtual Mom and Pop) can pivot long before large corporations can get the word that a market has changed.

It can take a large corporation a year or more to engage its strategic planning office, hire a consultancy, conduct an environmental scan, do a SWOT analysis, report to the board, and consider a change in direction.

Meanwhile, the Internet entrepreneur has been

at the customer’s side from the git-go!

Real Internet entrepreneurs are usually hungry critters. With the same kind of determination that drove their forefathers and foremothers—the Mom and Pops—they stake out their virtual storefront (get a URL), pay rent (server space), pay vendors (Internet services to run their business such as mail clients, shopping cart software, writers, graphic designers, etc.) and worry about their online enterprises 24/7.

They probably sweep their own virtual doorstep or hire the kid next door to do it. The daily sense of responsibility alone makes it a great place for customers to send their business. These small online business owners get their customers with self-determination and by NOT acting corporate.

Let’s talk more tomorrow about the

virtues of online business owners.

# # #

When you need some personal, one-on-one coaching beyond the Internet offerings, give us a call. (Direct line numbers on masthead above.) In the meantime, follow us HERE for FREE for the next 25 weekdays to see what others think, and discover some of the surprise findings we have in store for you—new and proven “mental apps” to apply to your own entrepreneurial and business development!

See you here tomorrow 9/15 for Day 6.

———-
For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US  Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Thank You for Your Visit and Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Your Role in History as an Entrepreneur

HISTORICAL BUSINESS

PIVOT POINTS

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY

written and published by Peggy Salvatore

Yesterday, we touched on the idea of Internet business      opportunities being the new $390-an-ounce gold   . . . . . . . and concluded it’s going to go way higher
for “Frontier Pioneers!”

I likened the technological frontier to early Americans who joined a wagon train to head into the Western American frontier in the middle of the 19th Century looking for un-mined opportunities.

All of this set the stage for today’s ancient question:

How can you know where you’re going
if you don’t know where you came from?

In a virtual world, un-mined opportunities are virtual too. If you think about the history of business over the last 500 years in a linear way, it is clear that we are heading into a third revitalization of the world economy as people adapt to new opportunities that technology has opened.

Some have referred to this epoch as “The Third Wave.”

In the first wave of opportunity, after sailors dramatically proved to mapmakers (by not falling off the horizon edge) that the world was not flat, global business opportunities opened up.

A merchant class emerged and dislodged the traditional power centers built around the kings and kingdoms of antiquity. Global tradewinds—in essence—democratized business. Wealth spread to a whole large new group of people willing to take risks.

The establishment of American colonies on a large, undeveloped land mass created yet more opportunities for new political and economic models to be tested safely away from the established old controls of entrenched power.

Merchant mentality spread to the previously disenfranchised masses and –VOILA!—the small business owner was born.

Mom and Pop shops proliferated beyond the old world butcher-baker-candlestick maker paradigm.
Mom and Pops opened banks.
Mom and Pops built all types of small businesses to support the growing manufacturing base built on bigger dollars funded by oil, coal, lumber, railroad and textile tycoons of the late 19th century.
A few Mom and Pops became franchises, and birthed their own corporations as well.

In the 20th Century, opportunity spread down to Everyman. It spread the same way that technology and genetics spread throughout human history–mostly through war–but now more frequently aided by commerce.

Progress through commerce became the late 20th Century model. It started to appear that the world economy would advance by peaceful means. War, it seemed, was becoming an outdated method of trans- ferring knowledge, wealth, power and genetics.

Then in the first decade of the 21st Century, something went horribly awry. War overtook commerce as the global force for economic power.

As we look at the trajectory of history, however, war no longer appears to be a sustainable model for economic power and growth. Let me suggest—crossed fingers behind my back—that war is having its last stand, albeit a very nasty one.

The unrelenting wars of today, threatening huge swaths of humanity and the land on which they live, seem more like the last gasp of a dying paradigm in the face of the Internet and the connectivity of Everyman, everywhere, as the new economy.

How dare I say that? Tune in here tomorrow!

# # #

SPECIAL   A N N O U N C E M E N T

Sign up NOW for NOVEMBER 29th (Sunday Night after Thanksgiving)

LIMITED SEATING COACHING WEBINAR:

“ENTREPRENEURS ARE AGENTS OF CHANGE . . . Accelerating Your Business”

Get fresh, informed, proven insights geared specifically to your business market, your biggest problems, your biggest opportunities.

With Hal and Peggy’s wealth of business coaching experience, you’ll learn how YOU match up with what successful entrepreneurs are thinking and doing RIGHT NOW. Get ideas you never imagined. Gain the traction you need within 2 hours — not days or weeks or months. Simply call 931.854.0474 Central Time: 11AM to 4PM Monday-Friday for details, to explain your business pursuit focus and to reserve your seat! $99 total for 2 hours. Satisfaction Guaranteed.

———-

For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

See you here tomorrow 9/11 for Day 4.

———-
For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US  Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Thank You for Your Visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

Your Role in History as an Entrepreneur 

TWITTER FEED FROM SYRIA

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY

written and published by Peggy Salvatore

Remember the Arab Spring? What was that, anyway?   People protesting for freedom, I think. People

    throwing off the shackles of oppression —
as portrayed by the press. That was the official meme.

Like King George issuing an edict to America’s colonies, the official meme was received with a jaundiced eye by the people in the middle of the action and their Internet friends around the globe.

Let’s face it. People are playing video games with other people all around the world, all the time. And global business ties keep everyone in close proximity to every-one else via Skype or a short jet hop.

Like never before in the history of the world, people get to know each other (or at least a little ABOUT each other). And it gets harder each day for an official story to go unchallenged. So it was with the Arab Spring.

As tumult rocked the Middle East, video gamers texted each other across and between continents. They started Twitter feeds. People talked about what was going on.

This dynamic affects business. At the same time as global corporations are capable of spreading influence instantaneously, so is the small on- line entrepreneur. If knowledge is power, power is no longer hierarchi- cal. Power is flat. It is matrixed. It favors the nimble.

Global corporations may be SEO and Google search engine masters. But today’s Internet entrepreneur has a real shot at reaching customers in her/his space using various networking opportunities in his/her field — darting around, past, over and under the global giants.

The average Internet Joe can connect with other Internet Joe’s and Jane’s in small to medium sized businesses and make an excellent living working for individuals who need his expertise.

Like the video game friends texting real-time human concern during the Arab Spring, personal networks have a flexibility and humanity that allow them to reach people on a level that the major players cannot.

The Internet offers small service and product providers the same, if not better, opportunities for personal service and connection to many poten- tial customers around the world as those exercised by huge multi-national corporations.

Customers benefit from low cost, high quality and personal service using Internet Joe businesses operating in the new economy.

This democratization of knowledge and power has leveled the business playing field. It has also leveled the political playing field which is, if not the same thing, something very highly related and correlated.

Just as politics attempts to control who gets what, and who decides, the proliferation of information puts control into the hands of the aver- age Internet Joe. He is the customer and the provider as the flattened power matrix envelopes everyone with an Internet connection.

From this vantage point, new products and services are being develop-  ed in a way that is not just close to the customer, but are being develop- ed in conjunction WITH the customer!

And with Internet Joe now everywhere, all the time, the New Economy transcends borders, nations and politics.

C’mon back MONDAY 9/14 for Day 5 to find out
how this impacts commerce.

When you need some personal, one-on-one coaching beyond the Internet offerings, give us a call. (Direct line numbers on masthead above.) In the meantime, follow us HERE for FREE for the next 26 days to see what others think, and discover some of the surprise findings we have in store for you—new and proven “mental apps” to apply to your own entrepreneurial and business development!

———-
For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS  or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book
# # #
Hal@Businessworks.US    Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Thank you for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

“MATTER” Matters!

In just this past week, without even trying, and with minimal exposure to advertising, I’ve seen or heard the following:

• Black Lives Matter!
• Police Lives Matter!
• All Lives Matter!
• People Matter! (Sub shop chain)
• Dog Food Matters! (Pet store chain)
• Your Gums Matter! (Plaque removal products)
• Protect What Matters! (Life insurance company)
• Kids Matter! (Goat farm sign)
• Your Package Matters! (Delivery service)
• We’re There When It Matters! (cellphone service)

And surely Firefighters Matter and EMTs Matter and Doctors and Nurses Matter. And what about animals and fish and birds and trees and plants and oceans and mountains? Can there be any doubt that Children Matter? Or Pets? How about Grandparents? Teachers? Scholars? Boy Scouts? Girl Scouts? Athletes? And then there’s Hollywood people and Politicians? (Wellllll, the jury is still out on those two).

What about Artists, Writers, and Musicians?  And Tan people? Pink people? Albino people? Yellow people? Green people? Polka-dotted people? Purple people? Handicapped people? Poor people? Rich people? Sad people? Happy people? Developmentally-disabled people? Babies?

Where does it end? Or does it?

Will “Matter(s)” be this generation’s buzzword version of “Where’s The Beef?”

Are scientists now gathering from around the world to launch their new “happening” slogan?

MATTER MATTERS!

Do we really want to go back thousands of years and pronounce that Cavemen Matter?

And there is no doubt whatsoever that ENTREPRENEURS MATTER . . . because—without them and their creations—the rest of global society would have very little to point to by way of missions accomplished.

Instead of simply choosing to accept the bottom line– that if you are a human being, a creature or planet creation, YOU matter(!)— it seems we have been instead choosing to lose trust and confidence in ourselves and buy into the implied exceptionalism of which lives matter, with the implication that no others do!

Unfortunately, stampedes are rarely stopped before innocents are trampled. But at some point each of us needs to simply stand tall, look in the mirror, and proclaim to ourselves:

I  MATTER.

# # #

Tune in here starting Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, to read and contribute comments to short DAILY excerpts from Peggy Salvatore’s new book, 30 DAYS TO A NEW ECONOMY for 30 weekdays in a row! Free. No strings attached. Why?
Because YOU Matter!

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

YOUR CLOCK IS TICKING.

ARE YOU?

Get your eyes off this blog post for just ten (10) seconds and look around you! Serious. Turn around! Scope it out! Look at what’s behind you! Go ahead! I’ll wait.

What do you see? And do you all of a sudden hear or smell or taste something you didn’t notice when you had your face buried in your screen? Odds are you hate, or are afraid of, looking behind you. Why? Because doing that puts you in touch with the awful or distant or useless or sad or irrelevant past.

Perhaps your unconscious mind is simply trying to get you to be so busy racing for the finish line, you have a “no-time-for-that” excuse for avoiding intimacy with others, or situations, or your self? So you may be acutely aware (or–the other extreme–) completely unaware of your clock ticking.

But the bigger question is: are YOU ticking? Are you so absorbed in making the most of every minute that you lose track of what you’re actually doing, where you are, what you’re looking at, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling?

Do you spend so much time looking so far ahead of yourself so often, that you forget about eating, or sleeping, or using the bathroom? Do you push yourself to achieve so much that you lose track of appreciating what you have already made happen?

It’s one thing to be independent and self-sufficient and yet quite another to barricade yourself into a brain-numbing tunnel of private pursuits. Some scientists may be . . . but great entrepreneurs are not and have very rarely been . . . hermits. Working in a vacuum makes it hard to breathe.

Besides instinct and all the “hustle” traits we hear about, the cornerstone for successful entrepreneuring is successful networking. Referrals come from networking. Ideas come from networking. Strategic partnerships come from networking. Marketable product and service enhancements come from networking. Investors come from networking. Sales come from networking. The contacts we truly need in our lives come from networking. Hermits don’t network.

No, social butterflying is not the answer. Engaging with and helping others with their pursuits is a great thing but if you don’t make a point of learning from such experiences, you are essentially helping others from a position of weakness, and that’s not much help to you or to those who win your good intentions.

No one can function as effectively by her or him self with running a business, a family, even a career, as he or she can with the support of a network.

Business and professional practice people exchange business and professional practice ideas by email and text messages and on sites like LinkedIn and Referral Key and Merchant Circle to help one another start, grow, expand, downsize, revitalize and re-invent, but nothing replaces face-to-face and telephone-voice-to-telephone-voice for effective networking.

So the solution is simple: Stay grounded in the “here-and-now” as much as possible. (Deep-breathing helps.) Telephone and in-person network whenever humanly possible. The challenge is in disciplining your SELF to build these practices into every day. Three weeks of consistent effort can turn your life around.

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

Entrepreneur Programs

Do Not Make Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship can be taught. And those who are entrepreneurs can be made more productive. But the truth is that those not born with entrepreneurial instincts and attitudes can only learn what the tools and ingredients are –and maybe even how to use some of them– yet never become entrepreneurs.

Not everyone, after all, can consistently look at problems and count them as opportunities. Thomas Edison saw his 10,000 attempts to invent the lightbulb as 9,999 ways to learn from, that led him to the last.

Just as tools and ingredients do not bake cakes, neither do they make entrepreneurs. What happens to the cake if you put the egg in at the wrong time? What happens to a well-informed entrepreneurship student who’s afraid to take reasonable risks?

Can risk-taking be taught? Maybe. But when the moment of truth arrives, will a top student who fully understands reasonable risk-taking, but lacks entrepreneurial instincts, actually take the risk she or he needs to take to achieve success?

Entrepreneurial instincts practically dictate resistance toward and distrust for authority figures. Does this preclude meaningful instruction? Who can teach entrepreneurship except an entrepreneur?

And how many entrepreneurs are driven by the entrepreneurial-essential fire-in-the-belly desire to put themselves in the middle of a complex politically-stratified organization that relies on academic authority channels to exist, when they themselves could instead be developing the next great medical treatment or mobile app, or self-tying shoelace?

Entrepreneurs are driven by making their ideas work, not by others’ ideas, not by money, not by organizational achievement. Though there undoubtedly must be some exception somewhere, my lifetime of entrepreneurial pursuits and independent coaching (to instill entrepreneurial values in organizations), has yet to uncover even one.

An entrepreneur is an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. [That’s sort of like: “if it quacks like a duck . . .”] Learning as much as one possibly can about entrepreneurial-thinking-and-doing will, without doubt, strengthen one’s business and career odds for success — on a campus, in a corporation, or in small businesses run by entrepreneur-savvy people. And, yes, even in government captivity.

Realities:

• Don’t expect such efforts to crank out legions of entrepreneurs
• Many succeed beyond their dreams without even an inkling of entrepreneurial values
• Almost every business and career can benefit by infusions of entrepreneurial energy and style

Like teaching those few-and-far-between truly brilliant musicians that they have what it takes, entrepreneurship teaching and training efforts can provide much-needed wakeup calls! Programs grounded in entrepreneurial traits, characteristics, behaviors, and action-orientation do indeed succeed. They raise consciousness for students and corporate executives who have what it takes, but who never quite cultivated the awareness levels needed to put it all together for themselves.

Deliverables include: increased innovation, productivity (less wasted time, energy, resources and money), and sales; increased customer and market awareness and responsiveness; sharper and quicker decision making; accelerated market testing; rapidly expanded networking and referral bases; enhanced communication skills; and a stronger across-the-board sense of teamwork, self-fulfillment, and self-motivation.

The ultimate entrepreneurship determinant is REALITY

. . . existing as much of the time as possible in the

“here-and-now” present moment. 

Are you?

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

ENTREPRENEUR ON THE FENCE

Like stunned fish floating aimlessly to the surface after an underwater explosion, corporations and colleges lacking entre-preneurial mindsets have been equally lifeless for decades . . . standing on the fence, trying to decide the next move. But, Aha! That is now changing.

UNLIKE entrepreneurial thinkers and doers (who have long known that an “ostrich attitude” only produces a head-full of sand), corporate and campus leaders –for very different reasons– have failed for decades to embrace entrepreneurship as a viable management methodology.

Shell-shocked by a quicksand economy, slippery-sloped job ops, and blink-of-an-eye marketplace changes, big business and academia are now beginning to regain consciousness as corporate and campus entrepreneurship training centers, programs, teams, and projects are rapidly moving front and center.

Reality is that America’s businesses and institutions of higher learning can no longer afford to manage from the “analysis paralysis” platform that requires months of committee meetings to recommend action instead of simply acting and adjusting immediately, then acting and adjusting again.

It takes an entrepreneurial mindset to dig out of the holes corporate managers and academic administrators have found themselves embedded in . . . to be airlifted out by technology-piloted choppers if need be . . . and accept the fact that entrepreneurial ideas, actions, instincts, and traits are yet again tantamount to paving the way for economic rebirth.

As quickly as we once reined in or abandoned Theory X, Theory Y, Theory Z, One-Minute Manager, Quality Circles, MBWA, Just In Time, Empowerment, Assertiveness Training, Anger Management, Lean Management, MBO, BOSCARD Management, and a hundred other such success fad formulas and piecemeal methodologies . . . we have come full circle from the 1980’s to realize we must think like entrepreneurs and act like entrepreneurs to truly make a difference!

CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The perpetual champion of management success, CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP, was billed in 1981 training program promotions by this blog post author, as:

“the new tack in the race for innovative business solutions that work”

— and reinforced by INC. Magazine‘s Executive Editor Stewart Alsop II (in April 1981):

“Entrepreneurship is in, it’s hot . . . a renaissance in American society, especially for entrepreneurs now buried in large corporations.”

Regardless of size, sales, or clout, if your business or academic organization is not already riding the new, revitalized 2015-2020 entrepreneurial wave of “Reality Success” that builds cruise-control managers into enlightened decision makers, you can be sure your competition is!

When it’s time to put more heart, more walk-the-talk attitude, and fewer politics into your business –to  ignite dormant organization spirit and foster more innovative business and market leadership thinking– CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP coaching and hands-on training can be your answer.

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474