Considering his long-term-do-nothing-decide-nothing-accomplish-nothing track record in both the State of Delaware and now in Congress, Rep. John Carney finally said something of substance about saving the economy:

“It’s up to government 

   to create favorable

conditions for

  business.”

At least it sounds good, though clearly his statement is the work of a professional writer, and I’m quite certain Mr. Carney’s vision of “creating favorable conditions” varies considerably from what America’s 30 million small business owners would suggest. But, taken face value, it’s a reasonably good start. Where it goes is what matters. 

Using taxpayer money to shore up bungling corporate giants as Mr. Obama did, for example, continues to be an unpardonable act of violating the public trust. So is the government’s financing of no-brainer token job creation in order to pump up fake employment numbers just as fraudulent a practice.

 (How many cone-placement people are really needed for DOT projects?) 

——————————————–

OPEN MEMO TO SBA CHIEF KAREN MILLS: 

At the very least, Mr. Carney’s comment above would seem to suggest that he (of all people!) is actually a step ahead of you. Your public statements remain as incongruously pathetic as those of the White House.

See for yourself, blog visitors:

Read SBA Chief Karen Mills’ declarations about

“How the SBA evolved through the economic crisis”

 CLICK THIS LINK TO Ms. Mills’ feature headline article 

Sorry Chief Mills, but your comments are far out of step with reality. It’s just too bad, because the SBA really could make a difference if it would only (and ironically) pay more attention to small business owners, by talking with them straight-on, instead of down to them.

Real entrepreneurs are much smarter

than the SBA acknowledges.

On the flip side, I also know for a fact that many SBA people have heartfelt intentions and that a good many SBA Loan Officers are excellent at what they do. That having been said . . .

As for your attempts to defend what we all know is a case of SBA lethargy at best, to say that the SBA “evolved” hardly represents a dynamic business passage worthy of bragging about.

Also, though your article tries very hard to pretend that the “economic crisis” is past, I respectfully suggest that perhaps some actual “down in the trenches” two-way communication visits on-site with real small-town, small business owners might provide appropriate enlightenment.

Here’s some business truth: The SBA, like the US Postal Service, is rapidly becoming irrelevant and –without major shake-ups– is headed for extinction. If you don’t think so, you’re living in fantasyland, and small business owners everywhere will agree. Go ahead and test this opinion. Ask!   

By taking up a politically risky crusade to launch a meaningful program of NEW business tax incentives for job creation and innovative development, you have the ability to open the doors to economic recovery by actually doing as Mr. Carney suggests: “Create favorable conditions” for small business.

The economy will never recover

until NEW small businesses  

get help creating new jobs!

You should know that I served two two-year terms on the SBA Region II Advisory Council (with 34 others, 33 of whom were all major corporate employees!), plus six years as an SBA SCORE Counselor. I’ve been running my own small business for 35 years, and have directly helped to launch over 500 successful ventures.

. . . And, that I am using this blog as a forum to address these points because I tried four times to submit similar comments on the SBA website yesterday, and none were ever posted.

Defending and reacting and explaining will not move us forward. In the Spirit of Entrepreneurship, I ask for you to respond with new small business job creation tax incentive action.

Thank you  – Hal Alpiar

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“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!

Stewards of Sustainability:

Show Us Your Cupboards!

The latest Gallup Poll shows 47% to 19% of Americans are opposed to raising the debt ceiling.

No doubt for perceived vote-getting value, Mr. Obama appears to be seeking to steer us away from this issue by pretending to be fast on the heels of solving the gas price disaster (which threatens to thoroughly destroy whatever remains of America’s economy) by attempting to extend oil production leases and hold more frequent lease sales.

Sounds great, but like so many other too-little-too-late White House manipulations, this horse will stall at the  gate. More oil drilling sounds good, but doesn’t mean anything. Gas prices will not change anytime soon. Why? Because too long a time has been taken to initiate action. Oh, and by the way, the EPA has to approve it too. They won’t.

As every successful business owner knows, REAL leaders faced with real crunch situations –like skyrocketing gas prices, moving debt ceilings, Mid-East tension tentacles, and let’s not forget the U word:  Unemployment— use instinct and at-hand information to act. They act first, and worry about analyzing the decision afterward.

From Albert Einstein to Bill Gates, the world’s genius’s have said that all we ever have is limited knowledge. Taking too long to make decisions is a major downfall of corporate management — analysis paralysis — and government is a prime contender. Gas pump prices have been an “immediate” issue with the public since 2008!

Your business would have folded by now if you spent three years of foot-dragging and kicking around should-we-or-shouldn’t-we options to solve a major “immediate” problem.

One need not be either Einstein or Gates to see that continually rising gas prices create continually rising shipping and transportation prices, which create continually rising food prices.

This progression (regression?) of true-grit stress triggers is like throwing explosives in the fireplace, especially when we add to the mix our continually rising unemployment rates, devaluation of the dollar, and loss of global respect.

(Ah, yes, and all the while, we tug at the small business choke-hold leash of mandated healthcare on the short horizon.)  

And we’re only addressing the relationship to small business here. Consider the even larger impact on family life and managing stress. Fuel affordability factors itself quickly into human dignity and self-esteem issues when gas pump prices exceed ability to take a weekend break visit to the shore or the mountains, the zoo or a sporting event.

Global leadership is simply a worthless wish if the nation’s economic foundation continues to crumble.

Socialist causes are draining the reality of economic resurgence.

Being “green” is useless if you can’t afford to eat!

How far are you willing to be pushed before stepping up to work for new national leadership that will take action over sound bites and voter-control agendas?

The brink of bankruptcy?

There are 30 million small business owners worth of clout in America. Use it or lose it!

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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!

You can count sheep, but

don’t count your chickens.

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched!” my mother always warned me. As usual, she was right. God rest her soul. Were she still here, she would have been marching around the White House with “SAVE SMALL BUSINESS” placards, and made herself a thorn in the side of the sooo-unbusinesslike Obama Administration.

Mom would have waved her finger at Mr. Obama, and lectured him on the need for the nation to rely on small businesses to reverse our ever-deepening economic quagmire. She would have looked him in the eye and might have said something like:

“Son, you need to know that hope and 

 expectations breed disappointment.

And you just better get on with it!”

Mom knew what the White House fails to know, and that professional practice and small business owners and managers –and, yes, all professional salespeople everywhere know in their heart of hearts (but often forget):

Only by taking steps to get things

done, do things actually get done!

No, she wasn’t a polisci major. Mom quit high school at age 16, when both her parents died, to become mother and father and housekeeper to her three younger sisters and two “good-for-nothin'” lazy older brothers (who grew up to be lazy “good-for-nothin'”‘ uncles). She supported her “sibling family” working at a telephone switchboard.

After marrying my mailman father, she became a full-time homemaker (in the days they were called housewives). Mom knew hard work and tough economic times, but worked through it all with smiles and prayers. Her bottom line advice would be:

“Y’know, the more we sit around and plan and analyze and hope and expect, the less that happens. Because,” she would thump on her kitchen table, mocking my father’s pretend toughness, and say things that you could interpret to mean: “Because the game delays that result from energy expended could instead have been devoted and directed toward stepping up to the plate and swinging the bat.”     

(Mom was a big baseball fan.) 

Regardless of whether you are a photographer, accountant, publisher, undertaker, precision parts manufacturer, pizza parlor franchisee, shoe salesman, crime scene cleaner, mattress retailer, or social media marketing mogul, you can be sure that absolutely nothing works for your business if you don’t make it work. 

So get off your butt, get you glove and get in the game. If you prefer to be hoping and expecting, send in an application to become a monk, or join the White House staff. If you seek results and growth, listen to my mother who would tug your sleeve and tell you “Action speaks louder than hope.”

She would have concluded by saying something like:

“If there’s anything to count after you’re done with sheep and chickens, count your blessings, count your lucky stars, and count ON yourself. You and they (your blessings and stars) are all here and now . . . real. You and they are what you have. Make the most of you and them. And visit again soon.”

Thanks, Mom.

# # #

           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!

Thank God It’s Monday!

“TGIM” is what separates entrepreneurs and leaders from the “TGIF” corporate suits and government flunkies.

If you’re not excited about starting each new workweek, remember that you’re an entrepreneur. God didn’t put you on Earth and help you get your business to the place it’s in, so you could whine and complain and blame and be a doom and gloom person. Well?

You are doing what you’re doing because:  

A) you have a good business idea (or inherited one) that you believe in, and

B) you have proven time and again in your life that you have the guts and gumption and instincts to make it all work.

So stay on top of it and keep making it work.

Easier said than done, says you? But the economy sucks, says you?

Yes, the economy sucks only slightly more than the narrow-minded, misdirected, inexperienced, pathetically incompetent leaders who have run our nation’s government into the economic quagmire that pulls like quicksand at the heels of every American small business.

The central issues are PRIORITIES and POLITICAL AGENDAS:

• Government preoccupation with globalization over —instead of— shoring up American job-creating entrepreneurial ventures.

• Government preoccupation with all things “green” over —instead of— facing the reality of continually growing unemployment lines fueled by skyrockerting gas prices and the resultant crunch on shipping, transportation, and food prices.

• Government preoccupation with “fairness” to everyone who slides into this country –legally or illegally makes no difference– because those people will be forever grateful and pay back government benefactors with their votes –legal or illegal makes no difference– instead of tightening and enforcing immigration laws.

• Government interference, over-regulation and unmerciful taxation of small businesses runs rampant instead of supporting and encouraging American businesses with meaningful tax incentives to create jobs to turn the economy.

Okay, so American Government leadership is clearly among the world’s worst, but you know what?

You can still make it work in your favor.

Here’s a quick 10-point checklist of ideas that may spark a winning action for you to make your ideas fly:

1. Read Leadership (the book) by Rudy Giuliani.

2. Take a rest day. Do something constructive, but keep your brain and body away from work for 24 hours.

3. Talk with two 70-year-olds and three 7-year-olds about what’s important in life.

4. Take some deep breaths, and build more of them into your daily existence.

5. Pray!

6. Recognize that your every move is a choice.

7. Offer to give a guest lecture or lead a Q & A session on business startup challenges at your local high school or nearby college.

8. Read two dozen assorted one-sentence Twitter posts. Think on them.

9. Take a walk on the beach or in the woods. Pay attention to what surrounds you.

10. Be thankful for all that you have instead of worrying about what you don’t have.

Time’s a wastin’

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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 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!

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!

 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? 

# # #

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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