Stop Beating Yourself Up!

     I’ve been hearing an inordinate amount of complaining of late from entrepreneurial types who are facing dried up venture capital sources, shut-down loan opportunities, and the literal disappearance of angel investors up and away into the distant heavens.

     So let’s explore some truths.You are not the reason for the bad economy. You are not the reason for anyone else’s problems. You are only the reason for your own problems and –harsh as you may think this sounds– you are probably the only reason for your business’s problems.

     Your feelings and your behaviors are your choice. Choose to make them good. Choose to make them easy. If your business has problems, think back and think hard and be brutally honest: you are likely the root of your business’s problems. And, yes, that’s also a choice. Ah, but you can just as easily choose to reverse direction.

     Stop making lame excuses for your business not doing as well as it should. Stop having unrealistic expectations for your business performance that are filled with empty hopes and wishes about what you imagine is possible. Stop justifying yourself with the barrage of pitiful media reports about how bad things are.

     Take the bull by the horns. Step up to the plate. Choose to put a positive attitude into your head and then begin to exercise it…consistently. Don’t accept anything less than the active pursuit of your goals as your daily regimen.

     YOU deserve better for yourself and your family and your business than to give it up to media and government know-nothings who haven’t a clue about what it takes to run and grow a successful business.

     Please forgive me for this tongue-lashing, butt-kicking lecture, but if it upsets you: A) Choose instead to see the value in rattling your cage and B) Use it as fuel to initiate positive action now.

     YOU are the smartest person on Earth about what your business needs to do to turn itself around and set the example for others. Now is your chance to make the difference that you set out to make when you started or took over your business. Be true to yourself, and your business will thrive.   

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  Hal@TheWriterWorks.com 

Thank you for visiting. Good night and God bless you!

Sorry, political types,

“hope” STILL is not the answer!

     I’ve had some flack lately about my “Hope is not the answer” messages. It seems a certain leftcoast-leaning political influence has gotten it’s ignorant, indignant, screaming self in an uproar over my having committed blasphamy because “HOPE” (combined with “CHANGE”) apparently continues to entrench itself as the rally cry of our profoundly inexperienced and badly misdirected federal government.

     I find this odd since never–in the history of the world–has HOPE created CHANGE.

     Hope SOUNDS good if you’re a politician (it just won a campaign!) or if you’re an out-of-touch religious leader (or a professional athlete; I hear lots of them respond to interview questions with “Hopefully…”). But as truth will have it, this line of thinking, dear business owners, operators, managers, and entrepreneurs, is a crock!

     It is unrealistic to the core. Nothing creates change except action!

     Nothing that’s “hoped for” happens without action. A “hope” is a wish. “When you wish upon a star…” is great stuff for kids, but it isn’t going to pull America out of the economic tailspin. Hope and wishing are NOT believing.

     Believing instills action. And only ACTION by small businesses can straighten our crooked path. Small businesses, entrepreneurial ventures and entrepreneurial spirit with ACTION platforms and agendas these leaders, these catalysts of change, can believe in, are what hold the key to financial recovery and growth.

     If we can get government to stop mollycoddling equally-incompetent corporate giants and start providing real, tangible job creation incentives to small business, we will actually have a chance to survive and thrive. Are you truly a leader or truly a follower?

     Will you pick up your phone and leave a message for your government representative that you favor REAL small business job creation incentives over corporate bailouts? Or will you just mosey along to another website, another blog, another email? Hmmm?     

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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Here, Mr. President:

Take this and run with it!

     Okay, all you government and big-business corporate executives, take this! Everyone except you guys knows that small business is the lifeblood of America, and that small business is the single greatest and most important creator of jobs. For now, we’ll forget about why you don’t know this, and just move forward.

     Here is what we need to straighten out the crooked economic path that you folks all contributed to and nurtured and reinforced. We need to present every American small business (1-20 employees) with a choice of 5 stimulus options. Before you laugh up your respective sleeves, re-read the first paragraph.

Here’s the select-one-only choice that needs to be offered:

1) You choose OPTION A and receive an outright, no-strings-attached grant from the government for $5,000 to be used against pay off of bills over 60 days old from the date of application. I shouldn’t need to spell out all the resultant benefits; just think about it for 30 seconds!  OR…

2) You choose OPTION B and receive a $15,000 payment for $15,000 retail value worth of your products or services, which you deliver to any government agency you choose that can use what you sell, or any charity of your choice if no government agency can use your products or services. Surely you need not think about what this would accomplish.  OR…

3) You choose OPTION C and receive $30,000 in two $15,000 payments, six months apart for creating one new parttime (20-hours/week) job with no benefits, and—using pre-determined criteria—prove the job’s existence and value after twelve months.  OR…

4) You choose OPTION D and receive $70,000 in six equal payments for creating one new fulltime (40-hours/week) job with benefits PLUS one new parttime (20-hours/week) job with no benefits, and—using pre-determined criteria—prove the existence and value of both jobs after twelve months.  OR…

5) You choose NONE of the above, and receive a $10,000 tax credit.

     Oh, but how would this ever be administered? Use the Energy Department which performs next to zero value services at any measurable level. They have enough personnel to oversee and monitor such a program. 

     You don’t like the details of this proposal? Then change them. Do anything you want with them, but do SOMEthing with them. Show small business the respect small business deserves!                                                                                                          

Here, Mr. President,

is the bottom line:

     You want to reverse the economy? You want people to be happier and healthier? You want to see new jobs created? Then stop asking other government employees with no business experience and corporate executives with no realistic sense of business operations how to do it.

(These people are corporate management operations experts; corporate management operations has nothing to do with the kinds of day-to-day small business activities that made this country great and that hold the key to today’s present need for economic recovery!)

     These people haven’t a clue. Their ideas are lethargic and unrealistic, and just plain won’t work because they don’t understand the down-to-earth dynamics of how to dig out of a hole. It takes a shovel and an I-can-do-it attitude.

     In our country, the only people with these tools are entrepreneurs and small business owners. Give them shovels (the 5 options above) and they will dig! All the corporate and government resources in the world will not get down in the trenches and get the job done.

Why? Because you cannot dig out of a hole while sitting

in a tower or the backseat of a limo or private jet.

     We are past the point of pretending. Politics aside for just one minute, if that’s possible, why is it that the people most capable of turning things around are not being given meaningful opportunities to do exactly that?

     If you, Mr. President, are willing to take what is a more-than-reasonable risk and charge small business with the solution, you will be astonished at how many of us will rise to the occasion and get the job done. I hope only that this thinking makes it to your doorstep while there’s still time to act on it.  

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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Hope Is NOT The Answer.

(Neither is government spending nor business borrowing!)

     The old business adage, “NOTHING HAPPENS ‘TIL THE SALE IS MADE” applies more today than ever! I have noted here often that budget slashing, and save-on-expenses mentalities end up digging an even deeper hole because they divert energy away from what needs to be done to put the economy on a rebound and growth track.

     Economic recovery can ONLY happen when more businesses decide to make it happen. We have to blow off mainstream media’s efforts to drag the public into the maelstrom they’re busy creating in their relentless quest to sell more print advertising space and more broadcast commercial time.

     When businesses decide to focus on sales and entrepreneurial pursuits, we will see increased financial stability across the boards. Sounds simple, huh? Unfortunately, our own business-inexperienced government is essentially leading the blockade to progress on this front…token small business incentives don’t cut it!

     Add to the government’s misguided energy and maniacal spend and borrow and tax mentality the sad truth is that many business people have simply given up, and the saving-grace focus we’re talking about turns out to not be so simple after all. 

     Government spending and business borrowing? Digest this (following) quote made 5 days ago in a European Parliament speech by Daniel Hannon MEP who was targeting the English Prime Minister with some realistic advice:

You cannot spend your way out of recession,

or borrow your way out of debt!”

[See www.Hannon.co.uk for more.]

     If you are an entrepreneur or run your own business, you need to be resolute in your thoughts and actions. You need to be literally invulnerable in your convictions that hope may spring eternal, but it simply does NOT fuel or grow business in any way–never has, never will. ONLY sales do that.

     Like throwing two baseballs at equal velocity with both arms simultaneously, the most difficult task for any entrepreneur or business owner is to be running your business and selling your business at the same time. Yet that is what has to happen.

     This means, you must be willing and able to go the extra mile with customers, prospects, employees, vendors, your industry, your community, your family, and your own health and fitness. Dropping any one of these from the pursuit equation will collapse the energy around those that remain.

     Okay, HOW? you ask. By paying attention to having fun instead of feeling pressure (the feeling-pressure guys have already boarded up and left town). By paying more attention to exercise and eating and sleeping right, by laughing more, and by learning and using stress management techniques , by taking a yoga class, a jog, a walk, another walk, more walks. 

     As for help, what’s suggested here isn’t much, but–like everything else in life–suggestions are what you make of them. It’s always your choice about how to proceed. The rest of what happens is up to you.  

Good Night and God Bless You!  

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When the chips are down,

entrepreneurs switch to pretzels

     When a consumer product manufacturer or service provider needs to dig up more business–even in such a mainstream media created economic vacuum as we’re presently being sucked deeper and deeper into– there are literally endless resources spelling out a myriad of strategic avenues and approaches…not to mention equally endless tactical options, methods, and techniques.

     But let’s say you have a B2B business. You provide services to the product manufacturers and service providers. Maybe you’re a customer service training organization or a building custodial service or a website design and maintenance business. Where do you go?

     The big guys are choking. They’ve wiped out training budgets, they’re cutting back building cleaning frequency, and they’re making do with their internal IT people to keep their websites functionable.

     How do you get these corporate giants to stand still long enough to consider adding or extending your services when they are in this budget-slashing frame of mind? How do you tell a company that’s laying off employees that they need customer service training now more than ever because the best source of business is existing and past business, and they’d better step up those relationships? 

     The big product and service guyscan make it nearly impossible for the little B2B guys to survive. Ah, but that’s where entrepreneurial spirit rises to the top. When the chips are down, entrepreneurs switch to pretzels. And guess what? Entrepreneurial hi-tech-anchored businesses are not only breaking the communications barrier, they are pulling entire legions of small B2B businesses along with them…not very unlike the makings of the industrial revolution.

     So once again, it is small business to the rescue, even as big business is being rewarded with government trillions for having screwed up the marketplace beyond recognition, and then for having sidestepped the wiser path of bankruptcy

…wiser because it would have forced more efficient operations and more effective products and services

…wiser because it would have spared us all ten more years’ worth of beating our collective brains in, to raise the taxes and repay the debts that are being used now to feather union beds in return for their political support. 

     What a sad and sick commentary on society that we’ve come to this. How fortunate we all are that the entrepreneurial spirit does still live, and will ultimately bring us a return to respectability, assuming the White House doesn’t continue paying off political promises with our hard-earned tax dollars. But it’s what we must all want. We elected zero business experience.

Good Night and God Bless You!  

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HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.

OH?

…time to examine both the cause of business failures and the solution.

The cause is something like a one-two punch:

1) For the past 18 months, mainstream media have been delivering a staggering succession of doom and gloom jabs to keep professional practices and businesses off balance by focusing one of every three headlines on how bad things are, and then beating the economic woes into the ground. 

[And guess what, mainstream media? — Professional practice and business owners and  operators and managers, are sick of your negativity! We have stopped buying your poor excuses for print and broadcast news, and many of us have withdrawn our advertising dollars. And so now you are starting to suffer. Time magazine’s list of top ten newspapers that are about to go under is startling to say the least, but, unfortunately, well deserved.]

2) The federal government‘s pitifully naive and sorely misdirected “bailouts” and “stimulous package” reactions (note “reactions” not “responses”) that actually fail to bail out or stimulate anything of any consequence in the direction of economic revitalization, have done their damnedest to deliver the knockout punch!

     Only trouble is that the entrepreneurial spirit lives on, and will never be destroyed wherever free-thinking people exist. Small business people know that it’s small business people who produce the vast majority of jobs in America. And small business people know that the ONLY way the economy gets stimulated is with incentives for small business to create jobs. And small business people know that there’s not a single penny allocated for this purpose in government’s (almost laughable were it not for the fact it’s our taxes being fed to those who choose not to work!) stimulus guise.

So here’s the 2-way solution:

1) Mainstream media pulls itself up and starts pounding our ears and eyes with positive, inspirational, motivational messages, and

2) The federal government hires a team of independent small business management consultants and proven entrepreneurs to show the corporate giants how it’s done (economic survival) with no cash and no bailouts and no stimulus, and how to take that survive mode into a thrive mode with 6-7 days-a-week of hard “lean and mean” work, networking, some reasonable risk-taking, some tough ROI due-dated venture capital, and the rallying support of familiy and friends.

Yeah, right. And how sick is it that reality renders this solution not even worthy of dreaming about? Oh, right, I almost forgot, times have changed.

Besides, who needs dreams now that we’re up to our ears in “hope”?       

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Aloha Hal!

What better way can I say thank you for such an earnest and thoughtful response to my 3/11/09 blog post criticizing the U.S. Postal Service, than to reproduce the complete (as received, with no editing) comment… and extend my heartfelt appreciation to Postmaster Tom McCarthy? THANK YOU, TOM!

(Special thanks too to my good friend Judy Vorfeld for facilitating this exchange.)

Oh, if only our government could practice this kind of give and take which helps achieve both improved productivity and improved customer relations!    

Well, It’s good to see we have customers who care enough about the Postal Service to offer their ideas on how we can become better. [RESPONSE AND REFERENCE IS TO 3/11/09 BLOG POST BELOW, OR IN MAR ’09 ARCHIVES ON THIS SITE]

Here’s my spin—point by point.

1. Wasting time and money on surveys? Totally agree. We spend an enormous amount of money on surveys. However, the real problem is that we do not act on customers’ comments, or for that matter, lack of comments. For example: We have a Voice of the Employee survey that goes to each of our 650,000 employees every year. Although employees are paid on the clock to take the survey, I believe our response rate has never gone over 72%. Non-response says a lot.
2. Because most district managers have little-to-no background in sales and marketing, they fail to realize the other side of the budget equation—revenue generation. Most managers were promoted because of their ability to cut workhours. They really haven’t a clue about sales and marketing. Fortunately that mind-set changing. But we are so far behind that it’s going to be hard to catch up.
3. I’m not exactly sure what you are referring to about bad products. There are some products that not very popular, and the Postal Service is constantly evaluating them. Some customers feel we shouldn’t sell retail merchandise, that it’s a waste of time, and we should concentrate on selling stamps. But in 2007, Official Licensed Retail Products generated over $70 million. However, I will agree that often we fail to take innovation to completion.
4. I don’t know any FedX or UPS driver that has the time to market and sell. They constantly under the microscope. FedX even has wireless video tracking their drivers and making sure they are under a strict time schedule. A few years ago the Postal Service initiated Carrier Connect, Business Connect and Carrier Pickup. These programs encourage city and rural carriers notice what businesses use our competitors and then forward those leads to our Business Development Team, who will then contact customers to sell our products and services. A few years ago the Postal Service created the Postal Ambassador program. In each of our 80 districts across the nation, a select team of city carriers, clerks, and postmasters were sent to Chicago for intensive training in media, marketing and sales. I was fortunate to be selected as the Hawaii district Postmaster Postal Ambassador. The idea was to have districts take advantage of Postal Ambassadors to market and sell products and services to businesses, train clerks, and act as a public relations person for the media. But as you stated in #3, we failed to take it to completion and as a result, the program fizzled, mostly due to managers who could only see value in cutting costs.
5. Email delivery service sounds something like a service we offered years ago with fax. A customer could fax a letter to a post office, and then the letter would be placed in the customer’s mailbox. It didn’t do well, so the service got axed. But I certainly would like to hear your idea.
6. Social media is powerful but I can tell you this: Most postmasters are fried by the end of the day. We are micromanaged to the tenth degree. There is little room for innovation or creativity, and many must endure 2, 3, and 4 hour telecoms that are unbearable.
7. Customer service training is where we really fail. We desperately need sales training. But the powers that be see it as a huge expenditure. We actually have a number of web-based training, but for the most part, I feel they are useless. There is nothing that compares to real-life class situation with interaction and Q & As.
8. PO box in every box? Hmmmm do we charge double???
9. Recruiting community groups to garden and landscape sounds great until the lawyers look at liability issues that come with it—not to mention contract issues with employee unions. However, here in Hawaii we have had a post office on Kauai have a grammar school paint a beautiful mural on the post wall. But we needed all sorts of approval from higher sources.
10. I’m all with you on community events. It is one of the best ways to network and connect with customers. And here in Hawaii we do those type or activities. Many postmasters across the nation are involved in community events such as the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, Marrow Donor program, and many, many other events, including community fairs, parades, and business expos. I personally have manned marketing booths at conventions, Kona coffee festivals, Ironman World Triathlon Championship in Kona, and given workshops to coffee and mac nut farmers here on the Big Island of Hawaii. I know of many other postmasters who do similar kinds of sales and marketing in their communities.
11. Most of us would love to sell advertising space—especially on postage stamps, but we are regulated by the Postal Rate Commission, Postal Board of Governors, Congress, and some very limiting laws—lobbied no less by our competitors.
12. Same as above.
13. Every office should have some type of table for customers to rest their heavy parcels on. If your office doesn’t have one, I suggest you request the postmaster to install one. Tell your post office that if they can’t afford one, you’ll go to the competition—if nothing happens, write to the district manager. .
14. Music? Don’t you love hearing the clerks singing their song: Is there anything fragile, liquid, or perishable? Would you like to send it Express? Would you like insurance or delivery confirmation? etc, etc. Did you know that some offices have a television set to keep customers mind off the wait time in line. Many offices do have music but I’ve experienced situations where the customer complained about the music. Maybe we should hand out iPods while waiting in line to listen to your preferred music?
15. Our goal is to make it a positive experience. That’s why we hire Mystery shoppers and put a huge amount of pressure on offices who do not achieved the 5 minute wait time in line goal. There are all sorts of other things that an office is evaluated on, too.
16. A little note slipped into a mail box? I’ll tell you a story. One of my carriers had slipped a letter into a customer’s mailbox and the customer complained because there was no postage stamp on it. They said we were violating our own law—that anything in a mailbox must have postage on it. Strange but true. However, we have many carriers who very much care about their customers. I had a rural carrier who would deliver mail to one of her customers, and then after work go shopping for groceries for her, because the customer was elderly and could not drive or go outside. If you only knew the good and heartwarming stories, you’re thoughts would surely change.
17. Barter? That could become dangerous. Besides, we’ve got rules and regulations regulated by red tape regulators.
18. We do direct mail training workshops. You can also go online to our website and practically get a masters degree in mailing. We also have a small business development team in each district. Ask your postmaster for more information or go on usps.com website and search for direct mail….coffee not included.
19. We have over 7 million customers visiting our retail outlets every day. That’s real-time blog. And if you consider we have something in the neighborhood of a million hits a day on our usps.com website, that would be one big blog.
20. USPS.com has the whole spiel. If you want more information, ask your postmaster to give you the phone number for the business development team in their district. They’d be more than happy to help.
21. We have publications with direct mail information, rates, and tips on how to use direct mail to grow your business. I regularly order these pamphlets and place them in our business customers’ mailboxes.
22. For years Congress and postal laws had our hands tied. We could not give discounts. Fortunately, a few years ago, congress passed the Postal Reform bill. We now have more freedom to offer discounts and make special deals. Unfortunately, we are not moving fast enough.
23. This could possibly be under consideration. We do offer discounts for business customers who prepare their mail properly and comply with automation requirements.

Well, there it is. And I agree. It would be a terrible waste of assets, resources, and some super-nice people if we don’t listen to our customers and become better at what we do.

Thanks again for your thoughts.
Tom McCarthy tmpm@mac.com
Postmaster
Holualoa HI 96725

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Patriotism Before Personal Ambition!

Coo-kook-a-choo,

Mrs. Robinson,

where has

Ronald Reagan gone . . .?

     Regardless of your politics, there’s no escaping true wisdom. Here are two quotes from one of America’s most inspirational leaders, words worthy of at least one minute of your think-time over this coming weekend: 

“Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond… There are entrepreneurs…who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity… Their patriotism is quiet but deep. Their values sustain our national life.”  1981

“The most fertile and rapidly growing sector of any economy is that part that exists right now only as a dream in someone’s head or an inspiration in his heart.”  1987

     If you are an entrepreneur, if you own or run a business, if you are invested in a business startup, if you are part of a family business . . . and you have not been speaking up about the national economic stimulus package that is about to put a chokehold on entrepreneurial pursuits, speak now!

     The “stimulus” plan, on top of the “bailouts” has yet to show one single penny directed to small business incentives to create jobs, not one cent! It sees your half-full glass as three-quarters empty!  

     The bottom line: NOW is the time to pick up your phone and call your senate and congressional representatives to tell them that the only way this nation’s economy can turn positive is with job creation programs and that virtually all job creation comes from small business. Send letters and emails.

     If you believe as most entrepreneurs do that you are on Earth to make a difference, to make your mark, then this is the best step forward in that direction you can possibly take right now.

     In the spirit of Ronald Reagan’s perceptions and comments, make your entrepreneurial patriotism and your business count for something important. Act now and recruit others to act with you to influence the only kind of economic change that’s truly meaningful. Insist on substantial stimulus funding for small business job creation incentives!

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What ARE you smoking,

Mr. Woodward?

     Yesterday, an Associated Press writer named Calvin Woodward naively proclaimed that “Small businesses don’t create jobs!” What are you smoking, Mr. Woodward?

     In his astonishingly unprofessional, biased, gushing diatribe, he attempted to influence readers to join him in blindly supporting the terribly misdirected, partison-political “stimulus package” that takes direct aim at entrepreneurs…that seeks to cripple America’s small business owners and operators who account for the vast majority of U.S. job creation.

     As if that wasn’t insulting enough, Woodward went on to note that there are twenty million (20,000,000!) small businesses in this country that don’t even have employees. What an utterly ridiculous and misleading statement!

10 QUESTIONS FOR YOU, MR. WOODWARD . . . 

1. What, Mr. Woodward, do you think the twenty million small business owner/operators DO if they are not “employees”?
2. Where do you think new jobs come from?
3. Where do you think new jobs come from?
4. Where do you think new jobs come from?
5. Where do you think new jobs come from?
6. Where do you think new jobs come from?
7. Where do you think new jobs come from?
8. Where do you think new jobs come from?
9. Where do you think new jobs come from?
10. Didn’t Apple and Microsoft, as just two quick examples) come from one-person businesses that started in garages? 

     The United States of America would not even EXIST without entrepreneurs and small business growth to create jobs.

     It’s called Capitalism, Mr. Woodward. It works. It’s been proven. It’s called being careful with spending. It works. It’s been proven. Show us a Socialist agenda that works, Mr. Woodward! Show us that the doomed-to-failure stimulus plan is not a socialist tool to create deepening dependency on government. Of course it is. Every entrepreneur knows that. 

     And don’t you think the coming $13 a week more in every paycheck will be the height of disillusionment when a year down the road the unchanged tax laws will require employees to cough all that money (and more!) back up, plus re-tax small businesses to boot?

     I heard The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore (WSJ Editorial Board and Senior Economics Writer) comment today on WABC New York Radio that “entrepreneurs are capitalists and capitalists cannot exist without capital.”

     He explained for the public what all of us already know who run our own businesses: that entrepreneurs start new businesses and expand existing ones, and need capital investments in order to do those things. While some of these ventures fail, many (like the two examples above) succeed and create jobs as they grow.

     The so-called stimulus package does everything possible to put a chokehold on small business owners and entrepreneurs. Where does that leave us? Isn’t it jobs that ultimately stimulate the economy? Well, maybe not. Maybe jobs are not as important as many of us believe.

     Maybe we who own and run small businesses should all just throw our hands up and quit, and file for unemployment and foodstamps and welfare and other “stimulus” plan handouts. Hey, life would be easier, wouldn’t it?

     Oh, wait, I forgot, we can’t all do that because there wouldn’t be enough businesses around to pay the taxes to support these “spread the wealth” programs. And we surely wouldn’t want to prevent needy folks who choose not to work from having a chunk of change from all that wealth spreading.    Halalpiar

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Dwelling on the past

…is emotionally unhealthy, but a short visit there

can help your future planning and present focus!

     Let’s go back to this past Friday for a minute.  [See Friday, 2/13/09 blog post below for details]. 

     A number of you have asked whether my Twitter-contact talk-radio host Dan Gaffney in his Friday morning broadcast of my situation (with a children’s book manuscript I edited and my lost contact information for the author) actually produced anything. 

     Well, as most everyone who knows me knows, I am not often in praise of the media (though it’s mostly  “mainstream” media I’m critical of for taking advantage of human frailties and emotions simply to stir up sales by using disparaging and exaggerated reports that are totally subjective, often completely false and –more frequently than not– highly manipulative).  There.  Had to say that.  I feel better now. 

     Now on to “The Good Media.”  Most local media (though it certainly is not beyond also being misguided) at least tends to feature on-air and technical professionals who –to me– always seem to be warm, endearing, concerned, community-minded, straightforward and engaging local personalities. 

     And whenever they do have political axes to grind, they at least approach the task with a sense of care, compassion, and craftsmanship that we would never see from major media moguls.

     Anyway, Dan Gaffney is one of those good media guys.  And his loyal listener base, I have discovered is as responsive as it is huge.

     After my not being able to locate my promising, estranged, young author since Thanksgiving, Dan Gaffney produced the “lost” author’s business name and cell phone number, and put it into an email for me within an hour after he finished his show. 

     I called the number.  The author and I had a joyful telephone reunion (I got his home number too this time) and we’ve scheduled a meeting Wednesday evening.  Thank you all for the nice and encouraging comments and inquiries.  And thanks again, Dan for the assist. 

Why can’t network TV and big-time newspaper people have some of these fine qualities?  It’s called being authentic.      halalpiar      

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