“J”…JUSTICE

You’re thinkin’ maybe

2012 will be better?

If you’re thinking 2012 will be better, and you’ve decided to wait until the new year to kick into gear, you lose! That’s like saying you’re gonna quit smoking (drinking, doing drugs, eating so much) for the new year.

What’s happened to “now”? The “new year”? In case you haven’t noticed, it’s not 2012 yet! Or, perhaps you’re planning to be sick  for Christmas so you can avoid another dysfunctional family gathering?

Maybe you’re a big White House fan and figure –since 2009, 2010, and 2011 have’nt exactly been big economic rebound years– that 2012 will be Obama’s year of small business enlightenment? Don’t hold your breath. He’s proven he prefers union-vote paybacks and government splurging over championing the entrepreneurial spirit that built America.  

He prefers sharing the money you work hard for with those who choose their flat screen TVs and living room sofas over legitimate employment. Hey– free food, free medical care, free education, free cash– who can fault them? Ain’t Socialism wonderful?

So if you’ve worked hard all your life and earn a respectable living, pay your bills, give to charity, and are struggling to make ends meet with your business, don’t expect any sudden shifts in allegiance or respect or support from those in control. You’re just one of 30 million.

Here’s the bottom line:

Your Fairy Godmother

is not on the way.

Yes, the treuth hurts. Sorry about that.

Just in case you were keeping a low profile in your business with the hope and expectations that a more super-sized, more charged-up environment and marketplace is on the way, smack yourself along side the head, take a long hard look in the mirror and measure yourself up against these 5 steps

 . . . 5 things you need to do:

1.  Something instead of nothing. (In business and personal development, some action always beats no action!)

2.  Stop choosing excuses because you’re lazy. Waiting until the new year (or Christmas!) to jumpstart your sluggish enterprise is an excuse. Surprise yourself . . . start tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.

3.  Stop telling all those who work with you (employees, partners, family members, investors, referrers, suppliers, community members) about all the great promise “in store” for next year. Instead step it up now. Now.

4.  Put away the fantasyland thinking that you’ve used to convince yourself that you have time because nthere’s all the rest of October, and all of November and December to plan and get ready for some 2012 launches.

5.  Realize that even with –prayfully– a new administration in Washington to be elected on November 6, 2012, it won’t have any authority until January 2013. And it will likely take another 2-3 years to UN-do the mess Mr. O has put us all in. If your business is hurting now, it won’t survive another year or two, or three, of empty promises.

You really CAN walk the talk, you know. You’ve done it to get this far. It’s all a matter of choice. If you think it’s too hard, it will be. THAT is a choice as well. Choose to make it easy. Choose to make your business work NOW, and imagine how great it will be when we have national leadership that appreciates and respects small business!

~~~~~~~

Footnote: If you think this is a “lecture,” you are either too far gone to see the value of what’s represented, and probably shouldn’t be surfing blogs looking for inspiration that you won’t follow through with anyway, OR you have needed a good swift kick in the butt . . . I hope this served the purpose. Remember what your grandpa (and Thomas Jefferson) said about not putting off ’til tomorrow what you can do today?                               

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Small Businesses Once Again Ignored . . .

Financial Expert Reports 

of “Economic Rebound”

Grossly Exaggerated

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

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

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

The past and future are fantasyland,

and generally not good places for

nurturing entrepreneurial minds.

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

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

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

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

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

The bottom line is that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Turning prospects

into customers

means leading

with your soul

. . . not your mouth.

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

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

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

Every purchase

–including those that 

seem most rational–

is emotionally triggered.

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

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

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

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

You need only to have

an emotional buying motive

trigger pulled to justify your

wallet on the counter or

your pen on the dotted line.

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

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

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Every entrepreneur falls

and needs to get back up.

 There’s no doubt about it . . .

If you haven’t failed at business,

you’ll never be successful.

Implicit in that bit of wisdom is that you must make a strong recovery after being knocked down. And that takes guts and gumption.

Though some upstarts and some do-nothings may get themselves fired and need to find new jobs, corporate employees know little of this “Comback Trail” pursuit, or what it takes. Government employees? Their heads fall off when they try to even think about reinventing themselves.

But entrepreneurs? That’s what small business is all about. It’s a calling. It’s the excitement and challenge of being successful –making a success of your idea– against the odds! In other words, for an entrepreneur, reinventing yourself and your idea and your business –the action– is a way of life.

Unfortunately, some corporate muckity-mucks and top-ranking government officials who see themselves as voter-mandated, or hand-picked by those who consider themselves voter-mandated are often in the way.

They block entrepreneurial efforts to get back into the free market competition fray by throwing up roadblocks to economic progress under the guise of social reform. I mean hey, remember we’re talking about the same political types who think they need only to change their appearances and messages to make comebacks.

Small business owners know better. They recognize that it takes more than a haircut and flamboyant (or –as long as we’re onto “flam”–  inflammatory) oratory. Business comebacks demand changes that are grounded in substance. Putting a blue spotlight on the outfit doesn’t make it a blue suit. Talk does not cook rice. 

It is more important, say some misguided politicians, to make the whole world wonderful for every living soul no matter how much that state of bliss is earned or not earned, than to encourage small business growth and job creation.

The problem is

that the economy is the problem,

and 

only small business job creation

can solve that problem,

and there’s not enough TRUST

in government to convince

small businesses to create jobs!

And, yes, that problem has to be solved before we can address other world needs from a position of strength.

The bottom line is that there’s nothing wrong with reinventing yourself and/or your business in order to get back up off the floor and revitalize a staggering or TKO’d business venture. The world’s most successful entrepreneurs have all done that repeatedly.

What IS wrong is to make a half-hearted effort at it, or an intentionally deceptive or manipulative one. You’ll never “dance with the stars” or get back up on your feet if you’re wearing cement shoes (an old Mafia saying). To put yourself on the comeback trail, focus your energy on the here-and-now present moment, not the finish line.

A map is useful, but always be prepared for detours. And never give up your ideas, your pursuits of them, or your sense of integrity. The trail you seek is just around the corner. It will all work if you will. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Do you fit it,

grow it, break it,

or live with it?

I know how much you’ve been wanting for some intellect rising on this complex subject matter, so, okay, here it is. After reading this post, may you never again need to deal with mold in your career! This is my take on the subject:

If you “FIT the mold,”

. . . you probably work for big corporation and you’re happy as a pig in mud with your weekends, vacation, personal and sick days, benefit plans, and your acquired ability to analyze things to death while you cover your butt with one hand, and climb the internal political ladder with the other.

You also don’t like your your $50 tie, $100 white shirt, or your pay, but hey, who does?

You’re no doubt fed up with commuting costs too, but keep a lid on that complaint because fitting the mold also assures you of lunch hours, coffee breaks, holidays off, your own cubicle — maybe even a corner office if you’re a hot-shot — and you don’t want to sound too ungrateful with such long lines at the unemployment office.

If you “GROW mold,”

. . . it’s because you’re ambivalent, lethargic, basically lazy, and skilled at staying under the radar on the job. The last time you were innovative was when you helped the neighbor’s kids set up a lemonade stand in the driveway. Other than that, you’ve never had to think for yourself.

Your most complicated decisions have typically been whether or not to deal yourself another hand of solitaire. At least 3 people in your family have benefited from your counseling about how to qualify for welfare and food stamps. You work for the government.

If you “BREAK the mold,”

. . . Congratulations! You’re an entrepreneur. Here are a couple of links that will shed some light on your bizzare behaviors. You don’t buy lottery tickets, take long vacations, bet the farm,  or head off to AC, Las Vegas or Mohegan Sun with your paycheck every month — because you take only reasonable risks.

You have a big ego, but don’t expend a lot of energy struttin’ your stuff because your msission in life is to make your business idea successful. You grew up in or around a family business, hated school, resented authority, sold something door-to-door, and you are free-wheeling but practical.

Your neighbor’s father, who worked for the government for 35 years, once helped you set up a lemonade stand in the driveway.

If you “LIVE WITH mold,”

. . . you are a more-tolerent-than-is-good-for-you business manager or partner who knows your boss needs a swift kick in that place that corporate guys always cover. You know a shakeup is inevitable, but don’t like to make waves, and probably feel beholden to your boss or partner for taking you in when times were (like today?) less than promising.

Oh well, there are always mold removal services . . . probably a useful awareness for November 6, 2012.

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You already know this, but

perhaps you’ve forgotten:

  You and your business are

here on Earth to make a

d  i  f  f  e  r  e  n  c  e  !

Does that mean you need to revamp your food business to offer only organic produce, fruits, meats and poultry? No. You may want to consider a direction like that for business reasons, but making a difference for others is not a pursuit that –unlike government bills and riders– has restrictions attached.

Making a difference with your business doesn’t mean you must suddenly be a better Boy Scout or Girl Scout. It does mean holding to a higher integrity, and offering goods and services that don’t inherently harm people. Cigarettes come to mind. Oh, and don’t rationalize with raves about all the tobacco industry jobs and good deeds.

That’s a big business/government style-defense. Drive responsibly, say the alcoholic beverage companies. We grow forests, say the paper mills and logging companies that strip mountainsides bare of trees. You can add your own examples here. Hypocrisy has become a mainstay of corporate marketing, PR, and government control.

You can’t make a difference on Earth

by being two-faced.

(Politicians take note.)

And —TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK-TICK— time marches on, so the amount of time you have to improve the business and personal lives of those around you and those who come after you are perhaps a whole lot less than you might have imagined (or maybe never thought about!) when you rolled out of bed this morning.

Bottom line: The time to act is NOW!

Start thinking about your legacy as you’re reading this, and take just one step in the direction of putting those thoughts to work by the time you walk away from your keyboard. Carpe Momento!

Recommended guiding words:

The old hit song lyrics from Seals & Crofts —

We may never pass this way again.

“There’s no time like the present,” my father always said. “Time and tide wait for no man,” my mother always said. “DO IT” says Nike. Now, entrepreneurs seem to know this instinctively, but they also seem to limit their hurries to business deals instead of to their own internal missions. Those little voices that point to reality.

What speaks to your ears from inside your gut? It may be different than the words that come from your brain. Words from the brain can be easily over-thought, manipulative, too rational, too unemotional, too logical — the stuff that corporate and government analysis paralysis is made of — What comes from your gut has no limits.

So maybe your gut instinct to meet your down-deep-inside legacy goals isn’t finding a platform in your business pursuits? Then set up something separate to make it happen. A new division, revenue stream, referral channel, product or service line extension . . . something that addresses your true life purposes.

Running a successful business is problematical enough; why saddle yourself with yet another entity? Because if the business isn’t satisfying your inner needs to, for example, help needy people and organizations, a nonprofit charitable or educational family foundation might. What’s the worst possibility?

You start a foundation and can’t make the time to run it? Find someone who believes in your purpose to step in, and you simply provide the guiding light. You start a foundation and the goals or mission become obsolete? Redefine them. You’ve already re-invented yourself and your business at least ten times over. Well?

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

How to run a business

while your way of life

is under attack . . .

It’s no secret. Unless you’ve been away visiting friends and family on Jupiter, there’s no way you could not be aware of the increasingly rapid emergence of America’s Socialistic policies.

There is no way you could not be aware of the union-spawned turmoil government has predictably forced upon a scared, angry, disenfranchised, and economically fragile general public.

Doubtful? Just look around you. Go sit in a crowded place and just watch. See the faces filled with looks of worry, dispair, anguish, frustration, wrinkled brows, downturned mouths, sad eyes, slumped shoulders. Listen to the moans and groans and nervous laughter. 

Our way of life is under attack.

Our sense of patriotism and morals, the faith we’ve always had in ourselves and the small businesses and professional practices we own and manage is being undermined daily by our own government and so-called leaders.

We have a White House and Senate tilted so heavily to the left that there is no more balance in American lives. There is no longer room for God? Parental respect? Small business as a way of life?

So how do we get past present union and government attempts to disrupt and destroy small business?

It’s shape-up or ship-out time!

Assess where you are. Be honest with yourself as to how you evaluate and measure your buiness progress and losses. Decide how to make the best use of what you have. (You’ve already been doing this or you wouldn’t be alive right now, so keep at it, and accelerate your efforts.)

THINK IN DIFFERENT BOXES!

Continue to NOT trust the government we’ve been saddled with. It hasn’t proven itself worthy of being trusted.

In other words, even though WE all know that small business creation of new jobs is the only answer to turning the economy — don’t create new jobs! Why? Why create new jobs simply to turn around and be penalized for it?

That government/union olive branch you reach to accept will be followed by a slashing machete.

Promises of immediate help are two-faced. They are laced with quiet admissions that long-term financial punishment is inevitable.

Sure, go ahead. Create new jobs now and get lower taxes and some make-believe incentives for doing that now. Then what? Feel that stab wound in your back? Next year or the year after (the identical dynamics of Obamacare), the great new jobs you created will come back in spades into your wallet with make-up-the-difference tax increases (plus!) and even more intrusive regulations.

What else is there to do? Remember November 6, 2012.  

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  Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Empty Promises

May Win Votes,

But Not Sales!

If you can’t deliver the goods or services on time and as expected –price, performance, and warranty-wise– don’t even discuss the possibilities. Send your prospective customer/client instead to your top competitor. In fact, force yourself to even go to the trouble of introducing her or him by phone or email, or in-person whenever possible.

Hand ’em over on a silver platter

(along with a sincere smile and backpat)!

Why? Because down the road a piece (you know how far that is, right?), that person may not remember where or who she/he bought from, but you can bet your bippy that that astonished and pleased customer will never forget you for the personalized introduction to help ensure a sense of purchase satisfaction.

Remember that EVERY purchase is an emotional one, with an emotional trigger clicking into an emotional buying motive. And you will have just pulled that trigger. So the other guy got the sale. So what? In all honesty, you couldn’t have fulfilled the customer’s request anyway.

To top it off, I guarantee you that the story of you going out of your way even though you weren’t making the sale will get told to at least ten other people and each of them will tell it to ten more. For a couple of minutes of your time, you will have created 100 positive impressions!

Imagine how many people will be praising your integrity and building your reputation when you choose to make a consistent practice of focusing completely on the customer’s needs, instead of your own! 

Is this a recommendation to grow your business by sending prospects to the competition? Good heavens, no! The point is that it’s better to help people find what they want when you can’t produce it yourself than to try manipulating prospect intents, altering what you have beyond performance reality, or –worst of all– promise and not deliver.

Performance is the key word. And honesty is still the best policy. Oh, and you’ll never need (like car dealers) to talk about either performance or honesty, because people will simply know about it when your actions match your words.

AAAACK! Too Late!

Okay, if it’s too late for all that good stuff

because you already screwed up, take heart.

All is not lost.

Let’s say you’re in the roofing installation business, and you promised a prospect that you’d deliver a three trillion dollar debt ceiling with insulated, soundproof ceiling tile panels by Wednesday, and it’s Monday with no debt ceiling supplier deal in sight. You now know you should never have promised it and your knees are shaking.

Go back to “GO” and own up. Tell the truth that you over-committed and promised what you shouldn’t have. Apologize. Be sincere and empathetic. Put yourself in the customer’s (or employee’s) shoes. Listen carefully. But stand tall and don’t ooze. Offer to do whatever it takes to make amends (and be sure to follow through with overkill effort!).

If doing this results in you suffering a loss, suck it up! Bite the bullet! Eat the expense! Write it off to stupidity. Lesson learned. Time to move forward. But remember that the WAY you handle the mess and the integrity you demonstrate (even after demonstrating no integrity!) adds up to creating a new opportunity out of an old problem.

It may be true that “nothing succeeds like success,” but it’s equally true that nothing succeeds like telling the truth in failure, and making good on a failed promise. 

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  Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone!