It’s A Best-Kept Secret

… Among Men.

     From my early days in Madison Avenue’s “Top 10” ad agencies, where I worked for the industry’s two most famous and successful leading ladies, to active roles in women’s rights marches, to a professorship career which led me to ignite a campus women’s program,  followed by group counseling facilitator days with a female partner, I learned I was barely able to hold a candle to the feminine wiles of business leadership.

     I moved into serial-entrepreneur pursuits with a bevy of talented female business associates (the most important and influential of these being Kathy, whom I married 23 years ago), I have always preferred working with women. I can’t speak for many product industries, but to my way of thinking, women have always been smarter about all the things one needs to be smart about in running a service business and dealing with clients.

     And TODAY, I can finally say to all those smirking owners, investors, and VCs who’ve always equated quarterbacks, fighter pilots, and five-star generals with required business leader traits and qualities: “See. It’s not just me who thinks women are better business leaders!”

     The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute has just released new findings that predict women entrepreneurs will create close to 6 million new jobs in the U.S. by 2018, more than half the expected new job total. “That’s great,” you say, “but so what? How does that make women better business leaders?”

     Ah, it’s HOW this new job creation tsunami will occur that’s important. Women entrepreneurs are reported in this research study to be “more customer-focused, more likely to incorporate community into their business plans, and more adept at creating opportunities for others,” according to a report of the findings earlier today by Lisa Pateus Viana in the “Small Business” section of FOXBusiness online.

     Viana says these characteristics are “helping women excel in 1) running a business 2) keeping employees driven and productive and 3) building a loyal customer base.” She goes on to say that the research shows “the only things more important to women entrepreneurs than their customers are family and religion,” and proceeds to make a strong case for the values of something few male counterparts strive for: a sense of balance.

     It seems to me that the only ones who disregard the validity of these kinds of study findings are those who have never learned to accept themselves or be able to respect others anyway. So, good riddance to all those stimulus/bailout-dependent corporate and government muckity-mucks who think entrepreneurship is an irritating business nonevent without promise.

     And let’s hear it for the emerging new stronger-sex business leaders! In fact, if we cut them some slack, they may actually create us some millions of new jobs sooner than later! 

~~~~~~~~~~~Visit Hal’s Recent Guest Blog Posts~~~~~~~~~~~

•  
  • “The SALES Snow Job” @ http://bit.ly/bYHmXx
  • “Got A Sick Website?” @ http://bit.ly/6iYe6g    
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  • “What’s Your T-Shirt Say?” @ http://bit.ly/7K0s4a   

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“Spread out the tools,

then go for donuts!”

No, those eight words are not part of what construction guys can teach to small business owners. In fact, those eight words may account for the building industry employment transience we so often hear about.

No, I’m talking about seven (7) magic words!

Did you ever have a house built? (No not those seven words.) If you’ve ever had a house built and asked something dumb like “Gee, when do you guys put in the main water pipe and wire connections?” (“Oh yeah! Plumbing and electric? No problem; we can run those lines after the house is done; we’ll dig the yard up again and re-cement the concrete foundation we’ll have to break, along with maybe a wall or two, but don’t worry!”)

Did you ever have an addition put on your house? (“Uh, what cough, cough, dust is that, cough, cough, that you didn’t expect? I, cough, cough, don’t see any dust!”) Was your builder marching to his own drummer? (“Duh, what blueprints?”) Odds are the lesson you learned was to never do it again, right?

Well, let me tell you that there are two great lessons to be learned from construction guys that can make a life or death difference for small business owners. One, which comes from such an unlikely pair of experts as a carpenter and a heart surgeon — but which probably started with the carpenter since carpenters have been around a lot longer than heart surgeons:

Measure twice. Cut once.

This little 4-word gem of a mantra is the unspoken guideline for many successful small businesses. It’s one way of making sure there’s minimal or no waste of time, money or effort. It’s also expressed as “getting it done right the first time” (or “haste makes waste” as Granny used to say).

It’s the idea that we can actually help ensure maximum productivity with minimum expenses and liabilities. It’s all about making sure there are no rocks under the water we’re diving into. This little piece of reassurance can have untold value and appeal to a small business owner’s wallet and sense of well-being.

And what are the other three words of wisdom?

Chunk it up!

Whether you’re overwhelmed with a ten mile-long “to-do” list or a project with altogether too many parts, or you’re looking for a value-added way to entice customers by offering them a staggered payment plan, construction guys score again!

They don’t kill their customers with the whole monster total price to pay at once, they charge you what? One third up front (to cover the costs of materials), one-third half-way through the job (to cover salaries), and one-third on completion with satisfaction (to cover profits).

If they only get the first third up front, they’ll never wind up on the short end of a parts/supplies bill. If they get the second third halfway, they can only not make a profit, but will have paid for all materials and labor and put money through their bank. This approach works for nearly all business services and most large ticket item products.

The customer is happy to not commit all their money at once and will prefer a pay-as-you-go option to keep more control on the work that’s booked. 7 words: Measure Twice. Cut Once. Chunk it up!

# # #

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Leave “Back To

The Future”

in the dust and

the old movies!

Leadership’s a funny thing, especially when running a small business. The more we try to figure out what went wrong, the less we move forward. Big unionized companies and government agencies can afford the luxury of assigning task teams to look back and determine who did what to whom and why and wherefore.

Small businesses can go broke while their heads are turned.

More than any other organizational entity on Earth, small businesses must remain the most flexible and the least concerned with exploring, assessing, and resolving old problems. In other words, if it’s broke (and not impacting the lifeblood of our business), we need to step over or around it and move on. Fixing stuff takes too much time that is better spent with forward motion … innovative leadership by example!

We need to remind ourselves that anything longer than a minute-old is:

1. Fantasy (because it’s not in the here-and-now present reality of time and space) and
2. Over with and impossible to change.

HOW do we keep our minds focused on the reality of what we’re dealing with day to day —  instead of what happened last week, or yesterday, or an hour ago? The fastest and most effective way that tens of thousands of successful business owners and managers use to accomplish this (and, by the way, that’s free, and takes all of 60 seconds!) is to simply take a couple of deep breaths.

     For specific reinforcement on this, take a quick side trip with your mouse and click here to take some deep breaths.

     The bottom line is that no matter what method we use . . . checking our watches, turning up the music volume, pinching ourselves, playing with a puppy or a baby, taking a slug of ice water, rubbing our foreheads briskly or rubbing our hands together briskly, phoning our desk lines with our cell phones and talking to ourselves (well, okay, maybe just let it ring once!) . . . if it works and it joggles our brains into the present moment, it’s a good method. We need to keep using it.

Recalling past incidents, problems and solutions, accomplishments can have a positive effect on our here-and-now decision making as long as we are consciously managing those “Back to the Future” visits from our present existences.

We get ourselves in trouble when we choose to allow ourselves to get lost with past thoughts, reveries, daydreams, nostalgia … whatever we want to call these experiences. Why? Because getting stuck in those mental journeys  is rarely if ever productive and — in a work setting — will almost certainly not help us establish or maintain the forward motion we need to grow our businesses.

   Is it very unlike running down the field carrying the football, and suddenly stopping to think about the circumstances surrounding your last touchdown?

Small business leaders must prompt, promote, and maintain continuous forward movement, be prepared to “turn on a dime” as the expression goes, and stay focused as much of the time each day as possible on the customer, supplier, employee, market opportunity that’s smack dab in front of our faces, not dwelling on history. Save that journey for your accountant.

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Are You

Juggling Seagulls?

     Draw a bullseye with two rings around it and label the center space: FAMILY & PERSONAL, then label the innermost ring space: WORK & BUSINESS, and then label the outer ring space: FRIENDS & OTHER ACTIVITIES.

     Copy each heading onto a separate column or separate piece of paper. Then list the most appropriate items/ people/places/ things in each category. Allow yourself one minute per list. 

     Put the list down and walk away. Get some water or a cookie or just stare out the window. (This is like a little ginger between sushi pieces.) Then return to your target and lists. The amount of “blur” between your bullseye and your next two rings will indicate how “fastlane” your life is right now.

I say “right now” because this is a here and now exercise: what goes in each part of the target can change by next week, tomorrow, tonight, or within the next 6 seconds!

In fact, when life gets too hectic, it’s a useful device for daily assessment, for helping you sort out and stay focused on priorities.

     Whatever blur does occur, whatever lack of definition exists between the three areas should give you a good heads up on how efficiently or inefficiently you are using your time, as well as the extent of your allegiances to each entity that is taking time and attention from your life.

     Once you’ve done this little diagnostic study on yourself, and have a good overview of your current activities and involvements, you need to decide if these pieces are where you want them to be.

     Are you spending too much time with your business and not enough with your family, for example? Or, are you so caught up in someone else’s problem that you haven’t made time to solve your own?

     I once found myself so sucked into a Chamber of Commerce project to boost town retail traffic, that I ended up working nights and weekends just to catch up with my own business (which was not retail and stood to gain nothing from the initiative).

     The crunch infiltrated my time commitments to my family. The small disruptions that surfaced were clearly the tip of cataclysmic explosion. I extracted myself from the C of C mission and discovered — lo and behold! — the retailers I was knocking myself out to promote didn’t care enough to pick up the ball for themselves.

This is NOT to suggest that voluntary community work is not worthwhile. It most certainly is. But it’s a good idea to look before you leap. For your own good, as well as the cause involved, such engagements are most successful when they are clearly defined, clearly justified, and clearly scheduled.

Plus –realistically — where choice is involved (vs. for example, an emergency), no one should ever commit to helping others who is not coming from a position of strength to begin with . . .

• A sick teacher is an ineffective teacher.

• A cashpoor business cannot donate to charities.

• A business owner who’s preoccupied with family survival issues or debt collection issues cannot be an effective sales leader.

     Draw your target again tomorrow. See if anything changes. Can you make something change? Maybe if you stop juggling one fewer seagull, it will fly away! 

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Don’t Trust

What You Remember!

     Unless you are one of the 27 other people in America who has not a shred of interest in football, or who found yourself snowed in and powered out as I was on Superbowl Sunday, you probably missed the emergency portable radio static-filled broadcast of the audio for “60-Minutes.”

     Even as many were trying to remember the Colts-controlled first half of the game as they watched the Colts being trounced in the second half, the “60-Minutes” broadcast was focused on the shortcomings of memory.

     Actually, besides the realization that no one ever listens to portable radios anymore (who knew?), the broadcast was wrapped around a cluster of gruesome news stories involving “100% absolutely positive” witness identifications of individuals as criminals who were not.

     A couple of examples involved innocent people who were wrongly imprisoned for many years (more than a dozen I believe I recall hearing in one case). It was only after a slim-chance break in reviewing nearly untestable past evidence that innocence was proven with DNA studies.

     The point of all the par-for-the-course mainstream media sensationalism was to offer newsworthy, scientific proof that the human memory plays tricks on us… that, no matter how absolutely positive we think we are about something we remember, odds are that we are wrong! 

     Okay, so that’s not much of an ego-flattering thing to have to admit… and especially if it has to do with your business and the ways you think you solved problems in the past, which carries a bit more consequential impact than recollecting who threw what touchdown in the 1987 world series (er, sorry, Superbowl).

     What it might say to us, this little touch of dementia, is that it’s not just professors who are absent-minded and that we could all stand to rely less on what we are sure happened in the past. Big corporations wallow in the past, thinking no doubt it will lead them soaring into the future.

     But if remembering the past produces so many inconsistencies and untruths, what good can it all be? How will it ever move us into the future? It will not. If you disagree, you’ve been hanging around too many history teachers and accountants.

     It is the spirit of entrepreneurship that all business most ultimately adopt if we are to heft ourselves upward and out of this mud-clogged economy. There is a genuine need for business leaders to put the past aside and pay attention to what’s going on here and now.

     The past may be interesting and worth much exploration, but not at the expense of what’s in front of our business faces, because present judgements based on past memories will never lead us forward. Before you bet the farm on what you remember that you’re completely certain of, take a deep breath and look instead to the opportunities that are sitting in your lap… appreciate that times and your memory banks have changed. 

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Business faculties

teach rules,

yet there are

no rules in business . . .

     If you or someone you know is planning to be a smash-hit success in the business world, and the plan has anything to do with getting an under-graduate or advanced degree from a college or university that offers up business programs and courses run and taught by PhDs and MBAs (and earmarked by curricula that’s been infiltrated by rules and regulations), get outta Dodge!

     Unless you have no brain, no ambition, no gumption, and are willing to embark on a career simply to please your father instead of yourself, the kind of pre-corporate career training you’ll get will simply waste your time and money. How can anyone who knows the truth — that business has no rules (except maybe in accounting and maybe some parts of retailing and manufacturing) — think that there’s benefit to be had from coursework filled with teachers who teach rules?

     Before you jump on the disagreement wagon, take a good hard look around at the economy we’re mired in. Where are the biggest mud-heaps? Where’s the quicksand? What’s needed to turn things around? Who’s leading us in that direction? Who’s not? Who’s talking the talk but not walking the walk? We are slogging our way through an economic swamp largely because too much emphasis has been put on the teaching of rules and regulations of business, where none exist!

     Where do you find the kinds of business courses that make a difference, that are focused on reality, that are taught by people who have been there and done that? Try community colleges. Try private training organizations. But if you think for even a blink that some hotshot School of Business MBA will send you skyrocketing to business success in today’s economy, perhaps you should think again.

• It’s not worth your money.
• It’s not worth your time.
• It’s not worth hearing what textbook academia types who’ve coasted through 16 or 18 years of classroom work think about what it’s going to take to do real work in the real world that they’ve never done — that you’re going to have to do once you get out.

     If you really want to learn business, get a job. Use the job to train yourself. Back up what you learn with some solid community college classes run by people who are in business and have learned in business how to be successful in business by doing it, not by theorizing what might be possible.

     There is no better way to learn the realities of business than to work in a small business and pay close attention to what’s going on, and take courses run by entrepreneurs, not PhDs. Business success is measured by your attitude and by how effectively you apply yourself and what you know, not by where you went to school or what PhD taught you what rules. 

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

If your Valentine list

doesn’t include your

business, get some

marriage counseling, 

or get out!

     Why? Because –first of all– if you own or run a business, you’re married to it. Second– nobody else can love your business for you. And if you’re not head-over-heels with it, your options are slim. You stand to bring it and/or yourself and/or your family tumbling into the kind of abyss that one might expect only to see in a Harry Potter movie. So get up or get out before you get whacked!

     Results of a new 2010 survey by the highly esteemed and credible The Conference Board, as reported in the Corporate Communicator (subscribe free to this great newsletter at www.bonmotcomms.com) show that only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their work…the lowest figure in 22 years!

     In other words, small business owners and managers are now facing big business problems. If The Conference Board findings are correct, and there’s never been any reason I know of to doubt their studies, those of you with 100 employees, have 55 unhappy employees; if you have 20 employees, 11 are unhappy! That’s an awful lot of discontent under one roof (especially if you don’t love your business)! 

     Whether little thumpity-thump hearts fly into the air when you think about your business or not, this 45% figure still spells disaster. It still means the odds are that a majority of people in your company are dragging their butts around, collecting paychecks and benefits from you for doing only the amount of work that’s necessary in order to collect paychecks and benefits from you.

     “Yeah,” says you, “but I can’t pay out any more than I am right now!”

     Ah, but –believe it or not, and EVEN in this economy– money is not always what turns frowns to smiles and negative attitudes to positive ones. Of course paychecks and benefits are important, and even more so where cutbacks have been necessary. But here are some proven solutions you can try, or use to prompt your own versions:

• Do everything you can to help employees be more a part of decision making (particularly as it impacts how they interpret their individual job responsibilities) 
• Empower employees to exchange more job-productive ideas with one another
• Promote greater pride in employee workmanship
• Publicly acknowledge all over-the-top efforts (regardless of whether they succeed or fail) with small frequent rewards

     Selecting something to target from the above list should get you off on a better foothold if your business marriage has been faltering and all you’ve been seeing is stars and corkscrews spinning away from the tops of disgruntled heads.

     And if you still truly love your business and can’t stand the thought of divorce or separation, try cherry-picking off the above list anyway. It can help enhance your Valentine’s Day message to your business and will get you a whole lot further than expensive roses or candy. <3 <3 <3 <3 (uh, right: sideways hearts that the blog won’t let me close the spaces on! Cheers!)    

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

S T O P

managing problems

and S T A R T

ending them!

     We are unfortunately taught from pre-K through graduate school, and brain-deadened all along the way by government, unions, and giant corporations (plus well-intentioned family, friends and associates), to wring out our dripping old problem washcloths and use them again.

     Some kind of recycling “green” thinking stewardship-leadership idea?

     Well, far be it from me to not be fully supportive of environmental and ecological interests, but “No Thanks!” when it comes to recycling problems. To manage a problem is to recycle the problem until it comes back again and bites you in the butt! Small businesses don’t have the financial staying power to withstand multiple butt-bites.

     This leaves small business leaders to end the dripping-old-problem washcloth cycle before it begins by blowing the thing up, instead of letting it collect bacteria before its next use. How? STOP doing everything we’ve been taught since childhood: STOP STUDYING THINGS SO MUCH!

     “OMG, that’s sacrilegious! We have to be analytical — especially men — that’s our job!” Right. Because every blue-blooded American is crazed about getting and regurgitating the “in-depth analysis” offered by competitive sporting events commentators, by political and news pundits, by medical and diagnostic healthcare professionals … and by the vast majority of teachers in the vast majority of classrooms. 

     But this is about your small business and my small business, not the AFL-CIO,  AARP, Chevrolet, Bank of America, VERIZON, GOOGLE, main-stream media or the American Federation of Teachers. This is not about the futility of trying to end the vicious cycle of problems of the deep-pocketed. This is about learning what no one (except perhaps for some wise old grandparents!) has ever taught us: HOW TO THINK!

     Leadership means many different things to many people and organizations and governments, but to small business owners, operators, managers, and entrepreneurs, it can only mean one thing: HOW TO THINK!

     Even college which is supposed to teach us how to think, teaches us instead simply more of how to analyze. Analysis skills will not ingratiate a customer, pay a bill, respond to an immediate market opportunity or patch up piece of bad press.

     Long-term strategic planning is the lifeblood of big business and often accounts for giant corporate leaders’ collective inability to see their hands in front of their faces. Action plans are the regimen of small business; they are about what’s happening now and what can be done now to start ending problems now.

     Successful small businesspeople don’t waste time re-assessing, re-evaluating, re-comparing, re-contrasting, re-thinking, revising, re-visiting, re-structuring, or dwelling on re-reads of studies, surveys, and reports.

     Successful small businesspeople try solutions, and when the solutions don’t work, they try other solutions; they don’t waste valuable time, money, and effort running around in circles trying to manage the fire and put the same flame out over and over again. They get rid of the fire.

What can you do today to start ending

            the problems you’ve been managing?          

Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US 

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

You have all the

ingredients, but 

it depends on how 

you bake the cake!

[…and you KNOW what happens if you put the egg in at the wrong time!]       

      Okay, so you came here expecting maybe a magic sales solution to make up for not getting a government bailout? Well, maybe you guessed right. Maybe this is the blog post that will change your life…the one that will make a difference in your future by holding your head still for three minutes and getting you to focus on the present.

     First, recognize that if you’re a salesperson, you are an entrepreneur. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a salesperson. The two functions and categories are not mutually exclusive. Consequently, Voila!

Salespreneurship is You!

     What does all this mean?

A) You cannot abandon the management and administrative tasks of running your sales rep business. Why? Because customer lead generation, product and service knowledge, customer communication and presentation skills (especially active listening) , closing skills, and building a strong enough relationship to generate repeat sales will all mean nothing.

Without accurate, attentive data entry and paperwork follow-through with every encounter, you are investing in disaster!

B) Likewise, you cannot dismiss the critical responsibilities of salesmanship and selling just because you’re a free-spirit entrepreneur flying from project to project. Why? Because without sales and a properly-performed sales function, there is no business ship to captain.

     So your job #1 mission is to accept that sales and entrepreneurship are joined at the hip. Your job #2 mission calls for acknowledgement of goals (like knowing where the finish line is in a race) and then abandonment of that acknowledgement! 

“If you dwell on the finish line while you’re running the race,

you’ll trip yourself up and fall on your face!”

–HAL ALPIAR

     True success in selling and in entrepreneuring comes with being able to focus on the here-and-now present moment every passing moment of every passing day as much as possible. You’ll never do it 100%. But the farther you can push the envelope and be consistently conscious of what’s right in front of your face, the happier, healthier and more productive you’ll be…the more rewarding will be your success.

     How to do this? The #1 Solution : Go to http://bit.ly/cMoqHf and practice the 60-second exercise offered there as often as you can. The #2 Solution: When you feel yourself drifting off into events and situations and conversations older than one minute ago OR imagining something that’s more than one minute into the future (the approach to the finish line), recognize you are headed into nonproductive fantasyland, and return to Solution #1.

     Salespreneurship. Bah humbug? Sure it’s harder work than being a halfwit entrepreneur or a slipshod salesman, but remember this mindset adjustment is all a matter of choice. It’s your behavior and it’s your choice. History proves that choosing a here-and-now orientation is always a healthier, happier, more prosperous place to be.

Comment below or reply direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Blog FREE via list-protected RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Great VALENTINE for GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Are You

Communicating

Your Brains Out?

Before you throw in the frustration towel over the failure of those who work with you to follow the enlightened path of leadership you carve out, get in front of a mirror; take off your hat and toupee; and examine your brain(s).

If you’re thinking the people around you are getting dumber than horseshoes, see if maybe — just by chance — there are any big bumps on your brain that seem to be causing you to shut down the power valve on your communicating channels.

The first symptom is evident by measuring the expressions of those who work with you. If they’re yawning and listening to their watches or sextexting while you’re talking, you’re probably not giving them enough information. If they’re squinting and frowning and writing too frantically to even look up while you’re talking, you’re probably giving them too much information.

How will you know when you’re communicating just the right amount of information? People will look and act attentive. They’ll ask relevant questions. They’ll ask for examples to clarify their interpretations of your comments. They’ll ask for diagrams, resources, directions. You will see active nods of agreement and reasonably-paced note taking.

Alert, receptive people who are getting your message will sit or stand leaning slightly forward without (defensive) folded arms or legs or ankles or hands. Watch out for the guy who sprawls way back in his chair with (superiority) clasped hands behind his head! And beware the individual whose clasped hands form a forefinger “steeple” especially with forefinger-tips to her lips (which means she thinks she knows more than you about the subject, and is saving up her attack for the right, most devastating, moment)!

Those three posture-people are holding back what they really think, believe, or want to say. Don’t let them disrupt your flow or presentation. Call on them as soon as you see these body language clues. Ask for their thoughts right away. Encourage them to offer their opinions.

Then it’s your turn to listen carefully, make notes, and ask questions about their comments . Today’s leaders are those who rally teamwork by setting examples with their leadership. Active listening, observation skills, and feedback are all enormously important factors in leadership level communications.

Setting examples with your leadership requires you to communicate just the right amount of information to get things done. That means (besides listening, observation, and feedback) to process carefully what you see and hear, and to put your hat and toupee back on before you leave your mirror.

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0911

“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!