Feeling Invincible? . . .

Think Only Wussy Types

Fret Over “What If” Stuff?

Perhaps consciousness of the fragility of life has never struck you or your business full force. Perhaps you’ve somehow managed to escape the anguish, angst, and fears attached to the reality of your own or the life of someone close hanging by a thread. Perhaps you’re too young or too lucky or too blessed to have ever known the stress of having machines do the breathing and feeding and medicating and pain management?  

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If that is even partly true of you, don’t let today pass without giving it at least a few moments of thought. Why? Because just as a business with no sign is a sign of no business, a business or business leader without good health — or a poor-health contingency plan– is the sign of a sick or unhealthy business.

“Nah,” a strong-willed 30-something entrepreneur responded to that idea, “My business is healthy,” he said, “and I have no provision for disaster because I work our regularly and I’m in good shape, we have a long-term lease, our customer base is growing steadily, and prospective investors are standing in line!”

“But surely,” I offered, “you have some kind of insurance coverage? Fire and theft? An office policy? Collision? Life? Health?” He cocked his head as if I’d hit him with an illegal punch, “Sure, but so what? THAT is MY contingency plan. Things go south? I just file claims and collect enough to start something else!”

“That’s good,” I said, “because burglaries and fires and tsunamis and earthquakes and hurricanes and tornados do happen, but I’m talking about catastrophic illness. That happens too.” Ask around. You’ll find plenty of people who’ve experienced sudden ill health, who suffered, and whose businesses suffered because they had no contingency plan.

When that “CLOSED DUE TO FAMILY ILLNESS” sign goes up on the front door (or website), dwindling (sometimes plummeting) customer loyalty and support follow. We live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? society.

Are you ready to face critical damage to your revenue stream and threats to the life support system your enterprise has routinely fostered?

What steps will you take and in what order? Or who will pinch-hit for you? What impact can your suppliers and customers expect, and how –specifically– will they be dealt with to accommodate their needs and to keep things running and moving forward? What gears will need to be shifted? By whom? When?

The time to deal with contingency planning is now, and to re-visit the plan at least once a year. The cost to plan is time. The cost to cope without a plan can be annihilating. It’s certainly true that expectations breed disappointment, but it’s equally true that having no plan is like captaining a rudderless ship.

And then there’re storms . . . 

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 You’re an entrepreneur?

You’re probably the

 runt of the litter!

Ask anyone who’s made it big in the service business, and the odds –by my calculations– are roughly 9 out of 10 that she or he did it by staying small. Makes sense. Most runts of the litter have entrepreneurial zeal and instincts. They scrap, scrape, and battle for food and attention from the day they’re born.

And runts make great dogs but not always great parents, which raises a key how-to issue about staying small. From my experience, there’s hardly ever a good and reasonable reason for adding payroll employees when you’ve passed the point of generating strong revenues on your own..

At most, you may decide to put an assistant on payroll, but herein lies the secret to continued growth: The person you choose must be dedicated and loyal to you at all costs. He or she must be a super organizer since –as an entrepreneur– you’re probably not. This individual must have no greater purpose than to make you successful.

In other words, do NOT seek a creative thinker. That’s your job! Do NOT seek a super salesperson. That’s also your job! Find someone you can trust absolutely all of the time. Find someone who will be assertive with other people on your behalf. Find someone who will rise to the occasion, who does not need hand-holding.

You need a person with strong judgement skills, who can readily size up others (and situations) and who knows enough to know when to insist on over-communicating with you. In other words, if you need to hire someone, hire a leader. If you can find this individual, and it may take years of searching, you won’t need anyone else.

Anyone else you take on should be on a commission, performance incentive, or parttime basis. Once you add a payroll position, and get the wrong person involved, you commit to stagnation and foreclose your prospects to succeed; you commit to the odds of adding expenses without being able to cover them. You commit to status quo.

In a product business, you need only to add skilled labor on a highly selective and prudent basis. One person with know-how, and the drive and energy to do the work of two people at one and a half times a one-person salary is far better than two people doing two jobs for three-quarter person salaries.

The bottom line: Runts of the litter excel as entrepreneurs. They are more independent, inventive, industrious, and self-sufficient. Rather than waste time looking, they will use a coin for a screwdriver. But once in a while, they need to back off and do some hard thinking about where they’re headed and where the next bone is coming from.

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

“Nuttin’s Happenin’”

. . . is to ACT NOW!

NOW, while we’re on the cusp of

The Great American Work Slowdown.

Christmas is Sunday. Everyone (except for rambunctious entrepreneurs–there’s some other kind?) is moving more slowly at work. The rank and file are increasingly preoccupied with office and neighborhood parties.

Could this be true? Is it just my imagination? Are you grinning nervously at that thought or at what I might be tossing your way in the next couple of paragraphs?

Well, if you’re in that “rambunctious” crowd I mentioned, you probably wait ’til the last minute to shop, hate to waste time making the festive rounds but find that a couple of stiff drinks help make those swashbuckling business status-climbers and oozy neighbors a little more tolerable . . . and it’s all good practice leading up to that big week of dysfunctional family gift-giving gatherings!

Put your mouse down for a nap.

Get up from your desk or work station or laptop, and stop reading this blog (I trust you that you’ll come back). Now, DO SOME thing. ANY thing! It doesn’t matter what you do. What matters is that you do SOMEthing.

Take a walk around the block. Eat a cookie. Take a bathroom break. Turn the music on or up. Draw a picture. Get away from the monitor and keyboard and take some deep breaths. Shake your head like a wet dog. Clap or briskly rub your hands together. Take a slug of cold water.

Appreciate that by breaking your concentration, you are also breaking some element or accumulation of stress.

Don’t quit yet. Don’t rush back to the screen. Gently close your eyes and take ten seconds to massage your temples or the back of your neck (counter-clockwise stimulates more blood flow).

Pick up a pen or pencil (you DO still have one?) and a piece of scrap paper. Write or draw or diagram the first thing that comes into your mind . . . like a creative branding theme exercise!

It absolutely doesn’t matter what you record (and no one but you will ever see it anyway).

Go ahead. I’ll wait. ………. Good!

Next, draw or write or diagram the first thought you have about something you can do at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning to pump up or booster-shot some part of your business into action right away.

Maybe it’s a new direction. Maybe it’s solving a nagging problem. Or it’s reviewing reports or articles you’ve been shoveling around, or checking websites you’ve been intending to visit, or having coffee with the new (or oldest) employee (or supplier/vendor/sales rep) and listening?

Perhaps you haven’t made enough time lately to initiate collection of customer feedback?

No matter how small a step, just make it an ACTION step. SOME action always beats NO action! I hear from blog visitors all the time that success comes from having a bias to action. Do you?

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302.933.0116    Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

to your SELF?

Those who talked to themselves were once considered out of step with reality, and those who out-loud answered their own questions were thought to be in urgent need of psychoanalysis… or a straitjacket.. perhaps even a lobotomy, like in the gruesome 1450s in England. But today? You’re in luck!

Judge-and-jury assessments like this obviously don’t include entrepreneurs. After all, you probably talk to yourself at least hourly, and carry a lifetime reputation for being crazy. I mean, how else could you still be good enough to be in business in this staggering leaderless economy?

When you decide to become an entrepreneur,

you necessarily choose to also become your

own (often lonesome) sounding board.  

You should know, by the way, I’m not trying to put a damper on your rants and raves and ongoing mutterings. Those activities, in fact, can be stress-reducing in and of themselves, and serve the purpose of clearing your head — something like a wet retriever shaking off water while standing on your foot! (Had that experience, eh?)

What I am suggesting is that you add to your self-talk repertoire, a bunch of other self-oriented and self-focused actions — like trusting your SELF and appreciating your SELF and recognizing your SELF-uniqueness.

Yeah, but that borders on being selfish, doesn’t it? And don’t we all know that selfish behavior is not a good thing for society, our planet, our personal long-term value? Absolutely. But I’m not speaking of self-aggrandizement. I am addressing the basic life and business success need — to be oriented toward one’s SELF.

Calling it selfish or not doesn’t matter. It’s what your purpose and intentions are all about that really count. When we can be oriented toward our selves in our thoughts and actions, we can be –among other things– more aware of the needs of others, and how we might best be able to help meet or fill those needs in addition to our own.

Selfishness in this respect also tips our internal scales in favor of a more improved, more productive and balanced state of mental and emotional health.

The more we appreciate and value our SELVES and our uniqueness’s, the more we tend to respect the uniqueness’s of others, and the more effective we can become at improving our pathways toward self-sufficiency, self-determination, and the all-important life quality that traditional schools fail to teach: self-esteem.

So the thin line to walk is being able to keep humility and let go of egotism while nurturing self-respect and fostering self-development through increased self-awareness. A high-wire act? If you choose to make it difficult on your self, it is… and it will be. But the choice is yours. And NOW is the time to act! Good luck!

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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!