Marketing your business outside

your small business market can

bring you BIG business returns!

     Before you stick your nose up at the idea of marketing your small business outside your business market, sit back, absorb, and be willing to be surprised! In fact, I’m willing to bet that I’ll stop your mouse in mid-air within the next 3 sentences.

     Before you offer one of those 37 pet excuses why it doesn’t work, won’t work, can’t work, costs too much, makes no sense, is fantasy, and just ain’t worth the time or trouble — before you start in, let me tell you that you need to open your mind and re-visit the idea. Because it works! [That’s 2 sentences; 1 more to go; this bracketed stuff doesn’t count.]

     It can work for you and your business and (AHEM!) it’s free! Ah, there it is. The magic word that suckers every small business owner/ manager/partner/entrepreneur. Did it stop your runaway mouse?

     Okay, here we go…Let’s say you own a small appliance repair service business in Gumboro, Delaware, and you think it’s ridiculous to promote what you do to people who live in San Diego, Dallas, Detroit, Denmark, or Djibouti, right? (Sorry about getting stuck on D’s, and Djibouti? Who knows?)

     Well, you might have been right a few years ago, but with today’s smaller, quicker world, there’s really “no tellin'” where your next sale is coming from. Someone who sees mention of a small appliance business in her cousin’s hometown is likely to mention it in a next phone call or email. If you believe sales could be from anywhere, then sales could be from anywhere. Check out this little story:

A restaurateur friend of mine in California, knowing I went to college in New Rochelle, New York, recently raved to me in an email about a unique “no-menu” restaurant located in New Rochelle after having just seen it mentioned on Twitter, and then checked its website.

I’m a couple of states away now, but my brother’s insurance business is in Larchmont, New York, next to New Rochelle. When I called to wish him Happy New Year, I asked his wife about the restaurant. They knew the place, she said, but had shied away because they heard it had no menu. But my mention of the email I got piqued her interest and she said they would try it this week.

• Total cost to the restaurant:    ZERO
• Total value to the restaurant: PRICELESS (My brother’s a big eater AND a big tipper!) 

     There are thousands more stories like this for all kinds of small businesses that choose to not limit their marketing because making excuses and staying stuck in a time warp is easier to deal with than having to develop new promotional, publicity and marketing strategies.

     I’m not suggesting you suddenly abandon your steady customer base, or that you plunk down barrels full of cash to sponsor American Idol.

     I AM suggesting that small businesses need to put aside past thinking limitations and step up to global promotional efforts, especially when they’re available for free, 24/7, exercise a little imagination, and go at it persistently.

“Tell your LA & NYC friends they can get LA & NYC music composed & recorded in Ohio…better & cheaper @ http://bit.ly/7LzLES” is all it might take, for example, as a Twitter post (and a dozen characters left over, no less!) or post some variation a few times a day. Or on Facebook, or with a video and soundtrack sampler on YouTube.

     Got the idea? Go get the business? It may take longer than you like to get the “buzz” going, but it’s hard to beat the cost.      

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Water, Sunshine, Fertilizer 

and Good Hard Listening!

     The most common report from thousands of employees (in hundreds of surveys done over the past 20 years) is that those who indicated they liked their supervisor all said something like:

“I like my boss. She listens to me.”

OR

“I like my boss. I can talk to him.”

      So maybe you don’t care about being liked? Then click off to some vampire/zombie site and be done with you. A little harsh? No, and do you know why? Because you should care.

     Because, even though management isn’t a popularity contest — and there’s surely some truth to the old saying that you don’t have to like someone to do business with him — reality dictates nonetheless that people who do like their bosses prove over and over that they are more responsive, more productive, and more loyal.

     Being liked comes from one place: mutual respect.

     Respect for others comes about most often from listening, not just hearing. Consider the following:

     During a hectic business day, it’s normal for your mind to wander when you’re listening to someone talk. Most people talk at a rate of 100-150 words per minute (double this if you’re a chimpanzee, a disk jockey, or a teenager). But we listen at the rate of 600-800 words per minute. In other words, our minds (those of us who still have them) are going at a rate about four times faster than someone is speaking.

     When you’re speaking, this speed difference works in your favor because it lets you think ahead. But when you’re listening, the speed difference breeds daydreaming and impatience.

     The ability to listen and observe aggressively — to really hear and see what someone is communicating has far greater business implications than simply gaining insight.

     In selling, there is no greater asset!

     Your employees and customers are constantly revealing themselves in ways that will go unnoticed unless you are aggressively involved in listening to them and observing them … instead of thinking about what you want to say and trying to figure out how to squeeze in your ideas.

     The statements people make about themselves— the signals they give off — are both conscious and unconscious (“body language” if you will), but understanding these signals enough to make some positive use of them depends entirely on your ability to pick up on them … to listen aggressively and to observe aggressively.

     Active listening requires practice, but it will help you get more from what people actually mean, which might be quite different from what they are saying. Oh, and you won’t daydream … there won’t be time for that when you’re busy listening and observing.

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www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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!

U B wearin 10 yrs?

(Where Will You Be In Ten Years?)

A long weekend with grandchildren beats two years of graduate school for practical small business development input education. It tops all the TV reality shows too! Assuming you can stop long enough to follow the latest WII~iPod~WiFi~Skype~Twitter~Facebook~Skiff~Kindle~YouTube APPS, you may have some sense of tech developments dragging business by the heels across the universe … but you don’t know Jack compared to most 8 year-olds!

• My 8 year-old granddaughter has her own website, illustrates and writes her own books, is into performance ice-skating, and plays on a girl’s basketball team.
• Her 14 year-old sister has her own weekly (sometimes daily) political blog, aspires to a Senate seat in 2026 as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court; she’s on a competitive synchronized ice-skating team.
• Their 12 year-old brother creates his own computer-designed amusement parks and roller coasters in between basketball and soccer team schedules and playing the trumpet in his school band. 

    Ho-hum, so do all kids today do that stuff. They’re all walking Googles with maniac time crunches. ~~~~RIGHT! AndYOU have kids in your life. And what are you learning from them besides that their lives are nothing like ours were when we were their ages. In fact, our existences have probably been closer to our parents’ existences than they’ve been to the lives of our own children … y’think?

     So where on Earth (or beyond) does that leave us with our world of small business when we take a step or two or three down the road apiece? Are we all tangled up in our past issues to the point of missing what’s happening now? Or — equally unhealthy — are we lost in future reveries to the point of missing what’s happening now?

     What keeps us centered and focused on the present? Young children, babies and puppy dogs all seem to possess that certain present, “here and now” sense of awareness, lack of inhibition, lack of preconceived notions or judgments, and — as a result — are able to think and create and innovate with reckless abandon!

     Take a lesson from them. Play on the floor, in the grass. Watch and listen. Let them lead; you follow. Ask and understand. What are they doing that can help you do a better job right now with what you’re doing? If you think that answer is something to sneer at, you may be having a problem with choosing your behavior. Maybe no one has let that be okay for you. Maybe you haven’t let it be okay for yourself! Why should you? Keep reading…

     So, here’s the kicker: Go to this link  http://bit.ly/Bb1Tw  now for 60 seconds; give up that adult resistance thing and put this “here and now” focus tool to work for yourself. Use it to pry open your business eyes and ears a little.

     I’m told by many that it’s changed their lives. Hey, and it’s free. Let me know how reckless you can let your thinking be with that one big problem that’s been making your business crazy. Go on. Tax your imagination. Start with this 60 seconds …   

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 LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP? See Hal’s 12/30 Guest Blog Post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 WONDERING WHEN NO is Better Than MAYBE? See Hal’s 1/6 Guest Blog Post in BonMot Communications’ Angelique Rewer’s FREE HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED e-zine www.thecorporatecommunicator.net 

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STOP THE GOOD

GREEN CITIZEN B.S.!

     This past week, I passed a dozen retail stores at night with their electric-lighted signs shut off. My opinion? Sheer stupidity that will end up as self-fulfilling prophesy. [My opinion? Nighttime or otherwise, “A business with no sign is a sign of no business!”]

     One major mall-anchor department store I went into had the escalator to the second floor turned off. “Well,” an ernest young employee I asked about it, told me, “we haven’t had enough shopper traffic since the Christmas rush to warrant the overhead costs. At least that’s what the boss told us.” [My opinion? Idiotic, panicky, self-defeating, misguided management.] 

     A retail warehouse shopping club I visited last week had half their lights off with a placard at the entrance explaining that they were “practicing energy conservation and good citizenship by not being a drain on community electric supplies.” [My opinion? That’s B.S.!]

     Pretty opinionated, huh? Well somebody’s gotta do it. Why not me?

     What’s happening here is that businesspeople who should know better have simply stopped thinking. They are all examples of smokescreen public relations, and of admitting that they have run dry on the kinds of innovative thinking that must emerge as pervasive in business today to survive and thrive in this lousy economy.

     “Lousy” economy? Yup. (Sorry; don’t shoot the messenger!) It is frankly not getting better any time soon (until GENUINE small business job creation incentives exist, and with all the token lip-service plans afoot, plus a zero-experienced government running the show, it’s going to be quite a while!).

     Unfortunately, the environment has become a scapegoat excuse for many businesses to cut back on expenses. It’s ludicrous to think that electric lighting cutbacks are substantial enough to offset the reality of lost business, or to think (and proclaim no less) that lower electric usage is benefitting society, and that customers should applaud shopping in the dark and hiking up stationary escalators.

     Here, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s at the heart of this blog message:

Utility cutbacks do not produce sales!

     Sales are what make business go. Sales are what stimulate small business to create jobs. Some may think it sounds good, but the truth is that GREEN is OUT right now. No one — outside of a ten-minute ring around Washington, DC, or Hollywood, cares. Show people how they’ll benefit by your products and services, and don’t allow others to make feeble excuses for their own incompetency in value-adding and catering to customer service initiatives.

     Or let your people focus on cost savings instead of sales … and die on the vine.

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 LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP? See Hal’s 12/30 Guest Blog Post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 WONDERING WHEN NO is Better Than MAYBE? See Hal’s 1/6 Guest Blog Post in BonMot Communications’ Angelique Rewer’s FREE HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED e-zine www.thecorporatecommunicator.net 

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Stop writing to, at, for, under, and

over customers. Write WITH them!

     I read an e-zine article published today by an “author/trainer and full time radio host” (we’ll call her FP), entitled “How to write a GREAT direct response letter” that made me wonder what indeed Ms. FP is authoring, training, and radio-hosting about. Surely it can’t be the direct response letter writing skills her article would appear to lay claim to.

     As if it were “BREAKING NEWS…” chugging across the screen, she wraps her snappy little  lecturette around a paralyzingly old acronym: AIDA (for Attract ATTENTION; Create INTEREST; Stimulate DESIRE and Bring About ACTION). Sounds okay, huh? But it’s not!

     This formula, first of all, was updated almost 30 years ago to add a final “S” to the AIDA guideline (Note, btw, a “guideline” NOT a “how to”) making it: AIDAS. The last “S” is for Ensure SATISFACTION. Without the last “S,” Ms. FP, you have a big “NO SALE” and your magical “how to” approach flushes away with one flick of the handle.

There is only one way to write killer copy that sells, and it is the same way to give killer sales presentations that sell — from the heart, and from the mindset of being on the same side of the table as the customer, helping the customer solve the customer’s problem.”

      This means (Ms. FP does manage to get this right, but doesn’t take it far enough) the focus needs to be on addressing the benefits, not the features. Features do make engineers, manufacturers and designers happy. But customers only use features to justify their purchase decisions to bosses, stockholders, spouses, etc.

     Answering the question, “What’s in it for me?” is the only question a customer really cares about. Isn’t it what YOU think about when you’re being a customer?

     Triggering an emotional buying motive (which is the deciding factor in every purchase, even those you might think are completely rational, analytical, and unemotional) requires a true talent for persuasive writing and one-on-one selling that probably 50% of the world’s population have, but that probably fewer than 1% know how to use.

     Lots of people THINK they can write words that sell, and many THINK they can speak words that sell, but reality overwhelmingly suggests that those thoughts almost never translate to big-time performance.

     Lack of self-esteem, authenticity, empathy, product knowledge, marketing experience — and realization that choice and resolve can make the difference — are ordinarily the culprits.

     When you have doubts about your ability to write or speak the best sets of words to sell your products and services, find a proven professional wordsmith. How? Look for great writing, then find the writer. You only get one chance at a first impression.

Note: $1 billion in client sales have been attributed to Hal’s award-winning creations.

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 LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP? See Hal’s 12/30 Guest Blog Post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 WONDERING WHEN NO is Better Than MAYBE? See Hal’s 1/6 Guest Blog Post in BonMot Communications’ Angelique Rewer’s FREE HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED e-zine www.thecorporatecommunicator.net 

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“Even if you’re on the right track,

you’ll get run over

if you just sit there.”

–WILL ROGERS 

     Well, isn’t that nice? We just lost all the lawyers who regularly visit this site (probably at least 3!) when they saw that this was going to be an encouragement-to-act presentation.

     Lawyers are, after all, heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, in creating and fostering delay. Trying to get an attorney to read about the need to take action steps is like trying to get a chiropractor with back pain to visit an orthopaedic surgeon (or vice versa!).

     Will Rogers was the right voice for entrepreneurs. Nothing speaks louder than action. And odds are almost universally that when in doubt, some action is always better than no action. The important thing is to stay flexible as you act… whether it’s on the football field, the factory floor, your website or in the middle of a customer sales pitch.

     Taking action — as in business decision making, customer service, sales pipeline pursuits, marketing, value-adding to products and services, opening new revenue channels, strategic planning, stimulating productivity. and designing innovative management approaches — is the true mark of leadership.

     Nothing is gained in business by waiting. Not any more. Not in today’s lightning-paced world of communication, not in this economy.

     Does moving forward before you have all the information you think you need, make you feel nervous and prompt you to worry about outcomes? Okay, truth: You are not alone (A) and as Henry David Thoreau once said, “All we ever have is limited knowledge” (B), so use what you know to determine and update and act.

     Short of a life or death decision (which, thankfully, not many of us are called on to make very often), if your action turns out to be wrong: Stop the train at the next station. Get down onto the platform. Brush yourself off. Collect feedback. Listen. Get your bearings. Get onto the next train. Just keep moving.   

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 LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP? See Hal’s 12/30 Guest Blog Post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 WONDERING WHEN NO is Better Than MAYBE? See Hal’s 1/6 Guest Blog Post in BonMot Communications’ Angelique Rewer’s FREE HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED e-zine www.thecorporatecommunicator.net 

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“Customer service begins

after the sale is made!”

–IBM, the early days

Is it just me? I hate the put-stuff-together, 46-fold-road-map-style directions printed in fading gray ink on tissue paper (but in 27 languages!) for products I purchase. Like the Christmas toys that even your child can assemble that kept you up half the night, HO! HO! HO!

And then there are those great power tools from Mexico with instructions that challenge your English-Spanish pocket dictionary left over from trying to deal with the landscapers last summer, when you offered them –por favor– a bowl of eyeballs instead of ice cubes.

You got the tools for putting together that great “Early American” furniture set from China, with instructions in broken English and diagrams to match? Oh, and only 89 of the 92 parts?

Or how about those “E-Z Steps” that accompany the new services you signed up for? You know, the “techy” ones with 11 disclaimer paragraphs of .4 type that protectively entomb a microscopic 800 phone number to call for further information about account activation?

Right! It’s that number you’re allowed to call between 9am and 11am or 2pm to 4pm, Pakistani time. Yup, the same one included in the box of Mexican power tools and Chinese-American furniture, that by now you’ve learned to not mind being left on hold for 45 minutes for the privilege of finally connecting with a non-English-speaking, unintelligible “counselor.” 

Of course by this time, you full well know where you’re going to plug the thing in, and what your plans are for the new drill and saw set as soon as you can Google the counselor’s phone number to get a street address and take the next flight out.

I’m not being multi-cultural-diversity friendly, you say?

Sorry, I don’t think it should have to be a huge time-wasting political struggle just to be a customer… a paying customer no less!”

Don’t underestimate the sales power of product and service directions. You need to exercise at least as much care in thinking through and writing (and printing) instruction information as you do for your marketing, advertising, promotion, and sales materials.

A well-written business plan might help you wrangle some financial backing, and some super website content and marketing materials might help you drive customer traffic to your products and services, but customer service (the real thing) starts the minute a customer settles in to figure out how to best use and care for your products and services.

Customer service doesn’t mean you smile and handshake and backpat people through the orientation period that needs to frollow every purchase. (Why do assembly and activation instructions have to be more complicated than frozen food package directions?)

Whatever credibility, integrity and branding value you may have worked hard and spent much to achieve will go out the window in a heartbeat when your customer spreads out the paperwork and finds small-type loopholes in the warranty, a missing or damaged part, no clear diagrams or explanations, stickers that don’t come off…

Make it hard for customers to not be thrilled!

If manufacturers or suppliers aren’t doing their jobs, don’t represent them, OR do their jobs for them because–in the end–your customers are your customers who will boost your repeat sales numbers when you boost your attention to after-sale details, like directions.

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Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US 

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Just because you’re a hotshot,

don’t blow off doing your homework!

      I recently noticed two free-standing specialty coffee kiosks gone from two strip mall parking lots I regularly pass. The business owners — a franchise I believe — are no doubt fretting that they made a bad investment decision, probably blaming the economy. 

     But the truth is much more obvious. They simply didn’t do their homework. They thought they had an idea that was so spectacular that it would work anywhere: Starbucks-style coffee on the go at drive-up booths in busy shopping areas. You do know the word “assumptions” is spelled “T~R~O~U~B~L~E” ? Apparently, they did not.

     What they overlooked (by not doing their homework) was that you can’t set up shop for a retail establishment of any kind that specializes in expensive, exotic coffee in shopping areas (no matter how much traffic) that boast boarded-up storefronts and are primarily frequented by welfare and food stamp recipients, in a poverty-stricken state.

     Even in good times in a rich state (are there any of either of these left?), to charge $3-$6 for a cup of coffee-to-go approaches the cusp of gouging, and is best left to major parkway service centers and sports stadiums where captive audiences will pay the piper. 

     So these owners knew they had high-traffic areas, but never checked out shopper profiles. And even this would have been obvious had they had their scouting eyes open: junk-heap cars and trucks, and shoppers in Salvation Army-style clothing ear-marked the parking lots.

     Of course it’s possible that these owners might have thought they were so entrepreneurially sharp that they could sell ice to Eskimos.

     Compounding the issue was that perhaps they saw nothing off-putting about cars lined up at these one-person kiosks, having pulled up because there wasn’t time to stop at WAWA or 7/11, waiting in bumper-to-bumper lines for some tweep to order a fat-free, candy cane brandy latte with 3 shots of carmel splash espresso, and skim milk with real whipped cream sprinkled with cinnamon… 

     And even that bit of customer aggravation would be resolvable and — in some neighborhoods wouldn’t matter anyway — if some value-added benefits were made part of the waiting time (not unlike the idea of Starbucks laptop connections).

[Don’t get me wrong here, I am not endorsing Starbucks; I don’t like their operations, their rip-off prices OR the taste of their over-the-top coffees; they are simply a convenient example.] 

Bottom line: Realtors beat it to death, but they are right! Location is indeed critical for every (even in-home) business. But if you fail to do your (complete) homework and don’t think through the strengths and weaknesses of any potential location, you do it at your own peril.”

     If the business has promise, excuses don’t cut it when hotshot entrepreneurs run it into the ground. Specialty coffee –in the right locations — can still command big bucks in this economy. Stupidity cannot. 

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 LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP? See Hal’s Guest Blog Post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 WONDERING WHEN NO is Better Than MAYBE? See Hal’s Guest Blog Post in BonMot Communications’ Angelique Rewer’s FREE HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED e-zine www.thecorporatecommunicator.net 

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Bosom-Bumping,

Chest-Thumping Websites

     Is your businessthe greatest thing since sliced bread and bottled beer? Do you consistently remind your customers and prospects that you and your business are the best there is and that your competitors should just fold up their tents, throw in the towel, take their footballs and go home to sit on the couch and eat bon-bons while they watch global warming creep in?

     Nah, you might say. Whaddayathink, I’m some kinda whack job? you might ask. I play it low-key with customers and competitors, you offer timidly, because, says you, your website does all that rowdy outta-control stuff!

     Well, if your website is bumping bosoms and thumping chests, it is BIG-time out of step with reality. Websites are NOT 24/7 TV commercials!

     Websites are your only round-the-clock opportunities to be engaging and deliver consistent sales messages, to stimulate 2-way interactive exchanges of information without prejudices or emotions getting in the way, without shooting yourself in the foot.

     Done right, your website gives you a dimension of control that’s not possible in personal selling. No, it comes nowhere near replacing personal selling, but it absolutely does enhance and accentuate the sales function in every industry on Earth if it has the right ingredients, especially (says all the research) great copy/text/writing/words.

     And if it does have the right ingredients, you need only to attract attention to it and generate visitor traffic (a task generally best left to Internet marketing specialists).

Here’s what your website should do: Educate, entertain, create interest, stimulate desire, bring about action, generate sales inquiries and leads, and promote increased awareness of how great you are not by saying it, but by demonstrating the benefits your products and services provide … not the features, the benefits!

     Does it matter that you’re a nonprofit organization or government agency? Of course not. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re the fading-off-into-the-sunset US Postal Service, the local community college, a church or service dogs organization. People buy benefits.

     Use your website to sell benefits. Do it serious or do it with humor, but do it by helping the customer solve a problem or address a need, not by bumping bosoms or thumping chests or telling everyone how great you are.

     Because when it comes to sales, except for maybe your mother, nobody really cares how great you are. And, in the end, integrity speaks for itself.   

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 LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP? See Hal’s Guest Blog Post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 WONDERING WHEN NO is Better Than MAYBE? See Hal’s Guest Blog Post in BonMot Communications’ Angelique Rewer’s FREE HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED e-zine www.thecorporatecommunicator.net 

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Happy Christmas

Recovery Time!

     SO … Answer these 10 questions for yourself about your SELF, and then answer the same 10 for your BUSINESS.

     If you are totally honest with yourself about your SELF and with yourself about your BUSINESS, you will positively gain some important insight!

•      What didn’t work this past year? (Not “why?” which may take another year to answer)

•      And what, pray-tell, is working NOW? 

•      What needs to be eliminated? 

•      What will work going forward? 

•      What needs to be reevaluated?  

•      What needs to be fixed?  Adjusted?  

•      Completely overhauled? 

•      What needs to be attempted? 

•      What needs to be planned? 

     Remember, this is YOUR business and YOUR self we’re talking about here, so ONLY YOU can decide where to go next and ONLY YOU can choose how to get there. ONLY YOU know the real answers to all the questions about growing your self and your business! 

     And you can take hours researching and surveying, but the bottom line is –dear entrepreneur, dear business owner and manager– that in the end, YOU must charge forward by experience, instinct, and informed subjective judgement. 

     YOU must take REASONABLE risks to improve your SELF and your BUSINESS!

     What you choose as a course of action may be wrong, but:

A. SOME action is always better than no action, and

B. YOU are the captain of your ship, and YOU can adjust the course you’re taking at any hour of the day or night. Or, simply put into port for a short lay-over to get yourself more focused. Just choose what you want  (since all behavior is a choice!). 

     No excuses here. You need to be your own consultant. Step back. Take some deep breaths (For your SELF, for your BUSINESS, for your SPORTS performance, for your SALESMANSHIP, for your LIFE!) Oh, and after you breathe, get hopping! 

     The New Year’s bell is ready to ring. Are you ready to run? Have a Happy! 

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