R.I.P. Butch Taras

     I, and roughly 149 other guys (including two women) who play senior softball (many of us year-round when weather permits) in Southern Delaware, learned today that all of us lost a special teammate, a friend … and an outstanding human being in Butch Taras.

     Hard to imagine 150 teammates in softball? Well, that’s because it really never mattered to Butch which of the ten or so teams you played for –or even whether you were playing against the team he was assigned to. Nor did it make any difference that you might be giving him a run for the money in game performance or you were the worst player in the league. He respected everyone equally.

     But don’t think his authenticity made him a pushover. Butch was the poster boy for competitive spirit, and took winning seriously (more than once I found him at the field on an off-day, by himself, hitting one ball after another from a practice T “to improve” his near-flawless swing!).

     The bottom line is that Butch was a leader through and through because he considered everyone a teammate.

     What made this behavior especially endearing is that Butch was a truly gifted athlete who could do almost everything better than almost everybody. He was arguably the finest all-around performer in our league of 150 seniors. But he never carried his superior athletic prowess on his sleeve. In fact, except for his World Championship Softball ring that he wore with great pride, he never spoke of his abilities.

     Friendliness, humility, and courage are the traits I most admired and associated with the Butch Taras I knew. He was a “gentleman” in every sense of the word, on the field and off. And now, he has left us after such an abrupt bout with cancer that it’s hard to believe that 20 of us shared the field with him just 4-5 weeks ago!

     We all knew he was battling his way through pain and stressful treatments. And each of us in our own ways let him know that he and his devoted wife Carol could count on us for support. His positive attitude prevailed to the end. It was and –I know I speak for all of us whose lives he touched– shall forever be, an inspiration to us all. 

I know, Butch, that I won’t be the only one to reminisce and compare your great lefty power with every long-ball blast to deep right field, nor will I be the only one to remember the encouraging pats on the back you gave me for meager little pop-up singles. And who can ever forget the sincerity of your pledge to overcome this terrible disease, or the sparkle in your eyes when you spoke of your wife and family? 

God bless you and your family, Butch. You will be dearly missed, but never forgotten. Thank you from us all for having made a difference in our lives.”

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Life lessons from

an 8 year-old!

     Yeah, I know, I know. Everyone has brilliant kids and grandkids. Just ask; you’ll get an earful, and that’ll probably be accompanied by an accordion photo show from the wallet or purse. The thing is we all talk about how bright kids are, but do we really listen hard to what they say and think hard about what’s behind the words they put out?

     Do you think they’re trying to tell us something?

     Check out the following messages which were bundled together and hand-lettered onto a little wall plaque gift from my 8 year-old granddaughter (who I was astonished to learn, has her own blog!):

Life is a question. No person on earth is your enemy but you. You can’t deside what you were born with but you can deside how you end up.

Being happy is beyond a feeling. Its a way of life. Questions are endless but only one awnser is you.

You can dream without imaganation but you can’t dream without a beleif.

You are who you are and know one can stop you.”

— Gwyn, Age 8 

     Where’s the business message? When times are tough and everyone seems to be struggling to make sales and dig out from under, temptation is great to work harder longer hours and let some family time slip away.

     I cast my vote against that idea. I’ve never known a business growth or sales situation to suffer from working harder, but I’ve seen many lives destroyed by breadwinners working longer hours.

     Of course there are bills to be paid, but there are also children to be raised and family roots to be planted, and nurtured. There’s an age-old excuse that surfaces frequently for the convenience of those who’ve chosen to set themselves up to get sucked into working longer hours.

     They say: “It’s the quality of the time we spend together as a family that counts.” Hard to argue with that, right? It makes sense, right? The trouble is that emotions don’t make sense, and families are all about emotions. Don’t let the sudden lack of financial independence thrust you into a family-distancing role of martyr. The stress alone isn’t worth the commensurate loss of life it cultivates.

     There are always other options.

     One major option is to stop thinking you have to carry the full load on your shoulders. Hold a family meeting. Keep it lighthearted, but discuss financial circumstances openly and honestly. Ask for ideas and input and don’t rush to judgement on thoughts shared that may at first seem empty or naive … like Granddaughter Gwyn’s philosophizing above.

     All well-intended thoughts have a meaningful core or point of origin. Search these out. Give the benefit of doubt. Ask yourself what you can learn from them, what they may cause you to think of. A small business is much more of a living entity than a giant corporation. It’s like a member of the family (and especially if it’s a family business!) so give it the benefit of others’ thoughts as well as your own.

     The more you ask for and listen attentively to input, the more you stand to gain in both respect and sales. The better your odds of achieving by working harder AND smarter without having to work longer.

Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US 

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

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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“Awk! My blog

is flogged!”

     Some of you who know me well know I maintain a fairly relentless (accusations of compulsion are sometimes hinted) fast-lane pace for a 200 year-old entrepreneur and business coach. But the last few days, fallout from Mr. Gore’s global warming warning took the starch out of me. Blessed as we were at our home and office, with 30 inches of snow (8-10 more en route) — more than we’d seen since NW Maine — Kathy and I were stoically committed to tough it out with boots and shovels at the ready.

     But then, like Hannah with Montana and bacon with eggs, along came the snowstorm’s accompaniment: 4.5 days of no electricity at 40 degrees inside! And a State state-of-emergency of course (declared by a irrevocably Europe-bound governor!). Foreign leaders no doubt outweighed the fate of the State … and my blog, which by now, was flogged!

     Part of me was in something of a panic mode because I had no contingency plan about how to continue conducting business in a blizzard. [Who woulda thunk an area with no more than a rare broom-sweep worth of snow over most of the past 30 years could be this, now?] I’m also reminded of riding out a hurricane and power outage when I was a dumb young professor living aboard my boat in a stormy marina.

     None of this may seem to have much business application, but — actually — contingency and succession-planning come to mind. Most entrepreneurs, I believe it’s fair to say, never consider worst-case scenarios and alternative plans if the central thrust of their venture fails to ignite. 

     And fewer still, I think, ever consider what will happen to their ventures if anything happens to them. [This thought admittedly rose to the surface after my third round of driveway shoveling in three days.]

     Odds are that not a majority of entrepreneurs will have been successful Girl or Boy Scouts, and so may lack some of that “Be Prepared” discipline. Plus, who likes to entertain his or her inevitable demise or consider being sidelined by accidental injury? The point is that it is as wise a set of considerations as drawing up a will, or planning for retirement or marriage or children, or purchasing insurance policies.

     The positives of entrepreneurship are that most small and new business ventures are undertaken by young, energetic types. The negatives of contingency and succession planning are that most young energetic types are too young and energetic to consider their own mortality, OR that any business problem that arises could possibly be beyond their capacity to control.

     Accept this as myth, and think about it. It doesn’t take much more to come up with an effective take-over and emergency action plan to make sure your business, your family, and your employees and customers are cared for. 

     So back to being snowed in and powered out: I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of business and life with a renewed sense of appreciation for all that I have and for what it must be like to not have those things. Do I sound mushy grateful? Maybe it’s because I am.

Comment below Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US 

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Are You Selling Whackadoos

To Nursing Home Residents?

     There I sat, 23 year-old hot-shot ad agency guy, at the fancy New York City restaurant lunch table between Richard Gelb, then the president of Clairol, and Charles Revson, then the president of Revlon… both men at least twice my age and light-years beyond my dreams of wealth. 

     Considering the extent of business and fashion industry clout at each of my elbows, I was about as close as one can get to being a total nervous wreck.

     My boss, who’d been suddenly placed on the DL that morning, asked me to fill in and represent the ad agency’s interests in establishing some vague, centralized public relations program for the HBA (Health & Beauty Aids) market that we hoped would involve both their companies.

     “Speak unique, Son,” I was told about 90 seconds into my awkward spiel, after stuttering and sputtering out some feeble explanation about what I do for a living, and what the purpose of my insignificant presence with them was all about.

     In other words, the Clairol man was asking me to get to the point, cut to the chase, not beat around the bush, spit it out! What’s your frame of reference, he asked. Who’s your market, he asked. I stammered even more.

     “Well,” I improvised, “considering that your two companies sell the most hair coloring…” CRUNCH! The Revlon man’s fist hit the table hard enough to rattle the bluepoint oyster shells. “Son, we don’t sell hair coloring. We sell the promise of sex to single, young girls. And don’t you forget it!”

     I never forgot.

     What do YOU sell? Are you sure? Knowing unequivocally what you’re selling and to whom — straight out, without elaborate, politically-correct, marketingese language — will keep your business on course and your sales focus front and center.

     Famous for its (truly outstanding!) “Artisan Bread,”the ACE Bakery in Toronto, Ontario Canada www.acebakery.com sells the “promise of every employee” that the bread is their very best quality using only the best natural ingredients, AND that they are committed to a sense of social responsibility for the community that supports them. ACE donates a percentage of pre-tax profits to local charitable organizations, targeting especially food and nutrition programs for low-income neighbors. 

     What is YOUR business known for? What are YOU doing about it? How are YOU representing it? DO YOU “SPEAKUNIQUE”?

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Are You Marketing to

Your “Inner Circle”?

     Besides your mother, there is no bigger fan support base for your business than the market that constitutes your “internal” (or “inner circle” of) customers. Perhaps you never thought of them as a market.

     Perhaps you never thought about who, exactly, makes up this hot prospect / top customer group. Here are some quick thoughts you might want to consider:

     Without exception, the best source of business is existing and past business. Most small business owners and managers realize this, if not overtly, then at least instinctively, and do a pretty decent job of catering to these special people.

     The second best source of business is your “inner circle,” your “internal customer market.” This is comprised first and foremost of your own employees and staff. And many owners and managers also recognize the potential attached to this segment of the internal customer market with things like employee discounts.

(As an interesting side note: In Ben & Jerry’s growth years, every employee was required by job description to take home 7 free pints of ice cream every week, which they of course served to friends and family and gave to neighbors, which became a seeding process to help create a “big buzz”! ), but . . .

     How many small businesses take the next step outside this innermost support ring? When did you last, for example, make special effort to gain customers from your vendor/supplier ranks?

     Think about the fact that at least part of the success of every vendor and supplier to your business (from manufacturing and office supplies, to specialized and not-so-specialized services) is dependent on your business’s continued success.

     Marketing? Ha! It doesn’t even cost anything to hand-deliver or email these people special announcements of special product or service deal considerations. The stronger your alliances with your vendors and suppliers, the more they’ll act as your UNcommissioned, UNpaid sales force as they make their rounds calling on other businesses. It’s like networking the networkers.

     Have you made efforts to similarly (perhaps more quietly) market your wares or services to outside visitors –including sales reps– who call on you in person or by phone? What about other businesses on your block, in your building, neighborhood, community, state or region?

     Internet social networks are not the only avenues for capturing customers from among those who already know of your existence and who may share some common ground. Put on your thinking cap, and keep open-minded. 

     And what have you done for or with the mass or industrial or professional media lately? Not only might those people be prospects for you, they have the ability to influence many others … So do you!

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Humility Beats Flattery

     Sure, it’s nice to give and receive flattering comments — when they’re sincere. Trouble is that truly genuine sincerity is about as rare as a flock of spotted owls landing on your Uncle Sid’s satellite dish.

     Humility, on the other hand, is internally driven and –by its very nature — never questioned for authenticity. Contrary to Hollywood’s overblown theatrics, humility is not a simply silent behavior that requires a reverently bowed head, hat-in-hand, innocently blinking eyes presentation. Humility is an active choice.

     Both words (humility and flattery) are over 700 years old.

     “Humility” at Dictionary.com is defined as the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or modest estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc… humbleness.

     “Flattery” is defined as excessive, insincere praise; fawning; pandering.

     So how would you categorize the last time you exercised these behaviors in your dealings with associates? With employees? With Customers? Vendors and suppliers? Referrers? Within your industry or profession? Your community?

     What did each incident get you? I’m willing to bet the ranch that your humbleness outperformed your pandering in terms of triggering positive responses … 100% of the time! Would that be an accurate assessment?

     So what’s preventing you from choosing the winning behavior more often?

     The answer to that question is: YOU!

     It is an active and conscious choice to deal with others in a sincere or insincere manner.

     Choosing humility translates to giving genuine credit to where genuine credit is due, even when you may not like or agree with the source, and this especially applies to those who work for and with you.

     It also means being careful to not underestimate the performance capabilities or the sincerity of others, again especially of employees.

     How can you best accomplish these ends?

• By listening 80% of the time.

• By paraphrasing what you just heard, in your own words, and checking with the source to make sure you have a clear understanding of the other person’s thinking and intent, and that you’re not imposing your own bias into other’s ideas and suggestions.

• By asking for examples, to better clarify statements.

• By taking notes so you can

  • Sleep on it when time allows

  • Recover where you left off when you get interrupted (which can sometimes last hours or days)

  • Accurately reflect other’s comments and credit them appropriately

  • Build others’ self-esteem; when you jot down notes of their comments (and, by the way, directly ask them to slow down so you can keep accurate notes), you are quietly saying that you value and appreciate others and their ideas.              

Bottom LIne: 

Don’t think that because you may already have a successful business, that you have all the answers. Odds are you may simply have been lucky to get to where you are, and that you really don’t have ANY answers.

Regardless of what you believe, you and your business can only stand to benefit by listening carefully — and with a strong sense of humility — to what those who surround you have to say. My best guess is that you’ll surprise yourself!

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Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 The birds and the bees and

the geese and the trees all

communicate better than

you!

At least, that’s what the odds are. They all spend their lives at communicating. You probably spend yours energizing your business, and not giving a whole lot of thought to keeping those around you informed or engaged in dialogue any more than you think you need to, right?

Ah, but energizing your communications is the highest form of energizing your business.

Well, even if this assessment is only partly right, it still means you are completely wrong. Sorry for the hard line here but I don’t imagine you’ll get much tough talk from those who work for you, or from your mother or your dog. And a good swift kick in the butt can sometimes get the head in gear if you know what I mean.

Are you communicating too little to your associates and staff? (Do they tilt their heads and squint a lot?) Or perhaps you tell them too much? (Do they nod politely and look at their watches a lot? Pull up the sidewalks and get outta Dodge if they start listening to their watches!)

Or do you communicate just the right amount? How can you know what the right amount is? (Do your people sit up or lean forward and ask questions? Do they take notes? Do they ask for examples? Do they repeat what you said to make sure they’ve got it right?

HA! Do YOU do these things?

How often do you engage those around you in real heart-to-heart business discussions? Do you directly ask for their opinions, and actually l~i~s~t~e~n to their responses?

Did you realize that MBWA (Management By Walking Around) is still considered the approach of preference for most successful owners, operators, managers, and virtually all entrepreneurial leaders? People like to have you visit their work sites and talk with them about what they’re doing.

When you can do this every day, you are helping ensure greater attention to detail and pride of workmanship. Plus you can leave when you want to, and it’s  good exercise. It will keep you in touch with what’s going on in your business day to day, and will even discourage time-wasting activities.

Have you thought lately about the direct relationship between taking your people into your confidence and the boost it gives their self-esteem to know that you (their surrogate parent) regard them highly enough to confide in them, to ask their opinions?

Did you know that every time you help boost an associate or employee’s self-esteem, you are also helping to build her or his self-confidence, and that — all by itself — can produce increases in both productivity and sales?

Like the most effective rewards, communications are best delivered frequently and in small energetic doses … “bursts,” if you will. Remember you want what you say to be contagious because motivated employees who feel they are making a worthwhile contribution will outperform your expectations (and your competitors!) every time.

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   Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

THINK OUTSIDE

YOUR BRAIN!

     Okay, you own and/or operate or manage a small business (or piece of a big one), or you’re a salesperson or an entrepreneur. That makes you a schizoid, right? I mean you have so much going on that even reading this is a sacrifice … but take heart!

     If you’re really serious about what you’re doing, you are also serious about exploring innovative approaches to today’s basic essentials: productivity, customer service, value-adding, and marketing efficiency. Whoa, there’s a couple of new ones there!

     Yup! Those last two essentials that snuck onto that list are the fruits of our egg-sucking economy. Until the going got tough, we never paid no never-mind to ideas like adding product and services value or to pulling out all the stops to maintain marketing impact while cutting marketing costs. They were token pursuits.

     But now we care. Now we’re here. And here means taking a fresh look at what you’re doing. Here’s just one example:

     Do you have any interns working for you? No, not the White House kind … BUSINESS interns. Why not? Have you actually approached your nearby community college or university campus (or even high schools for some situations) and pointblank asked how such an arrangement could be made? Why not?

     Perhaps you think there’s no room in your organization for a wet-behind-the-pierced-ears-tattooed dude? You may want to revisit that thinking. Interns in much of academia will work for free or minimum wage because they can earn course credits for on-the-job experience.

     Interns who perform well often turn out to be loyal, long-term, full time employees.

     Interns need a definitive plan and can sometimes require some extra hand-holding, but they are also typically eager to learn and anxious to please (especially when performance is grade-related!)

     Spare yourself the worry of excessive planning and what-ifs, and make some exploratory calls. If and when you uncover access to an internship program, THEN decide how, when, and where you can use some free or inexpensive project help. Many short-term projects, by the way, can turn into mutually-beneficial long-term assignments.

     The trade-off? Well, you or someone you can trust to provide role-model leadership will need to expend energy (and patience) with any intern(s) you take on, and the intern(s) may not provide what’s needed.

     But, then again, you could end up a major winner and that depends a great deal on your screening skills to start with. Formal programs offer the advantage of giving you recourse to the school if there’s any problem, and you’d probably only be required to provide periodic performance evaluations.

     The bottom line is to think outside your computer, outside your workspace, outside your organization — outside your brain — and start making better use of resources you may have been overlooking, whatever and whomever they are.

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  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Kiss Staff Infections Bye-Bye!

     By now, all of us know, or have heard (or we believe instinctively) that the majority of hospital deaths are the result of complications compounded or initiated by staph infections. These can be traced back to caregiver professionals and support staff not properly and frequently enough washing their hands. 

     Who woulda thunk it?  Such a simple thing.

     Well, not only is it true, but I believe it’s even truer (though never researched) in business.  It’s no secret that the majority of business failures, corrupted products and ineffective misguided staffs and services come from poor management. 

     Management (even when it’s more task than people-oriented) is all about interfacing, interacting, and encountering.  It’s about keeping a clear and receptive mindset.  Open doors open minds! SO WASH YOUR HANDS!  

     Now I’m not talking about hot water, soap, scrubbing and towel drying.  I’m talking about:

1. Closing your eyes for just 10 seconds (perhaps 5 if you’re telemarketing, and not at all if you’re driving!) before and after every customer/employee/vendor/investor encounter,
2. Taking a deep breath http://bit.ly/Bb1Tw (to focus and maintain blood pressure) and
3. Mentally (imagining yourself) washing your hands, like a doctor between examinations. 

     For many who try or maintain this practice, it helps to go through a 2-3 second physical action of briskly rubbing your hands together.  The action sends a reinforcing mental message to your brain.

     Do it before and after EVERY meeting, conference, phone call, email, letter, overnight delivery, and text message exchange, you are after all being a doctor, aren’t you? 

     You ARE examining, aren’t you? 

     You ARE listening, exploring, considering, assessing, recommending, deciding, weighing, evaluating, checking and re-checking, sizing up, assuring and reassuring, projecting, planning, strategizing, and predicting, aren’t you?

     And what happens to your brain when you’re on the fly and go straight from one encounter to another without –it sometimes seems– even breathing?  Go on, answer this last question.  I’ll wait.  Okay, and how does that stress translate to your body? 

     Headaches, backaches, toothaches, stiff neck, upset stomach, constipation, diarrhea, short temper, edginess, leg cramps, burning eyes, skin rash, urinary infection, or worse — cancer, heart problems?  Bottom line: is it worth it? 

     TRY THIS 10-SECOND APPROACH for just one week –January, 2010, is a perfect test period.  Try it and see what happens. 

     Here’s what you’ll get:  IF you’re honest with yourself and IF you actually follow the prescription, you will be more tuned in to each person you communicate with; you will be noticeably more productive; you will GUARANTEED feel better – mentally, physically, and emotionally; you will more positively affect others around you. 

     Put “WASH YOUR HANDS” reminder notes on a sign over your desk, stuck to your phone and computer screen.  Ask a co-worker, friend or associate to ask you: “Did you wash your hands?” before and after you turn a doorknob, before and after you lift and replace your phone, start or end your meeting . . . improvise here; just keep making the effort. 

     You will, I promise, astound yourself! 

More on 2010 “LEADERSHIP”? Come visit me and comment on my Guest Blog post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

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