Budget-Conscious Boss,

Best Friend, Do Business

in the Foothills

     Another day. Another dollar. And here I sit through yet another meeting.

     Only this meeting is different because it involves a whole different breed of people, and this meeting is taking place outdoors! Actually, all the leaders of my company are here, and we’re next to a big beautiful shimmering lake nestled into the foothills of the Berkshires.

      After listening to a little spiel that one of the HR directors just gave, my boss and I are getting ready to climb into a canoe together. We’ll be with a bunch of other partnered-up bosses and underlings in other canoes. I’m not much good at steering these things so I hope he lets me sit in front. “I can canoe a canoe, canoe canoe a canoe?” kinds of chatter starts flying around.

     As if I’m not unnerved enough, my boss starts in with how the best way to see if a marriage is made to last is to take a canoe trip when you’re newlyweds. General agreement seems to be that if you don’t kill each other while canoeing, you’re destined for a relationship of longevity.

     Anyway, this whole paddle around the lake deal is part of what’s called a Management Training Conference. Just yesterday, on the hillside over in the woods, we went on an Executive Ropes Course. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. In truth, it ended up being lots of fun. My boss and I both made lots of new friends with those we didn’t know before, who came from our other offices.

     Tomorrow, some of us are going to the nearby Lime Rock race-track and race-car driving school to learn about safety, risk-taking and something called mental focus. The mental thing sounds like it might be a bit above me, so I might just pass on that session and go instead to an Executive Golf Class that’s being held over by the other lake. Something about objectives, strategies, and tactics is supposed to be demonstrated by hitting little bumpy white balls into holes with flags.

     As for right now, I need to concentrate on not embarrassing my boss by falling out of the canoe as I tip-toe in from the dock. I mean just imagine how red his face would get if he had to hear “Dog Overboard!”

     Oh, did I mention that I’m a Golden Retriever, and that my boss’s Meeting Planner found this grrrrrreat location for a meeting that allows well-behaved dogs like me to go to the company meeting and participate in everything (well, not the dining room, bar, sauna, or heated swimming pool activities)? We can even hang in the library and game room if we don’t chew books or chase dropped ping-pong or billiard balls around.

     The bottom line is that my boss and I are having a wonderful time and we are learning a lot about ourselves and the others we work with. He says we may even stay through the weekend so we could do some hiking and antique shopping.

     Pssssssst! These guys set the standard for complete meeting packages, and you get more for less than anyplace I could find.

     Their rates include a luxurious world-class room, 24/7 business center and wireless Internet, endless coffee, all indoor and outdoor facilities and meeting rooms — plus all service charges, 3 award-winning restaurant meals for him, and a turn-down biscuit for me at bedtime!

     And they’ve been hosting businesspeople there since 1892!

     If you didn’t know better, I bet you’d think I was the one who’s the boss, huh? Hmmmm. Well, try it: www.InterlakenInn.com  (Oh, and take your dog, will you? It’s just 2 hours from Manhattan, 3 from Boston, 3 from Hartford)  Mention this blog for a special treat!         

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Input aways welcome: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in    subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  

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So go get a new family!

     Do these kinds of situations sound at all familiar, or am I just imagining…???

• The owner’s wife in charge of collecting receivables takes the task too personally because –through her eyes– she can only see that some deadbeat is preventing her from pleasing her husband since she can’t afford to serve him the kind of dinners he most enjoys.    
• The owner’s son is not as business-minded as his mother. She’s constantly berating him for wasting too much time playing around with creating new advertising approaches, and not paying enough attention to customer service, billing, and inventory.
• The two feuding sisters are always trying to outdo one another’s sales accomplishments, and neither is willing to handle growing staff problems.

     Having worked with hundreds of family businesses (from trash collection to surgery practices), I can assure you –since the popular shrink notion is that every family is dysfunctional– that your family business is not unique in it’s breadth and depth of problems.

     It is —on the other hand— unique inasmuch as it takes some very special give-and-take tolerance levels to be able to work day-in-and-day-out with the people you’re related to, and have grown up with.

     Having a history with others can be a positive and rewarding and affectionate experience, but working with those you have a history with can present many challenging opportunities.

     Opportunities? Aha! Therein lies the answer to family business problems. Would it be fair to say that the primary difference between whether someone views any given situation as a “problem” or as an “opportunity” reduces itself to how that person chooses to view it? 

Behavior is a choice… how we view it and how we do it!

     Okay, so some family members thrive on choosing “problems,”  yes? Oh, but you know what? It takes two to tango. YOU don’t have to choose to make a family-problem-chooser’s problems YOUR problems!

     Choose instead to walk away. Or choose to change the channel in your head from a confrontative talk station to easy listening. Or choose to offer choices.

     Above all, choose to be aware that it is a choice! That awareness alone will carry you through some of the rough spots and help keep others focused on what’s important. 

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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WATCH FOR ONE OF HAL’S SHORT STORIES COMING this September in a new book from Nightengale Press: THE ART OF GRANDPARENTING

To be on sale at Barnes & Noble and at special discounted price here! 

The World’s Greatest Expert

on Death and Dying–

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD

–Points to Five Stages:

• Denial and Isolation
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

     She said we –all of us–  must experience each of these five stages to one degree or another in the order they are shown above with every loss experience. The only exceptions being instances where people get stuck in a given stage and never get beyond it.

     So as business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs, some of us experience bits and pieces of these five stages everyday with daily losses.

     Kübler-Ross said that losses are not limited to human death, and can  include the loss of a limb or faculty, or ability… loss of a valuable possession (a home, a car, a business), loss of companionship (including divorce and separation), loss of freedom (including jail), loss of a job, loss of a client, loss of a prospect or opportunity, loss of self-esteem, loss of authority, etc., etc.

     And to a lesser degree, we even experience these stages when we lose a dollar, a photograph, a letter, an address, a contest, and so on.

     So what’s the point? Healthy successful people do everything humanly possible to channel all their energies and mental focus on reaching the level (or “Stage”) of ACCEPTANCE as quickly as possible, and on maintaining themselves at that level as permanently as possible.

     Everything else is non-productive. Everything else leaves us feeling deflated and defeated and negative. Some people stay in these places their entire lives. Some are institutionalized. Some do themselves in.

     Stages 1-4 are pure torment. We must go through them, but the goal needs to be to move through them as rapidly as our minds and bodies allow us to. Getting through the maze may take friends and rescuers to stand by shoulder to shoulder. We have all performed that function for someone else, but perhaps have forgotten?  

     Keep always in the front of your mind that no matter how out of control it may feel to be stuck somewhere in denial and isolation, or in anger, or in a bargaining position, or a state of depression, it IS a matter of choice!

     The minute we choose to accept loss, the quicker we can get on with a happy and productive existence and make the most of the short time we each have here on Earth…make the most of the relationships we’ve been blessed with: with other people and places and purposes.

     We need not choose to lock ourselves into suffering and misery. Life and business life are way too short to have wasted time and energy with anything besides being happy and healthy and in active pursuit of our dreams.  

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

FREE BLOG SUBSCRIPTION? Click on ”Posts RSS Feed” (Center Column), or now on your AMAZON Kindle for just $1.99 a month after a free trial. FEELING CREATIVE? Add your own 7 words to the end of the daily 280 POSTS tale! Click under “7-Word Story” (center column)

Sign up now for

“The Dirt Floor Visit”!

Well, I promised exciting news for tonight, and I’ve got it.

     BUT–

• if you’re not a grandparent,
• or don’t know a grandparent,
• or haven’t yet told a parent that she or he is about to become a grandparent,
• or haven’t told a parent the he or she is already a grandparent,
• or don’t have friends who are already grandparents, or about to become grandparents,
• or for some bizarre reason just don’t care about grandparents (is that possible?)

     — then it’s okay to leave this post tonight and go about your site-surfing because you definitely won’t be interested! Come back again soon though. I love you anyway.

     Now, those of you who are left: Hunker down, and give a listen!

     Mark your calendar for September to go to Barnes & Noble or your nearest bookseller (online or in-person) and sally on up to the counter (or just plunk out your PayPal or charge card numbers) and plop down $20 US, or $25 in Canada (you get a nickle change in either country), and go home with a copy of the wonderful new book edited by writer/ publisher/painter and Internet talk show host Valerie Connelly, to be published by Nightengale Press, entitled:

THE ART OF GRANDPARENTING

     As a thrilled, privileged, and happy contributor (of a reality-based story called “The Dirt Floor Visit” about grandpa and 12 year-old granddaughter!), I have just had the good fortune to read the first draft proofs, and I must tell you that:

Absolutely no grandparent in the world should be without a copy!

     You will not believe the great advice, the messages of love and understanding, the dynamics of grandparent and grandchild that never make it to the TV screen!

     Get a dose of the real grandparent/grandchild world of diapers and gurgles and thumb-grabbing and eyeglass-pulling and hugs and kisses and confidences and interactions you probably never imagined were part of this special relationship that spans the planet and the centuries. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. You’ll grab the arm of your chair.

     You’ll hear more about it here (Stay Tuned!) as well as at www.TheArtOfGrandparenting.com once school starts again, and the leaves begin to turn. Reserve a copy now for yourself, or your favorite grandparents or your favorite grandparents-to-be.

     What a great gift! It’s all about being able to share in the special relationships that make (and will make) any new or growing grandparent experiences special! 

Tomorrow: Back-to-Business Basics 

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

FREE BLOG SUBSCRIPTION? Click on ”Posts RSS Feed” (Center Column), or now on your AMAZON Kindle for just $1.99 a month after a free trial. FEELING CREATIVE? Add your own 7 words to the end of the daily 278 days old growing tale! Click under “7-Word Story” (center column)

“Don’t I recognize you

from my last job?”

(OR, “An employee today could be a customer tomorrow!”)

     There are not many pages that small business owners and managers like ourselves can take from universities or big business owners and managers, but here’s a new one that’s worth paying attention to…we like to think (being small and flexible and aggressive and innovation-driven) that we have a lock on the whole notion of networking.

     I mean when’s the last time you saw campus or corporate executives at Chamber of Commerce mixers or Better Business Bureau networking events? Ah, but they (academic hot-shots and corporate type muckity-mucks) are mainstays in the job search networking arenas. Yes, you might say, but that’s not real networking; that’s just exploitation of another job search tool.

     Who’s to say? After all: whatever you network for is what you network for. Hmm? If, in other words, you attend a networking event cranked up to meet and greet prospective employers, then job search is indeed your purpose. If you bring six pockets full of business cards with the idea of getting everyone you meet to visit your blog, or follow you on Twitter, then your purpose is to build an audience.

     The point is that we all network everyday with associates, employees, vendors, customers, referrers, prospects, even friends and family. Sure, so what’s this big page from big business (and academia, which hasn’t even a clue about business reality) all about?

     Many major corporations, which themselves have stooped to conquer unsavvy academic methodologies are now seeing great sales and business growth opportunities from networking with former employees! Aha! So, it’s not all of academia here that’s lighting fires? Correct.

     The ignition points are lodged in the sacred college and university halls of alumni associations, alumni directors, and development officers. They started it. Corporations are following it. Small business is next and starting to happen! The corporate social networking we’ve all heard about is now beginning to add a new dimension: employee alumni programs.

     A 2009 article by Mary Hall identified a few representative companies that have already entrenched themselves in commitments to build successful alumni programs: Microsoft, McKinsey, KPMG, Booze Allen, BearingPoint, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Bain & Co., Dow, Coca-Cola, Accenture, Agilent.  

     Hall’s article poses the question: Why would a company want to focus its attention on a group of people who are no longer employees? Because, she says, “whatever path former employees choose, they are likely to be expanding their personal networks and getting to know new people. Why wouldn’t a company want to do the same? An employee today could be a customer tomorrow or have in their network a future hire.”

When ALL is said and done, isn’t it true that ALL of business

is ALL about relationships?

Alumni associations are here for small and mid-sized business. Many already recruit employees from them. Many hold annual reunions that produce payloads of workable i9deas because they come from those who understand how the business works to start with.

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You still need “Meeting Magic” 

but your budget’s been bashed!

The boss expects you to arrange your next meeting at a 5-star resort with 5-star service in 5-star surroundings at ONE-star prices?? 

     Talk about meeting planners having an impossible job… You’re expected to work miracles without a wand or a prayer… and now, to top it off, your budget’s been bashed. Right? Or am I just imagining things? In the “old days” you could book fancy meetings at fancy locations for fancy prices and get top management compliments left and right. Right? No more.

     In fact, if you’re still on the job, and your organization is still having off-site meetings, you may be what little kids used to call a “lucky duck”! Maybe that’s not a reassuring thought, but what I’m about to tell you can be the most reassuring option you’ve had in years.

     Here it is:I have designed, delivered, and facilitated nearly 2,000 management training sesions, workshops, seminars and meetings nationwide and in Europe and the Caribbean. The sessions I ran took place in some of the world’s finest hotels, conference centers, and campus and cruise facilities.

     I understand the importance of having an experienced, competent, and reliable on-site support team on-call, of not having technical glitches, of having personable engaging staff services from people who know when to provide quiet top level performance behind the scenes and out of the spotlights.

I appreciate the need for knock-out facilities and inspiring surroundings where participants can be both relaxed and challenged.

     I know how good it isto have facility services that are so outstanding that the chef actually visits tables (not while meetings are in session), that someone shows up at your door with a replacement toothbrush five minutes after you call the desk, that nice weather prompts a last-minute request to meet for golf or car-racing or ropes course experiences, or to relocate a session to poolside or lakeside or gardenside and it’s quickly and cheerfully accommodated.

     Yeah, right, you say, at six gazillion dollars per person. Nope. The best-kept-secret location—known for hosting America’s top executive management teams— is available at far less than you paid for your last exotic location booking, and probably far less than you paid for your last boring one-dimensional location booking.

     And odds are, by the way, if the absolute perfect setting and services you seek are likely to be just a couple of hours drive from Manhattan or Boston Commons, transportation expenses will be a whole lot less too!  

     If you’re interestedin knowing more about this no-gimmicks/no-strings-attached opportunity to book the best world-class service facility and location for the least amount of money I’ve ever experienced, return here later this week for the details. If you just can’t wait, email me as noted below.  

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

FREE BLOG SUBSCRIPTION? Click on ”Posts RSS Feed” (Center Column), or now on your AMAZON Kindle for just $1.99 a month after a free trial. BE A CO-AUTHOR: Add your own 7 words to the end of the daily 255 days old growing tale! Click under “7-Word Story” (center column)

“Thank you for your

service to our country!”

     It’s so simple. That’s all it takes. Walk up to anyone in a military uniform — or anyone who proudly wears or displays an insignia identifying him or herself as a veteran or active officer or recruit, extend your arm to shake hands, look her or him in the eye and simply say: “Thank you for your service to our country!”

     Not only will you make that person’s day, but (and this may surprise you) you’ll make your own as well. You’ll feel as pleased walking away as the person you took the ten seconds out of your life to stop!

     Remember Memorial Day Weekend is more than beaches, BBQ’s and parties. It’s a time for tribute to those who have lost their lives and those who have served us all in defense of America. What does this have to do with business to warrant attention on a business blog? Your business and mine could not even exist without the courage, vigilence and protection of those who serve our country.

     Thank you to all those who have served in and for the United States Armed Forces. You make and have made it possible for business owners and managers and entrepreneurs to be free to conduct business and grow business and make business work.

     It is, after all, small business that has made this country great, and it will be small business that leads the way to economic recovery. You who have served our nation have kept small business pathways clear. Now it’s the job of small business to step it up and take advantage of those openings to regain the economic stability that government and big business lost along the way.

TRY THIS:

Make “Thank you for your service to our country!”

a statement of appreciation year-round.

     By making it part of your ongoing practice to extend these words with every armed services encounter (not to mention the recognition due our police, fire and EMS personnel too), you will in fact be boosting your own business as well as your reputation for caring about what’s truly important…because it is!

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

FREE BLOG SUBSCRIPTION? Click on ”Posts RSS Feed” (Center Column), or now on your AMAZON Kindle for just $1.99 a month after a free trial. FEELING CREATIVE? Visit the daily growing 7-Word Story (That’s now 249 days in the making) and add your own 7 words: http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=157

HOORAY for the good guys!

     It’s not every day that a consultant like me can nominate a client (like i.g. Burton & Company) for an annual Better Business Bureau award as most outstanding family business in the state…and see them win!

     Even after my project engagement with the company ended, I had the good fortune to see this business be honored (tonight at the DuPont Hotel in downtown Wilmington, Delaware) at a formal reception dinner hosted by the Delaware BBB and Governor Jack Markell.

     Now if you’ve read this far, you may be wondering who is i.g. Burton & Company anyway? And there’s little doubt that if you don’t know, you will most definitely be surprised to learn that we’re talking about –of all things– a car dealership!

     i.g.Burton & Company is 101 years old. The company maintains five locations in Milford and Seaford, Delaware. They are one of the nation’s leading dealerships for Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep,  Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and are the world’s oldest Blue-Bird Bus dealership as well.

     They didn’t stand in line behind the automakers they represent, looking for bailout money. They didn’t pull in their rugs and move out of town when Chevrolet and Chrysler hit the rocks.

     In fact, they actually INCREASED their charitable contributions to needy organizations. They INCREASED their customer service training programs. And they went ahead and completed a 6 year-old monster construction project that helped keep hundreds of employees on payroll.

     Of course they have strong financial backing. But why? How did their backing become so commited? BECAUSE i.g. Burton demonstrated commitment to their customers, their employees and their community.

     They didn’t get to be 101 and win an Outstanding Family Business award in a faltering economy by being the stereotypical car dealers. They are fifth generation owned and operated. A great many of their employees have worked there for 15, 20, 25, 30, and more years! (This, in a day when most car dealers seem to keep employees just for those numbers of DAYS!)

     What’s the secret? i.g. Burton & Company has built a long-standing reputation for overkill customer service and for contributing to and supporting wholeheartedly the Delmarva Peninsula communities they serve. The have earned the BBB award, and statewide respect as business leaders.

     They will earn your respect too anytime you’re driving through Delmarva Peninsula (The 2nd biggest peninsula in the U.S., thank you, if you’re not counting Florida). Stop in. Say Hi. Congratulate them on their award. They’ll make you feel proud of it just for having visited. Well done, Burton Family. And well done, Burton Family of Employees!  

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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I Am So Happy To See Your

Smiling Faces (and avatars!)

Thank you all my Twitter friends, and welcome to my daily business, personal and professional growth blog. I look forward to more of your visits and comments. Have a wonderful week ahead! Hal

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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SPIT: Rarely the object of

attention in a tender love story

     If we laugh out loud the first time we see a child’s bib block lettering proclaim “SPIT HAPPENS,” it may be because those of us with little kids in our lives know it does.  Or perhaps the humor surfaces as our minds flash unwittingly to the bumper stickers (with the adult version of the saying) and know instinctively for it to be true grit more often than not.  Isn’t it, after all, simply the unsophisticated, Americanized version of C’est La Vié?

     Spit.  We do it in disgust.  We do it in relief.  We watch baseball players do it on TV 14,397 times every game.  Boxers have their own buckets.  Spit conjures up thoughts of adrenaline, mucus, repulsion and sinusitis.  Sometimes we miss the spittoon, the gutter, the car window (yucht!) and end up with it on our sleeves, the fronts of our shirts, the tops of our shoes, rivuleting uncontrollably down our cleavages or hunkering down somewhere deep inside the thickest of our beards.

     Spit is swapped and mopped, and comes in all shapes and colors and levels of viscosity (yucht again!).  Then there’s the specialized version of spit we all know as flem.  Flem—having once been front and center in the embryonic form of a booger that got sniffed back—usually originates as a kind of loose stalagtite structure hanging mercilessly from the back recesses of the nasal passages. 

     Flem can be lumpy, smooth, or intricately woven into kiwi and mustard colored strands, occasionally available in nasty deep brown globs.  The thickest and most projectile-worthy of these is probably preceded by a throat ravaging clearance effort that sounds like a lot of little haagggt, haagggt, haagggt noises—or one death-rattling H-A-A-A-A-A-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-T !!!

     Tough guys spit from atop their horses, tanks, and tractors.  Adolescent boys (and some adolescent-minded men!) will dry themselves up by having distance and closest-to-the-wall contests.  But many of the winners move onward and upward to the higher challenge of launching their spittle from rooftops, movie balconies, and prime bridge locations over passing cars, boats, and trains … and unwary pedestrians.  Tomboys and other masculine females use it to draw their lines in the sand, and don’t dare step past the bubbly little puddle!

Anyway, one thing’s certain: spit has rarely been the object of attention in a tender love story. Until now. 

Stay on this site and just click here for (in the words of the immortal Paul Harvey) the rest of the story (just a few very short paragraphs!) :

http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=30  

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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