How REASONABLE is the risk

of combining client interests?

It may very well be that when you decide to merge the activities of two or more clients who you think have compatible interests, you will get stung! You may be setting yourself up to suffer the consequences of their inadequacies.

It’s not just what you see on “COPS”–Odds are that more police officers will be killed and injured in response to a “domestic (family fight) call” than even a robbery or high-speed car chase. Why? Because battling relatives often turn on the police who are entering their home. They see the officers as invading their space and interfering in their private dispute.

Police crisis intervention training calls for officers to immediately separate warring or arguing members of a household to physically go to different rooms, or at least different sides of the same room as a tactic for diffusing the anger, preventing themselves from being set upon, and for setting the stage to encourage reasonable discussion and negotiation.

When you attempt to combine interests of different clients you service on the grounds that you see some mutually beneficial commonalities, you need to be careful in your assessment that you are not an unwanted invasion of one or both clients’ privacy.

Maybe, for example, they simply don’t WANT to work with one another. Maybe they’ve tried it or talked about it in the past (even generations ago) and decided NOT to combine interests. Maybe one suspects the other of undermining. Maybe there’s some professional (or industrial) jealousy present. Maybe one of them suspects you of having ulterior motives. Maybethe employees of one business don’t like the empoloiyees of the other business. Maybe…

ASK each client to be forthright about the idea…what each thinks of it, what each thinks she or he can gain by it, how–exactly– each feels about the other entity. ASK each to reassure you that each is totally supportive BEFORE activating any part of the plan. Meet ahead of time with each separately, and then with both together. Make sure they share the same understandings and goals.

Starting to sound like pre-marriage counseling?Absolutely! In fact, if you perceive even the slightest edge to any of these discussions, a pre-combined-interest agreement might even be in order. OR you may simply decide the winds are not favorable, and back off the deal before anyone steps up to the plate.

Let the track-records of the clients and your personal instincts be your guide in deciding between pursuit, abandonment and modification. Make certain the risks to all involved are “reasonable.”

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Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals and God bless you! 

“I’m Sick of Worrying!”

     An important followup note on last night’s blog post topic: “Worry” as noted comes from being too over-focused on the FUTURE, which ignites weapons of self-destruction fuses and pulls the pin out of expectation grenades that inevitably breed disappointment, followed by negativity, depression, stress…

     This is all true, but as I re-read the post, I see that I failed to include being too overly-focused on the PAST as a worry trigger as well. Consider getting caught up in giving either too much attention to future plans and expectations, or in over-and-done-with past events, as “partners in crime.”

     These “bad guy partners” are out to get you, and you can stop them short, before either one ever gets close to delivering harmful effects to you, your family or your business. Success means simply that you need to exercise more of your brain power to deliver increased personal awareness and increased self-control to your SELF! (Considering Einstein reportedly only ever used 10% of his brain power, just imagine what’s possible.)

     Thinking about the past can be productive, relaxing, and instructional, but not once it reaches the point of dwelling on past events. As with allowing future thoughts to become worrisome, our balance and stability as humans is equally threatened by dwelling on the past. 

     The past is over and cannot be changed. Worrying about and dwelling on it is a nonproductive (actually counter-productive) waste of time and energy. Conscious or unconscious, the fact remains that paying over-the-top attention to either the past OR the future—instead of the (much-healthier) present—is a choice.

     To get past the “points of destruction” in your mind, you need to be a detective about yourSELF. Figure out what it is that trips your circuit-breaker, that gets you “lost” in past or future thoughts and issues. Once you know what your “trigger” is, then every time you are aware of it coming to the surface, let it serve as a reminder to pinch yourself or feel your pulse or heartbeat, or take a deep breath…and return yourself to what’s going on right in front of your face.

     Oh, but that’s hard and I don’t know how to do it! It’s hard if you CHOOSE for it to be hard. You can just as easily CHOOSE for it to be easy. As for how to do it, just start paying closer attention to your own behaviors…how you respond and react to others, to situations.

     Keep track of your words and actions. Write your observations down someplace and review your notes every few days. Keep asking yourself what you are learning about yourself right this minute.

     You’ll surprise yourself. And odds are you’ll far exceed your own expectations of what you believed to be possible for your own physical, mental, and emotional health and happiness. Try it. You’ll like it! But don’t wait too long. There’s no time like the present!      

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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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Gonna Chunk It? Then Chew It!

     If your current state of existence fits the last (“Discombobulated?”) post, and you’ve decided to try managing your time in chunks instead of clock ticks, be aware that you can’t just wolf down the chunks like my Golden Retriever. She rarely bothers to chew when she’s excited.

     You however are not a dog. At least, I must assume that you’re not. But just in case you ARE some blog-reading canine phenom, please call me immediately; we’ll make lots of money together. So the bottom line is that your digestive system simply doesn’t work well with chunks.

     Still with me here?We’re talking time management. Chunks. Chunking up time and activities is better than nonstop eating of the same (physical, mental, or emotional) food for eight hours a day. After all, even casino dealers work 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off.

     The guys who clean out the winery vats are basically AA candidates after just 15 minutes of vintage fermentation fumes (although that’s not such a bad way to go) and have to take mandated breaks.

     Imagine for a minute if the chiropractoradjusted every single bone in your body all in one visit. You’d be like Gumby. It’d take you a week simply to get off the table. Ah, then there’s the dentist and doing all the fillings and extractions and crowns and all the other rotten stuff dentists do all at one time. Whew! That one hurts even to think about.

     Start by breaking up your daily “To Do” list…little pieces work better (like outline the Narrative section of the business plan,” which could take a couple of hours). Little pieces are more attainable, and achieving each will motivate you a whole lot more than having “Write Business Plan” on your list, which could take months.

     In other words, after chunking, chew. After chewing, digest. Your body wasn’t made to take a pounding 16 waking hours a day. Neither was your mind, nor your emotions. The more you push and force yourself, the longer you’ll take to complete each task, and the more likely you will be to screw up each task, not to mention the indigestion, heartburn, and ulcers that you’ll be cultivating. 

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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You can’t control your ship

while stoking the furnace!

     What IS it that makes business owners and managers so crazy when they’re confronted with the idea of hiring someone to do a task that they know they could do themselves?  Huh? I KNOW I’m not imagining this one. So answer the question.

     Why would someone who runs a business think she or he should set up his or her own website or write her or his own blog or news release, for example? To save money? Surely saving money is not a good answer.

     As we’ve discussed here often, no one makes money by saving money. Businesses only make money by selling. If you own or operate a struggling (or ambitious) business and you decide to do tasks that are not making money by actually disengaging yourself from the sales process, you are wasting money, not saving it.

     I have seen some very bright business owners step aside from the sales function to let the salespeople do the selling, and instead focus their energies on operational productivity or human resource management, or budget management, or manufacturing efficiency, then be astonished to see their ships go down while they are busily rearranging the deck chairs.

     FACT: No one (NO ONE) is better at selling what your business produces or provides than you are! If your business is struggling (or steaming “Full Ahead”), and you are not with one hand at the controls, actively selling, you may want to re-think your investment in survival (or growth) and see the role you’re playing for what it really is: an anchor!

     If you need a new or upgraded website or a punchy blog, or news releases that get printed and broadcast, and you can find a professional website developer you can trust who has a track-record for reliability…or a professional marketing writer who knows how to “storytell” your business messages and who has a track-record for sales results, for heaven’s sake: HIRE THEM and get on with selling!

     So what if you think you could design your own site or write your own content or marketing materials? It’s not worth you taking the time to do those things when you need to be selling because selling is the only way to make money and move your ship forward.

     Pay the professionals to do what they do best. It’s a cost of doing business. Trying to tackle non-sales projects yourself diverts your time, energy and money into non-productive directions and doesn’t make the best use of your knowledge, talents, and enthusiasm. Besides, if you do-it-yourself, and screw it up, it’ll cost you twice as much to get the same professionals to do emergency surgery at sea!

     One last thought: You can control your ship and sell at the same time. You can’t control your ship while you’re stoking the furnace or working below decks. Best wishes for smoothe sailing!  

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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Rule 1: Chunk it up!

If your job is to paint the Brooklyn Bridge, and your goal is to paint the Brooklyn Bridge, you’ll never make it!. If, on the other hand, your goal is to paint the first 100 feet of cable on the northeast quadrant by one week from Friday, and the first 100 feet of cable on the southwest quadrant by two weeks from Friday, and so on, and keep it flexible based on weather, etc, you will undoubtedly succeed.

If you put “clean house” on your list, it won’t happen. If you chunk it up into a series of small tasks like vacuum the second floor carpets, fold and put away the laundry, wash the first floor windows on the front of the house, de-clutter the kitchen counter, and so on, you will have much greater success.

Being specific and reducing the monster chores to small individual tasks not only keeps you on track, it serves to motivate as well because you’ll gain a sense of accomplishment each time you complete an item and cross it off your list (use a second color, by the way, to be able to still read what was on the list and keep track at the end of the day).

And interruptions? Life is an interruption! When interruptions come along add them to your list. (You run into a bee’s nest while painting the bridge and it takes an extra hour to get rid of it? Add “get rid of bee’s nest” to your list and then cross it out when you’ve taken care of it. While washing the first floor windows, you notice an overgrown shrub that’s scratching against the house siding? Add “trim overgrown shrub in front” to your list and cross it out when you’ve taken care of it.)

Keep reviewing your list of goals to see better ways to chunk it up. As you achieve or complete each chunk, cross it out, and add new chunks. Never-ending? Yes, goal-setting, like exercise and eating right, require commitment to changing your lifestyle. No one achieves their goals by dabbling with them. If you’re serious about goal-setting and pursuits, you need to be constantly monitoring them.

It helps to have a weekly checklist of goal criteria to be certain that you’re on track with keeping your goals specific, flexible, realistic, and due-dated. Without all four of these criteria, you have only a wish. Wishes, like hopes, get us nowhere. Action gets us somewhere. Any action is better than no action. Chunking up what you need to do and where you need to go works light year’s better than “paint the bridge” and “clean the house.” Now apply the same dynamics to your business and business planning.

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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 !

“I am me. In all the world,

there is no one else

 exactly like me. 

I am OK!”

–Virginia Satir

     Run your own business? Post these 18 words on your dashboard, mirror and refridgerator . . . Why? Because even entrepreneurs need reassurance, and especially when economic uncertainties have a way of making us all feel like too many things–often including our selves–are sometimes NOT okay.

     Have you ever felt like that, or am I just imagining it? Have you felt like that more in recent times than in the past? Do you sometimes think maybe the news media is trying to sink your ship by heaping negative economy stories on your already overburdened shoulders?

     Does it start to feel suffocating? Do you step back every once in a while and start to question your own self-worth? Get out of it! Rattle your cage! Change the channel! Shut down the news!

     Do you really need to take the murders, muggings, accidents, freaky and bizarre incidents and people, and the incessant dwelling on negativity to bed with you every night? Do you really need to wake up with it every morning? 

     What would happen if you shut it all down for a few days and used the time instead to relax your brain and remind yourself how truly special and unique you are? Do you really think you would miss much? If you have doubts, take a quick trip to the library or on Google through past newspaper headlines.

     Go back 20, 50, 100 years! Surprise! The names and locations change, but the stories are mostly the same. It will be like missing a week of All My Children and General Hospital. Nothing new goes on.

     As a sort of sports version of the old expression to do reality checks by pinching yourself, I don’t recommend the method former baseball slugger Bobby Bonilla used to practice, but the idea worked for him; every at-bat, he hit himself on his helmet with his bat just before stepping up to the plate. You can be sure it helped him focus his attention.

     SOMEthing that only you know about can be a “focus trigger” for you. Take a minute and think about that one thing. What snaps your awareness back when your mind starts to drift? Figure it out and use it more. Snap your brain back to the reality that YOU ARE UNIQUE. That awareness, and following the path of reality that it conjures up, is The Ultimate Small Business Stimulus Package.

     In other words, get yourself cranked up, and keep yourself cranked up. It’s catching, and others –internal customers (like associates, employees and vendors) as well as external customers will respond in ways that bring you more business. Remember that what you love doing best is what you do best, and appreciating your self more will help you succeed at doing what you do best. Now THAT’s a stimulus package!       Good Night and God Bless You – halalpiar

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HAPPY FIRST BLOGBIRTHDAY!

For those of you who have been with this from the beginning (April 24, 2008), and those who have joined and visited along the way, thank you so very much! I hope you will continue to visit and comment and subscribe, and urge your business, personal, and professional growth-minded friends and associates to stop by. I am always open to your ideas and suggestions. Please comment or email me anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (“Businessworks” in the subject line).

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Goals Schmoles!

No Problem? No Goal.

     If you can’t define your problem, clearly, in writing, in one sentence, you don’t have a goal. Early on in my career, I had one of those experiences that leave neophytes like I was at that time reeling in anguish and boredom, only to learn eventually that I had been a witness to business management greatness.

     I was working for the world’s number one Madison Avenue advertising agency and I was a “creative management team member” assigned to handle the marketing for a Fortune 500 company, one of the planet’s greatest airlines. The boredom set in after being locked (literally) in a fancy Manhattan hotel suite with the six top executives of the airline and the top creative and management team members of the ad agency for four 12-hour workdays and four 3-4 hour worknights, where we ate, drank and slept the airline business.

     The purpose of the marathon session was “to define the problem” that the airline had that we could wrap a major marketing campaign around. The airline chief required that we sort through reports from every department in every worldwide division and review all the problems, from late baggage delivery to delayed flights to food service complaints to air traffic control issues, and on and on.

     It was so much more than I ever wanted to know, and all I could think about was getting home to my family, and eating something besides subs and pizza. But guess what? The problem got defined. The boss insisted that it be written down as a single sentence and that everyone in the room had to accept the wording exactly. I probably don’t need to tell you I thought he was nuts, and that I was seriously thinking about tuning up my resume.

     The end result was that the problem got flipped over into a goal statement that was specific, flexible, realistic and had a due date. We all left exhausted. We worked with the goal statement. We achieved the goal with what turned out to be one of the most productive advertising and sales campaigns in history. In other words the torture produced.

     I’ve repeated the dynamics hundreds of times since over the years. It always works! Always. Define the problem. Be specific and put it in writing and get all involved to agree at least somewhat with the statement. Then rework the statement into a goal and go for it. Crazy extra nonsense work. Crazy? Maybe. Extra? Positively. Nonsense? I don’t think so anymore. Work? Yes it’s very hard work. But it also DOES work. And that makes it about as close to a sure bet as you’ll ever get in business! 

 Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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Yes, you do need

to love your spouse!

     When you think your business is buckling under from economic strains and from government’s abject failure to provide meaningful job creation incentives for small business, there are still steps you can take now to get your business back on top. Yes, steps you can take, not HOPE. HOPE is not the answer. ACTION is the answer.

     What does it take? You need simply to get your head up out of the sand and turn around. Look at the other businesses around you…in the same building, on the same block, in the same town. in the same county, in the same state, in a neighboring state, or even in another country. Find businesses that are compatible with yours, whose services or products are complementary to yours.

     Accountants and bookkeeping services, computer hardware and software services, animal and produce farming, office supplies and office furniture, painters and sculptures, publications and Internet marketers, ad agencies and photographers, furniture and bedding companies, candy stores and dentists (just kidding there; wanted to make sure you’re still reading BECAUSE striking up strategic alliances with other businesses offers opportunities you don’t have now by yourself!)

     With another complementary business, you may be able to share marketing costs (even utilities if you’re in the same building), public relations impact (with joint news releases and co-sponsored events), customer service (by offering an extended array of products or services), databases (shared email addresses for promotional emails, for example), even staff (centralized reception or sales reps that may be too costly for one business to carry alone. And so it goes, on and on.

     The point is that the opportunities are only limited by your thinking and your attitude. If you think it’s better to go down with your ship than to step back to a co-captain position with part of your business, help yourself. The thing that’s important to remember is that strategic alliances are strategic alliances because they are not formal legal entities. They are simply ways of working together that have mutual benefits.

     Oh, and yes, you do need to love your spouse, but you need not love a strategic partner. You need only to have two businesses that recognize there’s strength in numbers that just does not exist for either business functioning independently. What have you got to lose by talking and trying? You might even come up with a situation that lifts both businesses off the map! You never know ’til you try. Nothing happens ’til you act!

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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!

PR IS NOT

A SERIES OF STUNTS!

     If your goal is to attract attention to your business or brand, go stand on your head in traffic and eat watermelon, but don’t believe for even one minute that Public Relations is the answer. PR is not a series of stunts.

     Businesses that insist on misusing PR as a tool to take them on a promotional binge from one event to the next will soon lose enough credibility to cost them press release coverage at times when it counts most, and will end up hanging around, hands in pockets watching their blog sites go down the tubes, probably pulling their websites down along with them since search engine rankings are very much a function of blog activity.

     Why do PR-abusive companies create this downward spiral to start with? Because the public (whether it’s industrial trade, clients, patients, other professionals, or John Q. off the street) isn’t stupid. And media writers and editors, even less so…when careers are on the line, there’s a whole lot less tolerance of artificially-inflated newsworthiness tossed to the wind by overzealous organizations that are too preoccupied with day-to-day sales survival tactics to appreciate the need for strategic planning.    

     Effective PR is all about building SOLID relationships with the news media by consistently demonstrating the value of what it is that your product or service does and the value of whom you are in your industry, profession, and community.

     Why does the relationship need to be so emphatically “solid”? PR is a trade-off. For you to get free promotional mentions and news release and photo coverage (that, incidentally, research shows to be ten times more credible than paid advertising messages), you must be willing to perform at the whimsy of the editors and writers who decide on whether or not to accept what you provide them with.

     They will always be much more receptivity to what you provide when what you provide is professionally written and executed and followed-up on. My guess is that 80% of effective PR is follow-up. Ah, but that is what builds relationships, right?  

     And, by the way, effective PR will boost your branding efforts far beyond advertising for usually a fraction of the costs associated with advertising. A recent study finds this is particularly true for businesses connected with engaging and complicated product manufacturing and marketing processes.

     In fields like financial services, automobiles and consumer electronics, almost 30% of brand value is associated with solid PR performances that result in increased brand name mentions in print, broadcast and electronic news media. 

     What this means is that in economic downturns like the one we’re experiencing, it is wise to boost  your PR efforts and reduce your advertising expenditures. But that’s not to imply a straight exchange.

     It is to say that your PR efforts need to be professional, and your advertising needs to be more focused and more contiguous with your media relations efforts. There’s some delicate balancing and juggling acts involved, but you’re already a pro at that or you wouldn’t have your own business to start with, right?  

 Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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What’s blocking

your success

right this minute is

INSIDE YOUR HEAD!

     Ellen Degeneres says she wants a million Twitter followers. Good for her! That’s her goal. She believes in and sets and has consistently achieved her goals. That should have absolutely nothing to do with you except to set the stage for inspiring you to set and achieve YOUR own goals.

     Remember to make sure your goals are realistic, specific, flexible and have a due-date. Without all four criteria, you have only a wishlist!

     Pay attention to Ellen. You don’t have to like her (I do) or like her politics (I don’t) but she is teaching us all some important life lessons that we never got in school. When you believe in yourself and in your ability to achieve what you want in life, you will achieve it.

     There are skazillions of great motivational and inspirational sayings out there, and –by the way– you need only watch Twitter updates for about 10 minutes to see hundreds of these being tossed out like grass seed. There is no shortfall of resources or words of wisdom.

     The shortfall that is blocking your success right this minute is INSIDE YOUR HEAD! Either directly or indirectly, you are doing something to prevent yourself from making the things happen that you need to make happen in order to reach the point where you consider yourself to be a success.

     If you REALLY concentrate on this, you should be able to figure it out and step over the roadblock. If you simply can’t come up with what and where that roadblock is, get a professional to help you. What that means is a professional shrink, psychologist, psychotherapist, Gestalt therapist, reality therapist, counselor, tutor, traditional physician, nontraditional healthcare professional, lawyer, accountant, investment specialist, personal and professional growth group facilitator, etc.

     If you can’t get or afford professional help, start up or join a group dedicated to serve as a sounding board for business leaders. I ran one of these for years, meeting regularly on Sunday evenings for awhile, just business owners interested in giving and getting ideas and input to/from other business owners.

     Meet. Find one person who can facilitate discussion and buy her or him coffee. Recruit one other person to be the organizer, to get attendance at the meetings, circulate agendas, and publish master contact lists for everyone. It’s that simple. Try it.

     Make it like Twitter LIVE. Just by trying, you will be moving yourself and your business ambitions forward. Stay open-minded, and see what you can learn from others who are experiencing similar dynamics. If it’s not working, call me 302.933.0116. I’ll help you get on a roll.  

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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!