Welcome, and thank you

for joining me on this

personal milestone of

  1,000 posts at this site.

Before I take you on my quick-read path of lessons learned, which I unabashedly believe includes something of value for everyone, let me offer up my heartfelt appreciation for the first 400 visits I had in April of 2008 when I started, and the millions of visitors who followed over the last 3+ years.

~~~~~~~~~~

Please continue your visits, comments, and free RSS Feed subscriptions.

And please note that this blog will now publish new

posts 5 days a week, every Sunday through Thursday.

But the Search Window is always open, and content is always relevant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you

for your confidence,

trust and loyal support.

Special thanks to Kathy — the wind beneath my wings for 25 years, and to the wonderful dogs we’ve been blessed with, who surrounded my feet as I posted each night — our Black Cocker (“Tuckerton“) who left us last year at 6 years old and our Golden Retriever (“Barnegat“) who lived six months longer than him; she was 13 . . . and our new one-year-old-this-week Cavachon (“Breezy“).

For the endless stream of writing encouragement and feedback (regardless of agreement or disagreement with my representations, and there’s been plenty of both!), please indulge me long enough to use this space for special thanks to my: son, Christopher; daughter Haley; oldest granddaughter, Talley; brother-in-law Tim; mother-in-law, Marian; brother, Rick. And: my Aunt Dorothy and sister-in-law Claire; Melanie Adair, Angela Current, Doyle Slayton, Jonena Realth, Dr. Ian Fries, George Kanuck, Kevin Bousquet, Meredith Bell, Jeff Banning, Danielle-Dixon-Moyle, Peter Leeds, Jim Haines, Dr. Jeffrey Alpern, Michael Infusino, Ken and Sara Kraft, Bruce Burchell, Andrew Jackson; Jim Oliviero, Ken Poppele, Andy Larrimore, Laura Pritchett, Jeff Shactman, Barrie Proctor, Brian Smith, Dennis Forney, my friends, neighbors, Twitter and LinkedIn followers, former students, past and present clients, three special friends lost this past year: Butch Taras, Paul Harp and Ernst Dannemann, and my 150 softball league buddies in Delaware and New Jersey, and their families.

Thank you also to the young men and women of America’s military service whose devotion and courage make the freedom possible that allows me to choose to write, and to be able to write freely.

. . . and thank you, God!

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is some of what I learned that you may find helpful to be reminded of . . . to think about . . . to try, apply, expand, adjust, enjoy, and to just pick up and run with:

1)  Never assume that no one (or that no one who matters) is “out there.”

When you write and post something on the Internet, someone, somewhere, is always reading what you write . . . every thing you write! So make it count.

2)  Be gracious with your insults.

Criticize the behavior –words and actions– not the person! When you feel you must take someone’s behavior to task, take it to task, but try to “sleep on” what you write before you click Publish.

3)  Take lots of deep breaths. 

More frequent deep breathing will channel stress productively, to stay in control, to be focused on the “here-and-now” present as much as possible, to ensure that you respond instead of react. Remember, if you don’t react, you can never over-react!

4)  Be kinder than necessary

 EVERYone you meet and re-meet every day is fighting some kind of battle.

5)  “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

(Thank you Mark Twain) 

6)  “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter–’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”  

(Thank you again Mark Twain)

7)  “Time waits for no one. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”

 (Thank you B. Olatunji)

8)  Ask yourself the following 4 questions:

 Why?  Why Not?  Why Not Me?  Why Not Now? A few times a day is not a bad idea.

9)  Accept the fact that the news media no longer “reports” anything.

Literally every story breaks down into some stress-filled level of disguised political opinion. If you think that’s exaggeration, try testing your willpower to not watch or listen to or read any news or news-related presentations of any kind for just one week, then see and feel the results. You will be happier, healthier, less-stressed, more productive, and making a bigger difference in the world, especially if you combine this effort with #3 above. (3 weeks of it, by the way, will literally transform your life!)

10)  “To Thine Own Self Be True!”  

                                         (Authenticity + Passion = Success)

(Thank you, Shakespeare)

   11)  “There is a time for everything under heaven.”

(Thank you, God)

   12)  “Open Minds Open Doors.”

(Thank you United Technologies)

   13)  “The journey to discovery consists not in having new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

(Thank you Proust)

    14)  “The only thing that’s permanent is change.”

(Thank you Greek philosopher Hericlitus, 2500 years ago)

    15)  “Happiness is a journey, not a destination.”

(Thank you Alfred Souza)

    16)  Great blog posts only happen because of great blog followers.

If you like what I write, thank your self because I write it only for you, and only with your input. I am grateful for your every visit.

Have a wonderful week ahead, filled with everything you want.

Best regards – Hal

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.     God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone

Today’s News Report . . .

“Economists are now

calculating the odds

that the economy will

  slide back into

another recession”

What? “Another” recession? What happened to the first one? Everybody I know in my business and personal life thinks the first one that was ignited by Mr. Obama never went away! In fact everyone I ask thinks it’s just gotten worse, and is now on track to compete with The Great Depression of the 1930s.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, please, political and media people (assuming a difference), stop pulling our chain! Do you think for one heartbeat  –that because the White House pretends the recession has passed, it’s over and done, and that now we may be looking at a 2nd one–  that such nonsense could be anything but a lie to manipulate voter opinion?

First of all, who on Earth thinks we might “slide back into another recession” besides braindead economists who busy themselves “calculating odds” instead of telling Mr. Obama and the other spendthrifts (like Harry, Joe, Nancy, Chuck and Barney…even sounds like a bad cartoon) that we are still in the same recession that we’ve been in?

…and that the only way out of this mess is to embrace small business instead of continuing to terrorize it. Small business, every economist knows, is the only source of new job creation. Tell the White House to do what should have been done for 3 years: Extend tax-cut incentives to small business to encourage new jobs! Period. 

In truth, that same recession has now escalated into The Great Obama Depression, the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the 193os. The whole debt ceiling fiasco has solved nothing. It’s simply opened floodgates to even higher taxes and yet even more increased spending. Don’t doubt it. We the people have been had!

Just as FDR’s policies unnecessarily prolonged The Great Depression another 5 years, Mr. Obama’s agenda is clearly hellbent on worsening and unnecessarily prolonging The Great Obama Depression — making it a dependency-creating political tool. Jobs? Who cares? Everything’s FREE. Of course I’ll vote for the gift-horse and get more! 

What makes it just or moral for the government to decide who gets what? Share-the-wealth Socialism does not work. Never has. Never will. Check your history books.

This runaway tax and spend trainwreck of an Administration doesn’t care that real people with real small businesses are struggling, that real unemployed people and their real families are suffering, that America is starting to look like a nation of bumbling incompetents in our own citizens’ eyes and the eyes of many other nations.

You own or manage a small business or professional practice. So you know the only way to end it all is to end it all: on November 6, 2012. And that means starting NOW, not next week. Mr. Obama –in the midst of every conceivable kind of national calamity– has been busy: he’s already held an all-time-record 37 fund-raising events!

So, yes, our work is cut out for us, but there are 30 MILLION of us . . . 30 MILLION small business owners in America who know what hard work is all about. Is it worth the futures of your children and grandchildren and great- grandchildren for you to put off getting actively involved for even another day? Is it?

The decision you make now to move your business forward and to influence others to support candidates who support small business will bring results on November 6, 2012, that will affect this, plus your next two generations of your family.

It’s really this simple:

More government interference in our lives, or less?

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.     God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone

How can you ever get where

you’re going if you don’t 

know where you’ve been?

You’ve heard me a zillion times about the importance of focusing on the “here-and-now” present moment if you seek success in any form — and it’s a particularly embracable idea if you’re a leader, a small business or professional practice owner or manager, an entrepreneur, a parent, teacher, in military or community service, or unemployed.

I’ve belabored the point that dwelling on or in the past, and worrying about the future, are mentally, emotionally, and physically unhealthy places to be. They are fantasyland locations and are at the core of neurosis.

 BUT when you can make use of the past or future from a present-moment mindset, so that you control past and future thoughts . . .

You Win! Don’t believe it? Follow this:

• Think for a minute, from your present-moment level of awareness, about where you’ve been in life (not  on a map, but where your thought patterns, performance levels, relationships, and business experiences have been). When you think about those things, what value do you give them in the here-and-now? 

• Are these experiences that led you to where you are? So reaching back into them, which ones yield you the greatest value in the present? Which can most dramatically, most effectively, launch you into the future? Where exactly do you want to go in life? What in your past can most help you get there?

• What roadblocks have you chosen to put between past learning experiences and future plans? What are the 3 most important steps you can take right now to start getting over or around those roadblocks? What excuses are you choosing to use to keep yourself from taking the most important of those 3 steps?

• Take some deep breaths and mentally stand back from yourself, in a vacuum, without feeling past guilt or future worry, and describe you as you imagine yourself to be 10 years from today, August 3, 2021. What would you tell you to do NOW to get yourself on a more productive, happier, healthier, more rewarding path?

• Go ahead, tell yourself –maybe in a mirror? Take some more deep breaths. Imagine, see yourself as the person you most want to become. Try to visualize your physical appearance (clothes, jewelry, skin, hair, teeth, brightness of eyes) and your attitude (how you walk, talk, carry yourself).

• You have the ability to choose now, today, tonight, this hour, this minute to start on the path that will take you where you want to be. And this moment in time will be your past when you achieve that new goal for yourself. Will you look back to it then and commend your decision to move forward or wallow in self-misery for not choosing?

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.     God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone

Are you on drugs?

Is someone in your family?

Someone who

works with you?

The stress of owning and/or running a business is enough to make almost anyone crazy. It’s also almost enough –and occasionally more than enough– to prompt entrepreneurs, family members, and employees to resort to drugs. Do you ever feel like sometimes the whole world is on drugs?

Just swipe your eyes over some pharmaceutical and alcoholic beverage industry numbers. Scary stuff.

Factor in all the illegal Mexican drug cartel trainloads. Add illegal outputs from Colombia and Brazil and Turkey and Scandinavia and the Orient and thousands of other supply chains around the world. Scarier yet. (Hey, look at the people running our country. Now that’s scary.) Wheee! Drugs all around. And it’s not even Woodstock!

The trouble is that talk like that draws snickers from many, and it’s just not funny. Individual lives, entire families and businesses, whole nations have been wasted and destroyed by drug and alcohol dependency problems that literally drag them out of being in touch with the present here-and-now, into past and future fantasyland.

There are very few things in life more destructive than drug and alcohol dependency –even cancer– because in addition to also being degerative, drug and alcohol addiction that’s not brought on by parental genes and/or birth conditions (e.g. “crack babies”), is a disease that is often the result of (usually unconscious) self-destruct choices.

_________________________ 

If addiction is a struggle of yours, you’re obviously smart enough to be doing something about it, or you wouldn’t be reading this. If it’s someone else’s struggle that you are somehow engaged with, be careful, first of all, that you don’t get sucked into the whirlpool, because it is not a forgiving experience.

Everyone who’s battled addiction (their own or someone else’s) knows that it’s difficult if not completely impossible to be “under the influence” and to own, operate, or manage a business of any kind without “outside” professional help to monitor and guide a structured program of rehabilitation. But shop carefully.

There are a zillion helpful individuals, groups and organizations out there ready to pounce on a tollfree call of crisis and desperation. Unfortunately though –unlike a latex glove– one size doesn’t fit all, and it seems that most of these well-intentioned helpers are, in the end, very limited in what many affected people will allow them to achieve.

Many who say they want help, really don’t want help; they want only to say that they want help! Like trying to stop decay once it starts, addiction carries an ever-increasing degree of both business and social irresponsibility. This quickly disintegrates into a growing sense of apathy for everything except the next drink, the next fix. 

__________________________

In trying to teach me to swim, my father who was a great swimmer, threw me off a motor boat a mile out into the ocean. I failed to learn anything but fear; he had to hire a swimming instructor. I spent many years as a group counselor and stress management trainer, but couldn’t help some of those most in need who were closest to me.

It’s hard to shake off emotional connections when pragmatism and self-discipline are called for.

The bottom line is that if you or someone close needs help with an addiction problem, you/she/he has to be coherent and genuinely dedicated enough to want help, and to go out and find it, and to follow the path. No one else can push anyone into a resource situation that doesn’t fit or feel right, and expect some overnight miracle.

Addiction is a mental, emotional, and physical disease. Just as it takes time to “catch it,” it also takes time to work it out of your system and get rid of it. And some never do. Regardless of caregiver credentials, pedigrees, or intentions, others truly cannot help those who are not willing and eager and able to help themselves.

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.   God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

35 years ago,

a doctor told me my back 

was so bad, I’d never

walk again. 

  _____________________________

I bought a horse

and a jet ski!

(and my back has been better ever since!) 

Stubbornness or determination? Probably both. [And Thank God, I walk just fine.]

Stubbornness and determination represent attitudes that would get corporate muckity-mucks fired, but they’re not such terrible traits to have as an entrepreneur. Ive’ heard a lot of definitions of entrepreneurship over my years of teaching, consulting and doing it, but none sum it up as succinctly as stubbornness and determination’

We always hear that entrepreneurs have to have “fire in the belly” to pursue their ideas and make them work.

That they continue to move forward when everything around them is moving backward.

That they see the light at the end of the tunnel that others can’t even find the entrance to, or once they’re in it, slam their gearshifts into reverse.

Yet we also know that entrepreneurs historically take only reasonable risks. So the point of distinction occurs a few hundred feet into the tunnel when the light from the entrance is just about to dissolve away.

It is that moment in time that separates the courageous pursuit of free enterprise from the gutless wonders of government agency security and handout-dependent careers, and from corporate analysis paralysis treadmill careers. Entrepreneurs plod fearlessly forward as others turn and run. Sound like a military invasion? Well, isn’t it?

The enemy of entrepreneurs is lethargy and complacency. You remember that pair from your C-Span Current Affairs course? They are the two culprits that have gripped our economy since the present White House occupants took control. They are what must be overthrown if America is ever to survive and thrive again as a nation. 

The only difference in fighting this war of entrepreneurial enlightenment (vs. other, older ones) is that small business owners can no longer charge forward with their heads down. This time, we’re up against liberal fanatics who are not simply putting up roadblocks; they are actively fighting in the name of progressiveness to stop progress!

Go figure.

America’s present Administration refuses to stop short of literally pulverizing small business.

Over-taxing, over-regulating, over-burdening the very entity in society that has been solely responsible for new job creation, for economic stimulation, for boosting America’s reputation and strength worldwide . . . to what end? 

It’s not a puzzle; it’s a plan.

There are 30 million small business owners  in the United States. We have no ability to “certa bonum certamen” (fight the good fight) on our own, acting as individual small businesses. We all need to accept that the strength in numbers we are capable of can accomplish more than individual efforts.

We must vote AND prompt votes for any candidate who appreciates and respects small business owners and operators, our nation’s military people . . . and stubbornness and determination. November 6, 2012. Be there. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.   God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Economy-crunched small businesses, stampeding to reduce payroll, need first to pull back the bells and whistles.

S C A L E   I T   B A C K.

Ideas, Proposals, Recommendations, Products, Services

Stop to think about it: If YOU are having trouble affording employee costs, your CUSTOMERS may be having trouble affording your product and service “extras.” [Restaurants have been scaling back since 2008 by offering better quality in smaller portions on slightly smaller plates!]

Let’s say you’re a consultant, and know in your heart of hearts that a client organization you work with needs to develop three new levels of consumer goods and services to stay competitive, but you also know that their naive management has failed to get its arms around the budget stranglehold that White House pressure has put on them.

You can lay it all out for them , knowing they will never pay your fee, and go down with the ship . . . or chunk up your recommended action plan to address just one new level, leaving the other two to simmer until the first of these can produce enough revenues to cover the investment and your fee, setting the stage for a level two proposal.

It’s worth the reminder that, as my father was known to exclaim and as Giovanni Torriano was first credited with recording the phrase in his Second Alphabet in 1662, “You can’t get blood out of a stone.”  And while we’re on the subject of hard subjects and difficult feats, you may want to accept the inevitable and just agree to “bite the bullet.”

In other words, when you can see that your proposal carries with it the hand-wrenching anguish that forces your client to back away from the table, scale it back. What can be accomplished by eliminating the bells and whistles and still manage to develop a new first level that’s acceptable, that can be expected to perform adequately?

Does this put a burden on you? Of course. When you may have been thinking you could do a $15,000 fee project, you find yourself settling for a smaller $4,995 fee project. What’s the answer? Do it with a $15,000 fee attitude, and use the extra time to get out and sell another client or two on projects that total $10,000.

So, now what? You lose $5? Ah, but now you have three clients and can more safely hedge your bet. If you work at it you may also generate $45,000 total a short way down the road, instead of just the opening effort for $15,000.

You can do this. The point is that everyone in business has reached a point of struggle (or at least substantial concern). How much further can this go? Will we have to go belly up? How can we pay the bills? 

Bottom Line: WE HAVE TO RISE ABOVE THESE KINDS OF THOUGHTS AND FOCUS ON HOW TO GET INCREASED SALES NOW BY OFFERING DECREASED FRILLS.

Force yourself to take a good hard look at what you’re selling and to whom. Can it be streamlined and priced lower without losing value or impact or safety? Can the excess packaging be eliminated or relaced less expensively without risking damage? Can you use 2-day Priority Mail instead of more expensive overnight shipping? 

Can you make arrangements to package the cars you sell with a gas or routine servicing giftcard? Some lawyers are doing reduced price packaging of basic family and couple’s wills. Some chiropractors will do basic 2 for 1 adjustment visits. The travel and hospitality industries constantly offer discount incentives that strip away luxury cost extras.  

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.   God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

I grew up with unreasonable demands being made on me and my brother and my mother by my alcoholic father. I began thinking that that was life, and all the other stuff that came my way from teachers and coaches and bigger older kids was just more of the same. So were the demands of college, grad school, and parttime jobs. Or so at least it all seemed.

The more I kept inside, the

tighter, more withdrawn

and resentful I became.

Ever feel that way yourself, or am I just imagining? Don’t we all hold onto some kind of resentment? If it has to do with responsibility, maybe it knots up our shoulders. If it’s a love relationship, it may give us chest pains or heartburn, sadly sometimes heart attacks and heart disease.

Some experience “butterflies” in their stomachs, pains in their lower backs, or legs. We get headaches when oxygen and blood flow get sidetracked from traveling freely through our necks and end up like crimped garden hoses. We run to surgeons and chiropractors and massage therapists and drugstores and liquor cabinets for relief.

Did you ever have such an explosive feeling inside that you wanted to scream, but you ended up instead making some feeble guttural sounds, swallowing the wrong way, coughing or choking, or perhaps you simply stuffed food down your throat because it’s hard to express how you feel when your ability to speak is blocked with food?

All of these symptoms and often not-such-good solutions are magnified for small business owners and managers. Besides all the everyday life stresses of family and friends, small business owners and managers cannot leave their workday traumas at their workday worksites. Doing business 24/7 is what life is about. Entrepreneuring takes guts!

When you own or run a business,

you even dream about it!

If someone insults a corporate or government guy at work–and hopefully this is a rare or never occurrence–he may feel resentful and carry it around, or dismiss it, or confront it. Insults are standard daily fare, however, for many if not most small businesses, and the pressure is enormous to not dismiss it or confront it reactively. 

“Trading insults” leaves us with more insults than we started with!

By reacting insread of responding, it will surely come back to haunt

because only reacting opens the floodgate to OVER-reacting! 

So if all of that is the valley of darkness,

how do we rise up into the light?

Well, here’s how I did it. Try this little recipe.

You might pleasantly surprise your SELF! 

First is to acknowledge that we harbor resentment and identify what circumstances or to whom we attach the ill feelings. Next is to take some deep breaths to better circulate that oxygen and blood flow. Then ask ourselves if it’s really worth hanging onto the upset feelings and to what ends or purpose?

Is it worth “hanging on” in exchange for the bitterness to take its toll on our one and only bodies that we want to have usher us into long happy and healthy lives? Take some more deep breaths. Are you so stubborn that you’re willing to give up years of life in exchange for not being a big enough person to forgive? Isn’t it time to move on?

Watch how good your body starts to feel when you finally agree to answer those questions honestly and let go of that resentment you’ve been harboring all these many days, weeks, months, years.   

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting.  God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

There was a time, once upon a time, when I was young and foolish, and convinced I knew everything. Well I did know everything. Of course I did. After all, I was 29 or 30 and way past the dirt-poor boyhood lessons of life and growing up. In fact, I had been growing up in New York, which –when I look back– was a miracle all by itself. I mean, who grows up in New York?

A New Yawka? Ugh, who

wants one of them around?

It’s a weird thing when you think you know it all and have seen it all and have been there and done that and have the t-shirt, and then: swhooooosh! —out of the blue– the real you, broadsided with a new learning experience.

It happened when I was one of those hot-shot Madison Avenue advertising guys you may have seen portrayed on TV’s “Mad Men,” or maybe not. (Actually, that show was not very authentic, but what does TV have to work with except half-truths anyway?). I commuted 40 minutes each way by train into the city, M-F, creating great ads.

I married too young, and as I went “over the hill” at age 30, I was already ending a messy marriage, and winning diapers-galore legal custody of my three children (2,2, and 4), one of the twins profoundly retarded. Imagine the small army of friends, neighbors and household help (from a loyal young caring live-in couple, Wayne and Peggy).

As luck would have it, my troubled twin (now PC-termed “profoundly developmentally disabled”) slept all day and cried all night as I walked the floors with her. So with endless spare time on my hands, I made the mistake of taking up with more of the politics I’d left behind as a teenage and 20-something volunteer for the Democratic Party.

I know, I know, but it was because my parents were lifelong Democrats — “The working man’s party,” my father proudly exclaimed. I figured he should know which team was the good guys because he was of course, a working man! Besides the Democrats all spoke from the heart and made powerful promises and shook my father’s hand.

So what’s changed? The Democratic Party. It walked away. Democrats are now the party of greedy union bosses, elite academics, never-say-die tree huggers, fat and happy government employees, free handout beneficiaries . . .  and UN-American, share-the-wealth-with-thieves-and-illegals-to-build-votership idealists with no sense of reality.

Then I became an entrepreneur.

Democratic Party leadership (now there’san oxymoron!) is invested in destroying entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirit . . . obliterating the same entrepreneurial spirit that built this great nation. They are on a relentless anti-capitalism freight train crusade to run over and destroy small business enterprises and ownership

. . . at the expense of job creation and economic survival!

Doesn’t sound like much of a good trade-off to me, but, hey, what do I know? I’m just a transplanted New Yawka whose business is busy fighting off our great White House visionaries who obviously value votership over entrepreneurship. 

Can there be such a thing as short-sighted visionaries? How about 30 million short-circuited small business owners? How about we vote together for a change? November 6, 2012. Be there.                  

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting.  God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

“I am me . . . 

in all the world,

there is no one else

exactly like me.

I am okay!”

 — World renown family therapist VIRGINIA SATIR

[What? You came here looking for that all-time great 56-year-old recording hit “Only You,” by the Platters?]

People around you may sometimes prompt you to think –because you own or run or manage a small business or professional practice– that you are Mr. or Ms. (or Dr.) Awesome in the flesh. And perhaps that’s warranted, especially if you are what’s commonly referred to as “self-made,” in which case: congratulations!

If, however, you can’t even begin to think about your business success because right now you’re down there in the trenches with America’s other 29,999,999 small business owners who are struggling to survive the fanatical progressive/socialist/liberal agenda that has steered government into a trample-free-market-competition mode.

Then the time has come to step back and take personal stock of who you are and where you’re going. And I’m sorry to tell you I can’t help you with where you’re going; only you know that answer. Godspeed!

So let’s explore the real you, the only you, the you that only your inner circle of family and friends knows. I can help you with that. I have lots of experience guiding people (especially business people) to find themselves. It’s not always easy. Some entrepreneurs thrive on making themselves be needles in a haystack.

Begin with accepting the awareness that you are unique.

There is (if you check with your friendly local DNA expert, and as Virginia Satir’s quote above says), no one else exactly like you.

Next, consider that if in fact this is true for every human on Earth, then HOW employees and customers respond to the messages you put out is never exactly the same twice.

Now that should tell you something right off the bat. What you want others to know about you, your products and services is very likely to be not what they are getting from your messages. But let’s return to you.

Government has cultivated dependency among the brain-dead, who make themselves too busy with life to bother with work. Who needs a job when you can get it all (food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education) for free? There are others who work just enough to get by, but most of them seem to have RDD (Responsibility Deficit Disorder).

You are not among those who live off of others or you wouldn’t be reading this.

But some questions for you are in order: Do you choose to make yourself too busy with work to live life? Is it essential to your survival or are your business priorities simply wrapped around “what if” worries? Do you take enough breaks and pat yourself on the back enough for the good things you do? Do you eat and sleep right?

Have you ever “almost died”?

Do you get enough exercise? Are you answering these questions truthfully? Do you realize that because you are unique, so are your needs, so is your activity level, so is your spunk and gumption, so is your faith, your sense of patriotism, and your entrepreneurial spirit? When did you last stop to think about those values and variables?

What can you do right now to give your unique self a boost?

We do, in fact, become what we think about. Have you been thinking about what you really want to become, or have you been preoccupied with being the person you think others want you to be? There’s no such thing as working smarter and not harder. The issue is one of balance. There is a way that you already know . . . and, there is prayer.      

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting.  God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

The best source of business

 is always existing and 

 past business.

What have you done lately about resurrecting contact with old friends and business associates? The amount of time, money and energy plowed into developing new business in new markets with customers and suppliers who’ve never heard of them is a phenomenal waste. Put the same effort and resources into those who already know you. 

Even brain-dead politicians know this. Why do they concentrate campaign efforts on those who have supported them in the past? Because to those people (voters), they’re known entities, and that alone is often enough to trigger contributions or in the case of business, sales. There’s no need to start the get-acquainted process from scratch.

“Go straight to the heart of the matter,”

(my father always told me!)

At the heart of winning more business in as catastrophic an economy as we’re living with, is the need to revisit, renew, and re-cultivate old friendships, old acquaintances, old customers and clients, old suppliers and vendors, old investors and lenders, old employees and employers, old partnerships and alliances. ALL former supporters.

These are people who you may have lost touch with (and perhaps on purpose), but with rapidly changing times often come changing more receptive attitudes. Someone who was an employee and left for a better career move may now be in a position of being a customer, or a referrer, or a supplier, or even an investor! How will you know? Ask.

Small business owners and managers typically avoid past contacts for many reasons, but none of those reasons (unless they would open some legal wounds) are good reasons for glossing over possible resources who have a favorable impression of you. Spend your time, money, and effort there instead of digging up new prospects!

When you communicate your message to someone who knows you, you can skip all the preambles; there’s no need to waste words explaining who you are and where you came from and how you do what you do. Go straight to the heart:  

• “I know it’s been awhile, but I thought you’d be especially interested in . . . because . . .”

Or . . . 

• “As soon as we put out this special (new product or service, warranty, price deal), I was reminded of how it would/might/does/could have great value/appeal/interest to/for you, and thought you may be interested in this ‘sneak preview’ of . . .”   

In the end, it’s all about consistently using the best sets of words to deliver your message, and targeting past and present business contacts which allows you to engage their interests without having to have them get past the preliminaries of who you are. That small difference puts you a giant step ahead in the sales or recruitment process. 

Oh, and a no-brainer by the way, you can also reach these people and get them to your website, store or office with personalized (free) emails or (inexpensive) postcards instead of extravagant network TV $pon$or$hip$.                                                                                                                 

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 Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed 

Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116 

  Open minds open doors. 

 Thanks for visiting. God bless you. 

   Make today a GREAT day for someone!