HAPPY EASTER AND

HAPPY BLOGBIRTHDAY!

For 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, comment, subscribe, and urge your business, personal, and professional growth-minded friends and associates to stop by. And please comment or email me anytime: Hal@Businessworks.US. Following is an updated version of a post from April 24, 2009.

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“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 the above 18 words on your dashboard, mirror and refrigerator . . . 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 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 discovering that YOU are your own best 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!  

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

SELF-EMPLOYED?

Defragment and

give your SELF a

stimulus package!

     There’s plenty of unused storage space in your mind, believe me. Even if it’s just a little teeny bit true that Einstein supposedly only used about 10% of his total brain capacity, where does that leave the rest of us? I mean, give that about 27 or 28 seconds of think time right now.

     Think about all that extra (empty?) space in your brain that’s available to put to work. Leave it plugged in tonight and just click on accessories> defragment. By the morning, VOILA! You’ll be ready for anything.

     Maybe we should sort out who’s working where first. That way, when you’re all freshly defragmented, you’ll be in a position to make more of what you’ve got, or jump into something different.

     If you work for a big company, raise your hand and leave the room. If you work for someone else in a small company or you work for an organization of some type, or you’re in school learning how to work for somebody else…or you don’t work (Wow! What’s thatlike?), you’re probably not reading any of this anyway because you’re too busy surfing FaceBook.

This now leaves us with the heart of the businessworld: YOU!

    You run and/or own and/or manage a business,

OR you are self-employed.

     Oh, there’s that nasty hyphenated word again: self-employed. This simply means that you run AND own AND manage a business. I love you for that…but don’t get yourself worked up over my affection because what do I know?

     Federal and state government leaders don’t think you count.

     Obviously they haven’t a clue about how Apple and Microsoft got started in garages by self-employed geniuses. Anyway, don’t hold your breath waiting for some kind of  stimulus package since “self-employed” doesn’t count as a small business in government circles.

     I saw a handful of governor-conference-attending governors on CSPAN last night, including I am sorry to say, Delaware Governor Jack Markell who clearly doesn’t get it…who thinks his small business job creation plan to help established small businesses get bigger is going to have big economic impact.

     Sorry Jack. You need to get real, and talk with (LISTEN TO) some of Delaware’s thousands of self-employed small businesses –the ones that are NOT established, that are struggling to get established to see what they need to get up to 3 or 4 or 11 or 25 employees…and TIP: it’s not more loans!

     Making stimulus package room for startups and struggling self-employed is like making disk space by defragmenting. Clear out the junk, the spam, the space-wasters.

     You see what I’m saying here about brain capacity?  Defragmenting cleans up your harddrive. The same concept will clean up your brain, and help you focus on how to be more productive with your time and energy.

     You can be sure of not getting government support, so what can you be sure of? Your SELF! And how do you make that start to work for you? The same ways that Messrs. Jobs and Gates made their one-man-band garage ventures start to work for them.

     They made the choice. They worked hard at their ideas. They didn’t give up when things looked bleak. They didn’t worry about stimulus packages. They put their heads down and charged. You can do that too! Start tomorrow morning…after you defragment tonight!     

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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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