Feeling Invincible? . . .

Think Only Wussy Types

Fret Over “What If” Stuff?

Perhaps consciousness of the fragility of life has never struck you or your business full force. Perhaps you’ve somehow managed to escape the anguish, angst, and fears attached to the reality of your own or the life of someone close hanging by a thread. Perhaps you’re too young or too lucky or too blessed to have ever known the stress of having machines do the breathing and feeding and medicating and pain management?  

~~~~~~~

If that is even partly true of you, don’t let today pass without giving it at least a few moments of thought. Why? Because just as a business with no sign is a sign of no business, a business or business leader without good health — or a poor-health contingency plan– is the sign of a sick or unhealthy business.

“Nah,” a strong-willed 30-something entrepreneur responded to that idea, “My business is healthy,” he said, ”and I have no provision for disaster because I work our regularly and I’m in good shape, we have a long-term lease, our customer base is growing steadily, and prospective investors are standing in line!”

“But surely,” I offered, “you have some kind of insurance coverage? Fire and theft? An office policy? Collision? Life? Health?” He cocked his head as if I’d hit him with an illegal punch, “Sure, but so what? THAT is MY contingency plan. Things go south? I just file claims and collect enough to start something else!”

“That’s good,” I said, “because burglaries and fires and tsunamis and earthquakes and hurricanes and tornados do happen, but I’m talking about catastrophic illness. That happens too.” Ask around. You’ll find plenty of people who’ve experienced sudden ill health, who suffered, and whose businesses suffered because they had no contingency plan.

When that “CLOSED DUE TO FAMILY ILLNESS” sign goes up on the front door (or website), dwindling (sometimes plummeting) customer loyalty and support follow. We live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? society.

Are you ready to face critical damage to your revenue stream and threats to the life support system your enterprise has routinely fostered?

What steps will you take and in what order? Or who will pinch-hit for you? What impact can your suppliers and customers expect, and how –specifically– will they be dealt with to accommodate their needs and to keep things running and moving forward? What gears will need to be shifted? By whom? When?

The time to deal with contingency planning is now, and to re-visit the plan at least once a year. The cost to plan is time. The cost to cope without a plan can be annihilating. It’s certainly true that expectations breed disappointment, but it’s equally true that having no plan is like captaining a rudderless ship.

And then there’re storms . . . 

# # #

FREE blog subscription: Posts RSS Feed

Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You got ideas?

You’re ready to trade in

that corporate career?

Don’t be too quick!

Created by cover-your-butt, tunnel-visioned corporate types, who are busy going nowhere, the “Small Business Career Trap” puts a stranglehold on reentry to the corporate world once someone has “defected to small business life. It’s like deportation. Change your mind? Oh, no, that’s not allowed. Make a come-back? No way, José! 

“Tunnel-visioned”? Well, sure– because the assumption behind that label is that you can play either football OR baseball, not both, and that once you switch sports, you can nevermore capture the credibility in the field of expertise you left behind. Ridiculous? Of course. Michael Jordan isn’t the only athlete to master multiple sports.

The kind of corporate mentality narrowmindedness that fosters (and nurtures) this kind of thinking discounts the wealth of unique contributions a small business-experienced individual can potentially make to stimulate the prevailing lethargy of so much corporate life.

And paradoxical, don’t you think, that the attitude strikes at the heart of the very same types of entrepreneurial contributions that no doubt accounted for launching every corporate entity to begin with?

As long as the political climbers at corporate giants refuse to honor the value of small business experience, and continue to fail to take advantage of the opportunities to integrate and cultivate more entrepreneurial spirit in their organizations, there is little hope that the big boys of business will ever favorably affect the economy.

And adventuresome entrepreneurial wannabe’s need to accept the reality

that big business-to-small business career moves probably have no return route.

This can be pretty disconcerting whenever you (the traitor) reach the point in small business (and you surely will) of realizing you are indeed smarter and more talented than corporate counterparts, MBAs and all.

It will become transparently clear that you could bring greater success to corporate productivity and profitability pursuits than people presently responsible for achieving these goals. Nonetheless, if no one will open the door, your only choice may be to return home and keep looking (Good Luck!) or break the door down.

Not many welcome mats are

laid out for forceable entry.

Will this ever change?

Short of revolution, it’s not likely.

If you should have any doubts, by the way, that corporate mindsets are so deeply entrenched in fears of recruiting and hiring entrepreneurial thinkers and doers, just scroll through some corporate help wanted ads. Find just one that addresses small business expertise, a sense of urgency, and the ability to respond and adjust. Good luck again!

# # #

FREE blog subscription: Posts RSS Feed

Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 You’re an entrepreneur?

You’re probably the

 runt of the litter!

Ask anyone who’s made it big in the service business, and the odds –by my calculations– are roughly 9 out of 10 that she or he did it by staying small. Makes sense. Most runts of the litter have entrepreneurial zeal and instincts. They scrap, scrape, and battle for food and attention from the day they’re born.

And runts make great dogs but not always great parents, which raises a key how-to issue about staying small. From my experience, there’s hardly ever a good and reasonable reason for adding payroll employees when you’ve passed the point of generating strong revenues on your own..

At most, you may decide to put an assistant on payroll, but herein lies the secret to continued growth: The person you choose must be dedicated and loyal to you at all costs. He or she must be a super organizer since –as an entrepreneur– you’re probably not. This individual must have no greater purpose than to make you successful.

In other words, do NOT seek a creative thinker. That’s your job! Do NOT seek a super salesperson. That’s also your job! Find someone you can trust absolutely all of the time. Find someone who will be assertive with other people on your behalf. Find someone who will rise to the occasion, who does not need handholding.

You need a person with strong judgement skills, who can readily size up others (and situations) and who knows enough to know when to insist on over-communicating with you. In other words, if you need to hire someone, hire a leader. If you can find this individual, and it may take years of searching, you won’t need anyone else.

Anyone else you take on should be on a commission, performance incentive, or parttime basis. Once you add a payroll position, and get the wrong person involved, you commit to stagnation and foreclose your prospects to succeed; you commit to the odds of adding expenses without being able to cover them. You commit to status quo.

In a product business, you need only to add skilled labor on a highly selective and prudent basis. One person with know-how, and the drive and energy to do the work of two people at one and a half times a one-person salary is far better than two people doing two jobs for three-quarter person salaries.

The bottom line: Runts of the litter excel as entrepreneurs. They are more independent, inventive, industrious, and self-sufficient. Rather than waste time looking, they will use a coin for a screwdriver. But once in a while, they need to back off and do some hard thinking about where they’re headed and where the next bone is coming from.

# # #

FREE blog subscription: Posts RSS Feed

Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

What do workaholics,

delusionists, and grieving

friends and relatives

all have in common?

 Why is it that the people who are most in need of breaking out of their workaholic patterns are the ones most resistant to the suggestion? They’re afraid to let go. Well, logically, it makes sense. Fear is the single most destructive emotion (and sometimes, paradoxically, greatest motivator) in existence.

Letting go is life’s single hardest task.

Workaholics share this infamous platform with those who live in delusion as well as those who grieve the loss of loved ones. Letting go means giving up an important part of yourself in favor of moving on, or back into, reality. Many egotistically, and sadly, are convinced that the world and their business could not survive without them.

“Sadly,” because these same people will almost inevitably drive themselves into cardiac care units… or the grave… using the excuse as a rationale that they “never gave up the ship!” It’s a lot like being mentally retarded (and having a daughter who is, I can say this with some authority). The single difference is the awareness of having a choice!

Never-say-die workaholics

 simply choose not to choose.

They know they have a choice, but feel threatened by the idea of changing horses in mid-stream. So they instead invest themselves in maintaining the status quo at all costs. Or, as world renown family therapist Virginia Satir used to say, “they get dried up and shrivel up.”

And, Satir goes on to ask: ”Don’t you think this affects the growth of their families and that of those who work with them?” See for yourself. Status quo seekers are everywhere, harboring pain and misery, and transferring their own inadequacies and choices not to choose to change.

How dim the lights that light these lives. How stagnant the businesses they run. How rebellious the children they raise. Choosing situations and leaders who make the choices for them . . . how unfulfilled the lives they live.

This picture is bleak indeed, and it permeates many corners of the corporate and union worlds and government universe but, thankfully, has rarely become the payoff of hard work and self-sacrifice that many entrepreneurs practice. How is that? Because most entrepreneurs play and sleep as hard as they work.        

  # # #

FREE blog subscription: Posts RSS Feed

Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Think “Shrink”!

Are you a basket case business owner?

“Nuttin’s Happenin’”

. . . is to ACT NOW!

NOW, while we’re on the cusp of

The Great American Work Slowdown.

Christmas is Sunday. Everyone (except for rambunctious entrepreneurs–there’s some other kind?) is moving more slowly at work. The rank and file are increasingly preoccupied with office and neighborhood parties.

Could this be true? Is it just my imagination? Are you grinning nervously at that thought or at what I might be tossing your way in the next couple of paragraphs?

Well, if you’re in that “rambunctious” crowd I mentioned, you probably wait ’til the last minute to shop, hate to waste time making the festive rounds but find that a couple of stiff drinks help make those swashbuckling business status-climbers and oozy neighbors a little more tolerable . . . and it’s all good practice leading up to that big week of dysfunctional family gift-giving gatherings!

Put your mouse down for a nap.

Get up from your desk or work station or laptop, and stop reading this blog (I trust you that you’ll come back). Now, DO SOME thing. ANY thing! It doesn’t matter what you do. What matters is that you do SOMEthing.

Take a walk around the block. Eat a cookie. Take a bathroom break. Turn the music on or up. Draw a picture. Get away from the monitor and keyboard and take some deep breaths. Shake your head like a wet dog. Clap or briskly rub your hands together. Take a slug of cold water.

Appreciate that by breaking your concentration, you are also breaking some element or accumulation of stress.

Don’t quit yet. Don’t rush back to the screen. Gently close your eyes and take ten seconds to massage your temples or the back of your neck (counter-clockwise stimulates more blood flow).

Pick up a pen or pencil (you DO still have one?) and a piece of scrap paper. Write or draw or diagram the first thing that comes into your mind . . . like a creative branding theme exercise!

It absolutely doesn’t matter what you record (and no one but you will ever see it anyway).

Go ahead. I’ll wait. ………. Good!

Next, draw or write or diagram the first thought you have about something you can do at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning to pump up or booster-shot some part of your business into action right away.

Maybe it’s a new direction. Maybe it’s solving a nagging problem. Or it’s reviewing reports or articles you’ve been shoveling around, or checking websites you’ve been intending to visit, or having coffee with the new (or oldest) employee (or supplier/vendor/sales rep) and listening?

Perhaps you haven’t made enough time lately to initiate collection of customer feedback?

No matter how small a step, just make it an ACTION step. SOME action always beats NO action! I hear from blog visitors all the time that success comes from having a bias to action. Do you?

# # #

302.933.0116    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!

(From Winter Wonderland) 

Endless studies show people are more afraid of public speaking than of death, so it would seem to follow that most people refuse to set goals for themselves and their businesses because they are afraid of failure to achieve what they decide to pursue. I mean that makes sense, doesn’t it? Fear of failure is part of life, right?

Well, there are all kinds of answers to that hypothesis. Fear is a behavior and all behavior is a choice, so fear is a choice . . . why choose to be afraid? Having no goals (especially if you own or run a business) is like being captain of a ship that has no rudder — another example of what seems to me to be a curious choice.

Did you know that when you decide to tell someone else (who doesn’t set goals) about your goals that you open yourself to such criticism and undermining that you stand to actually end up taking steps backward instead of forward?

Did you remember that effective goal-setting requires strict adherence to a simple set of criteria? A goal that’s realistic (to separate it from frivilous pursuit of wishes, hopes, and fantasyland) must be, in fact, realistic. It must also be specific, and due-dated. be clearly written down and carried with you, and –aha!– be flexible!

If you set a goal that looks like it’s not going to happen as you get to the the due date, be flexible: change the due date. Or change the expected payoff, or the dimensions or parameters of the goal. Flexibility means it’s okay to change the goal and the direction or the planned result. Y0u will not be a failure unless you choose to be. 

Writing your goals down and carrying them with you forces your brain to buy intro them. It’s not unlike checking your wallet before you go someplace special to make sure you can cover anticipated expenses, or at least to simply take inventory. It’s a self-discipline behavior that keeps you focused on what you will achieve.

By keeping yourself focused on your specific, realistic, flexible, due-dated pursuits, you increase the odds for success dramatically, and the avenues you take will be more compatible with what you seek to achieve. In addition, your focus will attract endless resources to help you get where you’re going — people, events, information, money.  

Face unafraid the plans that you made . . .

# # #

FREE blog subscription: Posts RSS Feed

Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!