I am truly grateful for your visit.

I am presently giving my full and complete attention to a major family medical emergency, and have no way of knowing as of today (1/15/12) when I will resume my daily posts.

Please, however, DO check back, and please feel free to use the Search window (to the right) for insights and ideas on most business development and personal development topics.

Until I return here (Watch for Twitter announcements), God Bless You.

Hal

that YOU are Special!

First of all, thank you! Thank you dear Twitterers for all your Tweets, RTs, shout-outs, and endorsements, but most of all– for your visits to this blog and expressions of personal and professional support.

I have had the good fortune to hear from so many of you who’ve gotten over the Twitter Jitters by Tweet and email and phone, and blog comment boxes, and even some: in person. Thank you. 

No, I am not retiring. I’ve always believed that when you retire, you die. So many people I grew up with have, sadly, done both. No, I still choose to work fulltime and continue to maintain a schedule I am told would embarrass many people half my age.  No chest-thumping here; just a lot of long hours.

But, ah, I love what I do (mostly, write and consult on business and professional practice growth and development, and –because they need to work in tandem– on personal growth and development).

For whatever it may be worth, here –in more than 140 characters (whew!)– are some answers to some of the questions I have been asked alongside the road on my Twitter Journey:

I believe wholeheartedly that God intends us all to live life to the fullest and to help others to do the same thing. But I am not an evangelist.

If I were to quit now, I’d be wasting time and opportunities to contribute and exchange life values, motivating ideas, creative energy, and good cheer with others.

And that’s unthinkable. 

I believe in your freedom and your right to pursue your legal and moral life interests as you choose, whatever they may be, and as long as they don’t bring harm to others.

For the same reasons, I try not to bug any of you with sales pitches; in fact, since it’s April 2008 birth, I’ve never hosted a site banner, sales spiel or advertisement on this blog.

                  

And the proof that people seek unadulterated, commercial-free blog content is in the numbers. When I started, I had 100 visitors a week. By last measure, this blog now averages closer to 100 visitors an hour. Much if not most of that increase is from Twitter - from you and the praises you sing to your friends and followers.

I am deeply appreciative for that support.

As for my follow and follower numbers: they’re low (compared to Tweet numbers) because I hand-pick each Twitter account I want to follow. Automated programs may deliver quantity; but I care about quality. I seek Twitterers with shared interests. I read each Twitter profile, visit available websites, and a check recent Tweets to see if they have topical substance that interests me.

Topical substance topics that interest me include (in no particular order):

          business, marketing, small business, dogs, writing, leadership, branding, other authors, entrepreneurship, goals, economic impact,  teaching, sales, communication, books, other bloggers, personal development, self-help, sushi, goals, motivation, stress management, productivity, baseball/softball, action attitude, health, grandchildren, patriotism…and of course, God.                                           

The Twitter Journey continues to be one of great fun, enlightenment, opportunity, and growing friendships. Thank you all for indulging me this pause during my blog post march forward as an advocate of small business. And, [P.S. I have no ties to Twitter, nor do I even know anyone associated with Twitter; it just works, that's all.]

Your visits here are always welcome and secure from Internet invaders, lists, pop-ups, hysteria, and exaggeration. 

Have a GR8 day and week ahead!

Warmest regards – Hal     

 # # #

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  Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

startup, but now you know

entrepreneurs don’t

vacation . . . 

 even when they can. 

Home-based business vacations usually begin –and end– in the backyard. Family business vacations are often jammed into family vacation properties, usually not more than a state or two or three, or just a few counties, away. And you thought your life just wasn’t privileged enough?

REAL vacations are the stuff of academia, corporate muckity-mucks, braindead politicians and that rare breed of entrepreneurs who have made it so big that they no longer need to tend their gardens. They have full time gardeners willing to pick up the slack for the opportunity to shine, and reach the next rung up the ladder..

Seems a little upside-down and backwards, doesn’t it?

I mean, small business owners and managers are the backbone of America. They alone know how to make things happen. They are catalysts for change. They are action-oriented, and they create virtually all of America’s new jobs. Yet they are condemned and trampled on by the White House.

Entrepreneurs whose names are not among the self-made superstars (like Gates, Job, Carnegie, Zuckerberg, Edison, Ford, Winfrey, Ashe, Page and Brin), remain a formidable collection — 30 million of them to be more precise — and the vast majority of these still-struggling 30 million do not vacation even when they vacation.

Why is this? Because entrepreneurs are married to their ideas. With a burning desire to make their ideas work, there really is no room for prolonged or distant vacations. Yes, there are exceptions. There are entrepreneurs who travel as part of growing and nurturing their enterprises. They tack on days here and there in their travels.

Vacation.

But truth is that no real entrepreneur (Yeah, there some fake ones) ever makes the time to separate her or himself from her or his business long enough to sprawl on some exotic island beach or mountain resort. Who would run the business? Trusted employees, sure, but the baby is not theirs; they are simply babysitters. 

It’s not that no one else can do the work, or that no one else can do it as effectively, It’s that no one else has invested him or her self so completely in the business as the person who started it, and who probably owns most if not all of it. It’s called putting yourself on the line.

When you are on the line, “vacation” is a visit to the corner ice cream store, a day of golf or fishing, a trip to the zoo or circus or woods with the kids, keeping the spouse company on a shopping trip, Friday nights out for dinner, watching a big football game with neighbors, or coaching a Little League team.

There is much to be said for the sense of entrepreneurial loyalty and responsibility and dedication that most non-entrepreneurs fail to see and typically have no regard for. Those people, in fact, instead see only the Friday nights out for dinner and golf, fiishing, football, Little League, and fail to assimilate the lifestyle.

Entrepreneur vacations are in entrepreneur minds.

Even when they’re away, they’re checking in. Like the rabbit beating the drum in the battery commercials, entrepreneurial existences keep going and going and going. If all this sounds familiar, keep going. But eat and sleep and exercise and breathe better while you keep going.

Take more deep breaths. Take more walks. Take more time with your family, your loved ones, and your self! 

# # #

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  Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

  Open Minds Open Doors 

 Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

In the meantime, please review the archives for specific search window topics.

heated up your business,

 Jan/Feb/Mar won’t either!

I sit here in an area of the country that –until last year’s three-foot accumulation– hadn’t had any snow to speak of for over 75 years, contemplating the seven hours of driveway shoveling I just completed of another 1-2-foot-plus, on the day after Christmas.

One can’t help, I’m fairly sure, in circumstances like this, having one’s mind drift ever so creepy-crawly, to Ex (Thank Heaven!) Vice President Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning predictions of global warming.

This recognition of course came well after his claims that he invented the Internet. Duh! It’s hard to tell which of the three is the bigger farce: Gore, the Nobel Prize or global warming.

Anyway, it made me think about “Chicken Little.”

Remember him?

He ran around the neighborhood yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

Well, let’s have none of that, says our current Administration, hellbent on selling us all into business success by throwing good money after bad at corporate buffoon giants.

Thank Heaven, again! (Yikes! Twice in one blog post–  this “Thank Heaven!” is for Ford Motor Company. Thank you, FORD, for sassing it out and protecting Henry’s entrepreneurial legacy by telling the White House where to take a hike!).

Yes, I am a lifelong Ford owner, but No, I am not a White House hater. I am a realist. I am a serious skeptic of all who would think they could step on and over small business owners and entrepreneurs with the naive convictions that stimulus tax-dollars tossed to big business (and to frivolous socialistic-based enterprises and government agencies) would turn the economy around.  

Only small businesses create jobs. Period.   

Oh, and did I mention the flood of money that beleaguered, hardworking business owners and managers don’t even get to look at while being taxed into the dirt, while incompetent government agencies award themselves salary increases?

Well, yes, there have been some token awards possible through the pathetic SBA, assuming the struggling small business owner could afford the lawyer and accountant needed to process the truckloads of paperwork. 

Did we notice part of the government’s efforts to sell the public on economic success has been to push the media to glow with positive business talk . . . “the greatest holiday retail shopping returns in history,” I heard . . . while businesses continue to die in record numbers? 

Where does this leave YOU? If your last quarter of 2010 was great, congratulations! Odds are good that your first quarter of 2011 will also be fiscally productive.

If your last quarter of 2010 sucked eggs, odds are pretty good that the first quarter of 2011 will not break any revenue or profit levels. Ah, but hope, the White House tells us, is just around the corner.

Here’s the bottom line: Hope gets you nowhere in reality. Action is what moves business forward. And businesses that move forward drive the economy forward. (Yes, this is apparently too complex a concept for government to grasp!)

So, what’s preventing you from taking the action steps that you know need to be taken, that perhaps you’ve been shying away from to avoid making waves? Hmmm?

What will happen if you simply choose to turn up the heat on your challenges to employees, your opportunities to vendors and suppliers, and your service to customers and clients?

You don’t need the government to tell you what to do to make your business work!

You need only to choose to step up to the plate in your industry or profession, in your marketplace, and in your community.

Not being overly cautious is not the same as being careless.

Reasonable risks are what got you here in the first place.

The first quarter of 2011 is yours for the taking.

    Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Just do it!   

# # # 

www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116 or 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 collected over two hundred business cards at the trade show!” the energetic young salesman proclaimed. “So what!” said his sales manager  …”I’ve probably collected twenty thousand business cards over the years, and they don’t mean squat unless you DO something with them.” http://bit.ly/cusoV9

“Efforting” one or two sales messages after meeting someone rarely produces more than a smile and a polite no thanks! And it is at this precise point that most small business and professional practice owners and managers (and altogether too many sales professionals) tend to simply give up and walk away.

This dig-in-your-heels moment is the very moment that sales are lost.

First off, since research shows that it takes an average of five attempts of some kind to close a sale in order to make a sale (and it’s not likely that a quick trade show card exchange includes an attempt to close a sale), the odds are pretty good that five more encounters are going to have to happen before agreement to buy something is reached (or dismissed).

Sound like a Poster?

Try “DETERMINATION NEEDED HERE“

…Or what about “PERSISTANCE PAYS!“? 

Though it represents only the first step in the networking process (especially at trade and professional shows or BBB or C of C -type gatherings), the value of business card collecting can be enormously enhanced by making a memory-jogging note on the back of EVERY card: “Big hair and gaudy glasses” or “Bone-crunch handshake/blue eyes” or “Plaid shirt/Yankees hat” or “Moonlights for cousin Bill.” 

Why should this matter? Because it always helps to have a mental image of someone you email or call or txtmsg or visit ahead of time. The note you make will often also remind you of the brief conversation you had, which often holds clues about the person’s purchase intentions, interests, and/or timeline. Remember: Five attempts to close a sale. http://bit.ly/bS99Wo

In direct mail, the axiom is that the more you tell, the more you sell.

In personal selling, the more you listen and learn about the customer, and about what the customer wants, the more you sell.

Let your website stand as the source for addressing prospective customer objections and product/service features, so you can be more focused on benefits and emotional buying motives.

The truth then, the answer to the “Is it really WHO you know?” question is: yes, WHO you know helps get your foot in the door, but –in the end– it’s what you do with who you know (and what you do with your foot as well – like keeping it out of your mouth?) that will make the difference between a sale and no sale! Isn’t every success based on how effectively you cultivate what you already have?

Networking is simply a tool for identifying and sorting out prospects in a concentrated setting or channel of connections. It’s a great tool if you’re willing to go the extra mile . . . and work to make it work! http://bit.ly/cmyg2Z 

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

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or 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!

Please check the archives

and other tabs for all the

latest. And please return

Tuesday for big little news!

You get wet??  So what??

Rain. In life, it comes from the sky. In business? It can come from anywhere and everywhere, any time. It’s the “anywhere, everywhere, any time” part that gives most business owners ulcers, right? 

At least when rain always comes from the sky, we can duck for cover, use umbrellas, pull up hoods, wear hats, and avoid getting our eyeballs pinged by looking up!

But have you noticed that whether it rains in real life, or it rains on your business parade, it never makes everybody happy all of the time? That of course exempts those of you who live in Seattle, San Francisco, Ireland, or one of those preserved rain forests where you simply go with the flow (no pun intended).

Anyway, there’s always either too much or 

not enough… Or am I just imaging things?

We’re either in a terrible draught and can only wash the car on alternate weekdays, or we’re hiding under the covers, quivering with each cloudburst, and bemoaning the juiced-up local TV weather person’s bug-eyed flash flood warnings.

Oh, and we certainly know about how “hard” it can rain. We’ve known since kiddiedom that “When it rains, it pours!”… and Bob Dylan warned us that a “hard rain’s a gonna fall.”

People complain there’s not enough business,

or that there’s too much business.

Oh. . . such killer problems!

(You think I’m making this up?)

How do you handle too much or too little business raining on yourparade? Do you drown yourself, just wallow around in the muckity mud, or do a “Singing in the rain” routine as you tap dance around the nearest light stanchion?  

How often do you ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen here?” Hopefully, that’s the leading question that pops into your rained-on brain just before every decision you make. Why? Because having a worst-case scenario in your mind provides a platform of reality for forward motion, and helps prevent surprise…which most entrepreneurs stopped liking when they turned six.

Here’s the deal: You got into your own business by hook or crook, or by accident or accidentally on purpose. Or maybe you slid sideways into it through some family rainstorm or annoying drizzle, or slam-bam downpour. But it’s yours.

Like the old Toyota theme: “You asked for it. You got it.” So, by now, dealing with upsets is probably daily routine.

Dealing with your SELF though, may not be.

So, stop and take stock. This weekend is as good as any to look hard in the mirror and size up what you see there that’s upsetting. Ferret out the rain, and make your mind up to see it for what it is: necessary, refreshing, and routine in many places. Yeah, and wet.

Next, decide how you can reverse your own gears to back out of whatever upsets come your way. (Combat is not always the best answer!) And consider contingency plans based on (you got it) worst case scenarios. “Be Prepared” caution the Boy Scouts.

Choose to look at every problem as an opportunity, and get on with it.

Too much rain sells more umbrellas, slickers, ponchos, foul-weather gear, waders, boots, sump pumps, waders, hair dryers and flood insurance. Not enough rain, sells more watering cans, mulch, faucet washers, flush-efficient toilets, rain-dance manuals and videos, and ice cubes (for exotic drinks to enjoy while draught-watching!).

What’s the opportunity in your latest problem?

302.933.0116 or 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!

Barnegat Girl & Hal