Get it in writing . . . 

The Hardest Business Task!

Yes, test your objectives. Yes, test your strategies. Yes, test your tactics. And, yes –first and foremost– test your concepts. It’s the only sensible way (before spending money on ideas that might sound great, but that fail to produce), to make sure your pursuits are solidly grounded and integrally connected. 

~~~~~~~

What’s the hardest task in business? It’s really not hiring and firing, or funding, or maintaining operations, or making sales (though HR, finance, operations, and sales people may all want to lay claim to having the most difficult jobs). The hardest task is getting it in writing. Huh”? What’s “it”? And what’s so hard about writing? Writing what? 

I believe the most challenging of all business tasks is getting your direction and contingency plans straight. (Considering widely-published SBA findings that over 90% of business failures are attributable to “poor management,” knowing where you’re going is certainly Job One for most entrepreneurs.)

Writing your objectives clearly, simply, specifically, realistically, flexibly –and with a due date attached– has proven time and again to make the difference between revenues and profits, between success and SUCCESS!

The more principals, partners, investors, advisors, managers involved, the harder the task. It becomes exponentially difficult because –to have any value– everyone involved must agree at least somewhat with every word. In other words, agreeing on a precise target is sometimes the most trying of all challenges.

Is it (your target objective) the same as your Mission or Vision Statement?

No, but it probably needs to directly reflect both.

Whatever the objectives (or goals) are that you verbalize for yourself or your business, they need to be:

A) Missions in and of themselves, and they must fit conceptually under the umbrella of your own or your company’s overall Mission Statement.

[If your objective(s) fail to measure up to your overall Mission Statement, or don't quite fit under its umbrella, re-examine where you're headed with things. You may need to switch gears, or direction, or timing, or desired results.]

B) Following the path of your Vision Statement.

[If this isn't happening, redirect your focus or re-visit your Vision Statement to consider some adjustments.]

Can you make changes and still be “on-target” with your pursuits? Absolutely! Remember that flexibility (together with realistic, specific, and due-dated) is one of the key criteria for effective goal-setting. If you’re not reaching the goal you defined, be flexible enough to redefine it, or change the tactics you’re using.

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

What’s YOUR nomination for a best business Christmas message? 

“…To face unafraid

the plans that we made…”

You are NOT

“going into” 2012!

You are making it happen!

You’re an entrepreneur!

Welcome to the world’s first SMALL BIZ Alphabet Series of blog posts!

Welcome to the world’s first SMALL BIZ Alphabet Series of blog posts!

What Makes You Think

You Can Wing It?

 Farmers, carpenters, doctors, lawyers, firefighters, pilots, seamstresses, stylists, realtors, even Cub Scouts do it.

So what makes you think that you can wing it? Now I’m not talking any hundred-page document with 37 pull-out spreadsheets and an annotated bibliography featuring a gazillion itemized resources. Who cares? I’m talking about an Entrepreneurial Action Plan. 

Yes a plan of any kind needs a goal.

And that goal has to be realistic and specific and flexible and due-dated. If it’s not all four of those criteria, it’s not a goal, it’s a wish. Wishing may work in Disneyland, but business success comes from taking action. Taking action without a goal-based action plan is like trying to control a rudderless ship in a storm.

Your Entrepreneurial Action Plan

Like any good news release, your Action Plan must answer the questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? And be realistic, specific, flexible and due-dated. It’s always a worthy endeavor to include a Mission Statement and a Vision Statement at the beginning of your plan to set the stage.

A quick market assessment, a marketing plan, a management approach and/or team lineup, an operational outline and a financial plan and projections — that all answer the questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? (and that are realistic, specific, flexible, and due-dated) will do the trick.    

                                                                                                          

Is this over-simplified?

No. It’s actually very simple. An Entrepreneurial Action Plan is simple and quick to execute. It is not a formal business plan. Many of the same ingredients are in both, but business plans are primarily done for the purpose of raising investor or lender money. Action Plans are to get things going, and build momentum; they are not fancy.

An Entrepreneurial Action Plan can be scribbled on the back of a large envelope.

It is definitely not for the feint-hearted crossed-t-dotted-i perfectionists or analysis-paralysis corporate types. The best results come from those who chunk up their plans and adjust them frequently. This doesn’t take thousands of hours or a rocket science degree. Oh, and what a great amnd illuminating collection the saved scribbles make.

BUT your Action Plan does need to capture.

It needs to capture the five “W” questions and one “H” question above, and it does need to target goals that are realistic, specific, flexible, and due-dated. Otherwise, you are captaining a rudderless ship in a storm, and are bound to have schools of lawyers circling you, closing in for the kill.

Yes, put it in your pocket, not a spiral-bound or 3-ring binder.

It’s a working document for the day, week, or month. I do daily scribbled Action Plans for each blog post. I do weekly versions for my writing/consulting/marketing business. In the end, it’s all about why you are an entrepreneur in the first place . . . to make your idea work by exercising the freedom to continually adjust it.

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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

Failure to achieve

can often be traced to

one’s own big mouth.

What’s the old German expression? “Vee ist too soon alt und too late schmart!” (…or something like that). Well, combine that truth with the tendency most of us have to shoot off our mouths about what we expect to achieve –often before we even get started– and what have we got? A situation in which we are too late being smart enough to realize we should have kept our goals to ourselves.

Other than a genuinely-shared pact with your soul mate or trusted long-term business partner, it’s just not ever a good idea to tell anyone else about what it is that you’re aiming to achieve. Others are not in your shoes and do not have the same energy or confidence levels. You, after all, own or operate or run or manage or partner in a business. You’re an entrepreneur.

Many others (including some close to you) may –for down-deep-inside resentment– simply not want you to succeed, and will discourage and undermine your efforts. For whatever their reasons, don’t allow those confrontations to occur. Keep your goals secret.

Perhaps you believe you have personal and or business “goals” in mind. I would respectfully suggest that the odds may not be very great that these pursuits are worthwhile. The truth is that all of history has proven goals are only worthy of pursuit to start with if they meet all four of the following criteria:

GOALS MUST BE

• Specific

• Flexible

• Realistic

• Due-Dated

If what you’ve been thinking are meaningful personal or business goals, and they don’t measure up to solidly meeting four out of four of these requirements, they are not goals. They are wishes. Wishes are what people who wrap their lives around “hope” end up with. Wishing and hoping are the empty promises that empty people make to themselves and others. “Fantasizing” isn’t “taking action”! 

Not only are each of us at the doorstep of success when we choose to quietly set and work toward goals that are specific, flexible, realistic, and due-dated, we can also measure the sincerity of other’s intents by applying these criteria to what we see them attempting to do with the major life tasks that face them. And from that kind of assessment, we can often determine another’s integrity.

Say, for example, a customer tilts his head, shrugs, faces his palms to the sky and says, “Sorry we’re taking our business elsewhere; it’s strictly a money decision; nothing personal; your prices are just too high for us; we can pay offshore operations half of your costs for the same results!”

This is a knee-jerk, marketplace-ignited decision. Otherwise, you’d be hearing about quality and service and deadlines and willingness to work out payment terms and exact shipments involved. A customer who simply up and leaves with an armful of flimsy excuses was probably never a good customer in the first place, right?.

Replace him with one that demonstrates by her attitude and conduct and the choices she makes that she is working with goals. You don’t need to know another’s goals or share yours. But when you look below the surface of smiles and handshakes and illusionist promotions, you’ll see that those who set and function with goals behave in certain committed ways. You know the difference.

These are the business and professional people

to choose to associate with.

They make the best customers and partners and investors and employees because relationships start from a position of honorability and support for one another in traveling on the high road. More quality work gets done more often, and besides moving in more profitable directions, it’s also more fun.

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“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!

Tomorrow

is the 2nd day

 of the rest

   of your life!  

So, “business as usual” is an expression left over from the days of yore. Get rid of it! Click on Delete! There is no such thing anymore. No business that’s managed to survive this long into this dying quail economy has a “usual” anywhere on its plate.

This is especially true given The Great Global Warming reports whose noteriety earned an infamous Nobel Prize on the cusp of all the extreme cold temperature onsets. 

I mean, consider that business climate (as we used to know it) has been under crippling storm interferences from the Nation’s capitol, and from deadly mass media manipulations blowing out of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

If we look over here, at this gathering high pressure system in the Midwest we can probably trace back its origins to corruption in the Chicago area which was stirred up by former community organizers and regularly energized by “Hollywood’s finest” over on the left coast.

Ah, but you only (and rightfully, I might add) want the bottom line: Will it rain or snow?  

Yes. Depending on where you are, at least one and maybe both!

Whatever you’ve suffered to date in trying to keep arms distance from the incompetent government’s meddling hands and from the pathetic examples set by America’s corporate giants, is bound to get worse before it gets better. But it need not get worse for YOU! That’s your choice. You have the ability to stay in control of your ship and steer it through the coming storms. 

It will take some preparation and a vigilant sense of readiness, but you know what? You’re a pro at that! You’ve proven it by getting this far. Take time this week and next to enjoy your family and rest your business brain. But don’t hang up the phone. This is the most ideal period of the year to think about direction instead of survival.

Map out where you’re headed. Check the long-range weather reports and plan course corrections accordingly. Start to look at the prospects for added revenue streams that do not stray too far from your basic business. Begin piecing together a branding strategy and approach that can take you one step up on the competition.

Look a little harder for the opportunities that are there in the corners, the ones you might have passed over before you restructured or streamlined operations. You may have to “knuckle under”! That’s an expression that does still apply. Here’s another:

Open minds open doors.

Pay attention to proper, productive goal-setting. Pay attention to your SELF and your stress levels and your health (because the best open minds and open doors in business mean nothing if your body locked up and shuts down!) Stress, today, may not be greater than in other generations, but it’s certainly quicker, so you need keep pace –and set the pace– are you ready? Set? Go!

  # # # 

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!

Headed to 2012–and

your business

is still breathing?

You got guts!

It takes more, much more, than an MBA, family inheritence, or good luck to have a living, breathing business survive this still-spiraling economy. It takes guts.

Guts? Right. You must have ‘em, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Okay, enough with the backpats, where do you go from here? Yeah, into January, right. I know. But beyond that, what?

Since you’re an entrepreneur preoccupied with making your idea work, you’ll probably be doing all your gift shopping online, or running around at the 11th hour grabbing stuff off what’s left on nearby retail shelves.

If that’s not the case, and you’re a true romantic who has planned every inch, and had a thousand hours to plan and organize and wrap, you’re probably a corporate type who did all your Christmas shopping in July, and not reading this anyway.

So, here’s a thought: What about taking yourself through a group brainstorming experience —  by yourself?

Is that like suggesting that you do a multiple-personalities thing? Yes, but not so close to the edge that you’ll need a shrink by New Year’s.

I’m suggesting you start with a pad and pen or pencil (if any of those tools are still within your reach). Laptops and all those other hand-heold devices just don’t cut it! They don’t give you enough time to think.

Besides a little practice with that lost art called handwriting, the experience alone could be a good stimulous (speaking of which, Red Bull isn’t a necessary accompaniment, but you may want a cup of coffee?). 

Next, turn off your cell phone; I promise the world won’t end. Then find a place where you won’t be interrupted. (HA! Talk about challenge!) Maybe it has to be a locked car in your driveway?

At the top of your page, write the one business issue that is most important for you to address in 2012.

Be realistic.

Draw a vertical line down the middle of the page.

Put a + (plus) sign on the left and a – (minus) sign on the right. Start to write down everything you can think of (in the left-hand column) that could be a positive outcome of resolving this issue. Everything you imagine as negative on the right. Think freely.

Don’t criticize or second-guess yourself. Instead, go back over your list from the perspective of what you imagine to be your most trusted advisor or most valuable employee. How would it change?

When you’ve given these two columns about 10-12 minutes for each of your split personalities, STOP! Take a swig of coffee. Take some deep breaths. Rub your hands together briskly.

Next page: Write down the three steps you can take on Tuesday, January 3rd, to make some of that left-hand column stuff on your first page start to happen. Rank order the priority of steps.

Make some specific notes about the who, what, when, where, and how each of those three steps can/should/will occur.

Give them a timeline.

Be realistic.

Keep it all flexible: your rankings, your steps, your timeline, and what you expect for results (yes, without this, it’s hard to know why you’re pursuing anything) . . . flexible.

If you get close to the date and it’s not going to happen, don’t whip yourself (that’s hard to do anyway), just move the date. If the steps involve money or other people, leave them flexible enough to adjust in case things don’t go swimmingly (which as you know, they rarely do!)  

Fold up the pages. Put them in your pocket. Type them into your computer tomorrow (not today) and edit them in the process. Share the information as appropriate.

Congratulate yourself for doing goal-setting the right (most productive) way. Now make it happen! And stop worrying. Remember, you got guts!

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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!

Your business has just been 

beaten up. NOW what?????

The Small Business ER. Paperwork. Name? Date of birth? sole proprietorship, Sub-S or LLC? Address? History of ailments? Next of kin? Organ donor? 

The Business Doctor. A diagnostic work-up. What seems to be the problem? Take a deep breath! http://bit.ly/bo3ZJy Where does it hurt? Let’s see – does this hurt? 

What did you do, get mugged on the way to a sales presentation?

No insurance? Hmmmm. Ah, Helen, let’s see if we can slide this business in under some kind of federal coverage — maybe one of those stimulus plans?

Sooooo, the good news is you’re not gonna die from this. Take your business home, ice it, give it aspirin and lots of rest; keep the bank loans floating, drink prune juice and call me in the morning.

In the meantime, I’m giving you a rehab prescription – you’ll need physical and mental therapy both, but it may only be for six months to a year.

If by then, things haven’t straightened out, we’ll need to do some MRIs and consider a frontal lobotomy, or we may decide it’s just best for you to simply fold your venture and go to work for the government or a large corporation …which would be something like a lobotomy anyway.

Someone here to drive you? Good. You should feel better in a year or two. Have a great day! 

Yuh! Well, things could be worse, said the bloated cow that hadn’t been milked for three days.

The point is that very little compares with the mental anguish, and painful feelings associated with your business taking a beating at the hands of incompetent government agencies, overly-aggressive industry or professional competition, the two-faced-forked-tongue media, the IRS, or your cousin Vinny.

But YOU are an ENTREPRENEUR! Everybody calls you that. You have a reputation to uphold. You’re a free spirit. Nothing gets you down (well, almost nothing).

So the bottom line is that it’s time to get up off the floor (or examination room gurney) and pick up the pieces and set some new goals that are realistic, specific, flexible, and have a due date. http://bit.ly/95XCJN

Yes, it’s true that entrepreneurs typically do not like to plan anything, but the point here is that when your business and/or business ideas have been assaulted, and you’re thinking about chucking it all and heading for the islands, you need to PLAN.

Most recoveries of any type do not generally occur miraculously. They take planning. http://bit.ly/c4puBz Just as you set goals for yourself when you started your business, set them anew for making a recovery.

You CAN do this.

You know why? Because it’s a choice! http://bit.ly/9GydiP 

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!