Aug 16 2011

Small Business Politics

If you own a small business,

 

then small business

                                    

politics owns you.

                

You can run but you cannot hide. 

Even if you are a one-man-band or one-woman-band with no internal politics, you have no choice but to deal with external politics.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re an owner, operator, partner, or manager of an American small business or professional practice. You may own all or a piece of what you do, but the government (and politics) owns all of you!

~~~~~~~~~~

                                                                        

Regardless of all other influences in your life, when you own or run a business of any type or size, you still must face the fact that the massive amount of government controls and regulations alone can ruin more than your favorite breakfast, a good night’s sleep, and even a kaleidoscopic sunset. It can ruin your health and your family.

Since the government for the most part dictates what you can and cannot do; what you must pay for goods, services, and taxes, and when; who you can and cannot do business with and hire or fire; how you must treat and insure those you hire and how you must treat and pay off those you fire

. . . since it dictates what kinds of tools and equipment and forms and suppliers and shippers and transportation you must use . . . even how you state your business to others . . . and since government is born of politics, while somehow managing to also be its inseparable twin . . . There IS a breaking point.

It’s a never-healing small business stress fracture!

And now, clearly on track toward a Marxist dictatorship by way of the nonstop and sorely misguided Obama Socialism freight train, America’s small business community has reached that breaking point.

First off, there are 30 million small businesses in the U.S. Don’t believe the White House; they are patently and intentionally wrong; home-based businesses are conveniently ignored. The government doesn’t consider home-based businesses as worthy enough enterprises to allow them to be included under useless SBA jurisdiction.

You run an online business out of your closet, a jewelry-making business out of your garage, a cookie business out of your kitchen, or a grass-cutting business from your truck . . . you don’t count! The government only wants your tax dollars. Beyond that, you don’t exist! So, back to the beginning: there are 30 million of us!

If you are anything like the vast majority of small business owners and operators, home-based or otherwise, you clearly have a goal to make a difference with your life and your enterprise . . . for your self, your family, your community and hopefully –by the ways that you do what you do– for our nation as well.

That means taking some minutes out of your hectic schedule. It means putting down your tools, equipment, keyboards, dishtowel and whatever else you make a living with, for just long enough to take that step you dread into the sleazy world of politics. It’s time to do your part — show and inspire others to leadership.

It means taking just long enough to visit or write a couple of letters or emails to politicians about why you think small business matters. Take just enough time to support those who support your ideas about why small business matters. Why? Because small business does matter. And because it matters that we all step up.

Imagine the impact: 

THIRTY MILLION

visits and letters and emails calling attention to the economic recovery role of small business and why government must invest in small business –not with more wasted cash handouts– with tax incentives for innovation and tax incentives for job creation.

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  Hal@Businessworks.US  

  Open Minds Open Doors 

 Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Jul 25 2011

Entrepreneurship vs. Votership

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 ownersHow about we vote together for a change? November 6, 2012. Be there.                  

 

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Jun 06 2011

It’s about “TRUST”!

No, No, Mr. O . . .

                                        

America’s economic

                                                                     

mess is NOT simply

                           

“a bump in the road”!

                                       

                                      

It is an issue of TRUST.

 

Here’s the bottom line, right up front:

                                                            

I believe you have proven your self and your ideology (over common sense and genuine citizen need) unworthy of my trust, my children’s trust, my grandchildren’s trust, the trust of America’s military, the trust of America’s healthcare professionals, and –among others– the trust of America’s business owners, operators, and managers.

So, without trust, the question becomes: Why should we create new jobs only to get higher taxes? What reason have we to believe that taxes will not be raised again to even more crippling levels? Your word? I don’t think so. Some meaningful tax incentives for new small business job creation? Bring ’em on!

 ——————————–

You have put tons of tax dollars where they don’t belong:

  • In the greedly hands of over-the-top unions and States whose votes supported you.

  • In the incompetent hands of corporate giants and government agencies, neither of which creates new jobs that are REAL.

  • And in the frivolous hands of social programs you apparently value above weather-disaster victims in “Red States,” and the interests of free market competition businesses that are struggling to get free from government choke-holds.

_______________________
                                                                        

You’ve been putting BandAids on a gaping wound and have not stopped the bleeding, yet you persist in doing everything possible to squash small business, the nation’s only source of real new job creation and our only hope for turning the economy around.

You have demonstrated repeatedly that you have not even the slightest understanding of business or of how to undo the economic disaster that –in your relentless efforts to hold socialistic values above the financial survival of those you were elected to represent– you exacerbated. You have proven unworthy of the peoples’ trust.

You are plunging us into yet another (deeper by all appearances) recession. And –to make matters worse– your steadfast refusal to own up to the fact that every single attempt you’ve made –arrogantly and obstinately in the face of what knowledgeable businesspeople the world over have advised– has failed miserably.

Yet your oratory claims progress when every American with a brain realizes there is none. 

                                                       

I laughed hysterically today, at hearing the White House quote that America’s economic disaster “is a bump in the road”! (Of course, I was wishing it was laughter that was triggered by funny stuff instead of the sense of panic that crawls under the surface of every business owner’s skin!)

It’s all about TRUST, Mr. O. You haven’t earned it; you don’t get any. Why should any business owner (and there ARE 30 million of us, regardless of what your warped numbers show) trust you in urging to create new jobs when we know you will immediately raise taxes on those who do create new jobs. Truth? Of course you will.

Do you think we’re stupid?

                                                                               

Oh, and it’s also hard to not mention that following the “bump in the road” comment, came yet more undermining-of-reality: a declaration by Ms. Pelosi that “if not for the Obama Administration, things would be even worse.” Now THAT is truly laughable!

 Lest we forget:

It was you who inherited an economic molehill

and made it into a mountain of financial disaster!

                                                                                          

A 3-year-old can connect the dots: It’s the Obama Administration that’s made and continues to make the economy worse. Why is it so incredibly impossible for you to face facts, own up to your errors and move this country forward by honoring the input of small and mid-sized businesses and their owner/operators.

They know how to solve the economy. You don’t. Will you persist in pretending until the week before Americans rise to make a difference on November 6, 2012? That may be too late, even for you!

                                               

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

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May 25 2011

Are You Being Trickled On?

No wonder we feel like

                         

drops in the bucket

                          

with all this

                               

trickle-down spending!

                                                                                     

                                                                    

I mean where do we business owner types get our ideas? Sometimes from bits and pieces of what others say and do, and sometimes from opportunities that emerge or smack us in the mouth when we’re not looking. The steady bombardment of media drivel and twisted reports of government greatness can make us stop in our tracks.

We start to think, hey, maybe things aren’t so bad after all. Maybe gas prices will stand still and small business tax incentives for job creation and innovation will actually start to move forward. Maybe there’s more spending power in my bank account than I thought. Maybe tomorrow it will start raining ducks! Maybe I should have hope.

Hope. Yeah, well, that doesn’t accomplish anything. So let’s go back to the trickling action and see what we can learn

From the White House to the State House to the County Seat to the Town Hall, look and learn from all the mindless trickle-down spending muscle-flexing.

I’ve seen people in my town climbing through dumpsters for food scraps, and the mayor and council decide to spend a thousand bucks to buy a town logo and open a mega-million-dollar floodgate of “revitalization.”

                                                                                                 

Hey, why not? The White House thinks it needs to buy votes so it prints a few million and sends it to the States. The State people think it’s a great thing and that the counties will love them for passing along some of the dough to “green up” the place. The county guys want the poverty-stricken town’s votes, so the town gets a thousand bucks.

The money is spent on a new logo for the town. Next, of course, will be “beautification teams” and landscapers and architects and engineers and street widening and off-street parking and bigger more complicated infrastructure — more fire, police, EMTs, water, electric, sewerage.

But, hey, why not? Easy come, easy go. Spend it now.

                                             

Brick walks and old-fashioned looking gaslight fixtures? Go for it. Have fun! After all, you can’t take it with you. Besides, it will spruce up the boarded-up places with broken windows. And why be selfish. Think of your grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Plan ahead for future generations. Spend. So what if the revitalization isn’t needed. Do it anyway. It’ll create jobs, and we need jobs. What does it matter that nobody much cares about beautifying the town except two struggling over-priced restaurants. No one can afford the gas to drive through here anyway.

Oh, and take a guess where that revitalization money will come from. 

There you go. Consider yourself trickled down to! How does that feel? Seems like you need deep pockets and no sense of reality to be successful in politics. Just slap backs, pass out money, and make everything green. “I’ve always wanted a logo” the mayor explained as he railroaded the town council vote through.

Well, who knows? Maybe that’s the kind of thinking we need. A new $1,000 logo for a town where food scavenging and foreclosures and unemployment are almost more the rule than the exception. 

And are you as lucky as we are? I mean we’ve already got mandatory recycling services that we’re forced to pay for even if we want to do our own recycle sorting and transporting. I am NOT badmouthing recycling. I simply want the choice to do my own.

Don’t you just love mandatory stuff?

                                                                 

Well, that should certainly wrap up all the country’s economical and terrorist and natural disaster and devaluation and plummeting national image in one neat tidy package. Isn’t it just exactly the way you would deal with these kinds of problems in your own business?

No?

Oh, right, you know better than to tax and spend

and ignore others’ needs.

Hmmmm. How come you know all that

and our great leadership hasn’t a clue?

Think about it. You have ’til November 6, 2012. Nineteen months to get UNtrickled. Y’think? Well, there ARE 30 million small business owners being trickled on

 . . . as you read this.

Thought for the day: Strength in numbers!

 

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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!

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May 23 2011

GOT GUTS?

If you are Entrepreneuring

                                       

still –in 2011– you got guts!

                                                     

                     

Look at it this way, those of us who directly or indirectly choose to pursue paths of small business development –in the face of today’s upsets, intimidations, threats, and tsunami-like attempts to control every breath we take— probably deserve a medal!

The thing is there are 30 million of us and that’s an awful lot of medals. Besides, we didn’t choose entrepreneuring for fame and recognition. We don’t much care about being honored. We care about our ideas working.

We care about building our businesses to the point of creating jobs and reputations for customer service (the real kind, not some put-you-on-hold unintelligible “customer service department“).

Who does care about getting a medal? Why the very same types of self-serving, reckless spending, low life that work hard at creating all those roadblocks we and our small businesses are forced to contend with:

  • From our arrogant, get-the-votes-at-any-cost-campaign-obsessed, leaderless White House with zero business know-how and the global mindset of a two-year-old

  • And corporate giants (the antithesis of innovation, wallowing in incompetence and self-pity) with their deep pockets and greedy unions standing forever at the ready  

  • To artificial-do-gooder-preoccupied-with-“green” academia-land, which pollutes the world of small business with theory and complexity over reality and common sense

Loose accusations? No, deeply-documented fact-based assessments.

______________________

Small (and in-home) businesses, professional practices, small business owners, operators, and managers all. We are in the fights of our lives to overcome all the disproportionate tax burdens, all the government over-regulation and controls being shoved down our throats as we try to create jobs and make our ideas successfull!

Unions and academia? Not even a step up from Hollywood and mass media sensationalists: they just get in the way. Let them pester government and the Fortune 500 companies, or –perhaps even better– each other!

UNEMPLOYMENT is the worst it has been in the United States since the 1930s. Terrorism threats are at an all-time high. Natural weather disasters are running roughshod across America, destroying homes and businesses, killing and uprooting families. And America’s allies are being insulted instead of thanked.

GAS PRICES are still through the roof, and igniting skyrocketing costs for shipping, transportation, and now food–costs unmercifully and unavoidably being passed along to consumers who are made more dependent on government controls every passing day. And America’s enemies are being cajoled instead of chased.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS are pouring across our borders every night with drugs and weapons . . . and welcomed (!) in our schools, hospitals, and welfare rolls? America is on the brink of bankruptcy compounded by dollar devaluation, loss of global respect, and the compromising of our Constitution.

MR.. OBAMA is in Ireland toasting a pint of ale.The last catastrophe just weeks ago found him absorbed in worries about the Final Four basketball competition. And how long ago did he disrupt his golf trip to “dispatch” advisors to “review” the disastrous Gulf oil spill 30 DAYS AFTER IT HAPPENED?

THIS is leadership? Could your business survive this behavior from it’s leader? Like I said, if you’ve made it this far, you got guts! America needs you.

Keep it up!  Oh, and while you’re at it:

                                       

Mark your election day calendar

now for November 6, 2012.

                            

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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!

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May 22 2011

USA TODAY: Do you think we’re stupid?

The front page lead story on “Unemployment Worst Since 1930s” for your 5/21/11-5/22/11  weekend edition starts out with a qualifying statement about the recession having ended over two years ago . . .

                                               

Surely You Jest!

                                                             

 

Your paper has a reputation among many businesspeople of  being a highly opinionated medium (vs. a showcase for responsible reporting that probes beneath the surface of what’s printed, that carries an air of integrity instead of marching to the innuendo drums of alarmist and manipulative journalism).

Like the empty stories produced by low-grade tabloid papers and sensationalist TV news programs, yours are clearly the fodder of simpletons. For your paper to survive the long haul, it will need to step up to the complexities of providing information realistically, particularly as it relates to small business.

To be effective enough to grow externally, you must grow first internally, by exercising sufficient integrity to cut the White House puppet strings . . . to actually report the news objectively and honestly.

It’s true that you’re not known for such bold moves, but consider the following:

There are 30 million small business owners in America. (And pardon me for not giving you back one of your little pie charts showing that at least 90% of all new jobs are created by small business, especially NEW small business.)

And we 30 million are not stupid!

Your thinly-veiled suggestive lead-in (one of endless numbers) is trying to say that there is no longer any recession, that the recession is well on its way out of quagmireville.

                                                

Not only is that simply not true, it is a misleading and deceptive cover-up for what you well know to be fact:

. . . that Mr. Obama and his free-wheeling taxes and reckless spending have rapidly exacerbated a difficult economy into a catastrophe.

                                              

And the truth? The truth is there is no end in sight until Mr. Obama has been replaced. No, I am not some radical conservative on the warpath, or some uninformed run-at-the-mouth businessperson, nor am I interested or capable of running for anything, except in my daily exercise program.

Surely you disagree (I assume you well know where your bread is buttered), so don’t take my word for it.

Instead, take one of your famous surveys. Poll a statistically representative number of the 30 million small business owners and ask them:

  • Has the recession been over for more than two years?

  • Is the recession over now?

  • When will the recession end? (for those who think it’s still here).

  • Why is the recession still around? (for those who think it is still around).

                                                             

The truth is that the recession has not gone away, not even in even the slightest, that it will unlikely go away for another two years after the 2012 election, even if the nation is fortunate enough to unseat the power-mongers that rule the White House . . . Messrs. Obama and Biden have proven themselves incapable of appropriate, responsive leadership and decision-making.

Not only do they fail to understand what small business is really all about, Messrs. Obama and Biden have been doing their best to undermine and squash every attempt by small business to straighten out what the two of them and their union-vote cronies have made crooked.  

History proves that small business is solely responsible for job creation, and has proven itself as the only entity capable of turning the economy around. Government job creation is meaningless and a waste of tax dollars.

Perhaps your writers who opinionate on business-related subjects should be talking with real business people (vs. corporate executives and government flunkies who lack complete understanding of entrepreneurial reality. Perhaps they should do a little research on why entrepreneurial ventures represent the only real chance we have for regaining economic and employment balance, in addition to global dollar value and reputation.  

If I can be so bold as to suggest it, a good starting point is to not react to what’s said here, but to instead respond by taking a meaningful scroll through daily posts made on this blog over the past nearly four years. There’s nothing new here, except the stating of my opinion that your paper’s “news coverage” has far exceeded the bounds of responsible reporting. Maybe that can still be fixed?

                                             

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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!

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May 18 2011

OPEN MEMO TO THE SBA CHIEF

Considering his long-term-do-nothing-decide-nothing-accomplish-nothing track record in both the State of Delaware and now in Congress, Rep. John Carney finally said something of substance about saving the economy:

                                                              

“It’s up to government 

                                         

   to create favorable

               

conditions for

                         

  business.”

               

                                                                                                                  

At least it sounds good, though clearly his statement is the work of a professional writer, and I’m quite certain Mr. Carney’s vision of “creating favorable conditions” varies considerably from what America’s 30 million small business owners would suggest. But, taken face value, it’s a reasonably good start. Where it goes is what matters. 

Using taxpayer money to shore up bungling corporate giants as Mr. Obama did, for example, continues to be an unpardonable act of violating the public trust. So is the government’s financing of no-brainer token job creation in order to pump up fake employment numbers just as fraudulent a practice.

 (How many cone-placement people are really needed for DOT projects?) 

——————————————–

                                               

OPEN MEMO TO SBA CHIEF KAREN MILLS: 

                                                               

At the very least, Mr. Carney’s comment above would seem to suggest that he (of all people!) is actually a step ahead of you. Your public statements remain as incongruously pathetic as those of the White House.

See for yourself, blog visitors:

Read SBA Chief Karen Mills’ declarations about

“How the SBA evolved through the economic crisis”

 CLICK THIS LINK TO Ms. Mills’ feature headline article 

                                                                                     

Sorry Chief Mills, but your comments are far out of step with reality. It’s just too bad, because the SBA really could make a difference if it would only (and ironically) pay more attention to small business owners, by talking with them straight-on, instead of down to them.

Real entrepreneurs are much smarter

than the SBA acknowledges.

                                                                                   

On the flip side, I also know for a fact that many SBA people have heartfelt intentions and that a good many SBA Loan Officers are excellent at what they do. That having been said . . .

As for your attempts to defend what we all know is a case of SBA lethargy at best, to say that the SBA “evolved” hardly represents a dynamic business passage worthy of bragging about.

Also, though your article tries very hard to pretend that the “economic crisis” is past, I respectfully suggest that perhaps some actual “down in the trenches” two-way communication visits on-site with real small-town, small business owners might provide appropriate enlightenment.

Here’s some business truth: The SBA, like the US Postal Service, is rapidly becoming irrelevant and –without major shake-ups– is headed for extinction. If you don’t think so, you’re living in fantasyland, and small business owners everywhere will agree. Go ahead and test this opinion. Ask!   

By taking up a politically risky crusade to launch a meaningful program of NEW business tax incentives for job creation and innovative development, you have the ability to open the doors to economic recovery by actually doing as Mr. Carney suggests: “Create favorable conditions” for small business.

The economy will never recover

until NEW small businesses  

get help creating new jobs!

                                                          

You should know that I served two two-year terms on the SBA Region II Advisory Council (with 34 others, 33 of whom were all major corporate employees!), plus six years as an SBA SCORE Counselor. I’ve been running my own small business for 35 years, and have directly helped to launch over 500 successful ventures.

. . . And, that I am using this blog as a forum to address these points because I tried four times to submit similar comments on the SBA website yesterday, and none were ever posted.

Defending and reacting and explaining will not move us forward. In the Spirit of Entrepreneurship, I ask for you to respond with new small business job creation tax incentive action.

Thank you  – Hal Alpiar

                                              

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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!

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May 08 2011

TGIM

Thank God It’s Monday!

                                               

“TGIM” is what separates entrepreneurs and leaders from the “TGIF” corporate suits and government flunkies.

                                                  

If you’re not excited about starting each new workweek, remember that you’re an entrepreneur. God didn’t put you on Earth and help you get your business to the place it’s in, so you could whine and complain and blame and be a doom and gloom person. Well?

You are doing what you’re doing because:  

A) you have a good business idea (or inherited one) that you believe in, and

B) you have proven time and again in your life that you have the guts and gumption and instincts to make it all work.

So stay on top of it and keep making it work.

Easier said than done, says you? But the economy sucks, says you?

Yes, the economy sucks only slightly more than the narrow-minded, misdirected, inexperienced, pathetically incompetent leaders who have run our nation’s government into the economic quagmire that pulls like quicksand at the heels of every American small business.

                                                      

The central issues are PRIORITIES and POLITICAL AGENDAS:

  • Government preoccupation with globalization over —instead of— shoring up American job-creating entrepreneurial ventures.

  • Government preoccupation with all things “green” over —instead of facing the reality of continually growing unemployment lines fueled by skyrockerting gas prices and the resultant crunch on shipping, transportation, and food prices.

  • Government preoccupation with “fairness” to everyone who slides into this country –legally or illegally makes no difference– because those people will be forever grateful and pay back government benefactors with their votes –legal or illegal makes no difference– instead of tightening and enforcing immigration laws.

  • Government interference, over-regulation and unmerciful taxation of small businesses runs rampant instead of supporting and encouraging American businesses with meaningful tax incentives to create jobs to turn the economy.

                                                                                     

Okay, so American Government leadership is clearly among the world’s worst, but you know what?

You can still make it work in your favor.

Here’s a quick 10-point checklist of ideas that may spark a winning action for you to make your ideas fly:

                                                             
  1. Read Leadership (the book) by Rudy Giuliani.

  2. Take a rest day. Do something constructive, but keep your brain and body away from work for 24 hours.

  3. Talk with two 70-year-olds and three 7-year-olds about what’s important in life.

  4. Take some deep breaths, and build more of them into your daily existence.

  5. Pray!

  6. Recognize that your every move is a choice.

  7. Offer to give a guest lecture or lead a Q & A session on business startup challenges at your local high school or nearby college.

  8. Read two dozen assorted one-sentence Twitter posts. Think on them.

  9. Take a walk on the beach or in the woods. Pay attention to what surrounds you.

  10. Be thankful for all that you have instead of worrying about what you don’t have.

Time’s a wastin’

 

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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!

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Feb 12 2011

No, Mr. Obama, you still don’t get it!

America’s small business

                                             

community is 30 million strong.

 

                               

On one issue —the economy— we

                                   

stand shoulder to shoulder

                                   

with one voice:

 

The economy can only be saved by new job creation.

New jobs come —only— from small business.

(Check history!)

 

It’s time to face the fact that America’s small businesses drive America’s economy. Period.

It’s time to step up to the plate, Mr. Obama, and exercise the kind of domestic leadership you were elected to provide.

Without a strong economy, there is nothing else you can provide. Your social agenda will continue to dissolve. Our nation’s image will continue to deteriorate. Your support will continue to erode. And the kind of legacy you surely pursue will become more elusive each day.

But you can turn the tide.

                                                                   

You need only to choose to stop being driven by fear of losing face and votes, and show the world the leadership you appear to be capable of.

Bottom line, Mr. Obama:

Stop being an under-achiever!

                                                  

Your “pulling up short” behavior simply doesn’t do justice to the promises you represent. Surely you can do better than that?

                                                       

Instead of:

  • Blockading and berating small businesses at every turn, and catering to big businesses that are over-run with lethargic 9 to 5 attitudes and disreputable union leaders . . . corporate giants entrenched in maintaining the status quo.

  • Creating artificial government “jobs” that simply add to the deficit . . . how many people does it take to fill a pothole? (A State issue? And where do the states take their lead?) 

  • Making lots of PR sound-bites and photo ops to illustrate your administration’s dedication to business (and setting up token programs through the pathetic SBA and other smoke and mirror entities to try to look good to voters). . . I served the SBA Advisory Council for two, two-year terms; it’s a farce run by corporate giants. 

  . . . how about trying a bold new tact?                                           

What, for example, could happen if you actually threw Federal support behind small business development by providing genuine tax incentives for job creation?

What, for example, could happen by introducing genuine tax incentives for meaningful small business expansion, and for the creation of entrepreneurial and innovative new revenue streams?

                                                   

Will you please set the stage for entrepreneurial input by taking the high road? In other words:

  • Can you start to genuinely demonstrate a more receptive attitude toward small business owners?

  • Can you show a little entrepreneurial spirit yourself by taking the reasonable risk of rolling up your sleeves and setting to work with non-politicized teams of America’s great entrepreneurs? (This includes looking past just those who have worked with and on your various campaigns.)

  • Can you put political ambition aside long enough to recruit some active “straighten-out-the-economy” participation by small business? (This means doing far more than just dispatching small armies of researchers and interviewers and surveyors into consumer, industrial and professional marketplaces to “report back.”)   

So far, it seems to ALL of the hundreds of small business owners I informally communicate with regularly, that your administration has done everything humanly possible to alienate entrepreneurs and small business owners and operators and managers, instead of tap into their experience and knowledge, and embrace their spirit.

Small business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs know how to be productive.

They know how to turn on a dime.

They know how to create and manage marketplace opportunities.

They know how to do whatever it takes with a passionate sense of urgency.

They know how to make things happen.

                                                     

It’s hard to know the source of numbers that have crossed your desk, but reality is that there are indeed 30 million of us who are tired of being stepped on, over, under, and around. And many of us care more about turning things around than we do about making political points.

We truly want the opportunity to work with government to turn things around, but there must be an ongoing and mutual sense of purpose and respect coming from the White House. There has not been so far. 

Just say you’re willing to try, Mr. Obama, and let’s get started! Yes, it’s that simple.    

  

# # #

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www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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!

3 responses so far

Jan 30 2011

GUTS AND GUMPTION

30 MILLION STORIES.

 

Does that sound like

                     

the stairway to heaven?

 

No, the other kind of 


stories, as in tell me a…

 

It’s been widely reported that there are an estimated 30 million small businesses in the United States. This number includes sole proprietorships (which the government refuses to acknowledge as small businesses, and which therefore account for a smaller small business total in Washington’s eyes, though interestingly, not out of IRS sight!).

Why should this matter to you?

There’s barely an entrepreneur alive who doesn’t know that new small businesses create virtually ALL of the new jobs in this country –and always have– and that job creation is the ONLY solution to reversing this still plummeting economy (which, all the great funeral service and State of the Union campaign-style oratory cannot cover up with political blankets).

Just look at skyrocketing gas prices,

unemployment, and boarded up storefronts 

for proof of the still plummeting economy.

Every business that’s alive and breathing today has avoided shutdown and rollover by owner, manager, and employee guts and gumption.

Discovering and pounding away at a unique product or service differential; consistently thinking and acting beyond creativity into the gravitational pull of innovative orbits; delivering value, integrity, and overkill customer service is what spells s~u~c~c~e~s~s!

This means, among other things, that your business has a story. With 29,999,999 other stories floating around out there (not counting government and corporate media dominance and control), your business story may seem small and insignificant. But it is not. Your small business story is that you are here . . . and how you got here, and where you’re going. And that story is real and valuable.

YOUR story needs to be told. Do it yourself, or get someone to do it for you, but don’t shovel it into obscurity. Part of your value on this planet is to inspire and motivate others by sharing what you’ve learned along the way. If you don’t believe this, you shouldn’t be wasting your time on this site. You need not be Bill Gates or Oprah before giving something back. Teach by telling your story.

In the process of growing your business, what is it that you’ve learned the hard way . . . what do you wish someone had clued you in on before the eve of destruction?

What would have made a difference for you to hear when the going got tough?

How hard is it for you to choose to reach out to others in your family, your company, your industry, your community, and share some of your ups and downs in a way that might help someone else? Have you offered to teach a local high school or college or adult education course? How about initiating a business round-table group or discussion series at your church or community center?

(Practicing such enlightened self-interest, by the way, can only enhance your own business reputation in the process.)

Have you called a local school (or trade or professional show program director) and asked if you could arrange a guest talk, or guest lecture, or guest workshop, or seminar participation? (Some of the world’s best employees are also recruited at such sessions.)

What’s holding up your call? Are you thinking you have nothing important to say? If you are where you are, you have important things to say about the process that got you there. OR that didn’t get you there — What are some NO-NO’s you’ve learned? People DO want to know these things. You did yourself at one time. Remember?

 # # #

Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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! 

3 responses so far

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