Welcome to the world’s first

BIZ ALPHABET SERIES of blog posts

“C”…

CUSTOMERS/CONSUMERS

CUSTOMERS and CONSUMERS. These are sometimes, but not always, one in the same.

You buy a can of beans; you cook and eat the beans; you are both the customer and the consumer. But, If I am 6-years-old and badger you to buy me Chocolate Tsunami Cookies because “They Make Waves When Dunked in Milk,” and you buy them and I eat them – then you are the customer and I am the consumer.

In that situation, we are very different people indeed, but the bottom line to the Chocolate Tsunami Cookie Company marketing people is that I, the consumer, have influenced your customer purchase.

The monster corporations out there have monster R&D departments bursting at the seams with monster (3, 6, 9, and 12-month long)  research projects, and are busily preparing monster evaluations, assessments, analyses, executive summaries, and follow-up surveys and studies to support the research findings.

Many of these undertakings are aimed at identifying (in the case of the Chocolate Tsunami brand) which 6-year-olds in which towns are watching which TV shows, and who are most likely to influence their parents (or the most lenient or susceptable parent) to purchase the cookie brand on the next shopping trip.

Oh, and do they have the parent’s email address?

Small business owners know better

than to waste such time and expense.

They make the cookies, sell the cookies, gather feedback from some kids and parents, adjust the manufacturing (or pricing, packaging, promotion) and sell them again. All the while the monsters have no product. They are still doing statistical analysis of adolescent sugar intake.

But too often small business owners direct their marketing messages to the buying customers when actual purchase decisions are being made by the ultimate consumers and/or other influencers. [Women, for example, purchase more wine, but men are almost always the ones who specify what type and brand to buy.]

Small business owners often overlook that different messages need to be directed to different market targets. Parents buying cookies that they are pleaded with to get by their children may require a bit more rationality attached to the emotional appeal that’s focused on persuading the children.

“Making Waves When Dunked in Milk” may be a cute line for something named Chocolate Tsunami Cookies. It could probably attract attention and create interest for any age.

While a child may, however, simply buy into the slogan– Mom or Dad need to know that the chocolate and flour used are organic, or that every purchase comes with free quart of milk or roll of paper towels . . . or that they will be the talk of the neighborhood because their kids are the only ones who can’t “make waves.” 

The bottom line is that by focusing marketing efforts on customers alone risks losing potential business that’s generated by ultimate consumers.

Using the same message in the same ways doesn’t do it. 

KEEP your branding theme and slogan, but address different interests with different language in different media whenever your customers and consumers are different in age or attitude or responsibility or capability.

A handicapped senior may have primary concerns about the safety and ease of use for a stair-lift, while the family making the arrangements may be more focused on price, insurance coverage, and service warranty. The best way to cover all your bases is to ask customers and consumers questions, and keep asking. And Listening!

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone

“Detail” Counts

Big Time In 

Small Business

My first employee review in my first real job accused me of not liking or tending to detail. Decades later, I still don’t like it or tend to it, except as absolutely required by clients, the IRS, or a book manuscript or marketing program that demands it. And even then, I still don’t like it.

After all, how can creative spirit flow freely

 with “detail anchors” weighing it down?

And, it seems when I look back, that entrepreneurs and small business owners of every conceivable description, similarly hate having to deal with detail. Yet, meticulous attention to detail is what often makes a small business become a big business. At every level: finance and operations as well as marketing and sales.

By listening carefully (vs. just hearing) to what customers and prospects say they REALLY want, you engage yourself in the world of providing detail, and the better you do at it, the better you will invariably do at not just servicing, but delighting each person and entity that you confront.

Detail –except in word choices and design applications– is not generally an area that commands great attention from those who provide creative services.

Attention to detail is most typically the milieu of those who provide accounting and legal services, intricate products, operational equipment, and safety-oriented products.

This doesn’t mean you need to be a bean counter, brain surgeon or rocket ship c0mponent manufacturer to justify the need for attention to detail. In fact, the further away from these “expected” areas of business a customer or prospect encounters what you have to offer, the more likely you are to have positive impression opportunities.

Why? Because most people don’t expect a roofer or plumber, or dog groomer, graphic illustrator, a self-proclaimed SEO or social media  ”expert,” or shoelace salesman, to be able to support product and service claims with hard evidence and factual findings –details– that boost and solidify the sales message. 

Details are what drive home the emotionally-triggered sale by providing the objective, factual, unemotional supportive features that purchasers use to justify their decisions to themselves, their spouses, their boss’s, their partners, their associates, employees, shareholders.

Details may not always be fun. But –in every sale, they prevail! Do you? Are you supporting claims with facts? Attention to detail means attention to customers and prospects . . . a practice you can never go wrong with!  

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

“I am me . . . 

in all the world,

there is no one else

exactly like me.

I am okay!”

 – World renown family therapist VIRGINIA SATIR

[What? You came here looking for that all-time great 56-year-old recording hit "Only You," by the Platters?]

People around you may sometimes prompt you to think –because you own or run or manage a small business or professional practice– that you are Mr. or Ms. (or Dr.) Awesome in the flesh. And perhaps that’s warranted, especially if you are what’s commonly referred to as “self-made,” in which case: congratulations!

If, however, you can’t even begin to think about your business success because right now you’re down there in the trenches with America’s other 29,999,999 small business owners who are struggling to survive the fanatical progressive/socialist/liberal agenda that has steered government into a trample-free-market-competition mode.

Then the time has come to step back and take personal stock of who you are and where you’re going. And I’m sorry to tell you I can’t help you with where you’re going; only you know that answer. Godspeed!

So let’s explore the real you, the only you, the you that only your inner circle of family and friends knows. I can help you with that. I have lots of experience guiding people (especially business people) to find themselves. It’s not always easy. Some entrepreneurs thrive on making themselves be needles in a haystack.

Begin with accepting the awareness that you are unique.

There is (if you check with your friendly local DNA expert, and as Virginia Satir’s quote above says), no one else exactly like you.

Next, consider that if in fact this is true for every human on Earth, then HOW employees and customers respond to the messages you put out is never exactly the same twice.

Now that should tell you something right off the bat. What you want others to know about you, your products and services is very likely to be not what they are getting from your messages. But let’s return to you.

Government has cultivated dependency among the brain-dead, who make themselves too busy with life to bother with work. Who needs a job when you can get it all (food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education) for free? There are others who work just enough to get by, but most of them seem to have RDD (Responsibility Deficit Disorder).

You are not among those who live off of others or you wouldn’t be reading this.

But some questions for you are in order: Do you choose to make yourself too busy with work to live life? Is it essential to your survival or are your business priorities simply wrapped around “what if” worries? Do you take enough breaks and pat yourself on the back enough for the good things you do? Do you eat and sleep right?

Have you ever “almost died”?

Do you get enough exercise? Are you answering these questions truthfully? Do you realize that because you are unique, so are your needs, so is your activity level, so is your spunk and gumption, so is your faith, your sense of patriotism, and your entrepreneurial spirit? When did you last stop to think about those values and variables?

What can you do right now to give your unique self a boost?

We do, in fact, become what we think about. Have you been thinking about what you really want to become, or have you been preoccupied with being the person you think others want you to be? There’s no such thing as working smarter and not harder. The issue is one of balance. There is a way that you already know . . . and, there is prayer.      

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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! 

The best source of business

 is always existing and 

 past business.

What have you done lately about resurrecting contact with old friends and business associates? The amount of time, money and energy plowed into developing new business in new markets with customers and suppliers who’ve never heard of them is a phenomenal waste. Put the same effort and resources into those who already know you. 

Even brain-dead politicians know this. Why do they concentrate campaign efforts on those who have supported them in the past? Because to those people (voters), they’re known entities, and that alone is often enough to trigger contributions or in the case of business, sales. There’s no need to start the get-acquainted process from scratch.

“Go straight to the heart of the matter,”

(my father always told me!)

At the heart of winning more business in as catastrophic an economy as we’re living with, is the need to revisit, renew, and re-cultivate old friendships, old acquaintances, old customers and clients, old suppliers and vendors, old investors and lenders, old employees and employers, old partnerships and alliances. ALL former supporters.

These are people who you may have lost touch with (and perhaps on purpose), but with rapidly changing times often come changing more receptive attitudes. Someone who was an employee and left for a better career move may now be in a position of being a customer, or a referrer, or a supplier, or even an investor! How will you know? Ask.

Small business owners and managers typically avoid past contacts for many reasons, but none of those reasons (unless they would open some legal wounds) are good reasons for glossing over possible resources who have a favorable impression of you. Spend your time, money, and effort there instead of digging up new prospects!

When you communicate your message to someone who knows you, you can skip all the preambles; there’s no need to waste words explaining who you are and where you came from and how you do what you do. Go straight to the heart:  

• “I know it’s been awhile, but I thought you’d be especially interested in . . . because . . .”

Or . . . 

• “As soon as we put out this special (new product or service, warranty, price deal), I was reminded of how it would/might/does/could have great value/appeal/interest to/for you, and thought you may be interested in this ‘sneak preview’ of . . .”   

In the end, it’s all about consistently using the best sets of words to deliver your message, and targeting past and present business contacts which allows you to engage their interests without having to have them get past the preliminaries of who you are. That small difference puts you a giant step ahead in the sales or recruitment process. 

Oh, and a no-brainer by the way, you can also reach these people and get them to your website, store or office with personalized (free) emails or (inexpensive) postcards instead of extravagant network TV $pon$or$hip$.                                                                                                                 

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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! 

Small Business Suffers (See personal note at end) . . .

Highest Consumer Prices

in 3 Years!

(and the Worst Leadership Since Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter!) 

The highest consumer prices in three years were reported today for food, clothing, fuel and transportation.

the oppressive nature of obvious federal government efforts to control, manage and force small businesses into bankruptcy, this news is not surprising. What is surprising is that America’s 30 million small businesses have thus far failed to find and focus and rally their strength in numbers– to respond en masse!

What is surprising is that the Obama Administration has been pathetic at best in it’s token offers of olive branch diplomacy through its stagnant SBA puppet show. (Okay, well, maybe that economy-killing attitude is notso surprising after all. I mean, it actually makes sense as accompaniment to our business-leaderless federal government.)

Messrs. Obama and Biden have thrown entrepreneurs and small businesses under the bus.

In the process of over-taxing, over-regulating, intimidating, undervaluing, and completely disregarding the basic economic-growth interests of entrepreneurs and small business enterprises, widespread meddling in large corporate businesses and attempts to disintegrate free market enterprise competition from healthcare have prevailed.

Lest we forget, by the way, entrepreneurs and small business enterprises are the entities that built America into the world leadership posture that Mr. Obama is relentlessly trying to dismantle at the expense of all Americans. 
It’s inconceivable, his “fiddling“–outlandish First Family expenses, preoccupation with sports, and managing to be conveniently and consistently “out of town” while oil spills, floods, tornados, poverty, unemployment, foreclosures, and the undermining of America’s military and global image rise to the surface of day-to-day reality.

And now it’s consumer prices! What’s next? Must be “Dignity” because it’s trumpeted in every speech, and trampled in every action.

                                                                     

Leadership that incessently talks “dignity” and never delivers really cannot be allowed to continue. You and I and our families have struggled and suffered to keep our businesses afloat, to survive.

Has it occurred to you that we are no longer working for ourselves; we are working for the government battling against all odds to make an honest living, but losing ground daily because what we do manage to earn is turned back in to be distributed to others who are too lazy and too manipulative to work for themselves.

Why bother getting a job? Huh? After all, everything’s free. Why bother with even learning English or getting citizenship? Americans are so stupid that they’ll pay for everything anyway. Take advantage. What a great country!

______________________________

A SPECIAL NOTE TO BLOG VISITORS

I rarely comment personally here, because this blog was created for those seeking business development ideas, methods, stories and encouragement. It was never intended as a political instrument but, you know, it’s become increasingly difficult for me to choose to not be tormented by business-inexperienced, know-nothing leaders who –day after day– pound away at entrepreneurs and small business.

If what is said here offends you, please don’t just click off; call me or send a note and let me know your thoughts. I promise you a respectful response. 

Until someone can prove otherwise, I see no exception to the conviction that Mr. Obama has no regard for –or understanding of– what makes America’s economy tick, and that he chooses to ignore even finding out because that pursuit alone will cost too many votes?

Pardon me, but I believe, dear professional practice and small business owners and managers, that this kind of shortsighted, misdirected leadership is not leadership. It is sick, self-serving, do-nothingness that we cannot continue to live with, and that our economy cannot much longer tolerate.

We have the clout to make that change:

Election Day – November 6, 2012.

Vote Responsibly! 

                                                                           

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

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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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Stewards of Sustainability:

Show Us Your Cupboards!

The latest Gallup Poll shows 47% to 19% of Americans are opposed to raising the debt ceiling.

No doubt for perceived vote-getting value, Mr. Obama appears to be seeking to steer us away from this issue by pretending to be fast on the heels of solving the gas price disaster (which threatens to thoroughly destroy whatever remains of America’s economy) by attempting to extend oil production leases and hold more frequent lease sales.

Sounds great, but like so many other too-little-too-late White House manipulations, this horse will stall at the  gate. More oil drilling sounds good, but doesn’t mean anything. Gas prices will not change anytime soon. Why? Because too long a time has been taken to initiate action. Oh, and by the way, the EPA has to approve it too. They won’t.

As every successful business owner knows, REAL leaders faced with real crunch situations –like skyrocketing gas prices, moving debt ceilings, Mid-East tension tentacles, and let’s not forget the U word:  Unemployment– use instinct and at-hand information to act. They act first, and worry about analyzing the decision afterward.

From Albert Einstein to Bill Gates, the world’s genius’s have said that all we ever have is limited knowledge. Taking too long to make decisions is a major downfall of corporate management — analysis paralysis — and government is a prime contender. Gas pump prices have been an “immediate” issue with the public since 2008!

Your business would have folded by now if you spent three years of foot-dragging and kicking around should-we-or-shouldn’t-we options to solve a major ”immediate” problem.

One need not be either Einstein or Gates to see that continually rising gas prices create continually rising shipping and transportation prices, which create continually rising food prices.

This progression (regression?) of true-grit stress triggers is like throwing explosives in the fireplace, especially when we add to the mix our continually rising unemployment rates, devaluation of the dollar, and loss of global respect.

(Ah, yes, and all the while, we tug at the small business choke-hold leash of mandated healthcare on the short horizon.)  

And we’re only addressing the relationship to small business here. Consider the even larger impact on family life and managing stress. Fuel affordability factors itself quickly into human dignity and self-esteem issues when gas pump prices exceed ability to take a weekend break visit to the shore or the mountains, the zoo or a sporting event.

Global leadership is simply a worthless wish if the nation’s economic foundation continues to crumble.

Socialist causes are draining the reality of economic resurgence.

Being “green” is useless if you can’t afford to eat!

How far are you willing to be pushed before stepping up to work for new national leadership that will take action over sound bites and voter-control agendas?

The brink of bankruptcy?

There are 30 million small business owners worth of clout in America. Use it or lose it!

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

An open letter to the President . . .

CONGRATULATIONS, Mr. Obama,

for a job well done.

Now let’s get down to business!

Ah, at last. For what appears to many to be the first time since assuming the Presidency, you have actually acted in what most of the world’s eyes and ears would surely agree to be a “Presidential manner.” You have risen to the task of delivering a non-political Presidential attitude. Thank you. It’s a burst of fresh air.

Your “watch” has brought a piece of justice to America. Thank you!

It is time now for you, personally (and Presidentially), to bring justice to America’s entrepreneurs . . . to recognize and accept that it is SMALL business that ultimately holds the key to turning around this miserable economy, which many small business owners feel your political agenda has been insensitively fueling.

You stated today:

“Today we have been reminded as a

   nation, there is nothing we can’t do.”

Your statement no doubt includes being able to rise above political campaign agendas that have fostered one unrealistic attempt after another to turn the economy around. And I don’t think anyone faults you for trying.

But, clearly, you have not respected entrepreneurial small business and professional practice owners and operators and managers. Your economic recovery pretenses have done nothing except increase taxpayer burdens -especially for small business– and have only served to mushroom the federal deficit.

Your statement would also seem to include being able to follow the footprints of history in stimulating –instead of bumbling corporate giants and incompetent government agencies– small entrepreneurial business startups.

Surely you have the proof of this wisdom. You need look no further than the genuine job-creation pathways carved out by new small business enterprises. It is there that you will find true economic growth.

Americans are universally proud today of the military intelligence and guts it took to destroy the evil leader of the terrorist world.

But we continue to remain hopelessly (and needlessly, many believe) bogged down in this economic quagmire.

We are paying more than we should have to pay at the gas pump. This means that we are having to charge customers, clients, and patients more than we want to for shipping and transportation. And higher shipping costs mean higher food prices. Of course you know this. But you’ve been trying to put out the fire with gasoline!

These are not whining complaints. But the solution –contrary to your recent suggestion– is NOT to get a more fuel-efficient car. It is also NOT to stop using FedEx and UPS in favor of the less expensive (and totally incompetent) US Postal Service. Neither is the solution to eat more junk food because it’s cheaper. 

Many of us who own and run small businesses, Mr. Obama, are overtaxed and over-regulated to the point of bankruptcy. Instead of being free to innovate and lead the way (as in all economic turnarounds), we are forced to follow those who have no business sense, understanding, or experience . . . and who are unwilling to seek it!

Can we now finally sit down and talk about politically-UNencumbered, real and genuine tax incentives that encourage new small businesses to create new jobs and reward them for succeeding?

Can we do this with real small business leaders — NOT the corporate executive-laden SBA, or government Economic Development groups, or professorial think-tanks?

Can we do it now? Are you willing to take a reasonable entrepreneurial risk and sit down with some real small business people? Will you listen instead of defend? Will you process instead of preach? Will you give America’s 30 million small businesses genuine incentives and a free hand to go to work to solve the economy puzzle? 

America loves that the first step behind the promise of rooting out terrorism has at long last been honored. Now it’s time to return the economy–the issue that undermines all others– to the point that allows people to regain their dignity and self-respect without reliance on government handouts and token pats on the head.    

We have earned more than lip service, Mr. Obama.

Can we do it? Can we do it now? 

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

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

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