Economy-crunched small businesses, stampeding to reduce payroll, need first to pull back the bells and whistles.

S C A L E   I T   B A C K.

Ideas, Proposals, Recommendations, Products, Services

Stop to think about it: If YOU are having trouble affording employee costs, your CUSTOMERS may be having trouble affording your product and service “extras.” [Restaurants have been scaling back since 2008 by offering better quality in smaller portions on slightly smaller plates!]

Let’s say you’re a consultant, and know in your heart of hearts that a client organization you work with needs to develop three new levels of consumer goods and services to stay competitive, but you also know that their naive management has failed to get its arms around the budget stranglehold that White House pressure has put on them.

You can lay it all out for them , knowing they will never pay your fee, and go down with the ship . . . or chunk up your recommended action plan to address just one new level, leaving the other two to simmer until the first of these can produce enough revenues to cover the investment and your fee, setting the stage for a level two proposal.

It’s worth the reminder that, as my father was known to exclaim and as Giovanni Torriano was first credited with recording the phrase in his Second Alphabet in 1662, “You can’t get blood out of a stone.”  And while we’re on the subject of hard subjects and difficult feats, you may want to accept the inevitable and just agree to “bite the bullet.”

In other words, when you can see that your proposal carries with it the hand-wrenching anguish that forces your client to back away from the table, scale it back. What can be accomplished by eliminating the bells and whistles and still manage to develop a new first level that’s acceptable, that can be expected to perform adequately?

Does this put a burden on you? Of course. When you may have been thinking you could do a $15,000 fee project, you find yourself settling for a smaller $4,995 fee project. What’s the answer? Do it with a $15,000 fee attitude, and use the extra time to get out and sell another client or two on projects that total $10,000.

So, now what? You lose $5? Ah, but now you have three clients and can more safely hedge your bet. If you work at it you may also generate $45,000 total a short way down the road, instead of just the opening effort for $15,000.

You can do this. The point is that everyone in business has reached a point of struggle (or at least substantial concern). How much further can this go? Will we have to go belly up? How can we pay the bills? 

Bottom Line: WE HAVE TO RISE ABOVE THESE KINDS OF THOUGHTS AND FOCUS ON HOW TO GET INCREASED SALES NOW BY OFFERING DECREASED FRILLS.

Force yourself to take a good hard look at what you’re selling and to whom. Can it be streamlined and priced lower without losing value or impact or safety? Can the excess packaging be eliminated or relaced less expensively without risking damage? Can you use 2-day Priority Mail instead of more expensive overnight shipping? 

Can you make arrangements to package the cars you sell with a gas or routine servicing giftcard? Some lawyers are doing reduced price packaging of basic family and couple’s wills. Some chiropractors will do basic 2 for 1 adjustment visits. The travel and hospitality industries constantly offer discount incentives that strip away luxury cost extras.  

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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! 

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

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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 Second Civil War

is coming:

Obama’s left-wing, 

liberal socialists

vs. thirty million

US small businesses.

Happy Birthday America!

_____________

As we celebrate our “E Pluribus Unim” and “In God We Trust” heritage, as we pause to value the freedom that comes–as Thomas Jefferson said–at the price of eternal vigilance, we need also to take stock in the reality that for nearly three years, we the people have been trapped and sold up the river, by none other than our own President.

Mr. Obama has dishonored us, disowned us, and disengaged himself from the job he was elected to do, and –in the process– has triggered us into The Second Civil War, this one between big government and small business! 

Mr. Obama has disgraced and spit on the entire (30-million strong) universe of small business enterprises and on the entrepreneurial spirit that made America great to start with, the very spirit that allowed him to be elected in the first place . . . the very spirit he should be nurturing and rewarding with tax benefits for innovation and job creation.

Small business tax benefits for innovation and job creation remain the only viable key to economic recovery yet, at every turn, the White House arrogantly insists on doing the exact opposite.

Small business innovation and job creation tax benefits remain –after more than three years of harping on it in this blog– the only REAL solution to our still plummeting economy.

It is hard to imagine, when truck drivers and supermarket clerks and burger flippers and barbers and plumbers and roofers and accountants and doctors ALL see that this is true, how the White House can be so adamant.

By obsessively over-taxing and over-regulating small business

–AND by continually berating and discrediting the leadership of the Senate, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and our military–

Mr. Obama is simply demonstrating transference (ask any psychologist) of his own inadequacies and his own complete lack of leadership.

                                                               

Being tangled up in one’s underwear is not the way to move forward.

As we celebrate this second most important day in America’s calendar — second only to the birth of Christ — let us pray in thankfulness for all that we have achieved as a nation, all that we in small business have achieved in industry and technology and humanity.

Let us be thankful too for our entrepreneurial global leadership and enlightenment (until and in spite of the current White House).

And let us also pray

. . . that we overcome The Obama Depression, that we survive and thrive once more, that we the 30 million of us join together in purpose on November 6, 2012, to turn the tide, and begin to restore our battered economy and rapidly eroding stature as leader of the free world. Use your business clout to make a difference. Start now. 

STAND PROUD IN TROUBLED WATERS.

WORK HARD TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” 

[Thomas Jefferson] 

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 Open minds open doors.

Thanks for visiting. God Bless You.

God Bless America and America’s Troops.

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Sorry, Docs and Esqs,

 but you’re not God

anymore!

Well, one good thing about the current Administration (and it may be the only good thing) is that it has snapped Americans back to reality — the reality that no matter how great you can talk, action speaks louder. And taking no action speaks loudest of all. Like a whirling dervish, this tax-and-spend do-nothing White House spins in place.

So that’s the good news: we’re all learning from our mistakes. Watch the blur!

_________________________________                                                  

Now on to doctors and lawyers: You guys are being shopped around for on the Internet, and you haven’t yet caught on to the reality that this single shift in patient and client technology is driving your practice into the ground because you’ve chosen to ignore and discount its impact on you. But you can’t. You need to take action now. 

Reality is that your services are no better a commodity than peanut butter, plumbers, snowplowing services, or used furniture once a prospective patient or client gets her or his pudgy little fingers into the Bing or Google search window.

The days when you needed not to worry about your staff customer service skills are long gone.

                                                 

Heart patients in Pennsylvania fly to Arizona or Minnesota for surgery. People with vision problems in Florida will travel to Baltimore. Just because a local physician or lawyer diagnoses a problem seldom means anymore that the patient or client will stay with that professional. Many, if not most, seek specialized care referrals online.

A good part of the reason for this, and one that’s continually dismissed, has a whole lot more to do with office staff treatment and “bedside manners” of the doctor or lawyer than most professionals would care to admit. Truth is it’s likely to be costing you 50% or more of your practice volume. And it’s close to 100% avoidable!

Incredibly, to most of America’s population raised on ER and Law & Order, there are studies floating around that show over 90% of all doctor and hospital visits (including those to the ER!) are for reassurance

— being told with a warm smile and backpat, “You’re going to be alright. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning” seems to sum up what most people consciously or unconsciously seek.

And I strongly suspect the same dynamics of pursuing empathy come into play with lawyers.

Lawyers thrive on delay. Doctors thrive on patient loyalty. Neither of these payoffs are very much in the cards (or the stars, tea leaves?) anymore because people want gratification as immediate as a txtmsg response, and loyalty is directly proportionate to truth (readily verifiable on the Internet), and personal attention with every contact.

So, solutions? Here are 3 FREE solutions: More frequent and more genuine use of smiles, and of “Please” and “Thank you.” Don’t assume your patients and clients are being treated the way you want them to be. I can tell you of over 100 medical and law offices where they are not. Find out. Use friends as “secret shoppers” to report experiences.

Reward positive attitudes. Small, inexpensive, frequent rewards actually work better than lump sum cash or raises (which, remember, are permanent). Consider outside professional coaching help.

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

 Open minds open doors.

Thanks for visiting. 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!

“Someone’s opinion of you

   does not have to become 

   your reality.”

—Motivational Speaker Les Brown

Let’s look at it this way: You are reading this right now because you are an entrepreneurial thinker and/or leader, because you own or operate or manage a small business or professional practice, or because you are a partner or investor in, or advisor to (or a student of) small business.

If this is true of you, then you know you are made of different stuff than are corporate or union folks, or those engaged in mass media. . . or government employees (from the White House to your State House, County Seat and Town Hall . . . including all levels of government agencies) . . . or those theoretical academic types.

Let’s put all those people aside for a minute. (Yes, of course there are exceptions; I’m talking about the overwhelming, vast majority of individuals who simply don’t get it, and who prefer being sheep!)

You, on the other hand, have a brain. And common sense skills. You know how to think and act productively.

You are focused on the here-and-now present-moment more than most people, and have little or no use for analyzing the past or fantasizing the future, beyond getting your ideas to work.

You know how to make things happen.

You have a sense of urgency, and you know how to “turn on a dime” when it’s time to change direction or meet a market need.

You create your own opportunities and are not afraid to step up to the plate when they arise — plus, you are smart enough to know how to get yourself on base without swinging wildly for the seats on every pitch.

Okay, so as far as others cut from the same fabric as you are concerned, all of the above makes you a (no gender implied) “Good Guy.” (There are 30 million of us!)  

But–alas–those admirable qualities that set the entrepreneurially-minded apart from the closed-minded also fail to insulate small business enterprise high-achievers from warped opinions!

Here’s the bottom line: When you find yourself beginning to worry about others’ opinions of you, your behavior, the way you run your business, the kind of schedule you keep, ask first if you are behaving legally and second if you are sacrificing your own health or your family’s existence.

If it’s “no” to both of these questions, change the channel.

It’s your brain. You are the only one who controls your brain. Simply change the mental channel in your brain from whatever self-denial, self-badgering, self-guilt station is playing, to something more challenging or geared more to easy listening.

It’s a choice. You can choose to rise above other’s opinions and pursue your burning desires freely.

Imagine if Edison or Ford or Gates or Winfrey or Ashe or Carnegie or Jobs or any great entrepreneur had balked at others’ negative opinions. We’d probably be –just for starters– without lightbulbs, cars and computers. Don’t choose for the negative opinions of those who can’t see your light to create darkness for your business ventures.

There’s too much to do, and life is too short to waste time dwelling on or worrying about other people’s opinions. Because–in the end– all you have for certain is 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!

Yeast, the Sun,

and Leadership.

I get (and agree with) what Paul Ryan’s advice to Mr. Obama was all about when he visited the White House yesterday and reminded the man that “leadership starts at the top,” but I take some exception to the semantics of what that advice might suggest as it is applied to the rest of the world. 

———————————————-

Leadership, like yeast, like the sun on the horizon, rises from low places. It starts, often below the surface, and grows to recognition, then to love and respect or –sadly, in many cases– to fear and loathing, with little room left in-between those two extremes for tolerance and apathy. The problem is that yeast and the sun are fairly predictable.

Some aspects of leadership are also predictable.

Qualities like being able to inspire and motivate others, for example, are part of almost every description of leadership since the beginning of time.

Truth and reality, however, measure all leadership by one word alone.

What’s your best guess?

What single word sums up “leadership” most definitively?

Surely you know the word if you think about it enough. It’s authenticity. Authenticity of character, of personality, of purpose, of attitude, of responsiveness, of courage, of self-image, of the nature of the people involved, of the nature of the tasks to be done. It cannot be manufactured, pretended, stolen, replaced, avoided, dismissed, disregarded, or disarmed.  

Almost never to be found near government or political enterprises or management: authenticity. And rarely does it appear in corporate life when it isn’t guarded — easy to understand when UN-authentic people hovering at the top feel threatened. Yet, say many, true authenticity must also be free, so how could it be guarded?

Okay, so cross off corporate authenticity. And what are we left with? Family life and small business. Why? Because there is less need to lie, make excuses, and cover one’s butt, and because entrepreneurial attitudes are not so affected and convoluted by status-ladder-climbing and artificial allegiances.

–————————————-

TEN EXAMPLES of authenticity:

1. Giving credit where credit is due.

2. Speaking up for what you believe in and supporting others who share your purpose.

3. Accepting responsibility without excuses.

4. Acknowledging screw-ups and owning up to your mistakes, also without excuses.

5. Taking immediate corrective action when called for instead of analyzing and seeking blame.

6. Being focused on the present “here and now” moment as much as possible.

7. Always acknowledging the human factor in every decision and action, even when others pass it over. Business transactions are impacted by illness, injury, and family issues.

8. Nurturing (and cultivating) positive and productive behavior and attitudes consistently.

9. Soliciting and respecting the opinions of others . . . praise in public and criticize (constructively) in private.

10. Treat every employee and every customer like the special people they are, the way YOU want to be treated, every day, all of the time, without exception.  

————————————

How do you measure up, stack up, size up, match up? What three steps do you need to take now to give rise to more of that authenticity you have inside you? Can you take that first step right now?

It is, you know, a choice. 

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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!

Just imagine that someone

doesn’t like your business

(I know, I know, but it is possible!) 

So you get criticized. Then what? Right, you do like any normal red-blooded American: you threaten to terminate your critic.

I mean, after all, it’s dog eat dog out there, an eye for an eye thing. “I don’t like what your business has to say!” or “I don’t like the way your clerk looks at me!” POW! BAM! Blow ’em away! Threaten. Great PR. Guaranteed to win you customers. Oh, and what a fabulous example it sets. Reputation suffers? Who cares. You got even.

Anger wins!

It would almost be funny on SNL, but from all I can determine, this knee-jerk reaction is unfortunately coming from that un-leader-like icon of hope and change: The Great American Dream himself, Mr. (ta-ta-ta-ta-tah-tah) Obama. Are you ready? This news is completely off the charts. If you have a website or blog, you might want to be sitting.

 —————————————

Bloggers and websites critical of Mr. Obama are now reported as being targeted by the White House for something akin to “shape up or ship out” ultimatum warnings.

This news, according to a post filed online yesterday by Messrs. Doug and Joseph Hagmann.

(Doug is at Director@HomelandSecurityUS.com and Joseph is at JoeHagmann24@aol,com).

The two reportedly run a private investigative agency specializing in surveillance and counter-surveillance operations focused on terrorism activities. Their article was headlined in the Canada Free Press Daily Mail.   

According to the Hagmann’s, the Obama “online rapid response team,” created as part of the 2012 re-election campaign is “headed by… Jesse C. Lee, 31, of Tacoma Park, Maryland” who has been “tasked specifically with quashing any Internet articles and news critical of Obama.”

Lee, says the article, has initiated his activities by opening an official White House Twitter account featuring an image of “The Terminator” which sends a threatening message to anyone critical of the Obama Administration, and “a signal that unfavorable reports about Obama and his reign will be dealt with much more aggressively.”

Oh, and by the way, while such activity in the past has been the province of and at the expense of the National Democratic Party, this time, report Doug and Joseph Hagmann:  Mr. Obama has elected to keep costs and control “in-house” and under the jurisdiction of the White House Communications Department.

In other words, Lee’s “Terminator” services

are being paid for by the American taxpayers.

That would be like charging your customers/clients/patients an extra percentage tacked on top of whatever they pay for your products or services to pay for a hatchet man to come back and threaten them with extinction if they dare to criticize you or your business. Oh, joy! What a world this is. You can’t make this stuff up.

So now what? What on Earth could top that? I’m sure something will.

It’s bad enough to have a man that so many well-intentioned people were led to believe would be a great leader, only to find out that he is the absence of leadership.”

Besides being a one-man small business wrecking crew, his meddling is managing to screw up the corporate world as well. We the people are over-taxed and over-regulated at every turn. Mr. Obama continues to spend money far beyond America’s means at a terminally reckless rate. Could you do that with your business? Your household?

Make A Difference! TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012

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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 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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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!

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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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.

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