“I read a blog today,

Oh Boy!”

[With thanks for the unconscious melody, to The Beatles]

Contrary to a blog post I just read, MOTIVATION does NOT come from inside you!

It is DESIRE that lodges itself deep within each human being (and of course most animals).

Motivation is an influence that’s exercised and exerted from the OUTSIDE.

It is what activates or triggers desire.

To say someone is “self-motivated” simply means that person is in touch with her or his desires, and that some external things or events (or other person or people has) have activated, stimulated, or triggered those desires, increased awareness of them, and brought them to the surface.

This little bit of wisdom is as important to marketing strategists, sales professionals, and online content writers and designers seeking to trigger emotional buying motives, as it is to business owners and managers.

• We’ve chatted here often about the practical motivational applications of Maslow’s Theory of Needs Hierarchy.

Decades later, it is still a constant and still the most valuable motivational tool for business and organization leaders.

It requires leaders to pay ongoing attention to what things most make themselves and those around them “tick,” and recognize that needs can change instantly. 

• Herzberg’s research adds yet another dimension of reality that we often assume that we know what other’s needs are, but are frequently wrong . . . and that financial and job enrichment rewards are important, but in motivating for true job satisfaction, gaining some sense of achievement is what really matters most.

Okay, now that we’re past all that textbook stuff, let’s take a closer look at leadership. Motivating and inspiring others to perform optimally is a primary challenge and responsibility.

Whether the prompts to action are directed toward problem solving or innovating (or producing innovative solutions), or selling (which may of course combine all of the above), there is an over-riding need to turn on the reality spotlight!

The point is if you are out there on the front lines of sales and/or management–and aim to be successful–you’re not likely to have the time or patience to mollycoddle (cool word, huh?) a bunch of theoretical approaches about how to do your job.

Theory talks. Reality walks.

Now, here’s the killer: if you don’t do the reality booster-shots hourly or daily, your leadership effectiveness stands to suffer big-time.

Remember those on-the-job moments when a boss expected you to be internally-motivated and told you to do something “by the book” that turned out to be dumb, wasteful, irrelevant, insensitive, or ineffective (maybe all?)? Just a small example.

What about the boss who got you excited about doing something that you always wanted to try or to learn, but thought you’d never get the chance? THAT is external motivation of your internal desire! Also just a small example.   

How can you reach inside those you are responsible for leading, to locate and push those magic buttons that ignite their rocket launchers?

One good answer: 

Igniting people’s individual rocket launchers requires full understanding that the strength of your role performance as a leader is determined by how well you can get to know your SELF and others’ individual selves.

Your ability to make great things happen depends on how effectively you size up other people’s qualifications, energy drives, interests, instincts, capabilities . . . and desires!

The more you can know yourself, the more easily you can know others. When you know what others want and need, you’ll know how, when and where to reward and challenge them most productively.

But keep it on your back burner that a personal crisis or even minor oversight on your part or on the part of any of those you lead, can change the dynamics of the relationship and the tasks at hand overnight or within the hour, even within the minute! And that can change what you need to do to help others make a difference. 

# # # 

www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116  Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

The quickest fix for

“Nuttin’s Happenin'”

. . . is to ACT NOW!

NOW, while we’re on the cusp of

The Great American Work Slowdown. 

Christmas is just a week from Saturday. Everyone (except for rambunctious entrepreneurs–there’s some other kind?) is moving more slowly at work. The rank and file are increasingly preoccupied with office and neighborhood parties.

Could this be true? Is it just my imagination? Are you grinning nervously at that thought or at what I might be tossing your way in the next couple of paragraphs? 

                                                                                                 

Well, if you’re in that “rambunctious” crowd I mentioned, you probably wait ’til the last minute to shop, hate to waste time making the festive rounds but find that a couple of stiff drinks help make those swashbuckling business status-climbers and oozy neighbors a little more tolerable . . . and it’s all good practice leading up to that big week of dysfunctional family gift-giving gatherings! 

Put your mouse down for a nap.

Get up from your desk or work station or laptop, and stop reading this blog (I trust you that you’ll come back). Now, DO SOME thing. ANY thing! It doesn’t matter what you do. What matters is that you do SOMEthing.

Take a walk around the block. Eat a cookie. Take a bathroom break. Turn the music on or up. Draw a picture. Get away from the monitor and keyboard and take some deep breaths. Shake your head like a wet dog. Clap or briskly rub your hands together. Take a slug of cold water.

Appreciate that by breaking your concentration, you are also breaking some element or accumulation of stress.

Don’t quit yet. Don’t rush back to the screen. Gently close your eyes and take ten seconds to massage your temples or the back of your neck (counter-clockwise stimulates more blood flow).

Pick up a pen or pencil (you DO still have one?) and a piece of scrap paper. Write or draw or diagram the first thing that comes into your mind . . . like a creative branding theme exercise! 

It absolutely doesn’t matter what you record (and no one but you will ever see it anyway).

Go ahead. I’ll wait. ………. Good!

Next, draw or write or diagram the first thought you have about something you can do at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning to pump up or booster-shot some part of your business into action right away.

Maybe it’s a new direction. Maybe it’s solving a nagging problem. Or it’s reviewing reports or articles you’ve been shoveling around, or checking websites you’ve been intending to visit, or having coffee with the new (or oldest) employee (or supplier/vendor/sales rep) and listening?

Perhaps you haven’t made enough time lately to initiate collection of customer feedback? 

No matter how small a step, just make it an ACTION step. SOME action always beats NO action! I hear from blog visitors all the time that success comes from having a bias to action. Do you? 

# # #

www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You own or run a business

or professional practice,

so you’re filled with stories

 . . . and people have been telling you for years that you should write a book, right? And, HA!, you laugh it off, right?

But somewhere deep inside, you think you really DO have a story worth telling and that you, well, who knows, you could maybe even be the next John Grisham or Annie Proulx. After all, with 37 trillion boring text books already out there, this would have to be a novel. So, fiction it is.

Maybe at some point in your life, you even got up the nerve to get started?

Somewhere, buried in the back of a drawer, or deeply embedded in some tech thing-a-ma-jig (let’s hope something more recent than a, er, showing my age here, a floppy disk?) you have knowingly and hopefully saved your original scribble, no doubt based on some dialogue with one of your prior six or seven spouses, or long-(almost)forgotten soul mate…or a much hated boss!

And now that you think about it, if you can dig the whole mess out, it probably wouldn’t take much to finish it off, true? Even if you were starting from scratch, you could probably zoom through the first bunch of chapters before your spit even hits the ground!

Oh, just imagine–your name in lights, TV interviews with Charlie Rose and Oprah, book signings where you toss each signature pen over your shoulder.

Have I got news for you, Brothers and Sisters!

First, if you can pull an engaging story together in less than 40-80-hours a week for a year or two, and whip it into presentable format for soliciting agents and publishing house editors, your first name must be Miraculous.

Second, as hard as the plot, character development, storytelling, dialogue, writing, editing and proofreading is…expressing the right words in the right ways…finding a good agent who will find you a publisher is harder still.

You should know that whatever you write will never be good enough for 95% of those you seek to cornerstone your career. EVERY time you send out a query letter or first five or ten pages, you will find errors and weak stuff in your work that sucks AFTER you send it out. GUARANTEED!

“Well, just bypass all that garbage,” you say. “Just self-publish it. Then who needs agents and publishing house editors?” Uh, YOU DO, unless you’re also a marketing whiz with deep pockets, and prepared to be your own full time publicist and promoter as well.

Writing a “hot” news release is a skill all by itself.

Then after it’s written, you need to know when, where and how–and have, yes, the tenacity–to get the right person receptive enough to give it coverage. 

Ahh, and then there’s the next release or two or three or four, plus a media kit.

But could be you just want 26 copies printed (to perhaps impress the former spouses and all those stray children…and of course your mother!)   

So back to the agents and publishing house editors (assuming you have a day job and would have a hard time adding another full time one to your schedule). These are categories of people who tend to exude creepy-crawly and sometimes pompous attitudes.

They must spend most of their lives locked in closets from the best I’ve been able to determine.

Most avoid having any online presence. Most are so swamped with so much drivel submitted by so many drivelers, that they start to think of themselves as saintly and will only consider work that is 110% (that extra 10% always a brain-tickler) letter perfect in both content and presentation. Exaggerating? I wish! 

They use one of about four variations on the same theme for rejection explanations, almost always accompanied by a set of pat-you-on-the-back-of-the-hand encouragement and oh, such humility, that they of course can’t possibly know what other agents might “really relate” to your work so, pat-pat, send your review requests elsewhere (and keep the drivel clutter going!).

Here’s the bottom line:

You want to write a book? Write! Then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. OR just call me and I’ll rewrite what you’ve written to make it better OR I’ll write your story for you – your novel, or your memoir, or your company’s story, or your marketing or branding program, or your news release (which I will get coverage for!).

Click here for some of my latest work.

# # #

www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Stop Dreaming!  

Hope for economic 

change will not come 

from Washington.

It can only come

from YOU! . . . 

Roll up your sleeves!

CALLING ALL ENTREPRENEURS . . .

It’s time to step up to the plate, and accept the fact that we are not just the movers and shakers of the business world, we are quite literally the catalysts of society. Washington is not about to solve the economy or hand over the job creation tax incentives we need in order to get the job done.

We have to make things happen on our own.

Lest you have any doubt (or in case you’ve bought into token SBA talk), here’s some food for thought:

• America’s small businesses have been painted into a corner. Billions have been doled out to corporate giants (to appease union voter support instead of solve the problem). Recipients are using tax dollars to dig themselves deeper into the holes they created.

When entrepreneurs dig into a hole, they get up and out, and try digging someplace else. 

• Like a fancy dinner out with one’s spouse while the baby starves, a long trail of reckless spending has been carved out for creeping socialism programs that have no ability to do anything for the economy except increase the deficit.

Entrepreneurs consider worst-case scenarios and then take only reasonable risks!

• Next, we face the national healthcare plan that can bankrupt more small businesses than any other single act in history.

Forcing entrepreneurs to pay for healthcare coverage (including for illegal immigrants!) and deleting the free-market competition that has made America’s healthcare program the world’s best, is pure blindness.

• Now, we can choose our own healthcare professionals, institutions and methods — choices that will be eliminated. Many top  doctors are already seeking early retirement and new careers.

The tax-cut game is back to stage center (a diversionary tactic?) — all while unemployment continues to worsen. So, timing-wise, it’s back to the “He who hesitates is lost!” entrepreneurial spirit.

A prosperity direction?

Let’s remind ourselves please that just a handful of entrepreneurs is more likely to save our economy than all of politics combined. 

Why?  Because only entrepreneurs understand how to make things happen, and then make them happen. The antithesis of government and big business thinking, entrepreneurs believe and practice the philosophy that some action is always better than no action, and that “if it ain’t broke, fix it anyway!” 

Throughout U.S. history– from Henry Ford to Dale Carnegie to Thomas Edison to Bill Gates to Mary Kay Ash and Oprah Winfrey–  it’s been entrepreneurs that have achieved their burning desires, and created jobs, who have overcome crushing economic defeat, government incompetence, and corporate greed.

It will happen, this straightening of the crooked path, but only when the innovative pursuits of entrepreneurs are able to create new jobs. It is that innovative spirit that throbs deep within our existence as the guiding light and stronghold of leadership in the free world.

Sure, we can choose to wallow in misery–as many terrorist forces would no doubt relish–or just as easily choose to make an active and conscious choice to give America genuine hope and genuine change.  

How will this happen?

We who are blessed by America’s freedom, will help it to happen by what we do with every day, and with the gift of life each of us carries from dawn to dusk.

What we DO with that, how we use it to grant others freedom from oppression and depression, each in our own unique ways, giving others our own unique kinds of pats on the back… is how it will happen! 

We shall rise up as supporters and igniters, lending and offering the incentives to make forward motion possible. By putting our shoulders to the wheel, and marching alongside others, moving in the same directions of enlightenment, we will make the difference.

The investments we make of ourselves in ourselves, and in clearing the way for those who have the gift of making lemonade from lemons, will make the difference.

Think about someone you know who glows with that “git ‘er done” energy and drive…reach out with belief and encouragement…it will work as surely as even the tides rise and fall, and the moon fills with light. 

# # #

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Well, It’s Your PEOPLE,

Of Course!

Whether it’s your spouse helping with bookkeeping while you run a home-based business, or it’s a workforce of 3 or 300 or 3000, if you are not doing a GREAT job of motivating each of them, your business will never get where you want it to go.

Having the world’s greatest business plan, fat investors, and full access to cutting-edge tech systems and equipment means zip without committed support from those who work with and for you! Your PEOPLE are your most important asset!

And that kind of support only happens with your consistent leadership by example.

Job one is to do whatever it takes to figure out how to best open each individual’s mind, then open it, then keep it open.

Because open minds open doors.

 

The more people are encouraged to think for themselves, and to think in innovative terms, and to always think first of customers, the more opportunities they will create — for both the business and themselves, which translates to steady growth.                                                   

3 Key questions to ask yourself (and answer) in order to succeed and grow:

_______________________________

1)   Can you readily identify and separate your internal and external customers?

2)   Can you really tell the difference?

3)   What percentage of every day are you marketing to them?

This set of questions and answers is all about your ability to market your people, market to your people, and market through your people.

Successful entrepreneurs focus intently on these (above) fifty or so words . . . take a minute!  

 _______________________

Do you think that the meaning of customer service is to have dedicated customer service people?

Successful entrepreneurs charge every employee with customer service responsibilities all of the time. Parttime assistants as well as the most senior officers need to be able to handle every customer service issue at any time.

Customer service interruptions should be the rule, not the exception. 

Can you “ask, don’t tell” with the words you use? Unless you’re a creative director guiding designers and writers, can you “engineer, not architect” with verbal pictures you paint? 

When you lead by example, can you diagram ideas, and resist “giving orders” in favor of putting others and yourself on the same side of the solution table?

Successful entrepreneurs recognize that marketing through their people means being careful with what is said and how it’s said.  

Are you breeding entrepreneurs (and can you manage them)? Or are you breeding investments in the status quo (and can you manage that)? Are you encouraging enough reasonable risk-taking? Are you rewarding failure when great efforts are expended?

Do your actions take the 5-step direction of:

1) THINK

2) CREATE

3) THINK

4) INNOVATE

5) THINK

?????

Creativity only happens when thinking stops, and innovation requires re-activating THINKING in order to take the creative ideas all the way through every step of the strategic process from concept to launch, with all anticipated needs addressed. 

Then THINK AGAIN — Assess the innovative plans and designs.

# # #

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Hey!

Did j’hear the one about…? 

# # #

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

If you didn’t know you,

would you buy

what you have to sell,

from you? Are you sure?

MacDonald’s sells consistency, not hamburgers. Golden Arches customers know they can get the exact same fare prepared the exact same way at any of their “I’m Lovin’ It!” locations in the world. It’s like a security blanket for your stomach (assuming your stomach can stomach what’s served up!)

Revlon’s founding family president Charlie Revson was often quoted as saying “We don’t sell cosmetics; we sell the promise of sex to single teenage girls!” Airlines don’t sell seat rentals; they sell destinations. Churches sell redemption and hope. Disney World sells brain escape. IT businesses sell “solutions,” but often just add more problems.

Self-appointed SEO and Social Media “experts”? They don’t seem to know what they’re selling. But –by now– YOU must have a pretty clear idea of what works for you, or maybe not . . . 

How about YOUR business?

• Are you putting out “mixed messages”?

• Do those people you seek to attract as customers get it?

• Are you presuming or have you actually asked them?

• Do your customers buy what you have to sell, or what you claim to be selling?

• Are you selling real products and services or images of what the benefits are that one gets from buying your products and services?

• Have you made your marketing effort an exclusively online production?

If you are selling benefits (and you SHOULD be, by the way), does that represent some sense of ethical compromise to you? If you’re not doing that (and instead emphasizing and selling features, for example), has it occurred to you that your competitors surely are or will be selling benefits?

Do you think you would have lasted long in the passenger airline industry selling short-term rentals of seat manufacturing components while competitors sell happy couples skipping through the Caribbean surf or exploring Mediterranean fishing villages, or visiting Hawaiian mountain waterfalls, or diving off Mexican cliffs, or singing and dancing in Austria’s Oktoberfest?

When did you last sit still long enough to really take apart your sales message and examine the pieces?

Do the words work? Do they sell? Is there one word too many or too few? What you think you’re saying and what in fact communicates may be two separate things. How does your sales message look? How does it feel? What’s the intent? What did you discover by answering these questions?

How can you tweak or adjust or revamp or update what you have to make it better? To make it sing? To make it reach out and grab? If any of this leaves you puzzled and you are earnest about improving the process of selling what you’re selling, call me. No telephone fees. No strings attached. I’ll give you ideas. If you want more than ideas and I can’t help you, I can point you in the right direction.     

# # #

302.933.0116   Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

A Wandering Mind

Gathers Much Loss

Every minute of every hour of every day, conscious and unconscious negative influences are fighting for your attention.

You own, run, manage, just bought, started, are planning to buy or start, or inherited a business. The last thing on your mind is your mind. You cast away all those inspirational quotes on Twitter and in church, and those gems of wisdom from your six-year-old.

You have no time for the “You become what you think about” writings and teachings of Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, Wayne Dyer, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, or the hundreds of other thought leaders. Yeah, you’ve heard the “As you sow, so shall you reap” line from the Bible. In fact, you have your own been-there-done-that style version: “What goes around comes around.”

But without being consistently grounded in this thinking, you run the risk each day of your thought-stream leading you down an unhealthy path. In fact, you can be obsessed with negative thoughts that create business loss and not even be aware of it.

Taking inventory might be a good suggestion. How can you find out if your mind has slipped over the top without you knowing about it? Try this illuminating exercise:

Ask some friends, associates and family members whose opinions you value to tell you what animal, what musical instrument and what song they most closely identify you with, and why.

They’ll probably laugh. Simply say you are doing a study and explain no further.

• Be clear that you’re looking for their straight-out opinions.

• Do not interrupt except to ask for clarification.

• Do not refute, rebuttal or defend. Just listen, and take notes.

• If you’re not sure you understand, ask for examples.

• Whatever you get back, take it on the chin.

When you have the input of five or six people, decide if there’s any pattern or overlap. For example, do four of them think you most remind them of a snake (or wild boar?), and a kazoo, and a song like “Angry Eyes”? Well. Organize the input you get to see if it makes any sense. Prioritize. Evaluate. Decide how to get more positive stuff and less negative stuff.

Feeding on daily TV show lineups can produce a steady stream of negative-related people and situations which can take a toll on  behavior and prompt offerings of defensive reasons and excuses for every action. Dr. Andrew Weil has been known to prescribe “No News” for a week to some distressed patients.

If all your mind does is think about cancer, or your weight, or your age, or your bank account or bills, you are going to (like rolling a snowball) generate more of that kind of thinking.

When some one’s thoughts are preoccupied with having an affair, it will be hard to pay attention to their spouse. A new baby or puppy in the house can drain your ability to stay focused.

Behaviors. Behavior is a choice. A negative mindset is something we bring on ourselves. Directly or indirectly (and often obscurely), we make lousy behavior choices. Regardless of the who, how, why, when, and where, if you’re feeling misery, failure, or frustration, accept that you are choosing it.

Take some deep breaths and choose instead to change the channel in your brain. Self-control leads to leadership control. The world’s greatest leaders are masters of self-control. Self-control means exercising compassion as well as passion, and being focused on the journey –not the destination– as the source of achievement.

When your mind is healthy and you’re concentrating on something, it –like a spotlight illuminating the outer edges– will be fully aware of what’s going on around you as well as what you’re targeting in front of you. You can do it. Choose it. Practice it. Keep choosing it! (Yes, you can call me for a little coaching!)

If you work at it sincerely and haven’t experienced remarkable change in three weeks, I’ll be astounded. Yes, after thousands of success stories with zero failures, I will be astounded!

~~~~~~~~

931.854.0474   Hal@BusinessWorks.US

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Follow, deliver, be urgent

and reckless

hardly sounds like a

success formula, but 

. . . NOTHING in business is more telling about the character and integrity of an individual or organization than the honoring (or not) of commitments.

1. Consistent follow-through and follow-up

2. Delivery of what’s promised when it’s promised

3. An all-pervasive sense of urgency, and 

4. The reckless pursuit of customer delight

. . . are the marks of true business leadership.

Underpinning those magical business attitudes are respect for others, and a mission to maintain quality and value at every turn.

Besides –that all by themselves– those qualities make for explosively productive marketing and branding programs, regardless of the nature of the business or the goods or services offered.

Humans buy benefits first, attitude of the provider or supplier second, and product or service features a distant third.

Who knew? Not most business owners (who continually insist on marketing features first, and who routinely dismiss attitude issues as ones that impact the bottom line, and that they have little or no control over).

In fact, benefits and attitude offered are the engines that drive the bottom line. They are also largely a matter of choice. Attitude is 100% choice. If product or service benefits are limited, it’s because someone at some point didn’t recognize or flex that 100% choice muscle in the process or decision making about what to offer customers. But choosing a corrected attitude can upgrade the benefits.   

The only problem is that I can just barely think of slightly more than a handful of businesses in my lifetime that actually deliver consistent follow-through and follow-up, delivery of what’s promised when it’s promised, an all-pervasive sense of urgency, and the reckless pursuit of customer delight.

You?

What happens when you put these four yardsticks up against the ways you think and the ways your organization is doing business right now? How do you and your business measure up?

Are your weakest-link areas ones you can correct/adjust/improve or boost on your own, or will you do better to enlist outside help? How big of an issue are the expenses associated with getting expert input? What’s your opportunity loss?

You could well be, for example, losing more dollars worth of business opportunities right now because your and your business’s emphasis are on the least productive points (like marketing features?) which could easily be costing you more than to bring in a professional specialist who can help you stop the trickle before it becomes a flood.

If you go this direction, be careful about who you choose to step in. Make sure that that team or group or individual exemplifies the four points identified above. Yes, there are plenty of earnest and capable individuals (especially) out there who can deliver the results you seek. Do due diligence. Ask for references and ask references for references. Use your gut instincts.

~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Is what you’re doing

right this very minute

taking you to where

you want to go?

You run your own business, or a number of businesses. You know who you are. You know you’re an entrepreneur but you don’r readily admit it. (Why? Maybe it just sounds too fancy-pants?) Anyway, what matters right now is that you step back for the couple of minutes it takes to read this, and pat yourself on the back!

What’s the backpat for? You deserve to appreciate yourself for believing in yourself. And you should probably get a medal for keeping your ego in check enough to engage the “missing ingredient” help you need from those with the expertise to excel at the tasks you never mastered.

You haven’t been squirreled away this winter assessing your past business moves and decisions and carefully figuring your next game-plan strategy for the rest of 2011. 

I know this because I know if you are truly the stuff entrepreneurs are made of, these are things you ordinarily do weekly, if not daily or hourly. 

While others (government agencies and corporate types) are racking their brains with strategic planning exercises, you are just charging ahead — testing and trying new ideas and new twists on old ideas. You do this trial and error thing all year long because there’s just not enough time to take your advisory board on a retreat weekend, or lock up in some hotel room for days of chit-chat. 

That’s time that could be spent doing stuff, right?   

In fact, odds are you hate to think about or planning anything farther out than about 60-90 days. You prefer not thinking past 30! And you’d rather get in and out of a convenience store with breakfast to eat while you drive than sit down in a restaurant for more than 15 minutes, or –unless you’ve a home-based business– have to gulp coffee ‘n egg sandwich at home and then waste time cleaning up! 

Shopping trips you actually enjoy are probably limited to Staples, Office Max, Lowes, and Home Depot. I say all this just to let you know I get it. I got it. And, you, as independent a cuss as you may be, are not –surprise!– alone. I’ve been working with entrepreneurial whack-o’s like you most of my life because I love the challenge, high energy, enthusiasm, and turn-on-a-dime response level.

What’s important to know is that YOU,

and others who fit chunks of this profile

I’ve outlined, are the catalysts in society

that in fact make the world go around. 

If it was not for you and other dreamer/doers we would surely no longer be a (at least partly) civilized nation on this fragile planet. There simply would be no industry or marketplace or culture or technology to speak of.

Now with all this positive fluff floating around, it’s also important that –to be and remain successful– you maintain a balance with reality. This means you need to be forever vigilant about  recognizing one extremely critical entrepreneurial business factor. 

The foundation of your business rests squarely on shifting sands, and the stability of your enterprise is only as strong as your ability to remain flexible enough to shift when the sands shift. 

Those who entrench themselves thrive only in corporate environments that lack this balance and awareness. And you can only maintain your own ability to go with the flow by staying focused on which ways the moving targets move. 

Is what you’re doing right now with your business growth, development, and presentation of itself (how it communicates its messages) keeping a step ahead of the pace within the universe of business you’ve chosen? 

In other words: Are you making the best possible, most-in-demand kinds of (for example) pizzas, with the best possible ingredients, for the market you most want to capture? Are you presenting them at the price and service level that will usher in the sales you need to generate the profits you want? What do you need to do differently?  

REMEMBER:  Shifting sands work just fine when you’ve got a four-wheel drive vehicle, can deflate and inflate your tires according to how packed the surface is, have a couple of pieces of planking with you in case you get stuck, and are constantly monitoring wind, tide and precipitation (where appropriate), temperature and other weather conditions.

Stay alert.  Don’t get hurt.  Build bridges, but don’t burn them.  Make sure the risks you take are “REASONABLE.”  Always imagine a “worst case scenario” before you act. 

Your energy and the people around you in your life are your most important assets. 

Protect them by keeping on top of your stress, not under it!

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302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!