SELF-EMPLOYED?

Defragment and

give your SELF a

stimulus package!

     There’s plenty of unused storage space in your mind, believe me. Even if it’s just a little teeny bit true that Einstein supposedly only used about 10% of his total brain capacity, where does that leave the rest of us? I mean, give that about 27 or 28 seconds of think time right now.

     Think about all that extra (empty?) space in your brain that’s available to put to work. Leave it plugged in tonight and just click on accessories> defragment. By the morning, VOILA! You’ll be ready for anything.

     Maybe we should sort out who’s working where first. That way, when you’re all freshly defragmented, you’ll be in a position to make more of what you’ve got, or jump into something different.

     If you work for a big company, raise your hand and leave the room. If you work for someone else in a small company or you work for an organization of some type, or you’re in school learning how to work for somebody else…or you don’t work (Wow! What’s thatlike?), you’re probably not reading any of this anyway because you’re too busy surfing FaceBook.

This now leaves us with the heart of the businessworld: YOU!

    You run and/or own and/or manage a business,

OR you are self-employed.

     Oh, there’s that nasty hyphenated word again: self-employed. This simply means that you run AND own AND manage a business. I love you for that…but don’t get yourself worked up over my affection because what do I know?

     Federal and state government leaders don’t think you count.

     Obviously they haven’t a clue about how Apple and Microsoft got started in garages by self-employed geniuses. Anyway, don’t hold your breath waiting for some kind of  stimulus package since “self-employed” doesn’t count as a small business in government circles.

     I saw a handful of governor-conference-attending governors on CSPAN last night, including I am sorry to say, Delaware Governor Jack Markell who clearly doesn’t get it…who thinks his small business job creation plan to help established small businesses get bigger is going to have big economic impact.

     Sorry Jack. You need to get real, and talk with (LISTEN TO) some of Delaware’s thousands of self-employed small businesses –the ones that are NOT established, that are struggling to get established to see what they need to get up to 3 or 4 or 11 or 25 employees…and TIP: it’s not more loans!

     Making stimulus package room for startups and struggling self-employed is like making disk space by defragmenting. Clear out the junk, the spam, the space-wasters.

     You see what I’m saying here about brain capacity?  Defragmenting cleans up your harddrive. The same concept will clean up your brain, and help you focus on how to be more productive with your time and energy.

     You can be sure of not getting government support, so what can you be sure of? Your SELF! And how do you make that start to work for you? The same ways that Messrs. Jobs and Gates made their one-man-band garage ventures start to work for them.

     They made the choice. They worked hard at their ideas. They didn’t give up when things looked bleak. They didn’t worry about stimulus packages. They put their heads down and charged. You can do that too! Start tomorrow morning…after you defragment tonight!     

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Input aways welcome: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in    subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  

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Entrepreneurs Are

Imagination Junkies!

Okay, friends and enemies, enough bitching about the economy. Get out your “imagination sticks.” We’re going to group-beat the recession!

• “You’re a whack-job, Hal!”
• “Y’think?”
• “Yeah.”
• “Well, you may be right, but I also have some news for you. Are you ready?”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Knowledge is limited.

Imagination encircles the world!”

Who was the dumb idealist who said that, Hal? Hey, none other than our dumb old idealist friend Albert Einstein. And I know it for sure because it’s in a frame on the wall at the Delaware Creative Writing Center in the Cape Gazette Building in Lewes, Delaware, and Delaware Creative Writing Center people are very careful about the words they choose to surround themselves with!

So what? Who cares? What does that have to do with me? We’re in a recession in case you haven’t heard. And we don’t have any time to run around imagining things; there’s enough real stuff right here to deal with, besides you’re always preaching to be realistic and stay focused on the here and now, and now you’re saying we should all go off to never-never land with Tinkerbell and Michael Jackson?

Whoa! First of all, I’m not a big fan of either pixie dust or sequined gloves, but let’s look at the realism issue a minute, shall we? Realistically, none (zero, nada) of the world’s great businesses could have survived and thrived in economic problem times without imagination.

Only by fostering, nurturing and practicing the application of imagination to the products, services, ideas, R&D, and processes that launched them or put them on the map to start with, have they been able to make a difference.

Only when you plug imagination into your business’s status quo outlets will you experience the level of electricity that will thrust you into exciting new directions, markets, and revenue streams. Do you think Microsoft and Apple and HARO and TWITTER and revitalized old companies like GE just (pardon the expression) stumbled upon greatness?

Greatness doesn’t just fall from the sky and happen to happen! Greatness is created with imagination. You can build more of that commodity into your daily business activities. Start with some highly structured, tightly-timed brainstorming sessions as the road to expanding imagination!

Remembering that the solutions to any group problem are within the group, start with a group of 3-7 people (sometimes all managers, sometimes no managers, sometimes a mix works best . . . you may need some trial and error efforts to decide; sometimes three different groups tackling the same topics will produce the best results; don’t be afraid to experiment).

Conduct a disciplined 5-minute time period session with the goal of posting as many ideas as possible (on newsprint pages or whiteboard) that address the subject you spotlight. Encourage absolutely stupid and bizarre ideas (because they will trigger better ones!).

NO criticism is allowed during these 5 minutes! NONE!

When that list is done, take 3 minutes to refine it. This is the time to be critical, eliminate the nonsense, consolidate and combine points that seem to fit together, and take a good hard look at what’s left. Odds are you’ll surprise yourself with what you’ve orchestrated.

Many companies hold sessions like this weekly, and in some cases, even daily. The result is that people’s brains get stimulated. Productivity and sales increase. Imagination fuels the fire that heats up the economy. Entrepreneurs are imagination junkies.

Imagination is what made America great to start with. Imagination will do it again. Will you be a catalyst or an observer?

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Hal@Businessworks.US    or  931.854.0474

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

If today were

                                                    

the last day of my life,

                                                                 

would I want to do what

                                                                   

I am about to do today?”

                                                            

Apple founder Steve Jobs in an inspirational commencement address video my son sent me http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-3827595897016378253&hl posed the question above while noting that he asks it of himself every morning when he wakes up. 

To the young graduates he’s addressing, he says, “Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life!”

How many of us wish we would have heard that advice when we were younger, and of course be able to be tuned in and mature enough to have acted on it?  There is, Jobs points out, “no reason not to follow your heart.”

The point is, it’s never too late.   

I met a 40-something-old plumber today (not “Joe”) who loves plumbing.  I met with two dedicated auto dealership clients (the 40-ish President and the 30-ish IT Manager) of www.igburton.com  and two bright young men (the President and an Account Manager) of www.Delaware.net (eCommerce Services, Custom Web Development, SEM, etc) who clearly enjoy the work they do and the world their business lives in. 

All in the same day, I also spoke with a 50 year-old mother of three who loves mothering, and bought coffee from a (looked to be almost 70) checker at WAWA who obviously liked being a checker at www.wawa.com. 

Unusual?  ABSOLUTELY.  I sometimes go for weeks on end without encountering anyone who’s happy with what she or he is doing. 

In fact, I’ve heard some study findings that report 90-95% of Americans are not happy in their jobs.  Even if this happens to be only half right, then the bottom line is that a majority (or close to majority) of people in the U.S. are doing lousy work!  What?  If someone’s unhappy at work, he or she is not performing well, and vice versa.  Now just look at this post again before you click off . . . it’s a whole plateful of food for thought!  Halalpiar  

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