Big Business. Small Business. Your Own Business.

WHAT’S  YOUR  FOCUS?

IF YOU’RE WORKING FOR

A BIG ORGANIZATION . . .

. . . and flirting with someone down the hall or in another department (married or not), “Don’t fish off company docks!” is the best advice I can offer because edgy socializing undermines your business focus, and your stature in the organization. Others do not want to understand. Odds are you and your job will dissolve away before you know it… or collapse overnight!

Unfortunately, the only ones who don’t believe this are blindsided by their own pursuits. They simply don’t believe that a “stolen” kiss, or pat on the butt, or slightly too-long handshake could possibly interfere with a bonus or promotion. But “Aha!” They do. Work flirtations are never hidden. They dislodge your focus on getting your job done and exceeding management expectations.

Think for just a minute about being the boss and having expectations of those you’ve hired to “give their all” and be 100% focused on doing their jobs. What’s YOUR focus?

The secret? It’s all about balance.

IF YOU’RE WORKING FOR A SMALL BUSINESS OR A PROFESSIONAL GROUP PRACTICE . . .

. . . it’s your job and it should be your focus to do whatever you can to help grow the small business that has shown good faith in you. Your focus needs to be to do whatever it takes to make things work better, and to do whatever it takes to make customers/clients/patients as happy as possible every day!

None of that happens if you’re constantly preoccupied counting the minutes  left in the workday, the workweek, until a holiday or the weekend or a vacation. None of it happens either if you show up for work with your backpack or briefcase or pockets filled with upsets you’ve left at home, or with a relationship, or social commitment. A distorted focus can quickly and quietly distort your ability to think clearly, and focus.

Teamwork

The secret? It’s all about balance.

IF YOU’RE WORKING FOR YOUR OWN BUSINESS OR YOUR OWN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE . . .

. . . Bless you! But the trade-off here is even more pronounced. You are the business and the business is you. Not everyone can succeed as an entrepreneur, but keeping your energy and attention focused as much of the time as possible on how to launch and feed and grow your own business or professional practice will take you a long way.

The bottom line, though is that you simply cannot be 100% focused on where you want to be headed all the time. You got where you are because you wanted more freedom, so take more freedom. Working your brains out doesn’t grow your business. Making the most of your “freedom” by channeling it in directions that are as productive for you, and your self, as they are for the business creates a focus that’s balanced.

Balance is the secret.

And ONLY YOU know

how to balance your SELF!

If you failed to teach a

key employee 

something important

today, are you

missing the boat?

     With what I presume to be 55% of American employees being UNhappy [See yesterday’s blog post below this one], there’s very little “happiness-transition” wiggle room for a business owner or manager to exercise. The first important step, though, in the direction of kicking up productivity is to more fully engage employees in the day-to-day operations of your business. 

     Should you flat out trust the one person who seems most likely to head off to a competitor? Should you risk sharing critical product development or service expense information with people who you’re not confident will even be there in six months? Does it make any sense to encourage the employee your classmates would vote “Most likely to be brain-dead,” who you’ve kept around to do the slug work nobody else will touch? Sometimes the least likely people rise to the occasion. Think on that one.

     How about — instead of asking those questions about your employees — you ask some questions of your SELF? Where, for example, are you and your business headed right now? Where do you expect to be in five years? How (what’s the process you’ll use) do you expect to survive the next five months? What will you be doing differently then than you’re doing today? Why are you waiting five months?

     Keeping on that track for another minute, what’s something new you’ve learned about your business today? What’s something new you’ve learned about your SELF today? (Yes, both events did in fact occur; you just blocked them out or didn’t give yourself enough credit for the discoveries.)

     How will any of that new information help you tomorrow? When was the last time you and your family depended on someone else’s decision making? When was the last time you put yourself in your employees’ shoes and thought about their perspective of your business and your decision making? How do you think dependency feels?

     When was the last time you stopped long enough to teach an employee something important that she or he can use to do a better job, or be able to take home to share with family? Do you take active interest in your people every day? Why not? They may never admit it and you may never believe it, but all studies ever done would reinforce that you can be sure they take active interest in you every day, probably every hour! 

     So, that means you’re obliged to return the interest? No. You’re obliged to do everything you can possibly do to cultivate employee enthusiasm for the work they are doing. When financial reward is not possible, emotional support and psychological reward and teaching by example have to suffice. And if you’re consistent about making those money-substitutes work, they will. All human beings need reinforcement and reassurance. Employees need it from their bosses. Are you on it?                                                                              

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Blog via RSS feed or $1/mo Kindle. GRANDPARENT Gift? http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

IF YOU CAN FOLLOW

these 8 sentences, you 

understand how to fix

the economy — and the

White House is puzzled.

(PART 1 OF 2)

     Entrepreneurs pursue ideas. They taste, test, trial-and-error, and explore applications of their ideas. When they settle on a direction, they find or attract enough financial support to do two things: 1) Create an operations process to develop (manufacture, fabricate, enhance) the product(s) and/or service(s), and 2) Design and deliver a marketing program.

     Marketing drives prospects to the door and creates a support platform for sales. Salespeople (or the entrepreneur herself or himself, acting in a sales role) produce(s) sales. Sales produce revenues. Revenues pay operations process and marketing (and perhaps investor) expenses and hopefully generate profits.

     Profits allow entrepreneurs to create jobs.

     Big business really doesn’t create new jobs. Research demonstrates time and again that far more than the vast majority of new jobs created in America originate with small business.

     So— why does the White House insist on avoiding and glossing over small business as an insignificant source of new jobs? Why does the White House pretend to befriend small business, shaking hands with the right hand while stabbing it in the back with the left hand?

     Can someone please answer this? Can the answer please be a real one, and not some convoluted response anchored by union-held political chips or fantasyland corporate moguls riding bailout coattails?

     How do”We the people…” choose to allow narcissistic political arrogance to override the critical needs of our economically-threatened society to stimulate and foster job creation?  Part of the answer is that we have a federal government that’s universally comprised of individuals who have not one iota of business experience, and who adamantly refuse to get the business advice needed for economic recovery from the only source that matters: small business.

     And surely–because, really, no one could be this dumb– the government can’t possibly be thinking that the SBA is the place to turn for meaningful input. (Yes, this is the same Small Business Administration administered by small-business-braindead government employees and stimulus-recipient big business corporate types who can’t even spell entrepreneur, let alone think like one) .

     The message is: WAKE UP AMERICA!  There’s more to this story, and it’s coming tomorrow.

     I hope you’ll return for –as one of my heroes, Paul Harvey, used to say– the rest of the story!

# # #

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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!

America runs on small business!

Small business runs on

competition.

Competition runs on sales.

     It’s beyond me why no one in government has yet to figure out this relationship, or be able to translate it into the two following, near-unanimous, conclusions by leading national and global experts:

Free market price competition, state-by-state, is the only workable answer to healthcare reform.

Small business sales success is the ticket to job creation, and job creation is the only workable answer to economic recovery.

     I can understand that most politicians have little or no experience in business, but I cannot understand why they so adamantly refuse to acknowledge the truth of the two statements cited above … why they simply cannot deal with the simplicity of each. 

     They have political agendas. Who cares about their political agendas? Do you know anyone who cares about their political agendas? Our economy and our healthcare reform plans are sitting deep in the bottom of the toilet because our elected officials have agendas for self-aggrandizement, self-promotion, and self-preservation.

     Last time I looked, these people lugging around their agendas were supposed to be representing the taxpayers who have hired them. Hmmm, now there’s a unique thought! Just imagine how much would be possible to achieve if elected officials were not preoccupied with protecting their own butts.

     Imagine if politicians actually served those who elected them, instead of pandering to the government agencies, big business entities, and union constituencies who trip over themselves clinging to elected (and bought) coattails, seeking stimulus money to bail out of the holes they’ve dug for themselves.  

     In fact, ask any group of small business owners, and they’ll tell you that that federal and state government leaders are misguided, ill-informed, inexperienced, and completely unrealistic. They are trying to appease small businesses with a ridiculous, unnecessarily and overly-complicated loan program that no small business owner has time to deal with. And who needs a loan now anyway? Why do tax-incentives have to be Rubix Cubes?

     Government is trying to ramrod an unwanted, unworkable, astronomically expensive healthcare reform program down the throats of small business owners, and simultaneously smokescreen the public into thinking it’s in every one’s best interest when it clearly is not.

     Maybe America’s government and corporate giants and unions do run on donuts and promises and paybacks, but America’s small businesses are fueled by genuine competition, authentic innovation and accountable sales. 

• Small business owners know how to reform healthcare with free market enterprise price competition.
• Small business owners know how to fix the broken industrial manufacturing and financial communities with value-adding and innovation instead of cash handouts.
• Small business owners know how to turn the economy around by creating jobs that big business cannot. And frankly, it sucks that the government flat out refuses to give small businesspeople the chance to do these things that government is incapable of achieving.

     Competition makes life work. Sales are both the heart and the fuel of business. And small business is the engine of our economy. Small business owners don’t talk about “downsizing” and “cashing in political chips” and “taking loans to pay loans.”

     Small business ownerstalk about “opportunity costs” and “cashflow” and “innovation” and “asking and listening to their customers.” They equate sports with their businesses and use competitive terms like: Slamdunk! Goal! Hole-in-one! Gamepoint! TKO! Touchdown! Grandslam! to describe their sales efforts!

     Which sounds healthier to you?

# # #  

What does “business

as usual” mean to you?

Guess what you are? You get to your desk or worksite by 8:30 to beat the 9am employee rush. You make the rounds  with staff, do emails and phone calls. 12 to 1:30 is a fat lunch with an associate, customer, prospect, or relative who’s in town for the day. You return to a lineup of boring, energy-draining meetings where every attendee feels compelled to advance her or his personal agenda. You leave between 5:15 and 5:30 after most everyone else has cleared out.”

    Answer: Odds are you’re a corporate employee. So don’t waste time here; go to FaceBook, CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, the local commuter bar, or whatever floats your boat…and leave the business of straightening out the economy to the only people around who know how.

     I speak of course of those who frequent this blog: small business owners, operators, managers, entrepreneurs, and professional salespeople… those who aren’t conscious of time, who rarely spend more than 20-30 minutes eating anything, and who have no tolerance for time-wasting meetings.

     Their disciplined nature, by the way, doesn’t make these folks numb or humorless; they’re simply dedicated to their pursuits and tend, I believe, to be far more fun to be around than their “Fortune 1000” counterparts.

     None of them live like the “business as usual” guy described above. All of them are busy making their business innovations work because they don’t get corporate bailouts or economic stimulus packages.

     “Business as usual” has been made a thousand times more difficult by the shortsightedness and naivete of our government.

     When history points to small business as overwhelmingly responsible for American job creation, and job creation has been proven to be overwhelmingly responsible for building and strengthening our economy, history needs to be heeded, not re-invented as socialism.

     Sharing wealth and funding corporate and government incompetency doesn’t do it. Channeling staggering amounts of (not yet even available) tax dollars into major corporate entities whose insolent greed put us here to start with makes no sense. 

     The very same small businesses that stand the best chance of being positive economic impact catalysts are the ones being the most harshly drained. This is how to create job creation incentives?  

     “Business as usual” has a prayer attached. We need to pray that small business spirit and entrepreneurial innovativeness can rise up against all odds and once again rescue America’s economy.

     We need to nurture small business and business startups and pray that our nation’s small business owners and managers can make their dreams work in spite of government interference and corporate anchors.

     We need to support small business now more than ever before.    

# # #  

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

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“Don’t I recognize you

from my last job?”

(OR, “An employee today could be a customer tomorrow!”)

     There are not many pages that small business owners and managers like ourselves can take from universities or big business owners and managers, but here’s a new one that’s worth paying attention to…we like to think (being small and flexible and aggressive and innovation-driven) that we have a lock on the whole notion of networking.

     I mean when’s the last time you saw campus or corporate executives at Chamber of Commerce mixers or Better Business Bureau networking events? Ah, but they (academic hot-shots and corporate type muckity-mucks) are mainstays in the job search networking arenas. Yes, you might say, but that’s not real networking; that’s just exploitation of another job search tool.

     Who’s to say? After all: whatever you network for is what you network for. Hmm? If, in other words, you attend a networking event cranked up to meet and greet prospective employers, then job search is indeed your purpose. If you bring six pockets full of business cards with the idea of getting everyone you meet to visit your blog, or follow you on Twitter, then your purpose is to build an audience.

     The point is that we all network everyday with associates, employees, vendors, customers, referrers, prospects, even friends and family. Sure, so what’s this big page from big business (and academia, which hasn’t even a clue about business reality) all about?

     Many major corporations, which themselves have stooped to conquer unsavvy academic methodologies are now seeing great sales and business growth opportunities from networking with former employees! Aha! So, it’s not all of academia here that’s lighting fires? Correct.

     The ignition points are lodged in the sacred college and university halls of alumni associations, alumni directors, and development officers. They started it. Corporations are following it. Small business is next and starting to happen! The corporate social networking we’ve all heard about is now beginning to add a new dimension: employee alumni programs.

     A 2009 article by Mary Hall identified a few representative companies that have already entrenched themselves in commitments to build successful alumni programs: Microsoft, McKinsey, KPMG, Booze Allen, BearingPoint, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Bain & Co., Dow, Coca-Cola, Accenture, Agilent.  

     Hall’s article poses the question: Why would a company want to focus its attention on a group of people who are no longer employees? Because, she says, “whatever path former employees choose, they are likely to be expanding their personal networks and getting to know new people. Why wouldn’t a company want to do the same? An employee today could be a customer tomorrow or have in their network a future hire.”

When ALL is said and done, isn’t it true that ALL of business

is ALL about relationships?

Alumni associations are here for small and mid-sized business. Many already recruit employees from them. Many hold annual reunions that produce payloads of workable i9deas because they come from those who understand how the business works to start 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!

Action In Pursuit Of

Meaningful Goals

Delivers Success

     Much has been made in motivational literature about the wisdom of rewarding those employees who have tried and failed—solving, launching, selling, creating, producing, developing, inventing—cited often as a best practices reverse-psychology hallmark of many of the human resource management approaches used by the same big business catastrophes that have dragged down the entire global economy 

     The point of this thinking is that by mollycoddling people who can’t cut the mustard, these non-performers will inevitably produce more positive results when you continually reward them with an “A” for effort. After all, shouldn’t business be like T-Ball or Cub Scouts where everybody who does a good job of trying gets rewarded? After all, rewarding employees for failed efforts that are born of sincerity may produce failures, but will also produce more sincere efforts, which will presumably and eventually pay off in success. Right? 

     Well, I don’t buy it. It’s non-productive circular reasoning. We’re not talking about sensitivity here. Insensitive bosses don’t survive long term. We’re talking about making businesses work. Period. I believe when you reward people for failing, you are simply prompting them to produce more failure. Don’t you think? I mean, it seems to me it makes more sense to instead reassess the goals attached to the challenges at hand.

     Are goals clearly defined? Specific? Flexible? Realistic? Due-dated? If they’re not ALL of these things, they’re not goals; they’re wishes. Wishes don’t get things done. Action gets things done. Real, meaningful goals that are specific, flexible, realistic and due-dated are the ones that trigger action. Action in pursuit of meaningful goals delivers success. 

     Huh? Well, consider that if perhaps the carrot is closer, the rabbit will actually reach it and then get a commensurate reward (a bite of carrot) vs. having to try getting to a far-away, out-of-reach carrot, the pursuit of which serves only to exhaust and stress out the rabbit, nes pas?

     It is a far more productive practice to reward steady small steps to achieving success with incremental (small, frequent) rewards along the way. It’s easy to say the sky’s the limit, and set off for the sky, but whatever is “easy to say” is rarely productive, and almost never is “reaching the sky” realistic.

     Except for those few wondrous gifts to humankind—like the Wright Brothers, Mother Theresa, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, Einstein—most of us will not achieve their levels of the impossible dream in our lifetimes.

     We can, though, most assuredly achieve our own levels of the impossible dream by scaling ourselves and our employees back to manageable steps and by chunking up tasks to within the range of reason. And to then appreciate and reward accordingly. “One small step…” proclaimed the first moon-landing Astronaut.

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

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Don’t be waiting for unions,

government, big business,

banks, or Fairy Godmothers! 

     It’s a good idea to step on the scale every once in awhile. It’s easy to let your business get too heavy from feeding it too much fat and not exercising it enough, or making sure it gets the sleep it needs. Whaaat? Well, sure: your business has a life too. The question is–since it’s YOUR business and dependent on YOUR choices–what exactly are you doing to keep it healthy and growing?

     When’s the last time you stepped outside your business and re-entered it, pretending you’ve never been there before? Just as trying to draw conclusions about your own health from just stepping on the scale, weight is merely one indicator. Many other factors need to be inventoried.

     Beyond the obvious business health ingredients, like first-impression appearances (e.g., parking, signage, displays, employees, facilities, waiting areas) and all the components like lighting, colors, cleanliness, etc., there’s a myriad of interrelated factors, issues, concerns and pursuits that warrant your assessment or reassessment.

     When, for example, did you last–or when do you next plan to–launch a new product or service program or initiative? Have you been holding back until the economy is “better”? Considering the growing evidence that that could be a very long time, could a launch delay now drag your company’s energy level down, perhaps to a point below a more aggressive market competitor? In other words, is it worth waiting?

     If you’ve already launched your exciting new Zilch-Zapper product line and support services, are they dying on the vine while you’ve preoccupied yourself with tap-dancing around your bankers and investors? There comes a point–as with humans–when a business becomes so over-burdened, so dis-stressed, that it collapses or has a stroke. Could you possibly be cultivating that kind of trauma?

     The good news is that business trauma is easily reversed. It requires only two things:

1) Recognitionthat the negative places your business health dwells in or is headed toward are the result of your conscious or unconscious choices (It’s as easy to choose to UNdo a bad choice as it is to choose to stay with a bad choice), and

2) Awareness that a burning commitment needs to be made to act on and directly treatthe diagnosis your inventory produces, and to be made by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the immediate and long-term business healthcare and growth goals you set.

     Bottom line: If YOU don’t balance the life of your business (as well as your own… in order to grow your business from a position of strength vs. a position of weakness), who is going to balance the life of your business? Certainly not the government, unions, banks, or big business… I guess the answer kinda doesn’t leave much to the imagination. But that’s okay, because imagination is plentiful, and it’s what you need to exercise in order to get the job done. 

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

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“Thank you for your

service to our country!”

     It’s so simple. That’s all it takes. Walk up to anyone in a military uniform — or anyone who proudly wears or displays an insignia identifying him or herself as a veteran or active officer or recruit, extend your arm to shake hands, look her or him in the eye and simply say: “Thank you for your service to our country!”

     Not only will you make that person’s day, but (and this may surprise you) you’ll make your own as well. You’ll feel as pleased walking away as the person you took the ten seconds out of your life to stop!

     Remember Memorial Day Weekend is more than beaches, BBQ’s and parties. It’s a time for tribute to those who have lost their lives and those who have served us all in defense of America. What does this have to do with business to warrant attention on a business blog? Your business and mine could not even exist without the courage, vigilence and protection of those who serve our country.

     Thank you to all those who have served in and for the United States Armed Forces. You make and have made it possible for business owners and managers and entrepreneurs to be free to conduct business and grow business and make business work.

     It is, after all, small business that has made this country great, and it will be small business that leads the way to economic recovery. You who have served our nation have kept small business pathways clear. Now it’s the job of small business to step it up and take advantage of those openings to regain the economic stability that government and big business lost along the way.

TRY THIS:

Make “Thank you for your service to our country!”

a statement of appreciation year-round.

     By making it part of your ongoing practice to extend these words with every armed services encounter (not to mention the recognition due our police, fire and EMS personnel too), you will in fact be boosting your own business as well as your reputation for caring about what’s truly important…because it is!

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

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