Welcome to the world’s first SMALL BIZ Alphabet Series of blog posts!

 “E”…ENERGY

When you check out this blog’s timeless small business input archives with search window keywords, you’ll find a wealth of useful information and creative ideas for boosting sales, the economy, entrepreneurship, employee motivation and productivity, stress and time management, communication skills,  marketing and branding results and customer service, but not a whole lot of attention on the critical business success ingredient of ENERGY, so here goes:

~~~~~~~

ENERGY is mental and emotional

as well as physical.

It is easily spent and

 sometimes hard to muster.

Many of the dynamics and characteristics of energy apply equally to non-human energy sources and resources, but — here, we’re talking about your life in small business. So if you came here expecting some kind of eco-freak dissertation on Mr. Gore’s award-winning global warming hoax, you can delete and surf on!

Small business and professional practices demand never-ending energy management and infusion. So most small business owners and managers and professional practice principals are forever searching for new sources. “Where do you get it?” I’m often asked.

Well, it makes sense to “be,” as Thoreau once urged, “forever on the alert.” Small business energy. It’s not like it comes from cultivating some underground mine, or panning a streambed for nuggets, or plugging yourself into an outlet (yet!), and none of us want to play around with keys and kites in lightning storms. So, where do you get it?

Small business energy is extracted daily from passion for making your small business idea succeed. You don’t suck it out with a turkey baster or hypodermic needle. You simply direct your mind to reach inside of you and pull it up to the surface, or the front burner as some would say. Or let it just sit there and create mold.

Of course it can be stimulated by “outside” people, events, and circumstances, but it is born and raised inside your self (separated into two words on purpose). The secret is to recognize it, accept it, and nurture it. Hey, that’s great, you may say, but what’s the how-to part? What are the steps to make it work?

Sorry to have to be the messenger, but the only magic formula I’ve ever seen in many years of entrepreneuring work and writing and startups and coaching always comes back to the same reality ingredients: 

• Exercise regularly  

• Eat nutritiously

• Sleep enough

• Moderation in both eating and drinking

• No smoking or drugs

• Listen hard and talk little (take notes)

• Love your family

• Respect everyone you come in contact with every day

• Pray

Small business energy, an life energy of course as well –in fact ANY kind of energy– doesn’t happen or get channeled just because we wish for it. It’s all about nurturing your resources, constantly adjusting your attitude, and recognizing that every day and every night is a new opportunity to do the best that you can do.

Start with the next 86,400 seconds!

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

I grew up with unreasonable demands being made on me and my brother and my mother by my alcoholic father. I began thinking that that was life, and all the other stuff that came my way from teachers and coaches and bigger older kids was just more of the same. So were the demands of college, grad school, and parttime jobs. Or so at least it all seemed.

The more I kept inside, the

tighter, more withdrawn

and resentful I became.

Ever feel that way yourself, or am I just imagining? Don’t we all hold onto some kind of resentment? If it has to do with responsibility, maybe it knots up our shoulders. If it’s a love relationship, it may give us chest pains or heartburn, sadly sometimes heart attacks and heart disease.

Some experience “butterflies” in their stomachs, pains in their lower backs, or legs. We get headaches when oxygen and blood flow get sidetracked from traveling freely through our necks and end up like crimped garden hoses. We run to surgeons and chiropractors and massage therapists and drugstores and liquor cabinets for relief.

Did you ever have such an explosive feeling inside that you wanted to scream, but you ended up instead making some feeble guttural sounds, swallowing the wrong way, coughing or choking, or perhaps you simply stuffed food down your throat because it’s hard to express how you feel when your ability to speak is blocked with food?

All of these symptoms and often not-such-good solutions are magnified for small business owners and managers. Besides all the everyday life stresses of family and friends, small business owners and managers cannot leave their workday traumas at their workday worksites. Doing business 24/7 is what life is about. Entrepreneuring takes guts!

When you own or run a business,

you even dream about it!

If someone insults a corporate or government guy at work–and hopefully this is a rare or never occurrence–he may feel resentful and carry it around, or dismiss it, or confront it. Insults are standard daily fare, however, for many if not most small businesses, and the pressure is enormous to not dismiss it or confront it reactively. 

“Trading insults” leaves us with more insults than we started with!

By reacting insread of responding, it will surely come back to haunt

because only reacting opens the floodgate to OVER-reacting! 

So if all of that is the valley of darkness,

how do we rise up into the light?

Well, here’s how I did it. Try this little recipe.

You might pleasantly surprise your SELF! 

First is to acknowledge that we harbor resentment and identify what circumstances or to whom we attach the ill feelings. Next is to take some deep breaths to better circulate that oxygen and blood flow. Then ask ourselves if it’s really worth hanging onto the upset feelings and to what ends or purpose?

Is it worth “hanging on” in exchange for the bitterness to take its toll on our one and only bodies that we want to have usher us into long happy and healthy lives? Take some more deep breaths. Are you so stubborn that you’re willing to give up years of life in exchange for not being a big enough person to forgive? Isn’t it time to move on?

Watch how good your body starts to feel when you finally agree to answer those questions honestly and let go of that resentment you’ve been harboring all these many days, weeks, months, years.   

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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! 

“We are in an information-

overloaded society.

“Most people receive more information from just their smartphones in a week than their grandparents received in their entire lives.”

        ———– Bestselling Author David Baldacci from his newest novel, THE SIXTH MAN www.DavidBaldacci.com

I’m often asked about having done both, and continuing to do both, and can assure you that owning and operating a small business is not the same as writing a book. The commissioned memoir I recently completed and published privately, entitled “GOOD LUCK!” is summarized in the following 25-word “logline” synopsis:

“Steamshipped away, Hitler to Manhattan, 15-year-old Ernst delivered newspapers, farmed chickens, enlisted…  WON medals, citizenship, Holocaust bride, Delaware leadership, White House prominence, and business fortunes.”

That brief description was distilled from the 230-page book. The 230 pages came from more than sixty jam-packed file cabinet drawers and a dozen storage bins, a stack of videotape interviews, and many thousands of photographs, plus over thirty hours of personal interview notes and another 50 hours, at least, of online research.

I’m now working on another commissioned memoir for a totally different kind of business leader. But it’s the same thing. The cutting away process is like being a sculptor, and not always fun. But there is no other way to do justice to representing a lifetime of accomplishment.

Running a business?

Fly by the seat of your pants!

Leave it to the corporate biggies to drown themselves in research. They’re all busy justifying their existences, preoccupied with their own company culture memoirs, while entrepreneurs trial-and-error-and-adjust themselves into small business success, innovative product and service market approaches, and meaningful new job creations. 

I do both (entrepreneuring and writing books) because straddling the two different worlds is challenging to me and because I enjoy the unique opportunities ignited by having one foot in research-based writing and the other in creating new business directions, revenue streams, marketing programs, and sales channels.

Here’s what I see: The bigger the business, the more information-overload there is, and the more of a sculptor one needs to be. The problem is that the pace of life and today’s instantaneous global access forces even an information sculptor to work quicker. So the end product may not always be one of quality as much as one of expediency.

Who spans this gap, covers up and rises through this mad rush? Who leads the way to economic revival? Certainly not those lumbering, top-heavy corporations filled with people trying to cover their butts and write their make-believe life stories as if they were nonfiction.

Your small business is what it is. Avoid the temptation to over-burden it with too much information and too much analysis. Keep hold of the reins, but let it –and your people– run free! At least until it gets so big and successful that you need to ask yourself:

Hmmm, how much IS “too much”?

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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.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

As a national book award-winning author, a national marketing award-winner, and two-time university Professor-of-the-Year award winner, I can deliver the sales you want. 

Don’t believe it!

But if I tell you that I’ve created client programs that have delivered over $1 billion in sales, believe it! (Actually, all of the above is true. But if it’s sales increases you seek, “sales produced” is all that really matters, right?)

I am a writer so (for more than thirty years) I read approximately 1.5 books a week. Fiction. Nonfiction. You name it. I have my favorite books and authors, but I am always trying out new ones.

I rarely if ever choose to do any kinds of “reviews” on this blog, but —and I really should know better by now as I look back at bogus past big-name “Prize” recipients like Carter, Gore, and Obama-– when a Nobel or  Pulitzer Prize winner of any kind comes along, I am still (unfortunately) mainstream-media-conditioned to snap to attention.

Hence, to make a business point at the conclusion of this post, here is my 100% subjective review of Pulitzer Prize-winning book TINKERS by Paul Harding, MFA (who taught writing at Harvard and The University of Iowa):

First of all, considering that the speed of reading this meager (183-page) book could be equated with underwater page-turning, and that the torture of the story offered –which literally tells you how a clock is made when you simply want to know what time it is– Water-Boarding might have been a more fitting title.

If it doesn’t put you to sleep, or drown you in the author’s sweat (which he surely poured forth trying to polish and perfect every overkill shred of every word), it will make you so thoroughly depressed you’ll want to run to the nearest cliff to swan dive into the rocks below.

Even if your genes have been handed down from Socrates, you’ll be bored to tears at this writer’s heart-wrenching effort to draw you into a totally unremarkable story of death and dying.

If, by the way, the subject intrigues you, look up Elizabeth Kübler-Ross for a real education minus all the fluff.

But my advice? Don’t waste your time with TINKERS (or your $14.95/$16.95 in Canada) unless word craftsmanship and belabored descriptions get you excited.

If it’s a great read you’re looking for, you may rather want to go directly to Jed Rubenfeld, Nelson DeMille, Cormac McCarthy, Kent Haruf, or E. Annie Proulx.

Now, why is this like business? What does this have to do with entrepreneuring?

Lots of business service people out there sport big-name awards. But the odds are pretty good you’ll never relate to their missions. And, even if you do, they’re not likely to produce sales for you!

It’s probably a best bet to disregard what business elitists think, and direct your needs to those providers with real-life performance track-records.

If you’re brave enough to ask, I’ll be happy to tell you endless tales about creative groups, ad and PR agencies, marketing firms, management consultants, SEO “experts,” website designers, media moguls, and incompetent but well-intentioned relatives who have won major awards, charged a fortune in fees, and produced nothing!

Generally speaking, the classier and slicker the presentation (or book cover), the more award-conscious (as opposed to sales or productivity-conscious) a given provider tends to be.

As a business owner or manager, this translates to:

• Exercise extreme care when hiring outside consultant or service providers to make sure they are more committed to producing what you need than to serving their own pursuit of awards.

• Be careful about appearances. They are rarely what they seem.

• Ask for samples and examples. Put genuine effort into the screening process.

• Remember that awards of any kind are (like my review above) totally subjective. Sales are real, tangible, and measurable.

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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!

This is not the time

to back off your 

marketing plan!

     Three times in recent weeks I have firsthand experienced business owners running scared from the economic crunch, straight into the debris left by salesquakes that erupted because each decided they were too afraid to carry out their marketing plans.

     If you don’t think that’s remarkable, try this on for size: all three had already paid 90-100% of the associated expenses to activate the marketing programs that they had planned. Something is clearly wrong here. Fear of failure? Fear of success? Fear of competition? Fear of more government regulation? Fear of being out of step with the marketplace? Fear of the words and images they were about to use?

You live in the wilderness, and routinely hunt for food for your family. The deer you’ve been tracking all day is now ten yards ahead frozen in place, do you load your gun and then turn around, unload it, and walk away?

Do you say, “Oh, I guess I wasn’t really interested in hunting anyway,” or “Our food supply can hold out ’til next week,” or “Gee, I can’t just shoot it because it’s not running,” or “What if I miss?” or “How would I ever get the thing back to the truck?” or “I should probably wait because one more after this and I could end up exceeding the limit,” or . . . 

     When I asked each of the three what made them pull up short of triggering programs they had already paid for, the answers I heard back were just as ridiculous as the hunter example. You would not believe the credibility each attempted to put behind the excuses they offered.

     It would have been like the hunter deciding to sit and take the whole gun apart to make sure all the pieces were clean and properly connected before resuming the pursuit, by which time the deer would obviously be six counties away.

     This is not the time to back off your marketing plan.

     You’ve come this far. You’ve put together the best program you can, and engaged the best help you can afford. Don’t start to question yourself and your efforts and Monday morning quarterback your decisions! Your instincts are what got you here in the first place. Trust them.

     What’s the worst that can happen if the plan fails? What’s the worst that can happen if you do no marketing? What’s the worst that can happen if you don’t find another deer before your food supply runs out?

     Roll up your sleeves and get in the game! This is what entrepreneuring is all about. Stop choosing to fret and start choosing to take action. You’ll get to your destination. Enjoy the journey.  

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