Kids are

the world’s greatest

salespeople because

they know how to 

paint a verbal picture 

. . . and put you in it!

When’s the last time you took business advice from a single-digit-aged kid? Every small business owner, operator, manager, entrepreneur, and sales professional should have to do this at least once a month, even for a ten-minute long crash course.

Ask someone under ten years old to tell you why she or he likes something. Then listen. Ask questions but only for clarification. Odds are pretty good that you’ll end up inside that child’s verbal description of a thing, a place, or an event. You’ll get there by your own choice and you’ll enjoy the experience.

Those of you who are Mothers (or Mr. Mom’s) know all about the pearls-of-wisdom-from-the-mouths-of-babes thing, but in case you’re not, or don’t, don’t think for a minute that you haven’t time to waste with such foolishness.

Innovative business empires have been built on ideas and messages that have come from listening to children.

Children —and generally the younger the better– are less inhibited, have far fewer fears, and fewer feelings of self-importance. They may fantasize. They may not seem very realistic about things like money or distance or amounts or sizing up people or situations, but they speak the truth.

And they are passionate.

And they know how to

paint a verbal picture.

And they won’t hesitate to tell you

all the things you need to know

that no one else will tell you.

You will gain value from a child’s perspective.

His or her viewpoint, remember is looking up under your chin and your belly, and inside your nose. Put your new product, or a photo or video clip of it on the table in front of the nearest 8-year-old and ask what she or he thinks it is. Ask what it does, how it works, who would use it, why, when, where, how?

It’s a service? Simplify your explanation of it and see what you get back. Offer and ask for examples and comparisons. Does he or she if the product or service would be a good or bad thing . . . and why?

Tou’re looking to save your business money? What better deal can you make than to get an outpouring of honest, unbiased opinions about your business or business ventures for the price of an ice cream or hot dog, or a trip to the circus or a walk on the beach or through the park?

On top of all that, you’ll get a firsthand booster shot of salesmanship. Maybe you forgot about how important energy and enthusiasm are, or the importance of painting a mental picture with words, and walking a customer into it. Hmm?              

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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

In business and life:

THINGS AREN’T

ALWAYS WHAT

THEY SEEM

The business world is filled

with its share of illusionists.

Look in the mirror. Are you

coughing from the smoke?

We are under relentless media bombardment of fake unemployment numbers. The make-believe news has risen to howling proportions. It’s the White House’s feeble attempt to have us all swallow that the economy is on the upswing (which failure to confirm requires, merely, a trip to your nearest gaspump, with $8 a gallon coming soon to you!).

Just the word “gaspump” puts a gasp in your ump, right?

Probably because it prompts you to remember the last guy who ripped you off.

(Am I imaging this? I doubt it!)

Looking back to November, 2008, should remind us all that in business as well as government (and all of life!), what you see is not always what you get!

                                           

Though most of us think the Latin phrase “Caveat Emptor” — Let the buyer beware— first surfaced in the Ralph Nader consumerism movement of the 1960s, the birth of its use was in fact claimed in 1523, would you believe? So, bottom line here is that deception in business has been around for awhile.

Talk with anyone who sailed through the last few years of the “Dot Gone” Revolution in the 1990s, and you’ll hear sad tales of almost jumping out of tall buildings. I lost $500,000 with a legal signed contract in hand. Another family member lost $1.5 million with a signed contract in hand. The lesson? Signed documents mean nothing!

Where does that leave us? Having to be V~E~R~Y cautious about others we do business with. I’m not so much talking about customers (though big-ticket product and service customers have been known to take what they can and run). I’m really referring more to employment and investor and loan arrangements — big bucks deals!

But I’m also keying in on small business ripoffs that cost big-time hours and effort.

Those are the real killers of entrepreneurial spirit!

I need to make sales to eat.

It’s often hard to do due diligence on a small-time business down the road or in the next town enough to find out that the owner is a scam artist, looking to con as much information from your brain as possible, for free!

Experience has taught me some, but –in the end– I still have to sell my services. Selling services requires giving services. You can sample the pastrami in a deli, but any kind of consultant (except maybe a pastrami consultant) has to provide a sampling of know-how and experience, and that takes time. And time costs money.

So figuring out how to best parcel out samples of your expertise in order to hook the fish but not lose your shirt is the ultimate challenge. And you may never win if you don’t approach prospects with reserved skepticism. I’m not suggesting distrust. I trust everyone until they prove otherwise. I’m talking about being yellow-light-cautious. 

Not everyone has your integrity. Not everyone believes in God. Not everyone functions completely on her or his own. (You’ve heard of silent partners? Wives? In-laws?)

There’s not a whole lot we can do about gas prices, but we always have control of whom we choose to do business with. Yellow lights are only followed by red lights!

Stay alert. Don’t get hurt!

# # #

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! 

GOTTA HUNKA SPUNK?                                                                                                                               

NEGATIVE REALITY: “In THIS economy? Nah, now’s not the time to be thinkin’ about starting or expanding a business. You’d have to be nuts! Besides it costs too much for stuff like that, and –if I were gonna do a big new push, I’d want to do it the right way, y’know? Big-time!”          

POSITIVE REALITY: There will never be enough money available to start up or expand a business the way I want to make it happen. Never. So waiting won’t matter. I’ve always believed that CONTRARY to the famous quote: 

NOTHING comes to he who waits!     

That leaves spunk . . .  

1.  Spunk,

2.  determination,

3. tenacious persistence, 

4. belief in yourself and your ideas,

5. commitment,

6. and a burning desire to make your ideas succeed. 

When all six of these ingredients are front and center 24/7, odds are you will succeed by just putting your head down and charging toward the goal of making your product or service ideas come to fruition. 

When you can do that, the money you need to put things over the top will come to you from sources you least expect. Every truly successful entrepreneur will attest to this. If you doubt it, then consider these two points:

• If you have doubt, then you do not have all six criteria (noted above) going for you. Back off and shore up the weak spots before you go charging off. 

• If you are close to having the six criteria above, but still have a smidgen of doubt, talk with someone who has been successful as an entrepreneur, someone who started a successful enterprise on the proverbial shoestring, and you will hear back the exact same kind of chatter.                                           

In other words, people who worry about their ideas making money will not make money; they will, instead, make worry. 

Those who turn their backs on the making money goals and focus their energies instead on getting their ideas to succeed, will make money. 

Weird, huh?  Perhaps, but it’s true.

I have helped over 500 successful businesses and business expansions to get started. I have never seen a single exception to this thinking.  I’m sure there must be some somewhere, but not in my experience. 

You can take advantage of my experience if you’re thinking about launching a business or expanding one. For a modest consulting fee, I will serve as your temporary coach and advisor until you get things off the ground. I work with clients by phone and computer and occasionally, when realistic and appropriate, personal visit. 

You can tap into what I have learned the hard way and spare yourself considerable stress and expense. 

If you’re interested, call me direct at 302.933.0116, and let’s set a time to talk. No fee. I’ll give you 20-30 minutes to get me interested.

If you can’t afford me or I can’t help you personally, I’ll steer you in the right directions –as a courtesy– because my life’s mission is to help small businesses succeed.                                                                                                        

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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!

There are 30 million of us,

and we know better!

Through your manipulated mainstream media mouthpieces –specifically all the TV networks (except Fox), public radio, and most major newspapers– you and your union-thug cronies can talk until you’re blue in the face trying to convince us all that the economy has turned.

We know better.

We are the 30 million catalysts of America’s society and economy who own and run small businesses.

We see the truth. We are not stupid. We know the economy has not turned.

In spite of all your empty claims and false promises, we know this is only the beginning.

We are watching

. . . the gas pumps guzzle our wallets! While you cheer the rising prices to “urge more prudent energy spending,” we are paying more to ship and transport less. (And forget about pleasure travel!)

Are you truly so naive as to think that preserving obscure wildlife species (like spotted owls?) that barely even inhabit America’s vast oil-rich tundras to start with, could possibly be more important than our nation’s self-sufficiency and long-term human survival?

How much longer do you think you can continue to cultivate our nation’s dependency on Arab oil supplies when there’s more than enough in the U.S. to be able to cut those ties completely?

Let we whose lives your decisions are impacting make those choices for ourselves and our own grandchildren.  

We are watching

. . . food prices soar. We are eating (and feeding our families) less healthy more affordable meals in order to cut costs. Food costs will continue to rise as Arab-imported oil costs rise.

At some point, your defiance will shut down the shipping industry, and the rest of our industrialized nation will get flushed away in its wake. No? Then prove it. At the very least explain it! 

Your creeping socialism power-craze has overtaken the reality of America’s survival. Your misguided actions are succeeding at snuffing out the very spirit of entrepreneurship that has made America great! 

We are watching

. . . your tax dollar handouts go to bungling corporate giants who contribute not one iota to new job creation.

We are watching

. . .  unnecessary useless jobs be “created” in government so you, the bosses, can step back and smile and orate and snap your suspenders and gloat about all the new jobs being created.

Those meaningless jobs accomplish nothing except increase the already-catastrophic deficit that you have had the power to fix by putting an end to your administration’s reckless spending. You have instead opted to usher in a state of chaos and convulsiveness that tears at the very fabric of American life and America’s families.

Exaggeration? Oh, how we wish that were the case.  

Evidently, the news has somehow escaped you that America’s 30 million small businesses account for the vast majority of new jobs (97.7% by some estimates!). 

It must be hard to accept and act upon that fact when you’re deliriously busy spending the tax-dollars extracted from those same small businesses, and using them to bail out the dark corners of corporate incompetency.

Adding insult to injury, you’re using our hard-earned tax-dollars to secure and pay back voter support by urging we cave in to gluttonous union demands. You’re trying to improve education by increasing (already outrageously high) teacher benefits? Do people perform better because they’re paid more? That’s a new one.

Isn’t it bad enough that small business will be paying through the nose for ten years just to cover your inept healthcare plan that simply cannot achieve the ends you think the means are designed for?

Okay, maybe these questions won’t get answered, but the small business owners and managers of America will have to be answered. The political rug you’re trying to sweep us all under won’t hide 30 million self-starters. 

We are watching, and soon

(11/06/12) we will be acting!

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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!

Entrepreneurs?  No!  It’s the

9-5 folks who sell their souls!

I read a Tweet today, oh boy, and all it said was:

“Entrepreneurship is risky!”

Ah, such sweet naivety!

Corporate life is risky, not entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs take only reasonable risks, and –in the process– maintain strong contact with and control of their destinies.

Corporate types are the ones who risk.

They risk losing their souls.

They give up their spirits to security.

Far greater risks indeed than those that entrepreneurs take by investing in themselves! 

Having a nine to five job with guaranteed benefits and a pocketful of perks is like feeding a bagful of sugar cubes to a horse. It will love you and run around in circles until it drops from exhaustion. But never accomplish anything.

• If you believe life is all about who can drink and BBQ the most on any given weekend, be the 5-mile-run talk of the neighborhood and pay the way through college for kids who ought to be earning it themselves, you may want to just stay where you are. That white shirt and tie fits your sterile, fair-weather-friend, control-freak personality.

• You’ve been kissing corporate political butts so long to get to the next rung on that ladder to the stars, that you’ve forgotten there are other ways to achieve (like, for example, creating new jobs or innovating new revenue streams with product and service line extensions that are simply introduced and sold instead of swallowing them up in corporate analysis paralysis.

• You probably should just hang onto that corporate job.

• You’ll never survive with pursuing your own business. It will be too much work, too many hours, not enough pay, no security, and never enough time to do weekend runs and BBQs. You’ll be searching futilely for vacations, weekend time, 401k deposits, dental plans, sick days, bonuses, and a pension.

Entrepreneurs live every minute of every day with a burning desire to make their ideas succeed, and will work 24/7 when necessary to do that.

They are NOT big risk-takers.

In fact, I’m quite sure if you start counting up gamblers, you’ll find the overwhelming majority are corporate moguls.

People who work hard to build and maintain their own business don’t bet the farm because they have no income/benefit guarantees to back up their losses (and they work too hard for their money!).

Entrepreneurship is about passionate determination to step out where others cower. Corporate life is about protecting yourself . . . having a ready-made excuse for every action, every decision, and never working longer or harder than is required or expected.

Getting ahead personally is more important to corporate employees than gaining success with or for the product or service one represents.

The differences are huge.

If you’re on the streets and you think like a big-business employee, get some more education and training and find yourself a safe, secure job.

If you’re in college and think like an entrepreneur, get out! Stop wasting your time and money. College will not teach you how to believe in yourself and your business ideas, and make them work.

Only “doing it” does it!

# # #

931.854.0474 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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!

Trying to run a small business

amid today’s world turmoils is 

like trying to do your tax return

 at a Chucky Cheese

birthday party!

CIA people will tell you that you really don’t want to know what’s going on in the world 24/7. Global terrorist threats and attacks are literally nonstop across the entire planet, all day and night, every day and night.

We hear from off-the-deep-end-tree-huggers (so described as to separate them from genuine environmentalists) that Al Gore’s “global warming” warnings were not so “warm” and were actually intended to focus more broadly on “climate change.”

Whew!

We should all be relieved to know that the man didn’t have the warming warning thing any more wrong than his claims to have “invented the Internet,” and that he really meant to say “climate change” from the outset.

Oh! Okay.

And we all know about gas prices, and the federal government’s bungling of the economy. [See my 87 gazillion posts about how to turn the economy around with tax incentives for job creation to new entrepreneurs — instead of tax-dollar handouts to incompetent corporate giants, thieving unions, and socialistic reform programs that simply add to the crushing deficit burden.]

Now I know this next statement will send 14,000 PETA members picketing me and no doubt some threats from civil liberties lawyers, but by way of meaningful advice to small business and professional practice owners, operators, partners and managers:

When a horse throws you,

get up, brush yourself off,

punch the horse in the nose

and climb back on!

(Ask any horse trainer)

Right, says you, but how do you concentrate on your own business when all the walls around you come tumbling down? First, all the walls around you are not tumbling down.

It’s cold in lots of places where it was always warm. People riot in the streets and get killed every day of the week in some town or city in some country. That doesn’t make it right, or even alright, but it should be enough to convince you that you need to stay alert while keeping your shoulder to the wheel. Stick-to-it-tive-ness is one of the great entrepreneurial traits.

The economy? The only thing that will turn that around — realistically speaking — is new national leadership that values and understands the contributions of small business, that responds to small business, and that rises to the occasion to nurture entrepreneurship with more than tokenism, empty promises, and babble.

So the bottom line is that you need to send your star rising on your own. There’s no place left to lean. Challenge yourself and your people to innovate, build high trust, exceed customer service expectations, and market the truth.

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302.933.0116   Hal@BusinessWorks.US

“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! 

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!

~~~~~~~~

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!

Maybe you never thought

it was coming

. . . but, yes, it’s time! 

It’s time for:

“The Entrepreneur Whisperer”!

First there was Monty Roberts “The Horse Whisperer” and then Cesar Millan “The Dog Whisperer.”

And now the time has finally arrived (arriven?) for all of us who own or run a small or medium-size business or professional practice to learn some big-time sales lessons from “The Entrepreneur Whisperer“ whose insights and advice come from those guys’ horse and dog experiences!

“Hey!,” you say, “what do animal trainers know about business?”

The answer: Probably more than we do! Keep an open mind here. Remember that open minds open doors!

Monty Roberts managed and trained wild horses by channeling their energy. A horse (by Cesar Millan’s account of Roberts’ underlying platform): “…does exactly what (a human’s) emotional communications has told it to do.”

DO read Millan’s book, Be The Pack Leader, which I highly recommend for everyone in a leadership position, even if you’re a “cat person,” even if you (hard to imagine) hate dogs!.

You will gain insights about leadership and teamwork that (except for Giuliani’s Leadership) all the textbooks on earth (including Peter Drucker’s Management, which I used for a textbook in my professor days) don’t even come close to touching.

“We as humans,”Millan says, ” have the power to turn our perceptions around and use them to our advantage.

“Instead of seeing the negative things we are used to seeing, we can choose to see something different.”

He proceeds to explain how researchers have proven that the human brain cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined.

“When people who fear snakes are shown pictures of snakes,” says Millan, “sensors on their skin will detect sweat breaking out and other signs of anxiety, even if the experiment subjects don’t admit to feeling fear.” He concludes, “If you are ‘acting’ tough, but inside still feeling terrified, your dog will know it instantly. Your boss might not,” he adds, “but your dog definitely will.”

But if YOU are the boss, your employees will know whether you are coming from a position of confidence or not. So will your customers. So will your suppliers and vendors. So will your partners and investors! All of them watch everything you do, and hear everything you say, even when you least expect they’re paying attention.

“We can’t change,” says Millan, “our instinctual feelings any more than our dogs can . . . but as humans, we can change our thoughts.” This point of distinction is also illuminated by Deepak Chopra, and by Dr. Wayne Dyer in his book The Power of Intention.

The bottom line for entrepreneurs is to accept the idea of trashing your ego!

The more you cling to your ideas about who you are and the less you honor your intentions about what you are doing that is leading you to where you want to go, the lower your odds of success.

In other words, stop second-guessing yourself, stop being insulted, and stop worrying about what others think!

Believe in your ability to channel your own and others’ energy in productive pursuits.

Then do it! 

~~~~~~~~~

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 think you have an 

entrepreneurial mind,

it’s probably because

you have no mind left!

Anyone in their right mind would hardly choose an entrepreneurial career path if, indeed, any sense of logic was to prevail on the ultimate decision.

Those who go to college and major in entrepreneurship, imagining themselves as the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Mary Kay Ash or Henry Ford should instead imagine themselves as job candidates for Disney World.

Entrepreneurship is not an academic pursuit, and any college that offers it, pretending that it will produce graduates capable of changing the world should have its legs kicked out from under it.

I graduated from The New School for Entrepreneurs. I have taught entrepreneurship in college and university classrooms, and in private training facilities. I’ve written books and articles on it.

Entrepreneurship is an instinctive, gut, behavioral attitude that is more often inherited than learned.

It comes with the territory of growing up in a family or home where some influential person (father? mother? uncle? brother? next door neighbor?) has made a living by exercising an innovative spirit and taking reasonable risks in pursuit of a burning desire to make an idea succeed.

People can learn ABOUT entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ventures and enterprises and mindsets, but people cannot be transformed into entrepreneurs out of thin air simply because they can complete some egotistical business flunkie professor’s course outline with flying colors.

Wouldn’t that professor be a successful entrepreneur instead of a has-been academic?

At one weak point in my corporate life and academic existence that followed, I actually bought the theory that entrepreneurs could be made as well as born. It’s not true.

Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs, and those of us who are not entrepreneurs should stop pretending we are.

The pathway to independent business success is becoming irrevocably clogged and impassable. Legitimate entrepreneurs are being denied access to big-time success by the tsunami of incompetence being churned out by so-called “higher education.”

Hey, who can blame those struggling academic administrator types? After all, the promise of delivering entrepreneurial graduates sounds delicious to the communities-at-large.

The implied promises of happiness that accompany the freedom of working for oneself are expounded upon.

The local media rise to the occasion of making it all look like an admirable life pursuit, and even sponsor entrepreneur award programs (no doubt as investments in future media advertising paybacks from the soon-to-be business successes).

The saddest fallout is that naive parents –who want to see Susie and Charlie Jr. succeed at any cost– swallow the whole enchilada.

Their kids see a clear opening all the way to the fifty-yard line without interference, and four years of partytime capped by an office or store with their names in lights and lots of free time.

They see themselves reporting to no one, and having the wherewithal to pursue other life challenges, like travel and sports and surfing the Net and dating and all that other stuff that respected well-to-do business owners do.

And all the time, they are with dollar signs in their eyeballs.

The trouble is no one thinks about the surprises of needing collateral to get a bank loan or the realities of venture capitalists offering only a sliver of interest in a highly narrow field of business interests . . . and then wanting 65% ownership plus immediate return of their investments.

Little if any thought is given to who’s going to support whom during the years of startup or of (ahem!) unexpected parenting realities (Hmmm, some do manage to make time for some non-business endeavors). 

Not a pretty picture. Nine out of eleven businesses fail in the first five years. It takes six years just to break even. It’s no wonder that people opt for thirty years of brain-dead government work, at higher pay than any comparable position in the private sector. You think some thing’s wrong with this picture? Maybe you should think about voting for a government with business experience next go-round?

~~~~~~~~~

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!

Loose Lips DO Sink Ships . . .

When to keep your

mouth shut, and how.

You’re a self-confident entrepreneur, maybe even cocky. The likelihood is that you have a high sense of self-esteem and a big fat ego that sometimes gets in the way of your success —  an ego that you find yourself tripping over every once in awhile.

Your $50-necktie-and-$100-white-shirt corporate brother-in-law thinks you’re a smart-ass know-it-all. The guy you’ve been busting a gut trying to get business from can’t get past the fact that you’ve been everywhere, done everything, and have the same amount (or more) experience that he has. People who work for you start to yawn when you begin ticking off your accomplishments.

“A time for everything under heaven”

is true for sure.

But believing it and acting it

may be two separate issues.

How hard is it to keep your mouth shut when a customer, prospect, employee, or supplier starts offering an opinion on something you see differently, based on your firsthand knowledge?

Do you shut down your listening skills because you’re in a hurry to impress the other person that you already know the details, the scoop, the inside story, the whatever?

If any of this sounds even vaguely familiar, you may be setting yourself up for failure. Consider that no one likes to be upstaged. No one likes not being heard or paid attention to.

Try asking questions instead of offering opinions. Remember that true entrepreneurs who start and run successful ventures seek always to find others smarter than they are to run and manage their operations 

Surely you’ve heard some grandparent

warn a child to “hold your tongue!”

It’s actually very good and often productive advice. Try putting the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth (it’s very hard to speak coherently that way) when someone else starts in on a subject about which you consider yourself well-informed.

It will force you to pay attention and wait. It will force you to take the time to present your ideas in a less offensive, more productive manner.       

If someone else is trying to impress you, it almost always means that that person is already impressed with you.

If the exchangeis a potentially good one for either and/or both of you, tolerance may get you more respect than rebuttals or one-upmanship. Respect generates trust and cooperation and sales. Information presented in a way that others might interpret as bragging does not.

Leadership is about balance.

Balanced communications is the magic combination that opens the lock. Listening, active listening — eye contact, nodding, expressing agreement and understanding, asking for examples and diagrams, questioning instead of telling and offering opinions, paraphrasing, taking notes, showing genuine interest and concern — are leadership behaviors that create balance. 

Anytime you’re tempted to pounce on a discussion topic with with a tsunami of personal experience, supportive data, resource recommendations, evidence you consider conclusive to support your position . . . STOP! Ask yourself if you are more interested in impressing someone with how much you know or are capable of, than you are with growing or boosting your business.

When you can respond instead of react,

you can never over-react!

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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