A Time To Yield To Experts.

There’s light at the end of the half-full glass, and no end in sight at the half-empty one! And you thought you were in a tunnel? Maybe you are. Maybe the glass is sitting empty on the shelf, or maybe it’s so full, it’s spilling over the top. Maybe that tunnel is one-way.

Confused yet?

How sure are you that your branding and marketing messages are not equally confusing to your customers and prospects? If what you are saying to your target market about your business is not transparently clear, you lose. Period.

Many entrepreneurs mistakenly believe they’re great marketers because they have a great idea. They think they can write great slogans because they’ve spent years getting back pats from warm, fuzzy, encouraging friends and family.

The problem with this is that support like that unwittingly lends credibility to the incredulous, and the entrepreneurs involved take the tacit approvals as further encouragement to pursue their hair-brained schemes and lunatic ventures. It fuels their ego fires.

And, yes, some of those ideas truly are gems–diamonds in the rough–and family and friend nurturing can lead to ill-founded yet awe-inspiring optimism that ultimately anchors many successful new businesses. 

BUT, if you’re confused about how to best express your business thoughts in a captivating manner, imagine how confused those you seek to captivate might be?

The vast majority of small business marketing messages are misdirected, convoluted, not memorable and overly braggadocio.You know the ones who thump their chests . . . 

“We’re the best, the greatest, the finest and most quality-conscious, the most economical, the most customer service conscious, the oldest, the largest, the most traditional, the most modern, the most forward-thinking. We’re the good ole boys. Our family business tradition goes back to the Ice Age (Stone Age?). We’ve been on the Internet since 1999. We support our community. We back up our promises. We guarantee our work. Count on us. We do it all!”  

WHOOP-EE for you, but sooo what? Nobody cares!! 

Being a positive, optimistic, and exceptional  business leader means recognizing that the customer IS always right WITHOUT– short of physical threats or violence--EXCEPTION. Successful businesses literally REVOLVE AROUND the customer.

Successful entrepreneurs are those who fully grasp and understand the need to nurture everyone (customers AND employees AND suppliers) around them in addition to their product and service ideas.

SUCCESSFUL Entrepreneuring…

• The successful business entrepreneur functions from a position of strength, but recognizes her or his limitations and takes steps to shore up those areas with other’s strengths. 

• The successful business entrepreneur sees people (as well as his or her idea) as the business’s most important asset.

• She or he makes a conscious effort to be positive, optimistic, straightforward, appreciative, and motivational in EVERY single encounter with EVERY person EVERY day. . . exercising authenticity, giving full attention, respect, empathy, and providing solution direction guidance. 

• This means understanding that being genuine 24/7 is not necessarily an easy behavior, but that behavior is a choice. 

Delivering confusing messages to a target market can be worse than delivering no message at all. People will not easily or quickly forget marketing message mistakes. So marketing is just one more place to recruit and rely on professional skills.

An experienced outsider will almost always do a better job of clarifying direction and eliminating marketing message confusion than the business creator.

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 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!

Entrepreneurship is 

the only solution to 

plummeting economy, 

job losses, and

government spending sprees!

It’s true. American history has demonstrated time and again that the only road to economic strength and stability is the one that leads to the support and encouragement of entrepreneurial pursuits. America’s federal government has underscored this point repeatedly with its own arrogant and misguided business incompetency that runs rampant to the core.

Job losses are continuing at a record rate, and new jobs are not being created.

Job creation is the single most powerful and essential factor in strengthening industry and service sector pursuits, and in boosting the value of the dollar. Job creation is almost exclusively the product of small business. Job creation does not come from the government that uses tax money to pay for useless jobs. Neither does it come from big business that invests itself in maintaining the status quo.

 Job creation is almost exclusively the product of small business.

Job creation is the child of small business because small business is owned and operated by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs don’t know how to give up. They don’t know how to spend their way out of problems. They find solutions, or — by instinct — create them! 

Entrepreneurs live with a  burning desire to make their ideas succeed.

Entrepreneurs alone know how to capture the spirit of innovation in both thinking and practice. And no one needs to look further for the proof of it than the single-mindedness of purpose exuded out of the garages of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, out of the 10,000 attempts by Edison to invent the light bulb, out of the persistence and perseverance of Henry Ford and Mary Kay Ash and Ellen DeGeneres.

Why has nothing but SBA tokenism been offered to small business? Because tokenism is enough to make good press.

Why has nothing substantive been done to drive job creation incentives to small business and to stop breaking small business backs long enough to actually foster new jobs? Because it doesn’t suit prevailing political spending spree goals and because government has ZERO business experience.

America’s 30 million small business owners need to accept the fact that no help is on the way

What needs to happen: America’s 30 million small business owners need to accept the fact that no help is on the way, and start acting like the entrepreneurs they were in the early “pre-cushy” days. There needs to be a resurgence of pioneer spirit and a greater sense of self-reliance that seems — for the lack of necessity being the mother of invention — to have skipped a generation.

It means now is the time to dig in.

It means now is the time to dig in, to plant your entrepreneurial energy firmly into shouldering the growth of your own business, with regard for your neighbor, but determination to go forward without dependency. Government and big business won’t bail you out. And there is no hope for banding together such fiercely independent souls as entrepreneurs into some kind of grass-roots movement.

Without losing regard for others and their struggles, or the virtues of charity, or the good of the communities that support you . . . it is time to act on your own and in your own behalf.  If even a fraction of America’s 30 million upstarts lead their businesses out of the fog, they will create needed new jobs and brighten the economy with the glow of real sunshine instead of a fading flashlight.

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 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!

How you chunk up

daily commute time  

reveals the real you!

Ever wonder what you can learn about others based on how they spend their work commute time?

As unorthodox an HR assessment tool as it may seem, it’s probably as effective as any other. How a person commutes to work (i.e., by what means and process) indicates, after all, a little something of each of the following career attributes:

1. time and stress management skills
2. concentration and organization skills
3. entrepreneurship
4. motivation and prioritizing skills
5. sense of initiative and responsiveness

The first pair of these itemized attributes (time and stress management skills) signals a person’s ability to adhere to a schedule while juggling interferences, interruptions, and delays. It also offers some clue about tolerance levels associated with the daily barrage of pin-pricks and nit-picks (and occasional flair-ups) of fellow-commuters.

Yes, there are still carpool goof-balls who jam an unsuspecting neighbor between them in the backseat and proceed to laugh as they spill coffee on the sandwiched lap at every pothole.

Yes, there’s always a sprawling snoring (and probably drooling) sleeper to awaken and/or climb over who’s commandeering two (or three with luggage) rush hour train (or subway or bus) seats — always, of course, when there are no other seats available.

What’s a poor commuter to do? Standing for an hour of jerks (both kinds) and bounces is not usually a great option for starting the day, especially when the time window was planned for laptop or paperwork. And please don’t start with defensive comments from “business class” express trains or some limo drivers union. We’re talking real life here. 

The second pair of attributes (concentration and organization skills) assumes the first pair can be readily met and dispensed with. It’s almost always easier to concentrate and be organized when you’re on schedule and able to fend off anger, annoyance, and upset!

Then there are also some who thrive at concentrating and being organized in chaos and turmoil. (A terrific qualifier for government job applicants!)

Next is, aaah yes, entrepreneurship! First of all, most of these folks only commute a flight or two of stairs in their bathrobes. Hey, there has to be some trade-off with corporatesville, right? And if any of these types are not officially running a basement or garage or kitchen table operation already, they are planning the moment of great escape, and aren’t reading this anyway.

Motivation and priority issues surface as various commuters face the grueling daily ritual of “Commuter Mental Block.”  Not sure about that? Just stand back and watch how many smiles disembark commuter vehicles balanced atop those suits and skirts as they enter work zones and re-enter home zones.

You’ll get volumes of information to match up with Maslow’s Hierarchy theory of motivation and a truckload of clues about those with strong prioritizing interests.

Responsive individuals with a sense of initiative rarely keep commuting . . . except perhaps a bathrobe-clad flight or two. These are the innovators, the catalysts for change, the emerging entrepreneurs who will gladly move to live on the edge of their venturesome ideas. They are the people who happily leap from the daily traffic battles and 9 to 5 status quo monotony to take their chances with their own self control. For the rest: Don’t give up your day job!    

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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

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

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Not getting quality

from consultants?

  This may be why…

     Right off the top, if it’s not a life-or-death surgical, ocean oil leak, or rocket science need to fill, stop with the panic attacks about finding a consultant with industry-specific experience.

     What you need is to find a consultant who can get the job done. Period.

• Give me a guy, for example, who sells railroad cars full of French fries and I’ll teach him what I need him to know about representing my fine linens products (or my precision computer parts, or my insurance policies). And he’ll do better at it than a fine linens (or microchip) manufacturing (or insurance) expert.
• As another example, show me someone who maintains an efficient warehouse operation, and I’ll show her how to manage a shipping schedule better than the head of any trucking company.

     Why? Because sales and organizational skills are lot harder, more time-consuming, and more expensive to teach than the ins and outs of your business.

     Learning how you manufacture and package and sell your products and services is easy. Learning how to think and act like a sales or traffic management pro is not easy because it’s often an issue of attitude.

When you’re outsourcing projects and looking for consultants who can get the job done, don’t be making yourself crazy trying to find someone who has extensive experience in your industry or profession.

     Look instead for someone who has extensive experience in her or his consulting specialty. A good solid marketing person or writer or web designer or trainer or coach, for instance, doesn’t need to have ANY expertise in your specific business or professional practice in order to help you produce a significant difference in sales, sales leads, CRM, or staff development.

The same principles and dynamics that work for selling hot dogs also work for selling precision parts, accounting and legal services, heart transplant specialists, or (aaah, entrepreneurship!) “Silly Bands.”

     The art and insight of writing an effective news release, advertising campaign, or website, doesn’t change in the slightest.

     The target markets change; the media selections change; the technical details change. But benefits are still what need to be emphasized.

     All products and services are purchased because an emotional buying motive is triggered — not because a laundry list of rational features has been presented. Skilled marketing consultants know how to plan and create and activate emotional buying motive triggers that get results.

     Your job is to teach them your business, be a sounding board for their recommendations, and help bring about action.

     You can follow the advice of headhunters and placement services and counselors and job trainers all you want, and puppy-dog behind every leader in your industry or profession, but I’ll put my money on you finding the best outsource consulting service teams and individuals based on your own instincts and your own judge of character and chemistry. It got you here. It works.

Trust yourself.

     The minute you’re able to find people who can fill the role(s) you have in mind, who have a track-record of success in many diverse fields, don’t hesitate to engage her/him/them simply because you think your candy company is so unique that only someone who is a candy business expert can appreciate you and your business enough to do justice to it. A sweet idea, but unrealistic. 

Informed fresh perspectives don’t

    come from clones or ostriches.    

 www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America and America’s Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

Entrepreneurs are alive

and well (but fading)

in corporations. 

Many of today’s more progressive corporate entities still house an exuberant universe of entrepreneurial movers and shakers (Corporate Entrepreneurs © I call them), but the numbers are fading.

This is not a good signal to the business world because the giant companies that are hunkering down and cutting corners and holding desperately to their belongings are the same ones that were thriving with these freewheeling innovators just a couple of years back.

It’s as if these small-business-minded agents of change have had their rugs pulled out from under them. Our inept federal government has seen fit to replace the entrepreneurial energy they couldn’t harness — and surely could never understand — with government bailout dollars attached to CEO promises to toe the line and tighten the belts.

Like one big ugly Harry Potter fantasy trip, shareholders have responded by retreating into the evil “Do Nothing Abyss” of Status Quo Land. Too bad. A lot of the nation’s more spirited corporate enterprises have been reduced to rubble in the process.

The transition has served to move the center of the business world into the cyberspace pursuits of high technology because that’s proven to be one of the last remaining protective and nurturing bastions of corporate entrepreneurial fallout.

Entrepreneurs and Corporate Entrepreneurs must join together and rise to the occasion of voting out those who think that running a lemonade stand business means giving free lemonade to everyone who passes by, whether they want it or not, and then charging only those who are thirsty and rich enough to afford the unannounced mark-ups to $20 a cup . . . so that those revenues can pay the bills and keep the “free faucet” running.

Then, when the tank runs dry, give ’em more cash and make ’em raise their rates to pay it back.”

What’s next? The torch of innovative thinking and doing is getting passed back to it’s rightful owners: small business. A great deal needs yet to happen for small business owners, operators, and managers  in order to ensure clear passage to economic resurgence. The burden of righting the ship rests squarely on the shoulders of government.

Only government has the wherewithal to clear the path, provide meaningful (meaningful) incentives to small business to create real jobs and attract innovative leadership to their ranks.

No! . . . creating make-believe jobs inside government, and with and for government contractors, is not the answer. It never has been. Those jobs are a long-term drain on taxpayers. They are neither real nor meaningful and simply cannot have a positive influence on the economy.

Entrepreneurial business leaders need to step up. Our existing government leadership needs to step down. The first of these challenges is ready to happen. The second of these will never happen voluntarily because politics runs thicker than blood.

Entrepreneurs and Corporate Entrepreneurs must join together and rise to the occasion of voting out those who think that running a lemonade stand business means giving free lemonade to everyone who passes by, whether they want it or not, and then charging only those who are thirsty and rich enough to afford the unannounced mark-ups to $20 a cup . . . so that those revenues can pay the bills and keep the “free faucet” running.

Then, when the tank runs dry, give ’em more cash and make ’em raise their rates to pay it back. That mentality will not restore our economy. Competitive marketplaces will. Competitive marketplaces turn on innovative entrepreneurial spirit, not handouts. Corporate Entrepreneurs have the car keys. It’s time to get behind the steering wheel!

# # #

Hal@Businessworks.US  931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

When you undertake

to organize, manage,

and assume the risks

of owning and running

a business…

. . . you are not just taking a leap of faith.

You are taking the leap with a full plate in hand.

Imagine a waiter balancing a tray full of dinners on one hand and carrying a “table jack” with the other, while deftly jumping across a six-foot moat into a flame-edge-bordered room packed with ravenously hungry people, and no idea of who ordered what.

     Whew!

     Well, if the guy is the owner of the restaurant, odds are the right people will get the right food, others will get some complimentary food with appreciative remarks and everyone will end up coming back.

     If it’s a giant chain restaurant, the wrong people will get the wrong meals, nobody else will be acknowledged and the only ones who return will be coming back for the cheap prices only. 

     It seems appropriate on National Prayer Day (yes, that’s today in case you forgot to say some) to be addressing leaps of faith, even if it is in conjunction with a business focus. Entrepreneurial enterprises are, after all, among some of the world’s greatest benefactors of prayer and leadership faith.

     Most small business owners do most everything that needs to be done by themselves. They sell; they finance; they organize; they manage; they innovate; they manage and serve customers and clients; they market, promote, and publicize. Entrepreneurial “personalities” rarely if ever match corporate counterparts (and most would agree there really are no direct counterparts anyway).

     Entrepreneurs tend to be entrepreneurs because they simply don’t fit the orderly, entrenched, established, procedural, authoritative and controlling mindset that corporate muckity-mucks seem to thrive on. Corporate guys are invested in the status quo. Whoa! Don’t make waves!

     Senior executive vice presidents and directors of anything are up to their you-know-whats in burdensome and tedious reliance on planning and analyzing . . . activities that are viewed by upstart business venture principals as paralyzing behavior.

     By contrast, entrepreneurs thrive on innovation, action, and high enthusiasm. When a small business owner consults with her market research department, she is talking to herself as she cruises through Bing and Google.

     Okay, so right about now, I know there are a smattering of grumbling corporate people (mostly, it seems, brothers-in-law of entrepreneurs!) who are punching their monitors and yelling that times have changed and big business is now leading the way in innovation and brand loyalty and new market development and communications and high-level training. Bull.

     Automakers? Banks? Pharmaceutical giants? Oil companies? Mainstream media? Consumer product manufacturers? Need we go further? How many of these do you see taking leaps of faith?

     The monster donut-maker guys may think America runson their junk food, but they’re dreaming (their coffee’s not even good!).

     America runs on small business and entrepreneurial spirit, on Mom and Pop Stores, basement and kitchen table and garage businesses, one-man-band services, farm families, commercial and residential contractors, and techies in bathrobes working out of their bedroom closets. 

     That’s what we’re all about. That’s what will turn this economy around. That’s who we need to be remembering in our prayers today and every day. Small business and entrepreneurial pursuits are the foundation of America’s past and the keys to America’s future.

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops because “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day! 

Everyone else is slowing down,

so now’s the time to speed up!

The holiday buzz is here.  In fact, EPRs (Economically-Panicked Retailers) have been buzzing with Christmas since before Halloween. Rumor has it that 2010 Christmas sales and decorations may start the day after Labor Day. For 2011, write your greeting cards on the 5th of July. Who knows? We may eventually lap the entire process and start Christmas sales and decorations for 2020 (with hindsight of course!) on December 26th of 2019! Maybe we can just give one present good for two years?

 # # #

     The point is that once the buzz that’s started gets started,  America’s business enterprises all begin shifting into low gear. Some businesses close earlier. Many employees (especially corporate giant, federal government and academic types who have no clue about business anyway) start to s~~l~~o~~w  down and skip out early more often, and take longer lunches, and drink more … and be of good cheer.

     SO: AHA! NOW’S THE TIME TO STEP ON THE GAS,  to work 10 times harder cultivating and keeping customers … to strike out into the marketplace with your heavy artillery.

     Now, while all the big-time competitors (especially B to B services) are rolling in their carpets  and the media is hard up for news, is the time to unleash a big-time public relations campaign and sales push.

     If you’re a serious entrepreneur and have been looking for a break:  you’ve got it! Take it and run! So what if your corporate muckity-muck brother-in-law is headed off on a pre-Christmas cruise and can’t think about much beyond which golf shirts to pack?

     So what if the business on your left has closed for the holidays  and the one on your right is preoccupied with window decorations, office parties and cracking open bottles of booze at 2:30 in the afternoon?

     YOU are an independent, never-say-die, innovative, dedicated-to-the-action  entrepreneur and you have a chance to get your business to that inside lane along the rail and pull up even to some of the industry big-boys.

     Do it. Make it happen.  It is a choice. It is YOUR choice. You can do three unplanned-for sales and promotion-focused things every day between now and Christmas that will set you into a pack leader position when the 2010 gate opens on January 1. What are they? You know what they are. Can you do the first of these tomorrow morning?  

# # #               

Yesterday’s Customers

Bring Business Today!

     It’s a proven fact: Your BEST source of business is existing and past business!

     So, when the time comes,  if it hasn’t already, to put your shoulder to the wheel, stop working and have a party! No one ever told you that entrepreneurship is all about being spontaneous?

     Really! Stop what you’re doing  and have a Customer Appreciation Party. So what if it’s a last-minute deal? So what if you’re down to your last few nickles? Buy some cheap wine and cheese and make some decorations. Invite your not paid up-to-date lawyer and accountant. Tell them they can be their sharky opportunistic selves and use the gathering to network their own services.

     It matters not  that you run a retail or wholesale operation or a professional practice or service office, or turkey farm or pistol range (okay, well I’ll grant you that maybe it’s not a great thing to have a party at a pistol range) … or whether you have 100 employees or you’re a one-man-band … or whether you operate out of a fancy building, or your basement! 

     You simply call all your best customers  a couple or seven days ahead and tell them to come as they are and to bring friends, family and co-workers and stop in at 5 or 6 o’clock to have an Oktoberfest (or a “Celebrate The Economy”) drink (or 8AM for coffee and donuts! Be sure to invite local police!) and give you the chance to shake hands and say a personal thank you to each.

     Put on some music.  Lower the lights. Get Aunt Jabib to fix a tray of those old lady sandwiches. Pick up a bucket of pretzels. Give out special discount coupons (or even better:  handwritten “20% off until October 20″ on the back of your business cards, which you dole out with each handshake).

WHY? Here’s Why:

     You will get more business  from this impromptu gathering than you will from expensive advertising because you are PERSONALLY interacting with each person, and showing your humble appreciation for the value of their business in a PERSONAL way.

     Don’t believe me?  So go back to work and forget it; what do I care?

     BUT IF YOU DO THIS DEAL,  you’d better invite me as well. Besides I’m a cheap date; I’ll just slink into a corner with a glass of wine and dream up my next blog post! Happy Customer Celebrating!

[P.S. If not enough can make it, have it anyway, and then do it again for those who missed the first one!]

# # # 

Travel in circles

of authenticity!

     I used to teach  my entrepreneurship students to carry their business cards everywhere. I even suggested that a couple of laminated cards tucked into a bathing suit pocket or workout or yoga bag wouldn’t be a bad idea. They thought I was nuts!

     I’ll tell you what…  you find me someone who is a self-made business success who doesn’t always have a business card available, and I guarantee you that an inheritance played some role. Proactive business owners and managers know that most explosive business opportunities come from where you least expect them.

     I’ve had people  track me down with a ten year-old business card that no longer had the same address and phone numbers. And of course you can find anyone these days on Google. The point is to not discount the value of every contact you make every day.

     Networking isn’t about  a great grip handshake, a business card exchange and a teethy smile. Networking isn’t a flashy passing or a thunderbolt. Networking is all about cultivating the relationships you initiate.  Here are four thoughts, and a bottom line…

One:

Take the time and trouble  to jot down the date, event, and some memorable trait or visual or vocal characteristic or attribute on the back of every business card you collect. “Red hair / wire-rim glasses / unbuttoned collar / infectious laugh” are the kinds of comments that will help bring the individual back into focus after a hundred other cards and a hundred hours pass. 

Two:

Write something personal  on the cards you give out, especially to someone you really want to remember you. Scribble a connecting website or 2nd email address that’s not printed on the card, your cell number, or a book title you recommend.

Three:

Follow up. Follow up. Follow up.  Nobody does it. I’m not talking about being annoying or badgering; don’t waste your time. I mean if someone mentions they have a child with a special interest or need, and you run across information that’s related, send it along: “Saw this and was reminded of our discussion; thought you might be interested.”

Four:

The biggest and/or best business deal  you ever get is likely to come –as they say at the ballpark– from out of left field. It may be a contact you never dreamed of being productive, or one that comes as a second or third person referral from someone else who you never thought even noticed you.

The Bottom line . . .

Don’t write anyone off. 

The world is getting smaller every day.

People who like you and what you have to say

will talk about you and make sales for you . . .

when you least expect.

Oh, and expectations, by the way,

breed disappointment.

Value and appreciate everyone you encounter

regardless of appearances or stature.

What goes around, I’m reminded,

comes around!

Travel in circles of authenticity! 

# # #

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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!

Reality Check!

      Just in case  you’re star-struck with the idea of starting your own business venture, be aware that there’s a little more to it than flipping the black and red “Yes, We’re Open” and “Sorry, We’re Closed” sign twice a day.

There’s . . . 

• money (at least twenty times more than you can even imagine needing!) 
• industry experience, training and know-how
• knowledge of the market and the competition
• customers (you’re going to need a few to start)
• suppliers (you’re going to need a few to start)
• location (which is often critical, depending on the nature of the business)
• utilities
• a formal written business plan
• investor and/or loan payback arrangements
• basic office and business supplies
• inventory of products and/or services
• credibility (industry/community associations?)
• advertising/marketing preparation
• advertising/marketing implementation
• an accountant
• a lawyer
• an advisory board
• employees
• a bank and bank account
• maybe a post office box
• maybe charge card or PayPal arrangements
• maybe a charge card
• furniture and equipment

…this could go on for pages!

     And don’t tie-up  your brain with this next thought, but you surely need to be conscious of the fact that 9 out of 11 new businesses fail in the first 3 years, and that it takes 5 years on average just to break even financially.

     Be aware that  most businesses fail because of poor management. Period. It’s common to hear that a new business didn’t make it because it was under-capitalized, but if you think about that for 2.5 seconds and can be honest about it, under-capitalization is:  poor management!

     You can be  a free-wheeling entrepreneurial spirit all you want, but reality dictates that you have to do some planning and have a ton more money than you think you need just to get up and running. This is a “haste-makes-waste” point in time where shortcuts don’t work.

     Of course there are always  Steve Jobs and Bill Gates success stories about starting in a garage and working “on a shoestring,” and I wish for you to be that kind of successful, but reality is that these two superstars are each one in trillions.   

     If all the above  thoughts have fueled your fire instead of discouraged you into retreating to the life of a bottom of the barrel employee, you might actually have what it takes to make it work. Go for it! (Oh, and if you need to call me for help, do it please before running out of money! Thank you.)

# # #  

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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