STOP Hoping and Wishing.

STOP Analyzing and Trying.

 Just get the damn job done.

  Today. NOW. . .This minute!

You’re an entrepreneur or an entrepreneurial thinker. If you weren’t one or the other, you wouldn’t be reading this.

So, straight out, here’s the bottom line: The work you’re doing now in your life (as goes the old advertising expression goes) “ain’t your father’s Oldsmobile.” What you’re doing now (or want to be doing) is not likely to be the boring office or hard labor or high-stress job that you grew up hearing about.

This also means that the days of analysis paralysis that evolved from corporate mindsets is gone.  The age of putting in long hours and working up a sweat every day doing physical labor or mind-numbing assembly line work, or some high-stress (air traffic control, e.g.) job to eke out a living, pay the avalanche of bills, and put food on the table, are not for you . . . cut your own path.

You want a better life. You have some great ideas, but –instead of making them work– you’re wasting time trying to make them work.

You cannot afford to drag your feet. You cannot afford to worry about every detail. You cannot afford to be wasting so much time.

Problems will solve themselves if you just get off your ass and get moving. Some action is always better than no action! But don’t trip over your own face!

Speaking of “buts,” remember that the “Yes, but’s” and the “Maybe, buts” run circles in the woods with the rabbuts, and (aside from an occasional carrot) never get anywhere of any consequence.

The hardest part of marching forward to success is the marching. Many give up with, or even before, the first step. And many who get that far tend to lose the drive to go further because they lose the vision or perspective or finances or connections to keep marching forward.

Sustaining initial startup energy once you’ve designed or developed or invented or introduced or found a market niche for your product or service can feel impossible. But it’s really not . . . unless you choose for it to be.

Consider that all behavior is a choice –conscious or unconscious, made now or in the past– and that many people surrounding our lives every day are doing their best (often unaware) to sidetrack the entrepreneurial thoughts and pursuits of others because success may threaten their investments in the status quo.

Others –especially friends and family– may simply (and often without realizing it) not want to see you succeed. They may feel threatened by what they perceive as your stardom. Jealousy is not always something we are aware of, but it is right up there on every measure of emotional spectrum leaders.

Think about what you’re choosing to do that’s actually holding you back. What can you change? How will you do that?

It may be in your best interests to try taking some deep breaths before trying to answer those two questions.

You might next explore ways to stop making excuses, to stop blaming others and circumstances, and –instead– take some steps on your own behalf. “What’s the worst thing could happen?” is a good question to ask yourself. If there are no legalities, or physical or emotional harm involved: Go For It!  

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Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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

Hal@Businessworks.US         931.854.0474

Guidance to 500+ Successful Business Startups

Creating Record-Sales for Clients Since 1981!

     Go back 20, 50, 100 years! Surprise! The names and locations change, but the stories are mostly the same. It will be like missing a week of C-SPAN or THE BIOGRAPHY CHANNEL. Nothing Earth-shatteringly new goes on.

Updated From the Best of Hal’s Christmastime Business Posts . . . 

EA$Y DOE$ IT ON

CHRI$TMA$ EXPEN$E$ 

                                                                      

“Down in Onunderoverup”? Huh? Oh: Down and in . . . Revenues and profits are down. It’s the worst holiday shopping season in memory. In and on . . . Brick and mortar businesses are getting killed by the invasion of online businesses. On, under, and over . . . Online businesses are being undercut by overkill retail sales events. Up . . .C’mon folks, let’s own up to the reality that this is a bite-the-bullet Christmas for probably two-thirds of all Americans.

 ~~~~~~~

IF — like many others this year who don’t work for do-nothing, free-spending government agencies or bailed-out corporate giants — IF you happen to be having a tighter Christmas ahead than those you’ve left behind, you may want to consider three points:

• Unless you choose for it to be (behavior IS a choice), you need not think that it’s corny, hokey, old-fashioned, ancient, not P.C., or “yeah, so?” (Thoughts are things!), to consider this first point…

1)

Here’s how it goes: choose for a minute or two to think that Christmas is not all about you, except as a a joyful celebrant.

While you’re staring at your screen right now, dismantle the whole holiday stress clog-up in your brain (take some deep breaths) so you can step back with a fresh perspective and see Christmas more realistically, for what it is: the celebration of the birth of Christ.

• Okay, now, flying on the shirttails of the first point, comes this second point to think on…

2)

How have you chosen to let others (and your self) set you up over your lifetime to choose over-the-top artificial representations of this joyful event to bump the real thing off into the wings from stage center?

How have you become victimized by decades of deep and hard-hitting commercialism? 

• Have all those sales, ads, commercials, endorsements, emails, txtmsgs, and “perfect family with perfect dog in their perfect home setting” images left you with the guilties because you can’t afford that surprise diamond or vacation gift for your spouse this year? Because the kids will have to settle for the cheap iPod and a slightly used Wii? Just one chew-bone and a single squeaky toy for Rufus?

3)

Welcome to reality. It’s the same place that many (probably the majority) of your customers have been quietly and more steadily inhabiting over the last couple of years.

It’s not just you. It’s not just them. It’s the vast majority of the world that’s actively downsizing 2011 Christmas gift-giving and expenses.

Well, realizing that you’re not alone sometimes serves to soften the edge. You should, by the way, also know that I am not a minister of any kind, nor have I any religious drums to beat . . . what then?

It’s Christmas!

Skimpy perhaps by past life standards, but this is this life, here and now.

We only go around in life once, and we’re in it together:

. . . business owners, partners, managers, employees, suppliers, investors, service and sales professionals, referrers, AND customers!

In a time of year that accents good will, “blame” is a nonproductive misfit. In a time of life that businesses struggle with the economy, fixing the economy becomes Job One for businesses.

What can yours do? What can you do? What can you do now, tonight, tomorrow, to take a major step toward righting your ship?

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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!

Updated From the Best of Hal’s Christmastime Business Posts . . .

The quickest fix for

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! 

Self-Motivation?

I heard you

stayed up all night

talking to yourself?

Couldn’t wait to see

Part 2? Here it is:

(Oh, and be sure to check out the P.S. at the end!)

What are some other ways to motivate yourself besides talking to yourself?

When you’re feeling negative and you surround yourself with yourself, you set yourself up to lose. When you surround yourself with positive people, who are productive, achievement-oriented, and generally cheerful, you are setting yourself up to cultivate positive thoughts and positive attitudes.

When you find yourself feeling like you’re drowning in a sea of negativity, or overwhelmed by negative people or circumstances, remember you control your own brain and your own behavior . . . it is a choice, your choice. Choose to “change the station in your brain to best fit the circumstances. Dial in HAPPY-FM because “happy” works. 

Ask yourself what’s the worst thing could happen if you get up to the plate and swing instead of cower in the dugout corner?

You might strike out? Babe Ruth’s record number of hume runs ran in tandem with his record number of strikeouts.

Thomas Edison made 10,000 attempts before succeeding at inventing the lightbulb.

All logical rational stuff, you might be thinking, but negative feelings are not always logical or rational. True, but your ability to rise above them can be.

Learn what triggers your “throw in the towel” attitude and the feelings you typically experience just before that happens, then use that trigger instead to remind yourself to take some deep breaths. Use the couple of seconds worth of deep breathing as a focal point that allows you to shut down the upsets, crank up the positive side of what’s happening, and turn the situation around by simply choosing to turn it around.

Here’s what’s worth remembering (besides talking to yourself with conviction, three times a day, for 21 days): Use these tools (deep breathing and self-talk and awareness of choosing behavior) to force yourself to concentrate on the present, here-and-now moments in your life, as each moment passes, as much and as often as you possibly can.

Just in case of some disconnect as to why one would want to do this in the first place: The past is over and cannot be changed. The future has not yet come (and may never). Now is the only time. Or, as the now famous quote goes from B. Olatunji:

“Yesterday is history.

 Tomorrow is mystery.

Today is a gift.

That’s why it’s called the present.”

It may not be possible for us to live in the present moment 100% of the time, but odds are pretty good that most of us aren’t even doing that 20%-30% of the time, so there’s lots of room to grow and improve. And improving just this one single thing about yourself will improve your daily existence measurably. Again, give it 21 days. You will astound yourself with all you can accomplish and enjoy.

You doubt it? Then you’re proving the point that you become what you think about. The choices –happy and healthy or upset and ill– are 100% your choices. Make yourself a happy camper, and watch your business perform as never before. Surely your business is worth a 21-day trial?

Need a boost? Give me a call and we’ll talk. No fee to talk. No sales pitch. Anyone who wants more will ask for it and maybe then, we can discuss some terms, but this post isn’t about money. It’s about helping you to strengthen your SELF, in order to strengthen your business.

By the way, the very short video at the “P.S.” link below should give you a jump start, maybe even launch your rocket!

P.S. Click HERE: Could you possibly have

a bad day after starting off like this?

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!