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! 

If Oct/Nov/Dec hasn’t

heated up your business,

 Jan/Feb/Mar won’t either!

I sit here in an area of the country that –until last year’s three-foot accumulation– hadn’t had any snow to speak of for over 75 years, contemplating the seven hours of driveway shoveling I just completed of another 1-2-foot-plus, on the day after Christmas.

One can’t help, I’m fairly sure, in circumstances like this, having one’s mind drift ever so creepy-crawly, to Ex (Thank Heaven!) Vice President Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning predictions of global warming.

This recognition of course came well after his claims that he invented the Internet. Duh! It’s hard to tell which of the three is the bigger farce: Gore, the Nobel Prize or global warming.

Anyway, it made me think about “Chicken Little.”

Remember him?

He ran around the neighborhood yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

Well, let’s have none of that, says our current Administration, hellbent on selling us all into business success by throwing good money after bad at corporate buffoon giants.

Thank Heaven, again! (Yikes! Twice in one blog post–  this “Thank Heaven!” is for Ford Motor Company. Thank you, FORD, for sassing it out and protecting Henry’s entrepreneurial legacy by telling the White House where to take a hike!).

Yes, I am a lifelong Ford owner, but No, I am not a White House hater. I am a realist. I am a serious skeptic of all who would think they could step on and over small business owners and entrepreneurs with the naive convictions that stimulus tax-dollars tossed to big business (and to frivolous socialistic-based enterprises and government agencies) would turn the economy around.  

Only small businesses create jobs. Period.   

Oh, and did I mention the flood of money that beleaguered, hardworking business owners and managers don’t even get to look at while being taxed into the dirt, while incompetent government agencies award themselves salary increases?

Well, yes, there have been some token awards possible through the pathetic SBA, assuming the struggling small business owner could afford the lawyer and accountant needed to process the truckloads of paperwork. 

Did we notice part of the government’s efforts to sell the public on economic success has been to push the media to glow with positive business talk . . . “the greatest holiday retail shopping returns in history,” I heard . . . while businesses continue to die in record numbers? 

Where does this leave YOU? If your last quarter of 2010 was great, congratulations! Odds are good that your first quarter of 2011 will also be fiscally productive.

If your last quarter of 2010 sucked eggs, odds are pretty good that the first quarter of 2011 will not break any revenue or profit levels. Ah, but hope, the White House tells us, is just around the corner.

Here’s the bottom line: Hope gets you nowhere in reality. Action is what moves business forward. And businesses that move forward drive the economy forward. (Yes, this is apparently too complex a concept for government to grasp!)

So, what’s preventing you from taking the action steps that you know need to be taken, that perhaps you’ve been shying away from to avoid making waves? Hmmm?

What will happen if you simply choose to turn up the heat on your challenges to employees, your opportunities to vendors and suppliers, and your service to customers and clients?

You don’t need the government to tell you what to do to make your business work!

You need only to choose to step up to the plate in your industry or profession, in your marketplace, and in your community.

Not being overly cautious is not the same as being careless.

Reasonable risks are what got you here in the first place.

The first quarter of 2011 is yours for the taking.

    Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Just do it!   

# # # 

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!

J & J Leadership

Lessons

 Go Far Beyond

BandAids!

     We are witnessing now one of the world’s worst oil leak disasters. It could have been drastically minimized with immediate action. 

     Instead of responsiveness, however, we had eight days of Presidential foot-dragging in order to be preoccupied with more important issues, like trying to push Goldman Sachs over the edge of the political cliff without toppling in over them, and hosting a reception for the New York Yankees, among other such critical demands.

     Ah, but after eight days, when the White House finally did decide to step up, determined to save a token pelican or two, some key federal-titled muckity-mucks were actually “dispatched” with orders to report back in 30 days.

     Right, 30 days! How long would it take anyone you know who lives on a coastline to tell you that on top of 8 days of hundreds of thousands of gallons a day worth of leaked oil, we are destined to inevitably see that oil along the Eastern Shore? How about 30 minutes?

     WOO HOO . . . a little too little too late! Imagine taking this approach to respond to a business problem. You’d be out of business. Or, you’d be big-time up to the tops of your hipboots in debt with expensive apolgetic and advertising media expenses. Ask Toyota.

     Either way, the problem multiplies exponentially when responsiveness is not present. Without a sense of urgency built into your leadership position, your business is only as strong as the last time you took swift positive remedial action.

     The classic textbook example was, of course. when Johnson & Johnson handled “The Tylenol Scare” of 1982. They acted poste haste and authoritatively.

     J&J management breeds leadership. It doesn’t matter that you might have a mom and pop grocery store (are there any of those left?) or a 3-person home-based business, there is much to be learned about crisis management from the way J&J dealt with this potential disaster:

• Apologize immediately and completely.
• Act immediately.
• Tell ALL.
• Follow up.
• Stay invested in the solution and be transparent.

     Bottom line: RESPONSIVENESS.

     When you tackle a major problem head-on and immediately, the biggest risk you run is being accused of being over-zealous. What’s that compared to lost lives, lost environment, lost trust, lost credibility? The important distinction to remember here is the difference between reSPONDING and reACTING.

     When you reACT, you run the immediate risk of OVER-reacting, and that puts you out of control. When you reSPOND, you are acting with control, and you are ensuring increased odds of success. Seeking a practical control tool? Take some deep breaths!

Click Here to work with Hal NOW!

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!