The Lesson of the Dead Mouse

Unless you are a wing-walker on a bi-plane or a world-famous rock star, people don’t much care about how you do what you do in your business.

The Heath brothers, authors of Made to Stick and Switch, made that point unforgettably in one of their recent columns. Their example is the old saying, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”. That may be true as far as it goes, but the deeper truth is that people don’t care about how the mousetrap is better, they just want a dead mouse.

It is that focus on the beneficial end result to the buyer that is often left out of marketing campaigns, which all to often stop one step short and go on and on, preening about their product or process instead of  talking about your benefit. They fall in love with their part of the process or thing, and they want you to love all that stuff, too, when all you really care about is the “dead mouse”.

Let me show you what I mean.

Do you remember the iconic photo of a man hunched down in a chair being blown away by the power of the music coming from a set of JBL speakers?

JBL could have featured the NEWNESS of the speakers, or the SPECIFICATIONS of the speakers, or the GOOD LOOKS of the speakers, all of which would have been talking about the speakers (the mousetrap), and not about what you want the speakers do for you (blow you away!). The photo says it perfectly, and this one ad catapulted JBL into the front rank of speaker manufacturers because it focused on the experience their products would give you, not on the mechanics or design of the product itself.

That’s the right way to sell lots of stuff.

So go spend some time right now looking at everything you put out there to your potential buyers. Your brochures, videos, the website, your logo and signs. Is it full of details about what you do and how you do it (“we” this, “we” that), or is it totally focused upon buyer experience and benefit?

I just did a day full of strategic planning for an IT company that, until then, thought they were selling “IT services”. That changed about mid-day when they realized that what they really sell is freedom from worry about their computers and they are now orienting their marketing campaign around that.

Your potential customers don’t care how your business does what it does. They do care a lot if your product or service can really make their lives better.

Remember that, market to that, and your sales will go through the roof.

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership , doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

The Payoff for Ethical Hiring In Hard Times

I work with a lot of owners of small businesses, and many of them have hiring needs, even during the long recession.

As a matter of fact, a lot of them are hiring like crazy right now because business is getting better, and there is a large pool of very talented job-seekers out there to choose from due to all the job losses brought on by that recession.

When business owners become aware of just how many skilled people there are looking for jobs today, they can’t help but feel some relief about one of the most difficult parts of their hiring process – finding good people who are willing to work, who won’t cost them a fortune in wages.

More than one owner has personally told me, “look at all the incredible talent I can get for next to nothing!”.

At first glance it’s a great situation, but what I’m writing about today is how to walk on the right side of the line between reducing labor costs and exploiting workers unfairly.

On the surface, the abundance of talent looks like such a good thing; go find the highest quality applicants and pay them the lowest possible wages. Capitalism at its best. What a deal. Reduce costs big-time!

But it’s not that simple, and if you hire that way, it could really hurt your business in the long run.

Consider:

Many applicants these days have been through great hardships. They have been out of work for a long time, run through most of their resources, perhaps even lost their homes. They are highly stressed and often desperate, and if they take your position that comes with a rock-bottom recessionary low wage, they will feel temporarily grateful, but they will always carry some inner resentment, too.

This will keep them from giving deep loyalty to you or your company, and they will show their dissatisfaction in many ways, all of which will subtract from your bottom line. They’ll under-perform, bring negative attitudes to work, act out and will always have an eye open for a better job elsewhere.

This approach will cost you far more over time in turnover and lost productivity than the money you saved on salaries.

One of my clients in particular is making it a point to go the other way, and I think she’s smart to do so.

She is very thankful for all the talent in the labor pool, which gives her many more choices when she needs to bring someone on. When she does find someone great, she brings that person in at a good, strong wage.

This employer also does not reduce positions and heap huge amounts of work upon the remaining employees in the name of efficiency and cost-cutting. Her people get paid well to work hard and be productive, and they also get to have a life.

Her employees know they’ve got a great thing in the middle of hard times – solid jobs with an ethical employer who treats them fairly.

This creates strong loyalty to the company and strong performance from employees. It cuts turnover, and builds a positive atmosphere and culture in the workplace.

There is, I think, one exception to this policy, one good, ethical reason to start people at really low salaries. That would be if your company is in perilous condition and you just flat don’t have more money to pay.

If that’s the case, be clear with your people up-front, both those who already work with you and the new hires, that wages are not what you’d like them to be right now in hard times, but that you will raise their pay as revenues increase.

Then be sure you do that as soon as things start getting better. Give them an ongoing series of small raises that keep pace with your revenue improvement, proving to them your commitment to get their salaries to a fair level as soon as possible. Psychologically, people really like a series of small steps instead of the promise of something big. Those steps start sooner, and feel more dependable and do-able.

In summary, your company is only as good as your people. If you take unfair advantage of them during the recession, that policy will come back and bite you when the recession is over and they get to have more choices.

If you treat your people well, respect their needs and their dignity with good pay and fair hours, they will connect with you and your company deeply and help you build you a successful future as big as you can imagine.

Besides, it’s just the right thing to do, and you’ll sleep better at night. 

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership, doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

Journal Gets It Wrong/Right About Women Business Owners

I’ve been away for a while, but I saved one article I read in the Wall Street Journal on the road to share parts of with you because it has some commonly flawed thinking about women-owned businesses, but still offers good insights for women entrepreneurs.

The article starts by acknowledging the huge growth of women-owned businesses over the last three decades; that women launch new businesses at twice the rate as men, and that their growth rates of employment and revenue have beaten the economy big-time. Then the woman author, Sharon Hadary, founder of the Center for Women’s Business Research, goes off the path of entrepreneurial pride and laments that, despite those superlatives, “It is dismaying to see that, on average, women-owned businesses are still small compared with businesses owned by men.”

At that point my face tinged just a little bit purple and a small sputter was heard. Since when is business success measured just by size, and why is this woman doing that? She goes on to say that most men tend to start businesses to be the boss and to grow the business as big as possible, and she thinks the ‘big’ part is really essential for women to achieve also.

To Ms. Hadary,  the fact that women-owned business revenues are “still only 27 of the average of majority men-owned businesses” is a problem, even as she goes on to say that women start their businesses for different reasons than men; “to be personally challenged and to integrate work and family, and they want to stay at a size where they personally oversee all aspects of the business.”

Now, I am an executive coach who works with a lot of women business owners, and I can attest to the fact that women are very individual in their desires for their businesses, including revenues and size.

One woman I worked with is making deals for her products with major sports leagues, breaking her business into large-scale revenue and personnel expansion. Another wants a business of no more than twelve people and revenues of five million, max, more like a business family.

So my definition of business success is to create just the right business for you, whatever it is in all the details that will best serve your professional and personal goals. Big, medium, small, who cares, as long as your business is right for you.

Back to the article:  just as I was about to give up on Ms. Hadary for being more male than many men on this revenue and size front, she finally got to some other good stuff I think might be good for women entrepreneurs to consider. She talks about “what’s holding back so many women business owners”, and again relates that mostly to an outcome that’s about revenue and business growth. I think if we widen the ‘holding back’ issues she lists below to be more about “what holds back women entrepreneurs from having exactly the business they want”, it is a more valuable and accurate way to examine these issues.

Here are some of the ways she thinks women business owners hold themselves back from success:

• Women often fail to set high goals for growth. Very true, but women – and men – usually set goals only for revenues, leaving out other aspects of their business and their lives. Strong goals – and a strategic plan for the business – are needed for all of those things, or life doesn’t feel whole and satisfying.
• Women often start their businesses with fewer resources available to them than men. Sometimes true. This factor can drive women out of what they really want to do and into retail or personal services industries instead, for example, where the cost of entry is low, but so is the growth and profit potential.
• Research shows that women tend to think of debt as a “bad thing” to be avoided… one of women’s strengths is relationship-building, yet women seldom focus on building relationships with bankers. True again. Often women don’t reach out to the banker until they’re in trouble and REALLY need the money… the very worst time to start the relationship.

There are more good insights for women entrepreneurs in this Wall Street Journal article than I can highlight here, so you can go there and read the rest. Just remember you don’t need to define business success as being just about revenues and big growth.

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership , doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

Hot Tips to Manage Your Time

Do you feel like a Gerbil on a wheel, a rat in a race, a cat being chased by a dog, a… well, if you feel harried and harassed and your life teeters near out-of-control, read on.

I teach and coach time management, both privately and for executives through the Executive Education Program at the University of Richmond business school, and managing time effectively is the most elusive skill for most people in business today.

My last post was “Part one” about managing time, and this is the second, concluding post on the topic. Here are some hot tips to manage your time:

• Prioritize your choices — “I will do this, I won’t do that”, recognizing that each choice you make to commit to any activity has a price tag of time attached to it.
• Treat time like money in a checkbook; you get 24 hours ever day, so don’t write ‘checks’ for more time than you have.
• Learn the difference between important and urgent (see last post). Most things that are urgent are not important.
• Set goals. Not just numbers goals in your business, but goals for your life, which includes your business. How will you know what is important if you don’t have the priority of goals?
• Do an activity log. Find out how you spend your time. Most people spend only 20% of their time on what is really important. Think what you could do if you reverse that percentage — 80% of your time spent on important stuff!
• The science is in on multi-tasking and the news is not good. The brain is not designed to do two things at once. It can switch really fast – toggle between two things – but this switching carries a price of less focus. Bottom line: Focus on one thing at a time and do it well.
• Remember the ‘in-breath’. You can’t stay alive if you just breathe out (be active). You’ve got to breathe in, too (rest and relax). Self care is critical for performance.
• Organize your desk. When it comes to all that paper on your desk: toss it, refer it to others, act on it, or file it.
• Organize your space. Your environment sets the tone for what you do there; it creates mood and energy, either good or bad.

To manage time well, we must be clear about what is really important to us, remember the difference between “important” and “urgent”, and ruthlessly prioritize our activities to achieve those things. We must spend our time on the things that matter, and take care of ourselves along the way.

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative leadership, doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

It’s About Time!

I have a client who routinely works twelve hours a day six days a week, and about six hours on Sundays. He runs a successful manufacturing  company with about thirty employees, and he thinks he has to work like that to keep it all afloat. He also has three kids and an increasingly frustrated wife whom he rarely sees.

Then there is my ‘hard worker’ client. He prides himself on working hard, but he is usually working on the wrong things. He runs a contracting company, and spends a lot of time running around to various projects fixing glitches. In theory, he has managers who should be handling routine problems, but his managers are weak because he doesn’t trust them or train them how to handle the low-level stuff. As a result, he doesn’t have time for the big stuff because his priorities are out of kilter.

I have another client who can’t say “no”. She runs a very successful business, but she commits more time than she has to all kinds of projects,  and her focus is shot. She sits on at least four boards, personally manages two separate parts of her business, and is glued to her SmartPhone even when she is in meetings and at events. She lives in a whirlwind of overcommitment, and doesn’t know how to slow down.

I could go on. When I’m speaking to an audience, I often ask the attendees to raise their hand if they have problems with time management. Most of the hands in the room go up.

I don’t have the space here to go over all the points of my time management class, but here are some highlights:

• Everybody gets the same 24 hours a day. It’s how you choose to use them that makes you effective in what you do and turns your goals into reality. Time management is therefore not about time, it is about choices, which are about priorities.
• If you don’t have a good system of prioritization, you’ll make lousy choices about your time.
• Prioritize your choices in this descending order:

1. Things that are urgent and important. If my driver’s license is going to expire in a month, that’s important. If it expires tomorrow, that is urgent and important.
2. Things that are important. Taking more time with your family. Taking a long vacation. Getting an advanced degree or certification. These are the type of things that are very important, but quietly so. Usually not urgent. I define “important” as “those things that, if done, will contribute greatly to your long-range progress and happiness”.
3. All the rest. In this time when we are overloaded with electronics, and with work demands that have a lot of urgency, it is so easy to lose sight of what is important. Urgency is not importance. Most things that we feel we must do because they are urgent are not really important. Studies have shown that most business people spend 80% of their time working on the least important parts of their jobs. What would happen if that was reversed?

The three clients I mentioned at the beginning of this post all have real problems with prioritizing their activities and managing their commitments to obtain good outcomes. That’s why their lives are unmanageable.

Doug Hickok, CEO,  Institute for Provocative Leadership ,  doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com, (804) 272-0140

7 Reasons Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work

Here we are at the beginning of another new year, and I’m sure you’ve seen and heard all the usual pablum about New Year’s resolutions. The media loves to talk about resolutions and a lot of people try to make them, as they focus for a moment upon possible improvements for their lives.

It’s a great impulse, but such resolutions are largely worthless, and here’s why:

1. Sometimes they are made under the influence of alcohol. I don’t know about you, but I do not make thoughtful, informed decisions about important changes when under the influence of anything but sobriety.
2. They are made on the spur of the moment. Spur-of-the-moment impulses rarely survive the trek through reality that is necessary for real change. They’re like soap bubbles that last a moment in the wind and then go “POP!”.
3. No planning or preparation are involved. See number two above.
4. There is usually no follow-through, which should be a strong part of any plan for change. This is the part where rubber needs to meet the road, and it usually doesn’t ever get there when resolutions are involved.
5. There is no accountability. This is another critical part of advancement toward a difficult goal, and make no mistake about it, most change is difficult. We are wired to keep doing what we’re doing, and unless we bring in some outside accountability, change of any magnitude usually doesn’t happen.
6. Old habits die hard. Habit: “a settled or regular tendency or practice that is difficult to give up.” It is extremely difficult to change deeply ingrained habits. A New Year’s resolution is a grain of sand in the real foundation that needs to be built upon which a new habit can stand and take root.
7. Daily life gets in the way. The demands of our hyper, wired workweek (month, year…) are constant and unforgiving. What’s a little-bitty resolution in the face of the bulldozer of oncoming life?

So if you want change and New Year’s resolutions don’t work, what then?

You need to find a big bucket of steaming hot goals.

Goals are different, particularly if they are SMART goals.

What many people think of as a goal — a statement of what you want — is just as lame as a resolution. It doesn’t have real weight in its definition or a real plan to get it done.

S.M.A.R.T goals have a plan wrapped around them, like bacon around a chicken liver. (Forgive me, but any food that isn’t turkey has great allure right now…)

S.M.A.R.T.:

• Specific: “eating healthier” is not specific. Eating two servings of fruit a day and dropping refined foods from your diet is specific. Planning for each meal is even more specific. The more specific you are, the more chance of success for the goal.
• Measurable: “move to a new office space” is not measurable. Move to a new office space with at least 2,000 feet of space is beginning to be more measurable.
• Achievable: “I’m going to make a million dollars this year” is probably not achievable if you are making $12 per hour, unless you’ve got a killer app that goes number one for the I-phone and it’s ready to go.
• Realistic: Close cousin to Achievable. “I’m going to write a book” is probably achievable, but if you ad the word, “today”, it doesn’t pass the realistic test.
• Time-lined: “I’m going to build an airplane in my garage” is not time-lined. Breaking the project down into specific steps and giving each step a date is.

So now you can forget about New Year’s resolutions and start thinking S.M.A.R.T. Better yet, hire us to help you build a better airplane.

Happy New year.

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership. doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

Small Business Saves the Day

We have been in this recession long enough that some things are becoming clear about the recovery that is just beginning.

• It’s a ‘soft’ recovery. This means that it is a very gradual, mixed recovery, with some sectors of the economy, notably the stock market  and housing, on their way up, and other factors, most notably the job market, still on bottom.
• This recession has been like no other. It hit companies large and small so hard that some previously fundamental ways of doing business have changed. It has driven companies to use technologies more fully, and to redesign their workforces to achieve productivity with fewer people. Many lost jobs will not come back.
• The biggest driver for the U.S. economy has previously been personal spending. But, with fewer jobs and reduced incomes, many people are not able nor inclined to spend; they are stretching and saving instead. So this recovery is going to have to find its footing on a different foundation than before. Small businesses may be that foundation.
• Although small businesses were hit very hard by the recession, more of them are starting up now than ever before. It’s that disappearing job thing; when you can’t get a job from someone else, it’s time to invent your own.
• Small businesses are usually able to be much more agile and adaptable than large ones. It’s like the difference between a rowboat and an ocean liner… one turns on a dime, and the other needs a lot of time, resources and room.

So, if you own a small business and can hang in there and adapt, the future may be yours.

What does that look like?

• It is not necessarily true that you are  in trouble if your business is consumer-related (the no-jobs/low personal spending  thing). Think small banks versus big ones. Small community banks are booming all around the country, while many big ones remain mired in their troubles from a year ago. You can still do business with consumers, but you have to reach them in different ways, and you may very well have to reinvent any or all aspects of your business so it is relevant and sure-footed in the emerging economy.

• Strategic partnerships between small businesses are excellent pathways to success. What other business could mutually complement yours? If you sell telephones, for instance, how much better could you do if you team up with someone who sells broadband? If you’re selling financial services, what would happen if you team up with a bookkeeper?  Insurance companies and collision repair shops have known the power of strategic partnerships for a long time. Now the rest of us need to think that way.

• It’s a great time, if you’re doing OK and your competition is suffering, to go for it and gain market share. Apple is a good example of this. Computer sales overall are sharply down, but Apple, with its iconic and popular product line, is doing quite well, thank you. They have launched a huge initiative — right now when the computer market is suffering — to turn people on to Macs and gain market share. They are going for it big-time.

Above all, resist all the negativity about the economy out there. The gloomy nay-sayers are so tuned in to bad news that they’re blind to the good.  It is a wonderful, perfect time to unleash your creativity, reinvent yourself and your business, set up dynamic strategic partnerships, and thrive. Many small businesses are doing that now, right in the middle of the recession.

Are you ready to join them?

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

Give More

My wife and I have had quite a year.

She has been laid off twice this year, and I have had multiple surgeries and scary medical events that keep on going. A really mean recession that has its foot on everyone’s wallet weighs in with a daily negative undercurrent that drags down everything else, and it’s easy to get lost in the drama.

It’s enough to drive a person nuts.

To be more specific, it’s enough to make a person fearful, anxious, defensive, paranoid and self-centered, all of which are normal human reactions to deep distress and lots of losses. Trouble is, that’s no way to live over any length of time, because you really can drown in your sorrows if you can’t figure out how to swim.

So I want to share with you how I stumbled upon a cure for the blues, something that works no matter what.

It’s to give more.

No, I haven’t joined the Boy Scouts or a new church, and I’m not putting on a smiley-face to hide the pain.

I have found that giving more is an antidepressant/aphrodisiac/calmative/digestive aid/purpose-inducing/anxiety-lowering/sleep-restoring cure for just about everything that ails us. It is a magic bullet that can probably even cure the common cold or warm a cold heart.

It snuck up on me.

Coaching company executives is part of my work, and I noticed one day that I had started giving a little extra time to clients in our coaching sessions without even thinking about it. Once I noticed how I felt about doing that, I decided the next step would be to let no good deed go unappreciated; I started speaking up and giving a verbal appreciation whenever anyone did anything right, anything good. Everyone qualifies — friends, clients, grocery store clerks, mailmen, even used car salesmen. I simply say, “Thank you for ______________. I really appreciate it.”

This felt so good that I decided my wife could use some extra love with all that’s going on, so I started looking for ways to ease her way, do more than my share, to give her more of everything she likes. Let’s just say that the feedback was… satisfying.

Dang, this feels so good that I realize I hardly have any time left to feel afraid or sorry for myself. Guess I’ll have to schedule it.

When I’m busy giving more, my primitive, tight emotions relax into joy, connection and peace of mind. It’s true that the more I give, the more I get. I really like how the pinched look on someone’s face drops away and they smile really big just because I took a moment to give a little something. I’m having a blast spreading a little more love in my business, and I am crazy happy about the feeling of my marriage getting better and better.

Perhaps these times could become the best of times instead of the worst of times. Maybe we have a choice about that. What would happen if we all give a little more? How would doing that transform the mighty toils and troubles of the world?

Try it and find out.

I Double-dare you.

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

Be Agile

To borrow a line from The Wizard of Oz, “Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore”.

The tornado that lifted Dorothy and her dog Toto to previously unknown places is a good metaphor for the economic tornado that has just lifted all of us into a strange and unknown business future.

The economy is showing signs of life again, and as we dust ourselves off from our encounter with the ‘tornado’ of economic near-collapse, it is time to consider what the new future of the business world will look like, and how we can function well in it.

All indications are that recovery from this, the biggest and most unusual recession in our history, will not be a standard recovery where things return pretty much to what they were before the recession. The entire economic climate in the U.S. has shifted, and we are emerging from the damage to our financial systems into an unknown business operating system. We know we’ll face changes, but we don’t quite know yet what those changes look like when we translate them into our own businesses.

What we do know is that there will be a lot of change, and we’ll need to navigate those changes enthusiastically and effectively.

I wrote a white paper recently that lays out Seven Principles of the Provocative Leader, which we at the Institute for Provocative Leadership believe to be core principles that leaders must follow in order to succeed in today’s very different business climate.

The most useful of those principles right now is the ability to be agile.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

The world is changing so fast that the Big Guys (large, established businesses) don’t have the inherent advantages they used to have.  Agility has become the name of the game, and large size can actually be a handicap these days.

Charles Darwin was right in his observations about adaptation; that survival and growth depend upon the ability to adapt to change. We call this ability to adapt quickly agility.

Some qualities of agility are:

• Be quick to locate and exploit resources for change
• Have well-developed instincts to intuit dangers and opportunities
• Act quickly and decisively
• Remain vigilant in the search for positive change.

A great living example of this nimbleness is Ron Sargent, CEO of Staples, Inc. Listen to the breathtaking agility in this excerpt from an interview with him:

“The economic slowdown has caused Staples to reexamine every aspect of its business. Over the years, we started catering to the more casual customer. But that’s not where the money is, and that’s not what we’re really good at. Now we’ve stopped carrying about 600 items that appealed to the casual customer and added 650 to 700 items that appeal to the small-business customer instead.

“We’ve improved the quality of the merchandise we offer, because businesses have different needs than the casual consumer

“Instead of advertising as much in the Sunday circulars, which businesses don’t respond to, we put more into direct marketing, upgraded our Web site, and doubled our direct-sales force in four months.

“We took the money that we originally put into advertising and reinvested it in training for our associates, and we added more staff to our stores to provide better service.

“These are important changes.”

Another extremely agile business from the Forbes list of top ten small businesses is Hansen’s Natural. It blew off the doors with an 81% jump in sales in twelve months. Hansen’s repositioned the company from a staid natural juice-maker into a leading purveyor of the hottest new performance drinks. This level of accomplishment is noteworthy in any business, but utterly spectacular in the highly competitive soft drink industry, where average annual growth is 6 to 11 percent.

In the new business world, a company must be agile, or it will eat the dust of those who are.

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com

What’s Your Focus?

There is a huge mass hypnosis going on in the U.S. right now. 
It goes something like this:

• The economy is a mess
• Things haven’t been this bad in over fifty years
• There are some hopeful signs, but _______________ (insert any piece of bad news here)
• There are so many job losses that we’ll all be working at Pizza Hut within the next month.

OK, I made up the Pizza Hut part. It’s really Burger King.

The mainstream media is full of terrible news, and it always has been. We know this – it’s how they sell advertising -  but we can’t stop watching/reading it any more than we can look away from an auto wreck on the highway.

This is where the mass hypnosis comes in.

When enough people believe something, it takes on the power of being a fact, even if there are a lot of other, different facts lying around. The different facts are ignored or minimized in favor of the agreed-upon reality, and this focus on a single fact — that parts of the economy are a mess — becomes the only important fact about the economy.

But what of all the successes we never hear about in the dominant media outlets?

“What success?”, you say with a skeptical frown. “Don’t you know how bad things really are?”

Actually, there are successes everywhere you look. Check out The Good News Economist, or Seeking Alpha. How about Positive Economic News, or Business Success Stories in Entrepreneur Magazine?

Fifteen minutes of google search will yield all the success you can handle, and it’s all happening right now, when we’re supposed to be in totally dire straits across the board.

The danger of our culture of dominant media giants is that we increasingly let them define our focus, whether it is economic, political or personal. If it’s on the news often enough, loudly and repetitively enough, it must be the whole story, even if it’s really just a part of it.

I challenge you to start looking for the success stories, the good news about the economy, the positive results of big economic change. It won’t take you long to find them, but you’ll have to look. Then keep your focus on that instead of the other stuff.

Try it for just a day, a week, and see what an incredible difference it makes in your head, in your life.

What’s your focus? That’s what your life will be.

Doug Hickok, CEO Institute for Provocative Leadership doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com