This Blog is Interrupted Due to Flu

If you came over here and saw all the tissue and popsicle sticks I've been diligently piling up in my bedside trash can, you'd think someone offered me a job paying fairly decent money~

This is day number five.

As Henry David Thoreau said, "Tis healthy to be sick sometimes."

And he even said this with no advantage of Nyquil whatsoever.

"What Would Entrepreneur Chick Do?"

"It is better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong then to agonize at length and be right too late."  Marilyn Moats Kennedy

 

In a Jam? One Secret Sentence to Tell Yourself

 

Entrepreneur Chick is reading a very famous businessman's book over again.

As I read last night, this man was talking about how most people are not really cut out for success in that they can not handle pressure.

If you want to own a business, or you do own a business, one thing that you can count on more than anything else: is pressure.

I'm in a jam right now. That creates pressure.

 I'm going to be very candid with you.

I'd love to tell you that when I'm under pressure, why, I just rise to the occasion, never get upset, never get my thong in a wad, never raise my voice, never cuss and say a bunch of things I don't mean-

When I write as Entrepreneur Chick, I ask myself: is that true?

If it is, I write it- if it's not, I don't.

When my jam happened yesterday, my very first reaction was to get angry.

After I got angry, I decided to feel sorry for myself.

"Oh, this sucks. This isn't fair. Why is this happening?"

Anger is a valuable emotion in that it causes me to take action.

Pity is a useless emotion because it causes me to not take action.

I have to literally will myself out of feeling sorry, back to acknowledging my anger, and finally, take some sort of action in order to resolve the situation.

I'm getting much better not ruminating as to why something happened, but rather, what I going to do to solve it.

It's at this juncture I remember something very powerful.

Here's the one secret sentence, I say:

"I am a very creative person, and there are many solutions to a problem!"

I find this sentence gives me the power I feel I've lost, wonderfully back!

I return to the situation with a new attitude, as I am confident a resolve is just around the corner.

Why is a resolve just around the corner?

Because I am a very creative person, and there are many solutions to a problem!

This sentence has never failed me.

Try it and see if it doesn't work for you too.

Doing Business With Giants- Og, the King of Bashan

Have you heard of Og?

I know, right.

What was his mother thinking when she named him that?

However, Og didn't take guff on the playground because, you see, Og was a giant. A real, live, true giant.

You might be surprised to learn this about Entrepreneur Chick- but I read the Old Testament almost every day.

I'll give you the loosely translated, Readers Digest version of the Hebrew's dilemma.

(Though I only read The King James Version, which is classically beautiful and conveys a thought with fewer words; therefore making it easier to both understand and remember.)

God: Look guys. I'm giving you this land so-

Hebrews: Great! Well, you know, we'll send some spies over first and check out the place.

God: Um...

Later that day-

Hebrews: Gosh, God. It doesn't look so good. Did you KNOW that there's giants over there? Seriously. Giants. We're not so sure that we can beat them.

God: So, you're not sure I can help you out, huh? Does, oh, I don't know- the whole bringing you up out of Egypt with all those nasty plagues visited on Pharaoh and his peeps, and not on you, mean anything?

Parting of The Red Sea ring a bell?

Hebrews: But we like camping! And the manna thing- it's not so bad once you get used to it. We don't want to repeat the whole eat a pheasant and the earth swallows you up, drama.

God: No, see. That's not the deal. Don't think I can't hear you running your pie holes in your tents- you say, "HE brought us out here in the desert so he can kill us and give our children to our enemies for a prey." You're half right! You are going to die out here, those of you who don't believe me. Yep, you're gonners. However, TWO of you will not die, TWO of you will go into the land, and that's... (drum roll please- wait- I'll use thunder) Joshua and Caleb.

Two men out of literally millions went into the land because they had:

FAITH

They had this faith- not blind, stupid faith- but faith based upon historical evidence which denoted that God had been faithful in the past, therefore, HE could most assuredly be counted on to be faithful in the future.

What does this mean to the entrepreneur- if anything?

A Giant's Definition:

Giant: A multimillion dollar company that employs over 3,000- give or take.

You: A small business.

Should you, as a small business, dare to get involved and do business for, a giant?

Yes! If you are:

Aware, But Not Afraid: Be aware of, but not afaird of- how a giant pays.

Do you know how big corporations pay?

They pay on a net thirty, to net fourty five.

It will take you thirty to fourty five days to see your money. Uh oh. Now what? That's going to leave you scrambling to come up with enough cash flow to pay your labor and your materials. What do you do?

Do The Three B's, Babies!

Budget: This is how I manage to beat a whole bunch of odds. I told someone last night, "You won't believe how much money I won't spend!"

I carefully make sure that expenses are kept low and my employees are paid. By doing this, I am buying myself time until the gaint's cash starts rollling in.

Barrow: against accounts receivable. You don't have to- but it's an option.

This is called, "factoring".

Factoring is "a financial transaction whereby a business sells its accounts receivable (i.e., invoices) to a third party (called a factor) at a discount in exchange for immediate money with which to finance continued business. Factoring differs from a bank loan in three main ways. First, the emphasis is on the value of the receivables (essentially a financial asset)[1], not the firm’s credit worthiness. Secondly, factoring is not a loan – it is the purchase of a financial asset (the receivable). Finally, a bank loan involves two parties whereas factoring involves three."

Build: Get your sales staff out there, or you get out there, and build up smaller accounts.

You'll want to do that because they pay quicky, therefore, giving you the necessary cash to keep funding your business and make a profit, rendering the giant a whole lot more pleasant to do business with.

I share this with you today because one of my clients is, in fact, a giant-  a national name you'd all be familiar, if I were to share it with you.

Though I am happy as Charlie Sheen at Betty Ford to have acquired this giant, I now have a much better understanding of how one operates- and should you run across of few giants of your own- so will you!

HO, HO, HO~

(I'm quoting the Green Giant now, not Snoop Dogg.)

"For only Og, the king of Basham remained as remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron: is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man."

                                                             Deuteronomy 3:11

You've Got to Toughen Up- Holla!

See this fierce looking fellow right here? That's my Yorkie, Eliot, barking at me furiously because I told him, falsely, I think I saw a "kitty cat"!

You're real tough, Eliot, with your Trick R Treat Halloween t-shirt on there, buddy.

I hate to tell you, but the cat would first laugh you to death.

And then he'd claw your eyes out.

But you see, we can all learn something from Eliot.

In his mind's eye, this is how he sees himself, no lie:

You've heard it said that people look like their dogs?

I'm not sure about that, but in attitude, Eliot and I are two peas in a pod.

I'm going to shoot damn straight with you today. Business is tough. Life is tough. People aren't always going to like you.

What are you going to do about that?

I'll tell you what you're going to do about that.

Realize most people have a strong desire to be liked.

Now that you know that, you have an advantage. You drop that strong desire to be liked right away.

Seriously, get the hell over it. Pandering to what other people want you to do, think you should do, tell you to do- will never get you anywhere of consequence. And besides all that, who respects a Milk Toast?

Many of my friends are elected officials in the community where I live.

One told me recently, "It's like this- no one owns me. I vote according to my beliefs. I say, if you don't like it, then don't vote for me- so what?"

And you know something? That guy is the most respected leader out there.

Entrepreneur Chick has mananged to be successful in business because I don't care if you like me or not.

If I did, I probably wouldn't have married a black man.

But I won't start something just for the sake of it.

(Tony loves to say, "Don't start none, won't be none.")

However, after I've been all sorts of gracious, and it has not been met in kind;

I will peg you for the ass you apparently are.

You're pegged. And I'm done.

Pretty simple.

Sales, The Bottom Line

If you're going to be in business, you have to learn to sell. I've never seen one business yet that didn't have its heartbeat firmly established in sales.

As my good friend, and fellow business owner, Greg, observed, "You can make an awful lot of mistakes but sales will always keep you afloat."

Most people can not sell. The very thought of selling something shakes them to the core.

When they (finally) get the prospect in front of them they start to get nervous, start to sweat, start to not listen, and go on and on and on. Would you buy something from a person like this? I'd lay odds, you wouldn't.

Why can't they sell?

What's holding them back?

REJECTION

Being told "no" is too scary.

Again, get the hell over it. As George, my father, who was a consummate salesman loved to say, "You won't die."

Are you open minded?

Then I 'd like you to watch something for a little bit. You might not like it, you might not agree with the lifestyle, you might find it offensive.

But I'll tell you- this is the thick skin I'm talking about.

These people came up from nothing. Nothing.

Do you think these men were told no a few times? Do you think they turned tail and ran, or did they slug it out and come right back- only harder?
You be the judge.

The next time you drive up to a sales call, Entrepreneur Chick wants you to imagine pulling up in your Cadillac Snoop Deville!

You take a cue from these gangsta's swagger and develope a little bit o' yo own-
 holla back!

P.S. Both Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent are amazing salesmen and outstanding entrepreneurs. Both of them are so adept, they could sell vodka to Russians.

Get Goaling!

Now that I have everyone's attention, there is a new website the Entrepreneur Chick has found which has tremendously helped me not just clarify and focus on my goals, as in the oooh, la la photo above, but additonally provides an easy and measurable way, along with action steps, to help insure I meet them!

Reading many of your blogs I see that there's a common theme really, amongst those who seem to have goals, objectives and dreams that they very much want to reach but struggle in frustration, at times, to that end.

In the past, I have always relied on my notebooks- which understandably, is not very high tech; just humble pen and paper- to keep me moving in the direction I want to go.

I have to say it has been effective, and I have reached many of the goals I have set for myself.

The biggest of which were:

(1) Leave sociopathic husband.

(2) Maybe marry someone decent.

After obtaining those goals I had:

(3) Start a business.

Although I've had smaller goals along the way, and certainly every business I started was not a success, those three goals have been the plumbline, the hallmark, the gold standard- of the past ten years.

My current goals?

(1) Increase business sales by a certain amount of thousands every six months until two million a year is reached. (For business number two.)

(2) "Entrepreneur Chick"- the book! Should be completed by October nineteenth of this year.

(3) Radio show! Oh, why not? If I have a book, might as well. I can sell it on the show, invite guests, take callers, that sort of thing.

(4) Eat right and DO NOT EAT AT NIGHT! Eating right is pretty easy for me, but at night, some alien takes over my body and dips my hand into potato chips, forces me to make root beer floats, and other no nos.

Yeah, that's it.

If you have that same problem, here's a little trick I found to help me stop.

When I get hungry, I mix a teaspoon of this in water and drink the whole thing.

If that doesn't work, I do it again.

And now for the site I've been telling you about-

Get Goaling!

And guess what?

It's FREE~ 

The Sunshine Award!

This award is  "to celebrate the positivity and creativity of our fellow bloggers".
Mimi and Tilly, who's "Art of a Glittery Life" I positively adore, passed this award to me.

I so appreciate and feel honored you thought of me, Mimi and Tilly! Thank you! :)

To accept this award, I must pass this on to twelve bloggers who exemplify the same.

Therefore, in no particular order, I am pleased to share some blogs with you today that never fail to delight me.

Some are brand new to me, just discovered today, as a matter of fact, which is
Decades a Go Go. I can not believe he found a car and bought it, just like my grandparent's Rambler! Congratulations.


Here they are- do enjoy!

The Sententious Vaunter

The Whole Blooming World

Fortune Cookies and Men

Places with Character

Affordable Accoutrements

Colleen Drew Photography

Everyone Goes to Micks

Decades A Go Go

1950's Atomic Ranch House

Pupa Art

Scandalous Housewife

Workforced