Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

- Theodore Roosevelt

Businesses do a lot of dumb things. Here are 19:

1. The pursuit of synergy. It rarely works. Most mergers are lame excuses for the failure to create genuinely new products, services and markets.

2. The belief in strategic plans. The best companies let 100 flowers bloom - pick the winners from among the hardiest of the sprouts.

3. The more time you spend planning, the less time you'll need to spend on implementation. Almost never the case! Ready. Fire. Aim. That's the approach taken by businesses I most respect.

4. Great products will sell themselves. Rubbish! In a market full of contenders, hardball hustling is a must.

5. Great advertising can save mediocre products. Rubbish redux. Pour money into support of great products, legendary ad man David Ogilvy says, but don't waist a dime trying to advertise a ho-hum product into prominence.

6. Train’em and they'll leave. Sick! It's like saying, "Treat people decently and they'll screw you.'' Treat people well - respect, responsibility, big-time training, independence - and you’ll have a superior work force........Period

7. Bring back the good old days. What good old days? The segregated toilets I grew up with'? Autocratic front-line supervisors? Yes today's economic conditions set one’s head spinning. But no way would I trade 1994 for 1954.

8. Bosses should be paid more than those who report to them. Oprah makes more than her producers, and all-star performers in general should draw all-star salaries - in information systems, personnel, marketing, research and development. Obvious, eh?

9. Do it right the first time. Candidate for the dumbest statement ever uttered by a human. You don't do anything new or interesting right the first time.

10. Don't make the same mistake twice. Wannabe second dumbest statement. In pursuit of significant improvement, we make the same mistakes over and over.

11. Business is serious stuff. Hogwash. Business is a part of the human circus. It's about reckless tries and unbridled passion.

12. Total quality management should be the umbrella for all improvement efforts. If there's a single "it" in business, it's innovation, not TQM.

13. Market research is a must. How about a must-not? "The customer is a rearview mirror," says George Colony of Forrester Research, "not a guide to the future."

14. "People" don't want change. Change is a pain. But we all seek it. Humankind has two basic and equally strong needs - stability and change.

15.. "They" can't handle change. Of course "they" can. They do from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. It's the 9 a.m.-to 5 p.m. part, when bosses think for them, that I worry about.

16. The average person is not creative. Again, just look a their off-hours activities.

17. Job descriptions and organization charts are essential road maps. Nonsense! Job descriptions are "no" guides - don't do this, don't go there. Org charts suggest hard wiring in a world that demands fluidity.

18. Regulation is a nuisance. True, but most of the things regulated in the workplace offer first-class opportunities. The disabled make fabulous employees. Safety breeds quality. Environmentally clean operations attract top workers. To bad, we need to legislate such stuff.

19. Foreigners play unfairly. Sure, others do a number on us from time to time (As we do to them - America’s markets are hardly barrier free.). But mostly, those who try to cheat us end up cheating themselves. Open markets add to local competitiveness. Just ask Detroit.

Increasing size may give a firm more clout or leverage or power, but can it become a trap if the company merely assumes that coats will decrease as it grows larger. Some costs are sensitive to factors other than volume or market share. Executives should remember to factor in such costs as the management expenses of operating a larger business.

SPREADING YOURSELF TOO THIN

While trying to serve the needs of too broad a market, a business can fail to serve the needs of any of it. It can neglect to analyze buyer groups, to define the target market and to manage an efficient distribution system. Quality and service may then decline. Managers will begin to complain that the business seems out of control. And the firm may become vulnerable to a competitor's focused strategy.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

This means trying to gain the benefits of two strategies at the same time and achieving the benefits of neither. For example, a business that tries to be both a cost leader and a differentiator may lose its competitive advantage on both fronts because its investment and marketing policies are inconsistent.

NOT BEING CUSTOMER DRIVEN

This happens when executives become too product or technology-focused. They lose touch with how the customer actually uses a product or what benefits the technology offers from the customer's point of view. Avoiding this trap means having customer-sensitive leadership with the firm.

CHEAPER IS BETTER

Businesses often make this mistake in judgment when moving into unfamiliar products and markets. The trap has four components: not knowing what to price; not knowing why to price; not knowing how to discount; and not understanding the dynamics of cost-plus pricing. To avoid this, a business should understand and implement a method of "strategic pricing."

UNDERSTANDING THE COMPETITION

This occurs when executive teams assume that their product offering is unique. and underestimate the competitor's willingness to take losses to protect or gain market share. In such cases, the company always projects higher profits for the next year but never realizes them.

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT

Senior managers stop looking outward. They lose sight of the reasons why they became successful. They assume that the business will continue to be as healthy as it always has been. Becoming complacent causes a firm to miss profit-making opportunities.

WHAT THEY DON'T KNOW WON'T HURT THEM

This refers to the common assumption that only senior members of the organization really need to understand the company's strategy, an attitude that leads to clumsy and inefficient strategy implementation.

SLOPPY COMMUNICATION

Many executives do explain their company's strategy to the employee, but ineffectively. Key words, phrases and strategic concepts are ill-defined, leaving room for misunderstanding. No matter how brilliant the strategy is. performance will suffer unless the business team fully understands it.

ELOQUENCE IS EVERYTHING

Some executives are so enthusiastic about their business strategy that they tail to involve others in its development. They try instead to sell the formulated plan to the organization. Despite an eloquent presentation, however, those who were not involved in the formulation process may remain unmotivated and uncommitted.

FAILING TO RAISE THE BAR

This means accepting yesterday's definitions of excellence, rather than tomorrow's. It occurs when executives fail to raise organizational standards to meet the needs of a new company strategy.

"Strategy Traps and How to Avoid Them" Robert A. Stringer Jr. and Joel L. Ucheniok

We react to the image we have of ourselves in our brain. Change that image for the better and our lives improve. Self-image is changed for the better or worse, not by intellect alone, not by intellectual knowledge alone, but by experiencing. Wittingly or unwittingly, you develop your self image by your creative experiencing in the past. You can change this image by the same method. This experiencing can be either real or imagined. Experimental and clinical psychologists have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an 'actual experience" and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. Basically, a lie is as good as the truth as long as you believe it.

Maxwell Maltz M.D., a plastic surgeon, discovered that when you change a person's face you almost invariably change their future. Change their physical image and nearly always the person is changed, their personality, their behavior, and sometimes, basic talents and abilities. A plastic surgeon does not simply alter a person's face, he alters the person's inner self. It's as though the personality itself has a ''face Maxwell Maltz discovered that you can change that "personality face without plastic surgery and thereby change a person's "self image" for the better. If a person's "self image" changes for the better you almost invariably change the person's life for the better. Maxwell Maltz, M.D., invented this process and called it Psycho-Cybernetics.

The process of improving our self-image involves using our imagination and looking at ourselves in the most positive way possible.

We each have a current self-image that governs our conscious and subconscious behavior. If we are going to change our self-image we need to develop new ideas on how we picture ourselves. Ideas are not changed by will but by other ideas. We need to picture ourselves the way we want to be or what we want to become. It's very important to picture ourselves as already having attained full success, not just making progress toward success.

In sports the current hottest teaching technique is Cybernetics. Prior to the students going out to start practice, they view video tapes of the best athletes and then mentally picture themselves as successful, smooth and coordinated, basically having already accomplished success. They then learn faster, easier, with less stress and are more successful.

A technique that psychologists use for working on your self-image is to picture yourself before a large motion picture screen. You need to concentrate on as many details as possible. Make the picture vivid and real, pay attention to small details, sights, sounds, feelings, emotions. Picture yourself as an accomplished speaker, a first class salesman, or a great negotiator. Play out various scenarios in your mind. Be confident and eloquent as a speaker. Overcome every objection as a salesman or be a brilliant negotiator. Mentally experience success. Your mind reacts to what you have experienced easier than what you have intellectually learned.

All of us have had past successes that we are proud of. Remember how great it felt, how confident you were and how you looked to the future with enthusiasm. Remember and build on these feelings and memories, expand your capabilities and become a better you.

Remember! If you have a low opinion of yourself others will too. You should be your own best friend; don't tear yourself down. We all want to be liked, wanted and able. Give yourself the best chance.

Mentally picturing the desired end result forces positive thinking and lessens your tension. Tension, inferiority complex, and hesitation (being too careful) are the biggest enemies. You are better than you think. Consciously improving each individual area is too hard and takes too much time. By mentally picturing total success you allow yourself to be positive, loose, and less inhibited in achieving a better total you.

This technique is guaranteed to work, to make life more enjoyable, business more successful and to put more enthusiasm in everything you do. You're better than you think. This process will allow you to prove it to yourself.

Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz M.D. can be purchased at most local book stores or directly from the publishers. In paperback ($5.95) Simon & Schuster Publisher 212-373-8000 or cassette tape ($15.95) Audio Renaissance 800-221-7945.

Something is missing in most of our lives.

Part of what's missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can he measured. Part of what's missing is a game worth playing.

What's also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction: in music, in television, in people, in drugs.

And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We've fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion.

What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost.

That's what a business can do. It can become that place of community. It can become that place where words such as integrity, intention, commitment, vision, and excellence can he used, not as nouns, but as verbs, as action steps in the process of producing a worthwhile result.

What kind of result? Giving your customer a sense that your business is a special place, created by special people, doing what they do in the best possible way. And all being done for the simplest, most human reason possible--because they're alive.

What other reason do you need?

Human beings are capable of performing extraordinary acts. Capable of going the moon. Capable of creating the computer. Capable of building a bomb that can destroy us all. The least we should be able to do is run a small business that works.

For if we can't do that, then what's the value of our grand ideas? What purpose do they serve but to alienate us from ourselves, from each other, from who we are?

Our business can become something more than merely a place to go to work. It can become a place that satisfies more of ourselves than what we are today. There is a place in Business Development for the whole of ourselves.

Our business can give us more life.

The E Myth

If the task is leading to a sale, concentrate on perfecting that task. What contribution does it make to my business? The goal is to define what tasks are needed to make the sale, rather than how to keep busy and active.

CONTACT LEVEL

Is your contact level high enough to make a decision? If not, go up the ladder or your competitor will. Ask the question, "Could you graph out how a purchase decision is made at your company?"

ASK THE CLIENT

How do you find out what information is needed to make the sale. Simply ask the client. Salesman often try to recite their expertise on the machine tool business rather than working with the client to identify what specifically is needed to make a sale. Your conversation must be a two-way communication with the customer doing most of the talking, or you lose. Someone once said, "you have two ears and one mouth. Use them in direct proportion." Too many salesman tell rather than ask

FOCUS

High value salesman are skilled at identifying their clients' needs. These salesman know that the art of persuasion is not as productive as the art of identification of opportunities. Only after the needs are focused in objective detail can the path to a sale decision be planned, plotted, and produced.

PUSH YOURSELF

When you're trying to develop customers, emphasize quality of results. A machine is probably sold every week in your territory by someone; why not you? If you could sit in on your competitor's presentation and technically evaluate there product, you would probably be surprised at how easy it is to compete and win.