Steve Hoffacker's Sales Quips

Today, the House passed a bill to rein in the out-of-control, and unnecessary NLRB. Of course, the Senate will not take any action, but it's what the House needed to do for the country, and it sends a signal to the NLRB that we're on to them and their actions are not appreciated.

The bill should have passed by a much larger margin than it did, but 186 Representatives see no reason to challenge the NLRB for trying to meddle in private enterprise.

The legislative action stems from a ruling by the NLRB that Boeing cannot open a plant in South Carolina because it must give to jobs to union members in Washington state. South Carolina, like Florida, is a right to work state.

We may have to wait until a year from January to rid ourselves of outrageous actions by the NLRB, EPA, and other bureaucratic agencies, but this is a good shot over the bow.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website or go to my other blog "Steve Hoffacker's Home Sales Insights" for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at "Steve Hoffacker's Happenings."

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Podcaster, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

There are so many issues we can discuss to illustrate how our government is harming small business and jobs. This story, however, is hard to believe.

Imagine a small business in the US being raided by Homeland Security and Fish & Wildlife because they supposedly broke an Indian rule - not a US law - and being told as well that all of this scrutiny would go away if they simply used Madagascar labor to prepare the raw materials before being sent to the US company! You heard right - our government defending a foreign government against a US business.

The company? Gibson Guitars. Their chief competitor, Fender Guitars, uses the same imported wood in the same way. No problem. Isn't there something in the Constitution about equal protection?

There is a political undertone here that cannot go unnoticed.

How does this relate to real estate or other small businesses? Watch this rather long (8 minutes) but eye-opening video and you'll see the parallels.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website or go to my other blog "" for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at "."

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Podcaster, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved. 

We don't like to see businesses fail, but we know that they do. It's the nature of free markets. Consumer tastes change. Profitability changes. Prices and production costs change.

If that weren't enough, technology trumps it all. Try to buy an 8-track player, a cassette tape, an LP phonograph record, a typewriter eraser - or even a typewriter for that matter. Maybe from a collector, but that's about it.

We read with a little bit of sadness that Steuben glassworks is ceasing operations on November 29. They are a 108 year old company.

They have changed a little with the years, but the demand for their pricey heavy lead crystal cannot sustain them. They have been losing millions for years. Some people in their small work force of 60 may be able to find jobs with Corning, who sold the company in 2008 and will buy back the name.

Steuben may come back as a different type of company some day, but that's the way market forces work.

Maybe some of the other workers can use their skills to start their own businesses.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website or go to my other blog "Steve Hoffacker's Home Sales Insights" for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at "Steve Hoffacker's Happenings."

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Podcaster, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

The President says that he has a plan to create jobs in this country, which seems doubtful, but let's hear it. Might be a great plan. He says he reveal it to Congress when they return from their summer recess.

If it's such a great plan (which it must not be) he would be going on national TV now to tell us what it is and urging Congress to return to work now to act on it.

He had no trouble making over 1,000 speeches on his health care plan. Funny we're not hearing the same type of intensity on this.

Any plan the President has likely will cost us more money that we don't have, create more long-term government programs that will further exacerbate our economic condition, and do nothing to stimulate private sector job growth.

Funny that those who have not held a real job in years have taken it upon themselves to create private sector jobs. Of course, the answer is for them to get out of the way and rescind most of the regulations, taxes, and compliance that is choking American business.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other bloghomesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

The 4th of July is a week from tomorrow. Can you believe that we are halfway through 2011 already?

The 4th is a fantastic day and well worth celebrating - even if some of our freedoms have been curtailed and we can't have our fireworks due to the drought conditions and the potential for wildfires.

We have so many liberties and freedoms in this country, and we need to thank our brave men and women in uniform for protecting them for us. We have an obligation, too. Some of our freedoms have slipped away and we have not protested loudly enough. We must begin doing this.

The list is longer than you might think.

As solopreneurs, salespeople, and people who earn our living without a salary or dependence on anyone other than ourselves and our abilities, we must stand strong for free enterprise and denounce all regulation that attempts to manipulate, control, or interfere with the free market.

As we prepare for the second half of 2011, we need to make our voices heard more and more.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other bloghomesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

The House passed cap and trade in 2009, but fortunately the Senate never agreed to the measure. Then the EPA decided with the President that they would begin to implement the taxation policy on energy just as if it had been passed - an end run around the Congress and illegal.

Now, John Bryson has been nominated by the President to be Secretary of Commerce. The Commerce Department, to me, is one of the key government agencies. It supports, nurtures, looks out for, and paves the way for commerce in this country and abroad. We do not need as the head of this agency someone who supports curtailing energy development, taxing energy usage, and otherwise crimping economic development.

Therefore his nomination needs to be blocked by the Senate. Encourage your Senators to vote against confirmation.

Being in business in this country - especially small business and entrepreneurial business - is more difficult than ever before, and we don't need more roadblocks from the national level. We need need a business advocate. Bryson is far from that.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other bloghomesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Americans, we need a watchdog and an advocate as Treasury Secretary. I can think of a lot of adjectives for Tim Geitner, and none of them are positive.

He's the one that supported bailing out Chrysler and effectively buying GM. Now he is so proud of those actions.

He told us that our economy would collapse if we didn't bail out the banks. He forced the banks to take the TARP even though most didn't want it and most have returned it since. The financial collapse was highly overblown.

He promised a catastrophic collapse to our economy if we failed to raise the debt limit. We didn't, and it didn't - not yet anyway.

He cries wolf about a default certainty if we don't raise the debt limit, yet he can pay all our bills without defaulting with the money he has on hand - unless he intentionally chooses to without payments and cause a default that way.

He got us QE 1 and QE 2 and is lobbying for QE 3.

Let's get a free market capitalist in this post or let it be vacant. We shouldn't have to continue on this course.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other bloghomesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Not a day goes by anymore when we don't hear about the results of one scientific study or another - or a myriad of surveys and polls. Politicians, businesses, scientists, doctors, medical researchers, and academicians do them - among others.

Sometimes the results bear out out what we think is the case. Sometimes they have surprising results. Occasionally the published conclusions don't match the data.

Such is the case with a Baylor University study. Using data from a 2005 "World Values Survey" of 10,405 people across the industrialized world, they sought to prove that free enterprise was making people less happy. That's the conclusion they drew. The cited the US as being less well-off than other nations like Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Their findings were fine, it's their results that were skewed.

They looked at how satisfied people are with their lives as a whole these.

What they determined is that the us had a slightly lower index - 7.26 on a 10 point scale compared to 7.39 for the whole group.

Then, they concluded that less government intervention can allow for a more efficient economy, but create more stress. "If you get sick and can't work or lose your job and there are few social protections in place, you're more likely to be anxious and less satisfied."

What they overlooked - likely because they wanted to - is that with those fewer social programs and protections in place the more freedom you have to do something about your condition. Looking to the government as a parent is just wrong. We were never created to live like this.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other blog homesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

The federal government has a department called the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It's real name should be the National Labor Advocacy Board.

Clearly the feds know nothing about free enterprise - the backbone of this country. They are attempting to assert their will and determine where businesses can and cannot operate - all because of labor unions.

You've probably heard that Boeing wants to relocate part of its manufacturing from the Seattle are to South Carolina. This would mean some 3,200 additional jobs for South Carolina - not to mention homes for all those relocating to the area or moving around within the area - autos and pickup trucks, too, possibly.

But, the NLRB can't allow those jobs to go to a right to work state where union influence and control is not assured.

Thus, the NLRB is attempting to stop a private business from exercising their right to be located wherever they deem the most beneficial for their business - and attempt to keep union jobs in Washington state. Interestingly, Boeing has already added 2,000 union jobs in Washington state since the NLRB started poking its nose into this.

Once again, an Administrative department or function is acting outside the Constitution.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other blog homesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome to May. It should be an exciting month with a lot going on. Spring continues. The Kentucky Derby is next Saturday, the Indy 500 and Coca Cola 600 run at the end of the month, and summer begins unofficially on Memorial Day weekend also.

We have a lot of work to do as a country. We have to stop spending. We have to get rid of the regulations and controls that are stifling our businesses.

Congress is trying, but there is such a long way to go.

Not raising the debt ceiling is the first place to start to restore a little sanity to our government.

America did not become great through entitlements, but it may well become an also-ran through them.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other blog homesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.