Greatest Shortcut to Prosperity

A small investment in building character pays us back a millionfold. Every pound of energy we put into learning for the development of initiative, courage, and our own personality, we get back in many ways. For every determination that we put in to life comes back to us fantastically multiplied!

Nature is rich, and it was intended that everyone could take part in that abundance. The essence of having abundance in this life is what we must believe in. We must raise our sights for greater accomplishments and never let the thought of failure hinder our progress or hold us back, or limit our accomplishments. We must think success, and feel success and work for success, and its ok to work on increasing and expanding our boundaries.

Most of us tend to underestimate the real potential that we have within us. It was never intended that we should be poor, or worried , or unable to pay our bills, when we are surrounded with so much abundance.

When we think of fear, discouragement, and failure, that’s what we will get. We need to think of strength, and courage, and success. Our achievements and failures today are a sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. Whatever price we set upon ourselves, life will give back to us. If we visualize and emphasize our worries, our fears, and our negative attitudes, we live with and become saturated by them. We make them real by our practices.

When I was involved in sports at a younger age, I would put my mind to it, and my thoughts became my actions. There was no way someone else was going to beat me. In business today, as a parent, or in civic and ecclesiastical responsibilities, I believe in success.

Remember that thoughts are energy. Thoughts are magnets that attract to us to the various things that we think of. The greatest shortcut to prosperity is to think of it. Prosperity attracts more opportunities, and poverty repels it. Many of us have eyes but don’t see the great opportunities that are staring us right in the face. Before we can our true heart’s desire, we must get clearly fixed in our mind what we want and then concentrate all of our attention on that one thing. Most of us struggle on in a vague sort of way hoping that something will turn up, not knowing for certainty what to expect. We usually waste enough energy to get us to our destination. Most of us spend far more too much energy on the detours instead of concentrating on the main thing we started out to accomplish.

Remember that you can accomplish great things, and you can make a big difference in the lives of those you associate with…including your own. Our Creator intended for each of us to be successful, to experience abundance in this life, and good measure.

I don’t know who said this, but here is a good thing to remember  about abundance. “I bargained with life for a penny, only to find dismayed that anything I had asked of life, Life would have paid.”

Business Ownership is Not For the Faint of Heart

Here are a few things to remember as you take your journey down the path of entrepreneurship.

• Business ownership is not for the faint of heart…it takes
  • drive,
  • determination,
  • a dogged approach to winning business,
  • good marketing skills,
  • great people skills,
  • a little bit of luck, and
  • capital.
• Your business plan will need to be developed and updated periodically.
• Your competition will constantly need to be evaluated. They will come up with new products and services that you will need to compete against. Consistently do your homework.
• Once you have developed a solid Unique Selling Advantage tell everyone why your business is different and why people should buy from you.
• Set achievable goals that will make you stretch a little.
• Keep advertising and marketing no matter what.
• Set high standards and make sure that your employees follow these high standards.
• Have fun at what you do…”if it isn’t fun, then why do it?”

 

“If a man cannot dream he will soon be asleep to all the important things this life has to offer. If a man cannot pray he will soon only listen to himself. And if he has no charity for others he will soon be the only important thing in his pathetic existence.” Brian Hazelgren

This is your time to dream and to achieve your dreams. You have all the tools around you to help you succeed. Take advantage of the materials that will help you learn how to best run your business. Don’t get discouraged when you make mistakes, because you will. Learn from them and keep picking yourself up again, and again and again.

There is so much to learn…so don’t get overwhelmed in the process. Take the time to learn from those who have been in the trenches, fighting the battles, learning along the way and achieving success.

Goal #1: Come up with a list of what you feel are the next steps for you in your business journey

Goal #2: Write down the things that are keeping you awake at night in regards to your business and what you still need help with

Hire The Right People

Publicizing a Job Opening

Once you’ve determined that you need to hire someone and figured out what you need done, you’re ready to let the world know about your job opening.

There are several ways to do so:

• Advertising. The most common means of advertising is in newspapers. Newspaper ads are relatively inexpensive and get good response and quick turnaround. Trade journals are more expensive and generate less response, but can be used effectively for highly paid, highly skilled professionals.
• Writing good job ads. There are some things you should include in your ads, and some things you should not include, particularly if you’re covered by antidiscrimination laws.
• Personal recruiting. This involves going to places such as schools to find and attract job candidates. It can also include personal referrals.
• Outside services. If you tend to hire frequently or you need to hire several employees at once, this is a good route to use because they do a lot of the legwork. It can be expensive, though.
• Evaluating your choices. We provide some pointers on situations that might favor one method over another.

Screening Job Applicants

Once the word is out that you have a job opening, expect to get phone calls, in-person visits, and resumes in the mail. But what do you do once the calls, letters, and people start coming in?

1. First, determine whether the person is indeed an applicant. If you’re hiring your first employee, chances are that anyone who expresses interest in any way is an applicant. If, however, you have 15 or more employees, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires that you keep all records of all applicants for a full year, so determining who is an official applicant and who isn’t becomes more important.
2. Decide how to respond to applicants. It’s always a good practice to acknowledge everyone who applies for the job, even if you decide that they aren’t suited for it.
3. Decide on the type of information that you are going to require from applicants and how you are going to get it. Do you have an application you want them to fill out or are you going to rely on resumes? Which other types of application materials could you ask for?
4. Determine if you’re going to test your applicants. A few industries and jobs require certain testing, but most are at your discretion. What you need in an employee will determine what, if any, testing you want to do. Refer to the job description, if you have one, and see if any of the requirements necessitate testing.

How Do You Interview Applicants?

Once you’ve gathered the information you need from applicants and you’ve reviewed it, you’re ready to start making some appointments to interview the most promising candidates.

Most people believe that they are good judges of character. Just a short chat with a job applicant and they can tell you whether he or she is hardworking, honest, creative, and loyal. Of course, it’s usually not that easy.

Assessing applicants’ qualifications by talking to them is a highly subjective method of choosing employees. However, used in partnership with other screening methods, such as applications and background checking, it can be an extremely useful selection tool. After all, one of the most important qualifications a person must have for any job is the right personality to work well with the supervisor and co-workers, and you can’t get that information off a resume or application.

But, first you need to:

• Plan for the interview, by deciding where to have the interview and choosing an interview format.
• Know how to conduct the interview, by understanding your role as an interviewer, and knowing what to ask and what not to ask.

Doing a Background Check

After you’ve collected information about applicants and done several interviews, you’re ready to check the background of your most promising candidates.

Because so many people misrepresent their background and credentials, it is important to do at least a little checking to see if what the applicant says about his or her background is true. A lot of employers don’t do any checking, and they often regret that decision. The applicant may be unqualified for the job or may have some personality trait or past experience that causes problems for you later.

Moreover, if your applicant will have contact with other employees or with customers, an important reason to do that checking is to avoid negligent hiring claims. If you have an employee who turns violent and harms either a customer or another employee, you could be slapped with a lawsuit if reference checking would have kept you from hiring that person.

If you have employees who have or will have significant contact with the public, customers, patients, or children, you’ll want to be particularly careful about doing a thorough background check, including a check of criminal records to the extent permitted by law.

For more information regarding how to do a proper background check, consider the following:

• General guidelines for reference checks
• Employment references
• Personal references
• Education records
• Credit reports
• Driving records
• Criminal records
• Documentation of the reference check

Making the Hire

After you’ve interviewed your top candidates for a job and checked their backgrounds, you must decide which one you want to hire. Use the notes that you’ve taken in interviews to help you.

Now you’re ready to make a job offer to your top candidate.

A job offer may be made orally—either in person or over the phone—or in writing. I recommend you do it over the phone, so you get a quicker answer to the offer and so that your chosen applicant doesn’t get snapped up by some other employer while your written offer is still in the mail.

No matter what the form of the job offer is, the principle is the same. Do not make promises or statements that can be construed as promises, that you cannot or do not intend to keep. Those statements can sometimes lead to expensive litigation if you later decide to terminate the employee.

When a job offer is extended, it should include the following information:

• Position offered
• Location and working hours
• Salary (although sometimes salary must be negotiated before the applicant will accept)
• Benefits
• Starting date
• Any papers or information that should be brought on the first day of work
• A date by which the applicant must respond to your job offer, so you can move on to the next candidate if your first choice doesn’t accept

While making a job offer is usually a positive experience, there are some areas to be mindful of and things to beware of. Don’t create an employment contract with an offer.

What Do You Do After the Hire?

After you’ve made the job offer and the candidate accepts it, you can begin to take steps to:

• Complete the required paperwork (i.e., I-9, W-4, insurance application, credit card application, a copy of the employee handbook, etc.).
• Set up personnel files.
• Orient the employee.
• Review your recruiting and hiring process.
• Provide the proper training for their specific job responsibilities.
• Make them a feel a part of the team.
• Hold reviews after 30 days, 90 days, and six months. (These can be brief interviews to find out how happy they are…after all, it cost enough time and resources to hire them in the first place.)

Free Enterprise Model

The Free Enterprise Model is universal and allows all types of managers in all types of industries to work with an idea, and either bring it to fruition, or decide to ban the idea.

First, it begins with an IDEA that moves the manager to some form of action. The idea begins to take shape as the OPPORTUNITY is sized up and analyzed. The manager then begins to communicate his or her idea to others, and conducts further analysis of the opportunity. This analysis is required to realize just how viable the opportunity may or may not be.

Once it is determined that there exists a fairly practical opportunity, the manager then begins to design a plan for gathering the proper RESOURCES. In this case, the resources are those elements that are needed to turn an opportunity into reality.

The resources required here may vary from organization to organization, but there are a few basic resources to consider: Tools, Technology, Capital, Industry Best Practices, Partners, Suppliers, Value Added Resellers (VAR’s), and most important People, or staff–not the management team. Resources are vastly important in the overall success of making the opportunity a reality.

After the Resources have been identified and even allocated, the next step is to formulate the TEAM that will be responsible for driving the entire concept into a formidable, moneymaking opportunity. The team is made up of individuals who will be held responsible for the success (or heaven forbid, failure) of the opportunity.

As you go through the exercises of sizing up an opportunity, gathering the proper resources and assembling the best management team, four very important elements should not be overlooked as the process continues. Those four elements are:

• Communication
• Plan of Action
• Strategy
• Assessment/Review

Communication is paramount throughout the entire process. If communication breaks down, the process breaks down and will ultimately fail. Several years ago, I introduced the Power Planning Model™ for strategic planning, in which I explain that communication is the foundation of all successful planning operations. Pay close attention to the communication between members of the planning committee and management. Keep a close watch that someone is driving the process forward and that no backbiting or undermining is occurring.

Develop a Plan of Action and see the fruits of your planning labors. This is where you will actually begin to implement what you have designed. Your Action Plan is your Implementation Strategy.

How will you put into practice what you have committed to writing? Although the Strategic Plan itself is a call to multiple forms of action, a succinct Plan of Action to get things moving is also required. It outlines the steps you will be taking, your milestones you and your team will be achieving, who is responsible for the completion of the milestone, start and end dates, and a budget for each element.

Strategy is defined as 1 a (1): the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war (2): the science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions b: a variety of or instance of the use of strategy  2 a: a careful plan or method: a clever stratagem b: the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal  3: an adaptation or complex of adaptations (as of behavior, metabolism, or structure) that serves or appears to serve an important function in achieving evolutionary success.

And Stratagem is defined as 1 a: an artifice or trick in war for deceiving and outwitting the enemy b: a cleverly contrived trick or scheme for gaining an end.

Whether it comes down to war, winning a game or beating your competition, formulating a strategy is the first step to achieving success.

Assessment and Reviews should occur after you have implemented your plan. You will need to assess how well your plan is working. You should review with your team what things are working and which things are not.

• Has the plan been implemented?
• What are the bumps in the road that have occurred?
• What changes should you make?
• Who should you reward if things are going well? (Don’t forget this item…people like to be recognized for doing a good job.)

So, now that you have learned about the Free Enterprise Model, how does this help you understand how business flows?_________________________________________________

What is your business IDEA? ____________________________________________________

What RESOURCES do you need to make it work? ___________________________________

How will you find/gather these Resources? _________________________________________

Who are the players on your TEAM? ______________________________________________

What are their strengths (including yours)? __________________________________________

What are their weaknesses (including yours)? _______________________________________

Can you think of others (not on your payroll that will play a role in the overall success of your venture (i.e. your attorney, CPA, insurance agent, marketing consultant, etc.)?  ____________________________________________________________________________

What are your plans to find out if this IDEA that you have will really work? _________________

Where will you find the data to assess the real market OPPORTUNITY? __________________

Spend a few minutes answering these questions, and thinking through how the Free Enterprise Model will help you grow your business. Good luck!

www.brianhazelgren.com

Toasted Pecan Pudding

My wife Ann makes the most amazing pie called Toasted Pecan Pudding. It’s so delicious and makes me salivate to try it again! Tomorrow cant come soon enough to have a few bites…Anyway, several people wanted the recipe, so with Ann’s permission, here it is…

TOASTED PECAN PUDDING PIE

1/2 c. butter, melted

1 1/2 c. coconut

1 c. flour

1 c. chopped pecans

1/4 c. packed brown suger

2. pkg. (3 oz ea) instant vanilla pudding

3 c. cold mile

1 – 8 oz. whipped topping

COMBINE butter, coconut, flour, pecans and sugar. Spread into thin large, un-greased pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes until lightly browned. Cool.

In a large bowl, beat pudding mix and milk. Fold in whipped topping. Place half of pecan mixture in 9×13 pan and spread the pudding mixture over. Top with remaining pecan mixture. Chill until ready to serve…and enjoy! (try not to salivate too much during the process!

30 Traits of Leaders

I posted this a while ago, but several people have asked to view it again. We need Leaders who will stand up and take responsibility to make an impact, and make a difference. These 30 Traits of Leadership are good to review, and in the end, the implementation of these traits will be the key…

30 Traits of Leadership

 

1. Leaders Lead by Example without “Managing” Others

2. Leaders Don’t Have to Tell their Followers to Follow Them

3. Leaders Hold Others Accountable, and Want to Be Held Accountable

4. Leaders are Capable of Providing Clarity So There is No Confusion

5. Leaders Have the Courage to Take The First Step, and…Lead

6. Leaders Delegate and Allow Others to Grow

7. Leaders Are Not Afraid of Making Decisions

8. Leaders Possess a Winning, Positive Attitude

9. Leaders Respect Others Culture, Religion, Race, and Ideals

10. Leaders Want to Swim Upstream and Seek Out Opportunities That Others View as Difficult

11. Leaders Know Their Followers and Enjoy Helping Them Grow

12. Leaders Earn the Respect of Their Peers

13. Leaders Have a Vision and Share it with Others

14. Leaders Deal in Honesty and Integrity

15. Leaders Empower Others to Find Success, and to Lead

16. Leaders Control Emotions, Especially Anger

17. Leaders Motivate and Inspire Others

18. Leaders Don’t Look for Excuses or Scapegoats When Things Go Wrong

19. Leaders are Able to Adapt when Faced with the Challenges of Change

20. Leaders are Never Happy With the Status Quo and Seek New Adventures

21. Leaders Are Confident in Their Ability to Lead (Or They Fake It Really Well)

22. Through Their Example, Leaders Earn the Right to Be Heard

23. Leaders Do Not Rationalize Their Weaknesses, They Seek to Turn Them into Strengths

24. Leaders Quickly Change Their Fears to Confidence

25. Leaders Learn To Trust Others

26. Leaders Confront Problems and Look for Fair Solutions

27. Leaders Allow for and Encourage Two-Way Communication

28. Leaders Learn the Art of Listening Before Engaging Their Mouths

29. Leaders Exude Professionalism and Confidence

30. Leaders Seek for Personal and Team Improvement

 

by Brian Hazelgren, and taken from the pages of Brian’s book  Tactical Entrepreneur

www.brianhazelgren.com

$2,500 Scholarships

Good morning,

I am proud to announce that we are giving away two scholarships to help fuel the entrepreneurial fire. The first scholarship is for U.S. Military veterans and their family members. The second one is for entrepreneurs who want to receive further education in entrepreneurship.

Everyone has a dream…something they really want to accomplish. I know there are many that you have a dream of building their own successful business. Reaching your goals and living your dreams requires energy, focus, and determination.

There is a new kind of tenacious competitor that has emerged, and for that reason, we are offering a $2,500 Scholarship to our veterans and entrepreneur communities. The link to the first scholarship program is here:  http://www.brianhazelgren.com/scholarship_govets.html#

Tell everyone you know about these scholarships to help support our veterans and our entrepreneurs.

We will also be announcing a scholarship for entrepreneurs of all kinds, and in all places soon!

To apply, simply fill out the form on the site. Tell us, in 250 words or less, how $2,500 will help you accomplish your dreams. Good luck!

Brian Hazelgren

Leveraging Your Centers of Influence

What a Center of Influence Can Do For You

Setting out to build an IT consulting enterprise, I realized fairly quickly that his target market, Information Technology (IT) Managers in major corporations, wanted to deal with name brand companies. They felt comfortable buying products and services from well-established, well-known companies for one primary reason: if they make a bad decision and it turns out costing the company a lot of money, it could cost the IT manager his job. To avoid any problems, and possible loss of a job, IT managers needed to be assured that the solutions they are acquiring from a third party vendor will really work, and make them look good.

In the beginning, our business was not a well-known name in the industry and we had a very difficult time getting into any doors, let alone setting any appointments. We developed a plan to begin working with the vendors that were already calling on these same IT Managers. These would become Strategic Alliance Partners (SAP’s) to help open a few more doors that had previously been closed to anyone outside of the good ol’ boy network.

Presentations were made to the managers and sales people of several well-known companies in the IT Industry. The word started getting out that there was a real player in town that through professional IT Analysts, could assist on IT projects.

The key was to call on well-known hardware and software vendors that had nothing to do with IT Consulting. We didn’t  want to appear as a threat to these SAP’s, rather as a solid choice to bring and make them look good. This would enhance their current relationship with their customers, because if they brought in someone from the outside that did well on the projects assigned, they would be perceived as a vendor looking out for the company. In turn this would solidify their relationship and hopefully bring them more business.

The plan worked, and soon a small center of influence was developed. This center of influence opened up a few key doors in the beginning. As time went on, the first year in business developed a few key relationships that turned into over $600,000 in sales. The next year turned into over $5 million in sales, and the business kept on growing.

So start asking your self what centers of influence you have, even if its only one person, they could lead you to many other centers of influence. Take some time and ask yourself a few key questions, and write down your answers. This little exercise will surprise and invigorate you!

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

What are your centers of influence and who would you include?

Who are your friends and relatives that will help you promote your business?

What people in your church are you comfortable with that will help you get started and promote your business?

Are there any individuals in your center of influence that will buy from you? If so, who are they?

 

Set a few goals on what you want to accomplish. Here are three that you might want to have:

Goal #1: Write down who your Centers of Influence are.

Goal#2: Define how you will approach your Centers of Influence and what materials you will need to leave with, or send to them.

Goal #3: Come up with a list of 10 people that can open doors for you.

 

Best of luck!

www.brianhazelgren.com

Simple Steps to a Powerful Ad/PR Campaign

In order for your business to succeed, you generally need to promote your products or services to the same buyers that your competitors are targeting. Even if your business is one of a kind, you still need to tell target buyers that your business exists–with some kind of advertising or promotional communication.

PR activities are another way to promote the image or reputation of your product. PR is similar to promotion and advertising, but can be more indirect, since some or all of the publicity a company’s products and services receive from public relations activities may not be controlled by the company.

If you’re a larger manufacturer of business-to-business goods, you may need to do much more personal sales promotion (to purchasing agents of your customer firms) than a consumer goods retailer, who would go to a promotion mix that emphasizes paid advertising.

Wherever your business falls on the scale, today you need to be in many places to keep your name and brand in front of customers. The social media aspect today is driving many businesses to re-define how they reach their customers, and pull others away from competition. But this is such an effective way of telling others about who you are and what you. Even thought social media is re-defining how we reach others, there are still some basic things we must do, and questions we need to ask ourselves to run a successful campaign.

• Planning promotional programs outlines the steps you need to take to create a comprehensive promotional game plan.
• Promotion ideas discuss a number of opportunities for materials or events that involve direct product purchase incentives.
• Advertising ideas discuss the use of advertising to inform, educate, persuade, and remind. This is accomplished with outside forces such as billboards, T.V., radio, and print ads in newspapers and magazines.
• Public Relations ideas discuss some indirect but highly effective ways of keeping your business in the public eye.

Let’s focus on advertising first. To keep it simple, I would like to introduce a checklist for you to take a close look at as you develop your Advertising Strategy. And, I’m not referring to advertising on television, or big expensive ads in a magazine. Save those for the big companies. This checklist is broken down into four areas of focus:

1. Overview
2. Specifics
3. Files
4. Competition

Take a few minutes and answer the questions posed in the checklist. This will get you thinking about your Advertising Strategy in a way that will save you a lot of time and, probably more importantly, a lot of money.

As a small business owner, you need to be vigilant about looking for ways to reduce costs and increase productivity and efficiency.

Advertising Checklist

Overview

• Have you defined your marketing goals and objectives and written them down?
• What exactly do you want to communicate to your potential customers?
• Are you communicating Buyer Benefits in your advertising?
• Have you strategized an advertising campaign? (What media will you use? What exactly is your marketing mix?)
• Is the timing right for an ad campaign? Why?
• Do you have a planned advertising budget?
• Can you meet the budget with the marketing mix you want to use in your campaign?
• Are you prepared for a successful response?
• Have you asked suppliers about cooperative (co-op) programs and if they will participate?
• Have you made sure that employees are informed of your goals?
• Have all appropriate managers reviewed your advertising and bought into it?
• What is your lead time for running your campaign?

Specifics

• Does your campaign present a central idea or theme?
• Does your message require a response?
• Is it easy for your customers to find you?
• Is your campaign clear and concise?
• Is your campaign consistent with you desired business image?
• Has someone else besides you reviewed your ad and given input?
• Do your ads match your branding (i.e., letterhead, Web site, company brochure, Facebook, etc.)

Files

• Are you keeping files on all aspects of each campaign?
• Where did the campaign run? What were the results? (Number of responses and sales? Sales increases?)
• How many potential buyers will see your campaign and what percentage response do you expect?
• What percentage do you think will be converted to buyers?
• How much did your campaign cost, and what was your Return on Investment (ROI)?

Competitors and Customers

• Are you watching what your competitors are doing? (Look for repeat ads/campaigns, try to determine why.)
• Where do your competitors advertise and how often?
• Are you willing to try something different, and is it worth the risk?
• Are you able to get ahead of your competition by having a story published about your business?
• Do you conduct periodic surveys with your customers to find out what they like or dislike about your products and services?
• Are you listening to your customers? What do they want? What is important to them? What is not important to them?
• What media are most cost-effective to reach your customers?
• Are you working with a charity of any kind? If yes, what are you doing for them? If no, why not? (this could be your cheapest form of positive PR)

If you would like to know more about this area of business, plus a whole lot more, take advantage of a special offer I am making to give you a copy of my book Tactical Entrepreneur for the cost of shipping… http://www.brianhazelgren.com/tactical_entrepreneur.html

Have fun figuring out your PR/ad campaign!

 

 

 

The Power of Positive Thinking

Keep thinking positive. Keep progressing. Keep moving forward. Good things will happen to those with a positive attitude.

Do something nice for someone else today. The rewards are exhilarating and will help you forget about what’s holding you down.

What if you are right there…right where you need to be, and the next positive action will bring you success? Keep smiling, keep trying.

Look past the agenda others may have and remember your own. If your agenda lines up with good things for others, you will find success.

Keep smiling…it’s good for your digestion.

“A good positive attitude will take you further in life than skill and talent ever will.” my college coach LaVell Edwards

A great article on thinking positive thoughts…http://thinksimplenow.com/happiness/positive-attitude-happy-life/

When you forget about yourself and do good things for others the positive things that happen in your life will be manifested.

A positive attitude is a choice. Believe in yourself, its the most important lesson you can learn. There are many who believe in you!

I wasn’t connecting with my audience in my last speech, so I starting talking about positive things. Turns out that’s all they remembered!

“When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow.” King Solomon

“It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.” Walter Lippmann

“I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” Abraham Lincoln

Positive thinking is power…power over the negative influences that pull us down. You are the champion, and you control your destiny.

www.brianhazelgren.com