One of the first things I do
with a new story
is explain it to a buddy.
If I can get her excited
about my story
in a sentence or two,
I know I can sell the story
to both a publisher
and readers.

Leadership strategies are similar.
You can have the best strategy in the world
but if you can’t relay it
to your business partners,
employees, customers,
it won’t work.

As David Grossman explains

“You might have
the most compelling vision
for your organization,
but if you can’t get it out of your head
and get others to see it
and believe in it,
it might as well not even exist.

It’s up to you
to engage others
so they have the same clear picture you do
of your strategy and where the business is going.
Lift the perspective out of your head
and get it into others’
so they can own it
and help you achieve it.”

Figure out how to sum up
and sell your strategy
quickly and easily.

Cynthia Montgomery,
author of The Strategist,
shares that the core skill of a great leader
is being savvy at strategy.

When we think about strategy,
we think about pummeling the competition,
about winning over them.

That is not how Montgomery
defines strategy.

“Strategy is about
serving an unmet need,
doing something unique or
uniquely well for some set of stakeholders.
Beating the competition is critical,
to be sure,
but it’s the result of finding
and filling that need,
not the goal.”

Find and focus
on your prospect’s unmet need.

I love marketing.
Marketing is fun,
especially marketing through social media.
That’s more like attending a party
than putting in a day
at the office.

However, marketing makes no damn sense
without product.
I attended an author panel on Saturday.
Every author on the panel
said write first,
produce words first,
finish stories first,
THEN consider marketing.

There are products
that are successful without any marketing
(by the manufacturer).
There are NO products
that are successful without a product.

Producing the product
is ALWAYS more important
than the marketing.

Go, complete that product!

One of my buddies was laid off
from his job.
His company, working with the government,
arranged a very nice severance package,
so nice that it didn’t make sense
for him to actively look for work
until the severance package ran out.

So my buddy didn’t work… at all.
When the severance package ran out,
he no longer
had the habit of working
and looking for a job
is very hard work.

It was tough for him,
tougher, I suspect,
than it would have been
if he’d continued to work
at something, anything,
perhaps building a business,
perhaps making a dream happen,
perhaps giving back
to the world
through volunteer work.

Working hard is a habit.
If you currently work hard,
maintain that habit.
It is much easier
than re-learning to work hard.

Today is Mother’s Day.

I’m grateful to my mom
for everything she has done for me.
Of course, she’s human
and she makes mistakes
but I learn from her mistakes
and they give me permission to be human also.

I understand
if someone doesn’t feel grateful for her mom.
Not everyone has
as wonderful a mom
as I do.

However, if I ask the question
“Whom are you grateful
to have in your life?”
and that someone doesn’t name at least one person,
I become leery about doing business with them.

Why?

Because
she won’t be grateful
to have me in her life.
She won’t be grateful
for what I do for her.
She certainly won’t return a favor
she didn’t appreciate
in the first place.

Gratitude is an emotion
to look for
in business partners.

I’m selling every story I write
yet,
as I mentioned on Thursday,
I’m taking a writing course.

Why?

Because I want to become
a better writer
and
because my readers deserve
the best damn story
I can give them.

Unless you’re number one
in your field,
there is someone who knows things
you don’t.

Heck, even if you’re number one,
there are up-and-comers
who know tricks you don’t.

If you want to be the best
or maintain your status as the best,
you need to improve.

Yes, I talk about this often here at clientk
because improvement is so key
and
because I personally like to be reminded
how key it is.

Read, attend seminars,
take a course.
Improve your skills
so you can serve your customers better.

Sunday is Mother’s Day
in North America.

You may not think
Mother’s Day
is important to your business.

It is.

Why?
Because it is important
to your customers.

Of course,
if you can tie your product
into celebrating mother’s day
or being used by mothers
or being part of a childhood,
Mother’s Day can be marketing gold.

But even if you
can’t tie Mother’s Day
into your marketing,
you should consider
at least acknowledging the day
via social media
or blogs
or with a nice sign
or a giveaway
at your place of business.

Join in your customers’ celebrations.
Become part of their lives.

I’m currently taking
an advanced revisions course.
The course was clearly advertised
as being advanced level.

The thing is…
many newbie writers
are taking this advanced course.

The instructor decided
to dumb down the course
to better benefit these newbie writers.

This made no one happy,
not even the newbie writers.
They wanted to see
what advanced writers were learning.
We, advanced writers,
wanted to learn something,
anything.

Just because
your intended audience changes
doesn’t mean
your product has to change.

Investigate
before you make changes.

At a recent Women in the Economy conference,
Jack Welch advised women
that the only thing that would
aid their advancement
is getting results.

“Over deliver.
Performance is it!”

This is Jack Welch.
Of course, he is going to focus
on performance.

But there is a reason
he focuses on performance.
We can control performance
and stellar, high-profile performance
WILL advance anyone in their careers.

Even if you’re purple
and belong to three genders,
make huge sales
and your company will respect you.

I see this in my writing.
People respond to me differently
now that I have shown
I can write selling novels
and I have a bit of success.

Is performance EVERYTHING?
No.
But we can control performance.

Show you can deliver
and then ask for respect.

When I first started writing,
I produced stories that were innovative
but no one wanted.
I was innovating for ME,
not for readers.

I made changes
simply to make my stories HUGELY different,
not because readers would benefit
from those changes.
I was a selfish innovator
and I wasn’t doing my job.

As Harry West shares

“As an innovator
your job is to ask,
what do people want and
how can we serve them better?
If that calls for a radical new technology
then that is your imperative.
But if it calls for just the painstaking process
of simplifying
or improving the customer experience,
then that is just as much
an innovation imperative.”

An innovation doesn’t have to be big
to be valued.
It simply has to be needed.