Month: November 2013

The day is only so long.
We can’t do everything.
We can’t respond
to every customer’s demands
immediately.
We have to make choices.

I have four publishers
and there’s no way
I can write enough stories
to keep all of these publishers happy.

So I prioritize.
I have a spreadsheet showing me
earnings per word count
for each story, each publisher.
I know where I make my money
and I write stories for these publishers first.

I also track the sales
of the publisher’s top earnings.
This shows me sales potential.

Rieva Lesonsky
shares

“If there’s any chance
you’ll drop the ball
with one of your clients,
you’ve got to get brutally honest
with your priorities.

Choose your method,
then dig in:
You may want to prioritize
based on revenue
(the best-paying job gets top priority),
client relationships
(your biggest client,
your oldest client
or the new client you want to impress
gets your time and attention first),
or some other factor
that makes sense to you.

For instance,
if you have a client
who pays you a lot
but only uses your services occasionally,
they may fall lower on the priority scale
than someone who pays less
but is a regular customer.”

If you could make
only one customer happy,
which customer would that be?

There’s a time in an artist’s
or an entrepreneur’s life
when she’s too busy
to hold a second job
yet she’s not making enough money
to live off her business.

THIS is when patrons are most important.
In the business world,
these patrons might be investors.
These individuals or groups
allow artists or entrepreneurs
to survive this income gap.

As Seth Godin states
patrons are “hard to find”.
Patrons, however, don’t have to be wealthy.

My Great Aunt Ethel was my first patron.
I had a gift for art
but was too poor to explore this gift.
Aunt Ethel sent me $100 every year
to buy art supplies.
As a thank you,
I gave her my best works.
This $100 annual investment
made a huge difference in my life.

Yesterday, I gave $100 to another artist.
This $100 made the difference
between having to work a second job
or concentrating on the novel she’s writing.

You don’t need to be a millionaire
to change someone’s life.

I’ve been a published romance writer
for six years.

For three years,
I wrote under one pen name
in one subgenre.
I was trying something new and different
and it simply didn’t work.

I then tried a different spin
on this idea
in different subgenre
under a different pen name.
This second version
was much more successful.

I switched or pivoted to this version
and this is the version
I’m concentrating on now.

Logan Green,
Co-Founder of Lyft
shares

“I would tell them [entrepreneurs]
that it is important
to develop an internal culture
that encourages experimentation.
We did that and
that’s how we came up with Lyft.

I’d also tell them
to be open to pivoting.
Remember that the company
you start off with
isn’t always the company
you end up with.
And know that is okay.”

Ideas morph or grow
into different ideas.
Be open to pivoting.

In new business development
at the large beverage company,
we would look at flavor trends in other industries.
These flavor trends indicated a consumer need
that a new beverage could satisfy.

We didn’t start with a product
and figure out how to sell this product.
We started with a need
and figured out how to satisfy this need.

Dan Martell,
founder of Clarity,
shares

“I didn’t realize what I was building.
I was just using Clarity
as a tool to route calls
to people who wanted advice.
We eventually transitioned
into a marketplace for advice,
which meant that we needed
to divide our users
into members versus experts.
It was hard
because we had about 7,000 users
at the time.
After careful evaluation of experts,
only 30 percent made the cut.
It was hard to explain that to everyone.”

Start with a need.

After 25 seasons,
the Oprah Winfrey Show
has had thousands of guests.
These guests have become an asset,
a differentiating asset
only Oprah can have.

How is she capitalizing on this asset?

She has a show called
Where Are They Now?
She follows up with these past guests,
showing the old footage
and comparing it to
their new lives.

I have over 60 stories released
under one of my pen names
(these 60 stories have been released
in only 4 years
so this isn’t a forever build
type of promo).
Every week, I focus on
an older story,
giving readers updates
on what the characters are doing.

This differentiates me.
Not many writers have 60 stories
to choose from.

If you have history,
look at this history
and think of ways to utilize it,
to develop new products
from older products.