Month: March 2015

Seth Godin has a great post
about speaking up.

“Commit to articulating
your point of view on
one relevant issue,
one news story,
one personnel issue.
Every day.
Online or off, doesn’t matter.
Share your taste and
your perspective with
someone who needs to hear it.

Speak up.
Not just tomorrow,
but every day.”

This isn’t merely empowering
for you,
having an opinion
encourages everyone around you
to have one also.
You’re telling them
‘It’s okay to care,
to be passionate.’

If it is easier
to share your view
anonymously,
don’t sign your name!

The important thing is..
Speak up!

If Fifty Shades of Grey had been
first published
by one of the big New York publishers,
it wouldn’t have been a hit.
Christian Grey, the hero,
appealed to readers
because
he was NOT the typical romance hero.
He was different.

Big companies normally don’t like
different.
They want products (and characters)
to have mainstream appeal.
A big publisher would have made
Christian Grey more and more mainstream
until he no longer ‘shocked’ readers.

Readers want to be shocked.
The mainstream
talks about and often desires different.

Which creates a great opportunity
for entrepreneurs.
WE can supply this different.
WE can take the chances
bigger companies would never consider.

I’ve been saving many
of my ‘different’ story ideas
for self publishing
while
selling the more mainstream stories
to the big New York publishers.

If you’re currently working
for a big company
that tends to water down
edgy ideas,
consider doing the same.
Supply mainstream ideas to them
and keep the edgy ideas
for your own business.

The publishing industry
has changed substantially
over the past year.
Some of my fellow writers
bellyache about this.

My response?

Get over the past.
It isn’t coming back.
Figure out
how to be successful
in TODAY’s environment.

Adam Levine*
shares

“The whole nature
of the music business
has changed so much.
Back in the day,
everyone had a lot of pride
and a certain purity.
That was a really beautiful thing.

But that’s changed.
Rather than lamenting things
not being that way anymore
–which is something I spent
plenty of time doing–
I’m more interested in exploring
what the future is.
People are really hung up
on a lot of things
they don’t need to be
hung up on anymore.”

I suspect your industry
has changed also.
Adjust to this change.
Look forward, not back.

*March 2015
Men’s Fitness

One of the myths of crowdsourcing
funding
(via platforms like Kickstarter)
is an entrepreneur slaps her idea
on the site
and the dollars roll in automatically
from strangers.

Yeah, no.

Mario Armstrong,
explains in
March 2015
Men’s Fitness

“Mollick’s research found that
97% of projects
that were able to raise
at least half their funds
from already established contacts
went on to succeed.”

In other words,
most of the funds
are raised from friends, family members,
co-workers, existing customers
and other people
the entrepreneur knows,
contacts she might have
spent years cultivating.

Build your contacts now.

Early this year,
I considered quitting the writing business.
I didn’t.
Why?
Because I can’t NOT write.
It’s part of who I am.
I might as well figure out
some way to make a viable business
from it.

Ken Block,
co-founder of DC shoes,
shares,
in March 2015
Men’s Fitness,

“The brands I do
come from my heart.
I made skateboard shoes
because I was a skateboarder.
And now we have Hoonigan,
a motorsports lifestyle brand.

The stuff I do
isn’t really a ‘job’ for me,
because it’s my life.

That’s something
I see in a lot of successful people,
from creative directors I’ve worked with
to friends like Pete Fox
at Fox Clothing.
It’s their life,
so it’s easy to live it every day.”

Do you live your business?

One of my loved ones
is looking for a new job.
He’s freakin’ himself out
by asking
“What do I want to do
for the rest of my life?”

He feels if he makes
the wrong decision,
he’s f*cked.

That’s bullsh*t thinking.

One.
The world is changing
too d*mn quickly
to know if this next job
will even survive for five years.

Two.
We’re changing.
What we want today
isn’t what we’ll want
in five years.

Three.
There are very few decisions
in life
we can’t recover from,
change,
revisit.

Yes, plan for tomorrow.
Build your future in your brain.
But don’t ever think
you’re locked into this plan.

Stay flexible.

The average romance heroine
is an outcast.
She doesn’t fit into society.
She isn’t popular.
She’s often judged harshly
by the characters around her.

If a writer was one of the popular girls,
is one of the beautiful people,
she has trouble writing
these types of heroines.

Being an outcast
is a strength in writing.
Being a popular girl
is a weakness in writing.

Every weakness you have
is also a strength.
Every strength you have
is a weakness.

You can use either or both
to become successful.
Look at ALL of your traits
as possible assets.

Joe Manganiello
is a hunk.
That’s what he’s known for.
He’s the shirtless werewolf
in True Blood,
the stripper in Magic Mike.

He’s more than that,
of course,
but he embraces his status.

In Jan/Feb 2015
Men’s Fitness,
he shares

“I did what I had to do
to play the game.
Because if you get the role
as the new naked guy on the Naked Show,
well,
what are you going to do all day?
You’re going to get
in the best shape of your life.”

“On True Blood
I had a lot to prove
and a lot of ground
to gain back from years
I didn’t work.
I told myself
I’m not going to look back
at this experience
and think I made one misstep.”

Years from now,
don’t look back
at your experience
as an entrepreneur
and think you could done more.
Give it your all.