Month: April 2015

Large companies might have
the advantage of scale
but smaller companies have
advantages also.

Small companies can be nimble,
responding to changes
in customer tastes faster.
They can have the ability
to customize orders,
giving customers individual attention.

Jon Haber,
owner of Alto Music,
shares

“We can do things
like special orders and custom work
that a larger company wouldn’t take on.
We stay close to our customers
to get a feel for what’s happening.”
“We keep our ear
to the ground more
and can turn on a dime
when we need to.
We can jump right on it.”

I say ‘can’
because this is a choice.
Some small company choose
not to be nimble,
choose not to customize orders.

Every company size
has advantages.
Are you using your advantages?

I write for a large publisher.
This publisher
is in the middle of fierce negotiations
with their largest bookseller.
The bookseller is threatening
to delist all of the publisher’s books.

Press releases are being zinged
back and forth
between the two camps.

We, writers, have to answer questions
from readers,
from the source
of the publisher’s revenues.
Are we sent copies
of these press releases?
No.
We have to scour the internet
for copies
and
often our readers see them first.
When they approach us
and we don’t even know the news,
it does NOT reassure them.

The publisher has our emails.
How difficult would it be
to copy us on the press releases?

Extend your valued partners,
especially those working with your customers,
the courtesy
of providing them with press releases
at the same time
or preferably before
the press receives them.

Give them the information
to be your ambassadors.

Terry Starbucker
recently posted
the 5 best pieces
of leadership advice
he’s ever received.

One was
“Take the word
“can’t” out of your vocabulary,
it’s useless.”

Two of my mentors
gave me the same advice.

The first mentor
was my mom.
When I told her
I couldn’t complete one of my chores
because I was busy
with schoolwork,
she corrected me.
She said I could complete my chores
but I CHOSE to complete
the schoolwork instead.

The second mentor
was the V-P
of a huge beverage company.
When we’d tell him
‘this can’t be done’,
he’d reply
that everything could be done.
The real question was…
SHOULD it be done?
Do the results
warrant the resources?

Make a deliberate effort
to eliminate the word
‘can’t’ from your mental dictionary.

The product you’re developing
is different.
(I know this
because if it was the same,
there would be no reason
to launch it.)

When it releases,
some people in your industry
won’t be happy.
They might call you
a trouble maker.

That’s okay.
No, better than okay.
That’s what you want.

As Angelina Jolie
shares

“I was told I was different.
And I felt out of place:
too loud, too full of fire,
never good at sitting still,
never good at fitting in.
When someone tells you
that you are different,
smile and hold your head up
and be proud.
Cause a little trouble.
It’s good for you.”

The same has been done.
Be a trouble maker.
Be different.

The lowest price for any product/service
is zero
and there will always be someone
willing to offer it for free,
on the hopes she will get more business,
paying business.

If we can’t compete on price,
some of us
will try to load our product
with more features,
hoping to appeal
to EVERYONE.

That’s impossible.

Today, I read the marketing copy
for a 600 page romance novel
with a vampire/werewolf time traveling Duke
as the hero
(offered for free, of course).
A vampire hero is cold and aloof,
unemotional.
A werewolf hero is wild and savage,
driven on instinct.
Combining these attributes
into one product
almost guarantees
both groups of prospective customers
are unhappy.

More isn’t always better.
Sometimes it is merely more.
And your product will never
have EVERYTHING.

Does being creative
mean creating something completely new?

No.

If you look at a best selling novel
like
Fifty Shades of Grey,
you’ll see that many of the components
appear in other novels
written by different writers.
Writers were writing about BDSM.
Different writers were writing about billionaires.
Still other writers were writing
about newly graduated virgin heroines.
What Fifty Shades Of Grey did
was put these components together.
The usual became unexpected.

Tim Sanders
shares

“If you are creative at work,
you produce the unexpected,
the new…
but it solves the problem
and doesn’t produce complications.
Notice I didn’t say that
creativity required
completely original ideas
as there is no such thing.
It’s all about approaches
that are unexpected.”

Don’t worry about being unique.
Try to be unexpected.

I recently took a voyage
on Cuba Cruise.
Cuba Cruise has an unique niche.
It is one of the only cruise lines
doing a full circle of Cuba.

That is its sole appeal.
In all other ways,
Cuba Cruise can’t compete
with other cruise lines.
(One small example:
Their toilets can’t handle
toilet paper.
Passengers have to place it
in a waste basket.)

The issue is,
of course,
that the Cuban travel market
is opening up.
Cuba Cruise has a year
or less
to impress passengers,
to make the most
of their niche domination.

Unfortunately,
I saw no evidence
that they were aware
of this window of opportunity.

Don’t be as complacent.
Make the most
of your window of niche domination.