Category: New Business Development

I mention the niche
my story is in
at least three times
on a book listing.

I mention it
in the title
or in the series name
or indicate it visually
on the cover
or mention it
in the FIRST line
of the product listing
or mention it
in the LAST line
of the product listing
or mention it
once or twice
or five times
in the body of the listing.

I still have readers
who review it
and say they didn’t know
the story was in that niche.

This is especially true
if the story is free.
Many free readers
don’t read descriptions at all.
They merely look at price.

Seth Godin
shares

“All you know is
your understanding of
what was on offer.
And because
there are so many choices
and
there’s so much noise,
we rarely take the time
to actually read the label,
or
we get carried away
by the coming attractions,
or
we just don’t care enough
to pay attention
until we’re already involved.”

Make your promise
to customers clear
but
accept that some customers
won’t pay attention
to that promise.

Consider
ignoring their ratings
and their reviews.

The discussion around
increasing minimum wage
is heating up in the US.

Eventually,
minimum wage
WILL be increased.

Why?

Because it is the right thing
to do.
People who work
a full time job
with full time hours
deserve
a wage that will allow them
to survive.
(Surviving is not
‘living’.
It is merely surviving.)

And a higher minimum wage
will benefit small business.
(Despite big business
framing that it won’t benefit
small business.)

One of the key reasons
Walmart
and McDonald’s
drove smaller Mom and Pop
stores and restaurants
out of business
was due to these large companies
being able to
pay their employees sh*t wages.

Wages are a small component
of Mom and Pop businesses.
Owners receive profits,
not wages.

They are a huge component
of these massive businesses.

A higher minimum wage
in the US
is coming.

Plan your business
around that.

I recently split
one of my pen names
(my brands)
into two.

My output for that pen name
was way too high.
My readers (customers)
couldn’t keep up
with it
and it was frustrating them.

It was a huge task,
delisting some of the stories
and moving them
to the new pen name.

It also stressed
some of my readers out.
They looked for the moved stories
under the original pen name,
couldn’t find them,
didn’t know where
they had gone.

It would have been
MUCH more efficient
if I had started
with the two pen names,
if I had looked
at my output rates
and realized
it was too high
for one brand.

Know your output rates.
Build your business
(or businesses)
around those rates.

If you’re one product
a year
release person,
one brand is likely
sufficient.

If you’re a thirty products
a year
release person,
you will likely need
multiple brands.

Plan for that now.

I grew up
dirt poor.
We didn’t eat every day.
My siblings and I
were always hustling
for jobs.

We didn’t have
a wide choice
in jobs.
We were pre-teens
and teenagers.
That limited
our offerings.

So we took
what we could get
and we issued ourselves
a challenge
to make those jobs
interesting,
exciting,
a fun time.

Some days,
we were literally
shoveling sh*t
(mucking out barns)
yet we had fun.
We made it
a competition,
crowning the champion
King/Queen Of The Poop.

I take that energy
to tasks
I have to complete
now.

As Seth Godin
shares

“If we commit to
loving what we do,
we’re more likely
to find engagement
and satisfaction.

And if what we do
changes,
we can choose
to love that too.”

There is joy
in every task.
Sometimes
it merely takes
longer
to find it.

Most business builders
are very familiar
with the idea
of sunk costs.

Past expenses
are exactly that
– PAST expenses.
We can’t recover them.
And they shouldn’t be a factor
in future decisions.

It doesn’t make sense
to spend $100,000
to repair a
$200,000
10 year old system
when it costs
$50,000
for a brand new system.

Sunk costs
don’t simply apply to past expenses.
They apply to past decisions also.

I partnered with a new publishing entity
late last year.
It was a mistake.
I saw very little income from it
and it required a lot of work.

They wanted to partner
with me
on more of my books.
One of their arguments was
I was already
one of their writers.
To continue being
part of their team,
I should do this.

I declined.
Making the same mistake
twice
won’t fix my initial mistake.

I have more information now.
I am a different person.
(Time changes all of us.)
I made a different decision.

Seth Godin
shares

“When we’re not committed yet,
the cost of looking around
and switching
our choice
is small.

But once we’ve emotionally
committed to a cause
or a project
or a person,
the cost of change is high,
partly because
it involves feeling
as though
we made a mistake.

But compounding that initial choice
by doubling down on it
is the actual mistake.”

We’re different people
than we were
yesterday.

We’ll make
different decisions.
That should be expected.

A writer in my niche
has a history
of stealing my ideas
both for marketing
and for stories.

She thinks
she’s being sneaky.

I am told about it
the day
she shares it.

It irritates the f*ck
out of me.
I will NEVER work with her
or promote her work.

Not because
she steals my ideas
but because
she’s sneaky about it.

The irony is…
if she would ask me,
I would likely
not only give her permission
but support her efforts.

But she doesn’t do that.
She sneaks around
and ALWAYS gets caught.

If you think
you’re being sneaky,
you likely aren’t.

But what you ARE
likely doing
is p*ssing people off
and making enemies.

If you have a large group,
there will always be
someone who doesn’t choose
ANY of your offerings.

When pressed,
she might suggest
something else.
That is often
a garbage answer,
an answer
that will muddle
your results.

Why?

She is stating it
because she doesn’t want
to admit
what her choice truly is
– no choice.

Seth Godin
shares

“There are definitely
people in every group
who prefer
“none of the above,”
regardless of
what’s on offer.
Because none of the above
is also a choice,
something that’s offered
without being offered.

Being against
might feel easier than
being for.”

If someone chooses
no choice,
unless that someone
is critical to your success,
exclude her response
from consideration.

We’ve seen this
SO many times
during the pandemic.

Leaders are faced
with
a bad choice
or
a worse choice.

They could forgo a live event
and disappoint participants
or
they could host the event
and very likely infect
participants.

They could not release a video game
and forgo that income stream
or
they could release the video game
and cause a potentially deadly
line-up at stories.

When great leaders
have to decide
between bad
and
worse,
they push for more options.

And there are ALWAYS
more options.

The live event could be reimagined
and brought online.

The video game release
could be sold and shipped to gamers
on an exclusive VIP list.

These are different times.
We need different solutions.

When you’re faced
with a bad choice
or a worse choice,
look for a NEW choice.

I’ve worked with publishers
who edit
all the wonderful,
all the unique
out of a story.

It isn’t done
all at once
and making it boring
isn’t their intention.

Their intention
is to reduce risk.

They usually claim
it is due to the ‘market’
but that’s bullsh*t.
The market adores the f*ck
out of books that are different.

It is due to risk,
risk that they can’t easily
find the prospects
for the different product,
risk that they can’t easily
sell the product
to these prospects,
risk that they will be blamed
for a failure
because they made a decision
that was based
on something other than
‘everyone else was doing it.’

One of my projects,
for example,
started with
an adorably quirky,
plus-sized,
black female engineer
as the heroine.

The quirky was the first
to go.
The publisher claimed
she was too ‘strange’,
too unrelatable.

She became
a ‘normal’
plus-sized,
black female engineer

“Making her black
limits the market,”
the publisher next said.

So she become
a ‘normal’
plus-sized
white female engineer.

Then they said
plus-sized was
‘too risky.’

She became
a ‘normal’
thin
white female engineer.

Then, you guessed it,
she would be more ‘relatable’
if she was a teacher.

She became
a ‘normal’
thin
white female teacher
heroine,
of which there are gazillions
in publishing.

That project sold terribly,
the worst in my history.
My first story
with a small press publisher
sold more
than the entire year-long project
with a big New York publisher.

After my contract
was completed,
I went Indie
and published
the stories I wanted.

I took on the risk
and some of those stories
bombed.
They didn’t sell as poorly
as the ‘risk-free’
big publisher project
but they didn’t cover costs.

But some of those stories
sold VERY well
and continue selling
VERY well.

And all of them
broke new ground
in their niches.

The opposite of risky
is boring.

Don’t ‘edit’ all the special
out of your product/service.

“Those who cannot
learn from history
are doomed
to repeat it.”

The reply to this common saying
is often

“Those who
DO study history
are doomed to stand by
helplessly
while everyone else repeats it.”

This IS true
except
those who study history
know
what is coming
and can personally take action
to minimize
the impact on themselves.

For example,
having studied pandemics,
I know the worst time,
the most deadliest time
of a pandemic
is the period
between the first person
being vaccinated
and 85-90% of the population
being vaccinated.

I’ve arranged my schedule
so I can be isolated
as much as possible
between the middle of December 2020
and June 2021
when I expect I’ll be vaccinated.

I suspect history WILL repeat.
This will be the deadliest time
during the pandemic.
But I will personally be as safe
as possible.

Study history.
Learn from it.
Assume it will repeat
and take necessary actions
to keep yourselves safe
and your businesses successful.