Category: New Business Development

One of my buddies
tells me
she’ll write a book
once
her house is clean.

She’ll never
write her book.

Because
her house will
NEVER be perfectly
clean.

She has a spouse,
a teenage child,
and
two cats.
They can make messes
faster than
she can clean them.

Sweeping the floor
is a task
that can be completed.
Having a perfectly clean house
isn’t an achievement
that will ever happen.

Seth Godin
shares

“You can never
read all the stuff
on Twitter
or
catch up completely
on the news
or
be sure that
everything is alright.

Don’t make bottomless holes
a checklist task.
They’re a sideline,
something to work on
once you’ve actually
done your work.
Whatever work that
you’ve chosen to do.”

Don’t put
tasks that can
never be completed
on your to-do lists.

I have a reason
to post every day
here on client k.

My primary goal
for this blog
is to ensure
other female business builders
know they aren’t alone.

That’s how Jscott
convinced me
to start blogging.
He told me
there weren’t
enough women
blogging about business,
that it was discouraging
to other female business builders,
that they felt
like they were alone.

So I started blogging
to reassure you
you’re not alone.

Whenever you feel
like you’re on your own,
you can visit client k
and know that
another woman
is also out there
in cyberspace
building her businesses.

That’s my ‘agenda’
for this blog.

Seth Godin
shares

“An agenda helps
build resilience,
because it’s a compass,
a chance to reset
when we’re thrown for a loop.

Being clear to ourselves
about the change
we seek to make
makes it more likely
we’ll make it.”

What is your agenda
for your platforms?

In the ‘Before Times’,
as some people call
the time before the pandemic,
many people would wait
to say
‘I love you.’

They wanted to be certain.
They didn’t want to toss
those words around,
saying them to just anyone.
They wanted them
to mean something.
They wanted the timing
to be perfect.

And they COULD wait
because they believed
they had the luxury
of time.

We’re living in a pandemic.
We might not have time.
There might not be
a perfect moment
to say ‘I love you.’
We might never get
another chance to say those words.

Especially if the loved one
has pre-existing conditions
or has already had COVID
or is in any other high risk group.

When in doubt,
say ‘I love you.’

Note:
Some of you
are wondering what this has to do
with building businesses.

Nothing f*cks up
business building
like living with regrets.

Relieve yourself
of that potential burden
and say ‘I love you’
today.

Normally,
in early December,
I will review
the performances
of
my business ventures.

The first thing
I do
is evaluate
whether or not
I met my goals
for the year.

I suspect
very few of us
have met our goals
for 2020.

This has been
a strange
and challenging year.
No one
could have predicted
what happened
in 2020.
It was outside of
any norm.

I’m setting aside
my 2020 goals
and I’m replacing it
with
one perimeter
– ‘Did my business
SURVIVE this year?’

If my business
survived,
I consider it to be
a success.

Not all of them
did that.

One of my businesses
was simply too new.
It didn’t have
an established brand
and it couldn’t pivot
easily
with the changing circumstances.

I made mistakes with it
and that was to be expected.
Everything I was facing
was new to me.

I’m wiser now.
I’ll make different mistakes
in the future.

If your business
survived this year,
you should be
very proud of
it,
of yourself
and of your leadership.

If your business
didn’t survive,
hopefully you learned
lessons
that will help you
in the future.

You can restart it
or start another business
or do something else,
something you’ve always wanted
to do.

Because…

YOU survived.
You’ve achieved
what should have been
your #1 personal goal
for the year.
You should be very proud
of that.

I’ve made some great investments
in my life
-in the stock market, in businesses,
in education, in people.
I’ve been extremely lucky
in that way.

The best investment I’ve ever made,
however,
was not seeing
my extremely beloved
yet also extremely fragile
Mom
for Canadian Thanksgiving
mid October.

Some call forgoing an occasion
like
that
a sacrifice.

Sacrifice relays that
we don’t get anything
in return
for our actions.

I’ve received plenty in return.
I have talked to my Mom
hundreds,
perhaps a thousand
times
since that date.

That was my return
and it was a d*mn good one.

(If I want to increase
my return,
all I have to do
is call her more often.)

Forgoing face-to-face meetings
with her
has been an INVESTMENT,
not a sacrifice.

Invest in the people
you love.
Keep them as safe
as possible.

It is easy to make
the world
a bit better
today.

Simply tell someone
they’re doing a good job.

It doesn’t cost
anything other
than the effort of saying
those five words
and those words WILL make
a difference
in that person’s life.

They might push back
on it,
say they aren’t
doing a good job
or they could do
a better job.

Those are often
the people who MOST
need to hear those words.

Say it
with no expectation
of anything in return.

View it
as a way to make a difference,
to pay it forward,
to change someone’s life,
at least for a few moments.

Tell someone today
they’re doing a good job.

Note: A good job
isn’t a perfect job
or even a great job.
If they performed a task
for you,
they’ve done a good job.

2020 has been an…unusual year
and it might be challenging
to get into the holiday spirit.

But the holidays ARE coming
and, for many businesses,
this is a key time
for sales.

The big value-add
this year?

I predict it will be
delivery or shipping.

My Mom is still
in self-imposed quarantine
due to COVID.
Many of my other loved ones
share that same state.

Any gifts I give them
will be delivered
by a third party
to their homes.

Does the delivery
have to be free?

Some people
hate paying extra
for delivery.
Free shipping
DOES make a difference.

Stitch Labs
shares

“…retailers who always offer
free shipping
can directly increase revenue
by 10 percent.”

Free shipping isn’t,
of course,
truly free.
The shipping cost
is included
in the cost
of the goods purchased.

And there are usually
qualifications
to the free shipping.

The customer has to spend
a certain amount, for example.
They can’t ship
the product from the US
to Australia, as another example.

Free shipping makes a difference
in sales.

But having a reliable and timely
delivery option,
this holiday season,
will be much more important
than the cost of that delivery.

Customers won’t appreciate
that delivery was free
if the gift never arrives
or if the gift doesn’t arrive
on time.

Do you have a delivery option?

In the Romance Writing Industry,
we have,
what we call,
‘the perfect reader.’

She or he is the person
we write our stories for,
create our promo to reach,
build our products around,

This perfect reader
is different
for every writer.

My perfect reader
pre-orders my stories
as soon as she hears about them.
She doesn’t care
about price,
as long as
that price is reasonable.
She wants to read my books first
and wants to know everything
about them.

Once I’ve built this wishlist
of attributes
I love in a reader,
I create a product,
systems,
everything else
to make that
perfect reader a reality.

My perfect reader,
for example,
autobuys my stories.

If order for her
to do that,
she must have faith
in the type of story,
in the quality of story
I will tell.

My branding has to be
consistent.
Every story has to contain
core attributes
I know my perfect reader
will like.

I do this with every aspect
of my perfect reader.
If aspects conflict,
I resolve those conflicts
or I eliminate that aspect
of my perfect reader.

(I also look at things like
the market size
of each aspect
of my perfect reader
plus the market size
of the combined aspects
of my perfect reader.)

Who is your perfect customer?
Would your product/service
make your perfect customer
happy?

I have 92 ‘extra’ posts
for client k
ready
in case of emergencies.

This sounds impressive
but it is merely
the result
of writing one extra post
a day
for several months.

One of my writing buddies
writes an extra 100 words a day.

This doesn’t sound like much
yet it means she produces
an extra novella
every year.

She’s been writing for 12 years.
She has 12 of these ‘extra’ novellas
earning sales
every dang day.

A salesperson buddy
has a call quota
every day.

And every day,
he makes one more call
than is required.
That’s 5 more sales calls
a week.

He is convinced
that one more call
a day
is one of the reasons
he’s the top sales person
in his group.

One more,
a little extra
might not seem like much
and it likely isn’t much
…on its own.

But it adds up
and it often makes
the difference
between success
and failure.

Can you do one more
today?

It is easy
to become lazy
with the Romance Writing.
I could tell the same story
a slightly different way
and I might keep my readers happy
…for a story or two.

Eventually, however,
they will become tired
of these same stories
and I will lose them
as customers.

I don’t want that.
So I strive to keep
my stories original.

One of the benchmarks
I have
for how creative and fresh
a story might be
is how much research
I completed in order
to write it.

If I’m learning something new
and incorporating
that something new
into my stories,
the stories will become
something new also.

This applies
to a variety of products and services.
If you complete research
while designing them
and incorporate this research
into their design,
they will be different
from the products/services
you previously offered.

Have you completed
‘research’
today?