Category: New Business Development

Henry Ford
said
“If you always do
what you’ve always done,
you’ll always get
what you’ve always got.”

That’s as true now as it was then.
For creatives
–writers, product designers, marketing folks
— mixing it up is a must.
We’re being paid to provide new experiences.
For others,
progress in careers
only come when there’s change.

Aprille Janes
shares

“Being vulnerable is
the willingness to accept
either success or failure.
It’s being all in and playing full out
even when it’s messy
and less than perfect.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say
you can’t succeed
until you’re willing to fail.
It starts with stepping out
of your comfort zone
(which looks more like a rut,
don’t you think?)”

Try something different today.
It could be taking a new route to the office,
adding chocolate sprinkles to your coffee,
using a pen with green ink.
Change something.

What is holding you back?

I can almost guarantee
that the answer to this question
is…
you.
You’re holding yourself back.
Yes, things go wrong
and yes, there’s an element
of luck
in every success.
But one of the biggest determinants
of success
is knowing yourself,
knowing your strengths,
your weaknesses,
your psychological blocks.

I know I like to flit
from project to project,
never finishing anything.
I’ve put checks into place
ensuring I finish projects.

I know I have a terrible memory.
I have systems in place
to compensate for this.

When I see people fail,
it is usually because
they’re not aware
of their weaknesses.
They don’t realize
they’re doing this to themselves.

Take a good long look
at yourself.
Ask for input,
specifically requesting insight
into your weaknesses.
THEN craft systems
to compensate.

VERY few businesses are successful
from day one.
It takes some time
to determine
whether or not a business will work.

How much time?

Kevin O’Leary,
entrepreneur and venture capitalist
on Shark Tank,
shares

“The best rule is,
if, after 36 months
you’re not making money,
take it behind the barn and shoot it.
It’s not a business.
It’s a hobby.”

Don’t expect to turn a profit
day 1
(though that would be nice)
but expect to see one
day 1096.

Corbin Bernsen collects snow globes.
“The unusual collection began
while he was shooting “L.A. Law,”
visiting cities
and being gifted the tchotkes
as he went.
By the end of the show’s eight-year run,
he says he had collected
about 25 or 30
before finding an antique snow globe
priced at $240.”

What does this have to do
with business building?

The holidays are coming.
We’ll likely receive gifts.
We have two choices
— we can give loved ones
suggestions about what we want
or
we can survey what we receive
and figure out
how to make the most
out of the gifts.

Allow your loved ones
to help you with your dreams.
Put their gifts
to the best use.

As we enter December,
one of the things
I do
is review my goals for the year.

Are there goals
I’d like to achieve
but haven’t yet tackled?
Can I push myself
and my team
to achieve these goals
before the end
of the year?

If I can’t achieve these goals,
I add them to my list
for the next year.
They form a base
for 2015.

It isn’t too late
to achieve some of your 2014 goals.
WORK it!

When I first started writing romance novels,
I wanted to write romances
that taught business lessons.
I knew that many romance readers
were also businesswomen.

Sales were terrible.
Why?
Because women read romance novels
expecting entertainment.
They read business books
as ‘work.’
They don’t want these two worlds
to collide.

I’m currently working on
another merger of worlds.
This time, however,
the worlds both reside in entertainment.
Will it work?
I don’t know
BUT I do know there is a market existing
in both of these worlds.

Seth Godin
shares

“Our job is
to find the disconnected
and connect them,
to find people eager
to pursue a goal
and give them the structure
to go achieve that goal.

But just about always,
we start with an already existing worldview,
a point of view,
a hunger that’s waiting
to be satisfied.”

Start with an existing market
and then push at the edges
or merge different markets.
Don’t start from zero.

I’m a positive person
but this positivity is rooted
in a realistic view of life.
Things go wrong.
We have to prepare for these things.
We can’t assume
that everything will be perfect.

And that’s what I find frustrating
about the advice
“Think of the result you want.”
It is missing the second part.
“Prepare for the challenges
that might block you
from achieving what you want.”

Gabriele Oettingen,
author of
Rethinking Positive Thinking
shares

“Positive thinking fools our minds
into perceiving that
we’ve already attained our goal,
slackening our readiness
to pursue it.”

Oettingen suggests

“What does work better
is a hybrid approach that
combines positive thinking
with “realism.”
Here’s how it works.
Think of a wish.
For a few minutes,
imagine the wish coming true,
letting your mind wander
and drift where it will.
Then shift gears.
Spend a few more minutes
imagining the obstacles
that stand in the way
of realizing your wish.”

Think positively
but prepare for things to go wrong.

My definition of being a nice person
is not intentionally doing harm
to another person.

Unfortunately, society’s definition
of being a nice person
often is putting everyone else first.

If we put everyone else first,
we’ll never have time to devote to
building our businesses.

Genevieve Thiers,
founder of SitterCity,
shares
“You don’t have to be nice.
We grow up
and we’re taught to be nice girls.
We’re taught that
we’re supposed to sell ourselves
and we get hit
with a whole bunch of stuff
that’s not going to help us later.”

Be selfish
with your time and resources.

Fifty Shades of Grey,
the fastest selling paperback of all time,
was fanfiction,
the storyline based on Twilight.
The BDSM twist in the story
had also been done,
many, MANY times.

The human-vampire-wolf shifter love triangle
in Twilight,
the biggest selling series
in 2008
and the base for Fifty Shades,
had been done many, MANY times
also.

Just because it has been done
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

Seth Godin shares

“John Koenig calls it vemödalen.
The fear that you’re doing something
that’s already been done before,
that everything that can be done
has been done.

Just about every
successful initiative and project
starts from a place of replication.
The chances of being fundamentally
out of the box over the top omg original
are close to being zero.”

Your product doesn’t have to be original
to be successful.

I spent the past week
with a couple of entrepreneurial families.
Both families are in the process
of passing their very successful businesses
from the founding generation
to the second.

One of these founders
stressed that he gave his two children
the option of NOT joining the family business.

He actively encouraged both sons
to obtain degrees
in other fields.
The sons worked in these other fields
before deciding to join the family business.

When they made the transition,
they were given choices
about which department
they’d be working in.

When they decided to take
leadership roles,
the parents stepped back,
filling the role of consultants,
often working out of home,
not in the office.

These sons are more engaged
and enthusiastic about their fate
than I’ve ever seen a second generation be.

Why?

Because they were given
and know they still have
options.

Considering giving the heirs
to your business
options also.
No one likes to feel trapped
even if that cage is made of gold.