Category: New Business Development

Seth Godin has a great post
on how being the cheapest option
isn’t the positioning
you wish for your product.

“Every great brand
(even those with low prices)
is known for something other than
how cheap they are.

Henry Ford earned his early success
by using the ideas of mass production
and interchangeable parts
in a magnificent race
to the most efficient
car manufacturing system ever.
But then, he and his team learned that
people didn’t actually want the cheapest car.
They wanted a car
they could be proud of,
they wanted a car
that was a bit safer,
a bit more stylish,
a car built by people
who earned a wage
that made them contributors
to the community.”

The race to the lowest price
in romance eBooks
has already reached zero.
Writers can’t be the lowest price player.
They can merely tie for that spot
with THOUSANDS of other writers.

Eventually, your industry will look the same.
The lowest price might not be free
but it will be zero profit.

Price can’t be your competitive advantage,
not in the long run.
Work on some other competitive difference.

As a writer and an entrepreneur,
I hear the word real a LOT.
When are you going back
to working a REAL job?
When are you writing
a REAL book?
When will you make
a REAL difference in the world?

These questions imply
that I’m doing the opposite,
that I’m busy working an IMAGINARY job,
writing my IMAGINARY books,
making an IMAGINARY difference in the world.

When the response is phrased like this,
even the people asking these questions
realize they’re being ridiculous.

Jonathan Bush,
CEO and Co-Founder of
athenahealth,
faced the same questions
when starting his business.
Advising his younger self,
he’d share

“That is a real thing,
I would tell myself.
Everyone says they need a real job,
but you can define
what is real and worthy.”

Everything you do is real.

Almost all of the mistakes I’ve made
in my life
have been because I didn’t know myself.
I didn’t know my weaknesses.
I didn’t know how I liked to work.
I didn’t know what I’m good at.

The better I knew myself,
the more successful I became.

Sallie Krawcheck,
Owner of 85 Broads,
advises

“Keep a running note
of what works and
what doesn’t work for you,
what you like and
what you don’t like,
what you’re good [at] and
what you aren’t,
the work styles that suit you and
what doesn’t,
where your passions lie and
what leaves you cold.”

Know yourself
– the good, the bad, all of you.

Richard Branson,
Founder of Virgin Group
shares

“Most 22-year-olds today
think that the way
to make their fortunes is
through setting up tech businesses
and it is true
that can be a fruitful direction.

But other more conventional businesses
shouldn’t be forgotten.
There are still plenty of different sectors
that need shaking up.

It is more important
to follow your passion
than going into tech
simply to make a fortune.

Not everybody is technically minded anyway,
and if you don’t really love what you do,
you won’t succeed.”

I’ve worked in quite a few industries
(beverage, movies, mortgages,
real estate, publishing, etc)
and I saw opportunities in ALL of them.
Yes, even in the romance novel business.
There are almost too many improvements
that I can make.

Enter and improve
industries you’re passionate about.

I was chatting with a bunch of writers
about newsletters.
They all agreed that
short, seldom sent, promo only newsletters
worked best.
They had a higher open rate
than newsy, longer, more frequent newsletters.

That’s the rule.

However, I write short stories and novellas
under the pen name I was using
and I have a release a month.
My readers expect jokes and silliness from me.
They’d be very disappointed
if I sent them a promo only newsletter.
They’d consider it to be spam.

I’m the exception.

This is key when receiving advice,
especially advice we want to take
(a promo only newsletter is MUCH easier to send
than a newsy fun-filled newsletter).
We have to know when we’re the exception,
when following advice
for the average entrepreneur,
the average business,
will anger our customers.

Don’t apply advice blindly.
Evaluate if it applies to your business.

It’s a long weekend
in the States
and you’re working.

Your friends are drinking wine,
chilling on a patio,
or relaxing at the cottage.
You’re working.

This might be a bummer
if this was all you were doing
but it’s not.

You’re making a dream come true.
You’re changing the world.
You’re creating a difference
that no one else can create.

That tweet you just sent?
It might be the tweet that gets
your business discovered
by a huge new market.

That email you just crafted?
You might cite it one day
as the email that changed your life.

As an entrepreneur,
anything or everything you do
this weekend
could change the course of history.
It could be a small improvement type of change
or a huge life-will-never-be-the-same change.

Your friends?
They’re just drinking wine.

A writer at one of the smaller publishers
I once wrote for
sent an email to the writer’s loop,
telling writers that
the publishing business is
going to hell in a hand basket,
no one is making money,
and they shouldn’t quit their day jobs.

This is bullsh*t, of course,
but because this writer prefaced her rant
with “I’ve been in this business for 23 years
and have 17 novels published”,
writers got all in a tizzy,
citing her as an ‘expert.’

Yes, she’s an expert.
She’s an expert at surviving for 23 years.
She’s an expert at producing 17 novels.
She’s clearly not an expert
at selling these novels
or making a living from her writing.

Some new-to-Clientk readers
might look at my 9 years of blogging here
and think “k is an expert.”
Yes, I’m an expert at
blogging daily for 9 years.
That’s ALL this number tells you.

Judge an expert on her results.
If she hasn’t achieved the success you wish,
she likely isn’t an expert in the skill
you’re looking for.

I grew up in small towns.
Working as a teenager
in the local McDonald’s wasn’t an option
because there wasn’t a local McDonald’s.
We had to create our own jobs.

And we DID.
We were always busy,
always selling something,
always looking for opportunities.

And this was one of the best things
to ever happen to me.
I don’t ever worry about ‘finding a job’
because I know I can create one.

In the May/June
The Costco Connection,
Wayne Fromm,
inventor
and founder of
Fromm Works,
shares

“I’ve always created businesses
for myself–
I’ve never worked for a company
or anybody
a day in my life.”

“My interests and my passion
became my business.
I didn’t go around saying,
‘How can I make money?’
I went around saying,
‘What would I like to see
or what would [daughter] Sage
like to play with as a child?’
and that was the way I did things.
I always put Sage first.”

Create the job you want
and the business you want to work for.

If I can’t market my romance novel
in one sentence,
a Twitter-length post,
I know I won’t be able
to sell the story to readers.

Simplicity is rare.
It is also challenging to achieve.
But when we achieve it
and that simplicity connects with prospects,
it’s magical,
a recipe for success.

As Steve Jobs
shared

“”That’s been one of my mantras
—focus and simplicity.
Simple can be harder than complex:
You have to work hard
to get your thinking clean
to make it simple.
But it’s worth it in the end
because once you get there,
you can move mountains.”

Make EVERYTHING
as simple as possible.

Yes, this is your irregularly scheduled
get off your a$$
and get ‘er done reminder.

Nolan Bushnell,
founder of
Atari, Inc. and
the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza
-Time Theaters chain,
shares

“The critical ingredient is
getting off your butt and
doing something.
It’s as simple as that.
A lot of people have ideas,
but there are few
who decide to do something about them
now.
Not tomorrow.
Not next week.
But today.
The true entrepreneur is a doer,
not a dreamer.“

You’re an entrepreneur.
Prove it today
and do something!