Category: New Business Development

If you’re involved in a number of team decisions,
you will face a decision
you don’t agree to.

The time to fight this decision
is before it is acted upon.

You bring in an expert
to convince the team
and you ask for another vote.
Or you approach your manager
for advice.

Once acted upon,
a team decision is considered your decision.
The politically correct response
to questions about it
starts with “The team decided…”

Stating that you disagreed
after the fact
does a couple of very negative things.
It shows you have no loyalty
and you’re willing
to throw your team mates under the bus.
Individuals with that reputation
don’t last long in organizations.

It also communicates that you’re weak.
You didn’t have the strength/expertise/skills
to convince your team mates.
Individuals like that
don’t get promoted.

Once team decisions are made,
they’re YOUR decision.

eBook romance novel sales
are traditionally soft in December.
People give print books,
not eBooks
as presents.

Some of my buddies are relaxing.
I’m not.
I’m writing stories for 2013.
I’m promoting on venues
now devoid of competition.
I remain focused on my business.

As Bill McBean,
author of
The Facts Of Business Life,
shares

“In order to be successful
and remain that way,
you have to continually focus on the market,
react to it, and
fight for what you believe should be yours.
If you don’t,
your competition will win the war.”

It is really easy to lose focus
on your business
this time of the year,
especially if your sales aren’t concentrated
during the holidays.

You can’t afford to.
Continue fighting the good fight.

Last month,
there was an opportunity with a larger publisher.
This opportunity,
if I’m successful
(and that is a big if),
would pay off BIG in a few years.

I have a financial buffer
so I was able to take advantage
of this opportunity.

One of my writing buddies
has very little financial buffer.
She couldn’t wait that long
for a financial return.
It didn’t matter how big that return was.

These tough decisions
happen all of the time in art AND business.
The bigger the financial buffer
you have,
the more you can take advantage
of longer term opportunities.

Writer and Director
Joss Whedon shares

“The first penny I ever earned,
I saved.
Then I made sure that
I never had to take a job
just because I needed to.
I still needed jobs of course,
but I was able to take ones that I loved.”

Bootstrap your business
(i.e. keep the costs and investment low)
but consider having a financial buffer
for those bigger opportunities.

A buddy shared that
she hadn’t accomplished her 2012 goals yet.
When I told her it wasn’t too late,
her reply was
“How can I accomplish my goals
in a month?
I might as well wait
until January 1st
and start then.”

You and I know this logic
makes no damn sense.
Starting a goal in January,
a month later,
doesn’t make it easier to achieve.

But humans aren’t logical.
We fall into harmful habits
like delaying working on our goals.

These habits have a cost.
A month delay over a lifetime
is a delay of 6.5 YEARS.

Do you have 6.5 years to waste?
I sure don’t.
Work on your goals TODAY.

A writer announced on a publisher loop
that a certain marketing tactic
didn’t work.

I was surprised.
This was the best marketing tactic I’ve used
and I had proof that it was.
So I asked her for her stats.

She didn’t have any stats.
She’d pulled that declaration
out of her ass,
basing it on emotion and her gut.

Some writers will believe her.

As some clientk readers will believe
anything I post here.
Yes, I do my best research
and yes, I post tips
that I’ve seen work in the real world
but that doesn’t mean
anyone should blindly follow those tips.

Advice is the starting point.
Every business, every case is different.
What works for others
might not work for you.

Don’t follow any advice blindly.

When I asked an early mentor
whether a decision
was a good thing
or a bad thing,
he told me
“There’s no good
and no bad.
There’s just different.”

His point was
as soon as we put
a positive or negative value on an event,
it colors our decision making.
We look for that value
to prove we’re right
and we don’t see all of the opportunities
or all of the cautions.

And there ARE opportunities
in every event,
no matter how negative.

I remember this
when I’m watching the news
(which I rarely do).
The media’s job is to snag our attention
and nothing snags our attention
like an end-of-the-world level disaster.
The bigger they make the disaster,
the more viewers they’ll attract.

But it ISN’T the end of the world
and someone, maybe you,
will benefit from this so-called ‘disaster.’

Hold back judgment on an event.
View it as rationally as possible
and look for the opportunities.

I’m still a relatively new romance writer
(my most successful pen name is only 3 years old)
with a small but growing readership base.

I can’t compete with the best selling writers
on the marketing strategies they use.
I don’t have the bookstore distribution.
I don’t have the readership base
for book signings.
I don’t yet have the sales
to put my book on a best selling list.

However, there ARE promotions I can do
that better selling writers can’t,
promotions that will differentiate me
from these writers.

My relationship with my readers
is higher touch.
I know their names.
I know their likes, dislikes, concerns.
I host an online chat
and can personally invite them.
I use their names in my stories
and dedicate stories to them.

These tactics have been very successful for me,
so successful that in a couple of years,
I won’t be able to use them anymore.

Barry Moltz shares

“As a small independent retailer,
it is nearly impossible to compete
on price or reach
with the bigger stores.
Instead, emphasize buying local
and how it helps keep the community economically strong.
Do joint promotions
with other local business owners.
Emphasize local value over price.”

Don’t compete with the big boys.
Differentiate.

I’ve seen people take disasters
and turn them into opportunities.
I’ve seen people take the best opportunities
and turn them into disasters.

How people react,
what they do,
depends upon who they are.

As Dan Pallotta shares

“All of our focus is on the doing.
We obsess over the latest models
churned out by for-profits and nonprofits alike.
The social enterprise classes
at Harvard Business School
study the things people are doing.
When a foundation asks for an impact report,
they mean the impact of the doing.

It is all backwards.

What we should be asking
is who people are being.
Are you being courageous?
Are you being authentic?
Honest? Rigorous? Unstoppable?
Because that’s what really makes a difference.

You can run the largest NGO on the planet,
and if you’re being chicken-shit,
then you’ve squandered the powerful position
you’ve been given.
It’s who you are being that matters
— whatever sector you’re in.”

My siblings and I ran
a lawn mowing/snow shoveling family business.
We ranged in ages
and we ranged in abilities.

My sister started working in this business
when she was four years old.
At that age,
she held the bags
as we put lawn clippings in them.
She would stomp on snow banks,
making them more compact.
She would only ‘work’ for an hour or two.

When she was ten years old,
she’d use the hand clippers
to trim around trees and garden beds.
In the winter,
she’d push the snow to the side of the walkway.
She’d work three or four hours a day.

Kids are capable of different tasks
at different ages.
The key to bringing your child to work
is to match the task/environment
to the child’s age.

Katie Morell has a great
Age-By-Age Guide to Bringing Your Child to Work.

If I had a dollar
for every person who told me
they were going to write a book,
I’d be ridiculously rich.

Very few of those people
will ever write a book though.
They’re talkers, not doers
and they have a zillion excuses
why they don’t write.

As Mike Figliuolo shares

“Doers don’t accept excuses.
They say “no” to distractions
and get crap done
(hence the name “doers”).
Every day they focus on
a few objectives
that get them closer

to their ultimate goal.
It might be writing a business plan,
sending 10 emails to prospects,
writing a blog post or chapter of a book,
or writing some lines of code.

Regardless of what it is,
something happens every day.
That kind of focus
both on the long term goal and
on moving toward it regularly
is what differentiates
a doer from a talker.”

Get crap done
every single day.