Category: New Business Development

I belong to a writing group
consisting of five writers.
When I was invited into this group,
I stressed about
what I could offer
these more experienced writers.

I was told that
when I’m somewhere,
that somewhere is happier, upbeat, optimistic.
These writers needed that optimism.

Now, they hesitate to plan a function
unless I can attend
because they know
without optimism
meetings spiral into pity parties.

When I was laid off
from the big beverage company,
my V-P contacted me
and apologized.
He said he didn’t realize
how I had set the hopeful mood for the office.

If you’re a new product developer
or an entrepreneur,
the odds are good,
you’re optimistic

Never strive to be anything else.

And if you don’t have an optimistic tone setter
at your workplace,
hire one.

Optimism is contagious
and optimistic people change the world.

Some readers emailed me
about yesterday’s post
on not holding out for the big win.

They pointed out
that the media always talks
about the writer hitting the bestseller lists
with her first book
or the business that was discovered
by a celebrity using their product.

Here’s the thing…
normal is NOT newsworthy.
Media covers the exceptional.

Most successful writers
build up their reader base slowly.
Most successful businesses
grow as slowly.

That’s not exciting though.
It isn’t newsworthy.
The average person doesn’t find
hard work sexy or interesting.
So the media,
being in the entertainment business,
doesn’t cover it.

Slow and steady isn’t sexy
but it works.

Some of my writing and entrepreneur buddies
scoffed at the people
buying tickets for the 640 million dollar
Mega Millions lottery jackpot.
The odds of winning were so low.

I stayed silent
because I know many of those writers
are planning their careers around
“winning” a place on the bestseller lists,
the equivalent of the publishing lottery.
They won’t publish their books
unless the publisher has proven
they can land books on the lists.

Some of the entrepreneurs
are planning their business success
around “winning” a place on Walmart shelves
or “winning” celebrity endorsement.
They ignore smaller vendors
and other slower avenues to success.

Dreaming of the big win is fun.
Keeping those dreams viable
by writing a great book
or designing the product to be Walmart friendly
is smart.

Hinging all of your success,
on these wins,
however,
is risky.

Consider expanding your plan
to include slower routes
to success.

“Research
(such as The Power of Small Wins
that ran in Harvard Business Review May, 2011)
shows that people who make progress
every day
toward something they care about
report being satisfied and fulfilled.”

Notice that it doesn’t say
BIG progress
every day.

The size of progress doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter to your happiness
and it doesn’t matter to your success
because even with small progress,
you’ll eventually get
to where you want to go.

So take action,
any action,
big or small,
toward your goal
every single day.
That means weekends too.

You deserve to feel fulfilled
and you deserve success.

A writing friend approached me yesterday.
Her writing career (i.e. budding business)
has built to the point
where she can’t handle a full time day job.

However, the writing money isn’t there yet.
She needs additional income.

She is stressing,
juggling both the day job and the writing,
going without precious sleep
because she can’t afford to quit her day job
and write full time.

I hear from people with this challenge
ALL the time.

The average person
thinks full time,
all or nothing,
working on one job
or working on another job.

You’re not the average person.
You want to do something different
with your life,
so
it helps to look at the world differently.

And that means considering
all of the alternatives.

In my friend’s case,
this could be…
taking a leave of absence,
working three days a week at the day job,
switching to a contract job for the cash,
combining part time jobs,
accepting freelance work,
I could list 30 or 40 alternatives easily.

If you’re venturing
from the path well trodden,
the routes to success are only as limited
as your imagination.

When uncertain,
Leonard A. Schlesinger,
Charles F. Kiefer, and
Paul B. Brown,
authors of
Just Start: Take Action,
Embrace Uncertainty,
Create the Future,
recommend to act.

“Put simply,
in the face of an unknown future,
entrepreneurs act.
They deal with uncertainty
not by trying to analyze it,
or planning for every contingency,
or predicting what the outcomes will be.
Instead, they act,
learn from what they find,
and act again.”

You can’t predict the future,
people,
including your customers,
aren’t rational,
and you can’t get ALL the research
anyway.

Take action.
See what happens.
If your action works, continue on that path.
If your action doesn’t, try something else.

I’ve been crazy busy lately
with projects.
There’s a temptation
for me
when I’m crazy busy
to push off learning.

That’s a big mistake.

Even the publishing industry
(or maybe… especially the publishing industry)
is changing quickly.
If I don’t stay current,
I become outdated.

My customers (readers) are becoming
more and more sophisticated,
their expectations increasing.
To keep up,
I need to learn.

I suspect the same thing
is happening in your industry.

Take time,
even if it is five minutes a day,
to learn.
That knowledge WILL pay dividends.

Often when I’m working on an issue,
I’ll write it down.
I’ll type the problem
and the possible solutions out.
If that doesn’t fix my issue,
I’ll handwrite it.

For some reason,
putting it in writing
frees my thinking.
It allows me to put the issues in order.
It organizes my thoughts.

Michael Hyatt has seen similar results
and that is one of the reasons
why he blogs.

“Blogging has helped clarify my own thinking.
This is the single biggest benefit
of blogging to me.
It’s why I started blogging
to begin with.
Sometimes I joke that
I don’t really know what
I think about a subject
until I have blogged about it.
Writing helps me untangle my thoughts.”

If you’re struggling with a problem,
try writing it down.

I sat at a dinner table recently
with a newer writer.
She told the folks at the table
she wrote novels
and I cringed
because I knew what would happen next.

Everyone else piped up
that they were writing novels too.
(which is the equivalent of saying
any untrained monkey
can do this big, scary task
she’s been spending 18 hours a day,
7 days a week
on)

The girl was upset.
So I asked this question…
“Have you finished the novel?”

Only the girl said yes
and I murmured
“THAT’s the hardest part.”

Everyone starts
(novels/product development/businesses).
Very few finish.

But that’s a good thing
for those of us who DO finish.

As Scott Ginsberg shares
“The exciting part is,
in a society that worships incompleteness,
the people who do commit,
the people who do carry their work to execution,
are the ones that inspire us forever.”

Finish that damn project already!

One of my buddies
is very, VERY intelligent,
book learning smart.

Unfortunately, this is more of a hindrance
than it is a help.

She doesn’t ask questions
because she feels
she should know the answers.
Folks don’t volunteer answers
because they’re intimidated by her brains.

That’s tough
because it is impossible
to know everything,
especially the practical knowledge
you can obtain only from doing.

The book learning knowledge
she prides herself on having,
of course,
is often a Google search away.

As Patrick Lencioni,
author of
The Advantage
shares

“In this world of ubiquitous information
and nanosecond technology exchange,
it’s harder than it has ever been in history
to maintain a competitive advantage
based on intelligence or knowledge…”

Knowing the answers
is no longer as important as
asking the questions.