Category: New Business Development

It has been a year
since my four writing buddies and I
started the world domination plan.
When we started,
we were below mid list
eBook exclusive writers.

Yesterday,
one of those buddies signed a deal
which will have her to-be-released print book
be one of the spotlighted books
at Barnes during the Christmas season
(which is high season
for print books).

This is a breakout opportunity,
a breakout opportunity
after only a year of concentrating
on her writing.

Another buddy is in negotiations
with Harlequin.

A third buddy is the featured author
for TWO of her large publishers.
She’s their rising star.

I’m writing full time
and selling every story I produce.

A year is long enough
to produce substantial results
AND change your life.

Make this year count.

Open Forum has an awesome article
on tipping points
at different start ups.

Brian Leventhal,
co-founder and CEO of Brooklyn Winery,
shares

“If you look at 100 people,
50 are content with what they are doing,
49 talk about doing something else,
and one of those people is
actually doing what they want to do.
My advice is to move
from being in the 49
to being the one
that does something.
What’s the worst that could happen
if you fail?”

Notice he said
move from being in the 49
because the 50
don’t read Open Forum
or blogs like this one.

They don’t need to
and often, they shouldn’t.
They’re content.
If you’re content,
for shit’s sake,
do what you can
to maintain that coveted state.

If you’re in the 49,
the dreamers,
the talkers,
then yes, move to doing.

I recently watched
journalist Meredith Vieira
on Ellen.
She talked about the Olympics
and how she always imagines herself
participating in and winning
the Olympics.
It is a dream she has
to this day.

She’s 58
yet she dreams and visualizes
something
that is unlikely to come true.

She hasn’t put this dream away.
Why would she?
Having this wild dream
isn’t stopping her
from reaching more realistic goals.
It might help with these goals.

I don’t think it a coincidence
that she’ll be covering the Olympics
in London.

Goals should be semi-realistic
but dreams don’t have to be doable,
not at all.

Dan Bobinski
has some super ways
to increase productivity.

“One man said he gets more done
if he finds a place to work
that’s far away from his cubicle,
usually in a different department altogether.
He says this technique
keeps him away
from the never-ending chit-chat
and office politics that
“hum non-stop in the cubicle farm area”
and eat up valuable time.”

I used this technique all the time.
(I called it hiding)
I would find a quiet corner
in the cafeteria
or I’d find a spare desk
somewhere in the building
and focus on the task
I needed to get done.

People couldn’t find me
and when they DID find me,
they assumed
I was involved in a meeting,
that I was seated there
for a reason.

And I was.
The reason I sat there
was to get my work done.

If you are struggling
to get work done,
try sitting in a different seat.
Hide.

Many people won’t ask for help
because they’re afraid
the person they ask
will say no.

Highly unlikely.

“Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake
of Columbia University
tested people’s estimates
of how likely others were to help.
They recruited people to ask others
to fill out questionnaires,
borrow cell phones and
even escort them to the gym.

The result:
people underestimated
how likely others were to help them
by as much as 100%”

Why?
Because there is a lot
of societal pressure to say yes.
People like to be seen
as nice.
Saying no is not nice.

So ask for help.
If you don’t want to pressure people,
make it easy
for them to say no
but
at least
ASK.

Andrea Kates
shares that one of the talents
Steve Jobs had
was a love of tinkering.

“From a very young age,
Jobs sat at his dad’s side
at the car-fixing workbench.
He migrated to tinkering
in the world of electronics,
cutting his teeth on
assemble-it-yourself kits
for making ham radios
and “other electronic gear
that were beloved by the soldering set.”
Being situated in Silicon Valley
exposed him to neighbors
who worked in holographs, lasers,
and other new technologies
and a high school teacher who introduced Jobs
to transistors, coils, and circuit boards.”

This is one of the things
great writers do also.
They take an idea,
usually an existing idea,
and they tinker with it.
We have werewolves.
What about weregophers?
What would they be like?
What powers and personality traits
would they have?

Every great idea
builds on other ideas.
The product developer takes the idea
and tinkers with it.

Play what if.
Tinker.

Today is February 29,
leap day.
Every four years,
we get the gift of an extra day.

And that is exactly
what today is…
a gift.

So what are you doing
with this gift?

Need ideas?
Review your New Year Resolutions.
Two months have passed.
What goals have you achieved?
What goals remain untouched?
Can you achieve one of your goals
today?

Use your extra day
to make your entire year
more successful.
Make this gift last
for a lifetime.

One of the abilities
great product developers
have
is separating themselves
from their products.

We don’t often seek out
criticism of ourselves.
In order to develop a great product,
however,
we HAVE to seek out
and listen to
criticism
of that product.

And if the product isn’t worth launching
we also have to be able
to KILL that product.
If we view the product
as an extension of ourselves,
this is very challenging.

I love having pen names
for my writing
because these other identities
remind me I am NOT my writing.
Hell, I don’t even write.
My pen name writes.
I’ll happily kill one of the messed up stories
that beyotch writes.

Separate yourself from your product.

Leading Blog has a great post
on why identification
can lead to negative, disruption behavior.

I’m not sure why
some people are so secretive
about their techniques for success.

If a person REALLY wants to follow
in your footsteps,
your techniques will usually be easy to figure out
once you’ve had a few successes.

However those people are VERY rare.
Even if you wrote a book,
giving people a step by step outline
of how you were successful,
almost no one would follow that outline.
(unless it was damn easy)

Yesterday,
three writers separately asked me
how to increase sales.

I shared with each writer
what my editors shared with me.
The best way to increase sales
in romance
is to write books in a series.

Yep, that was my easy advice.
Set two books in the same town
or
give the hero in the first book a brother
and make the brother the hero of the second book
or
write two vampire books.

All three writers gave me reasons
why they couldn’t write
books in a series.
(none of their reasons
made any damn sense to me)

Of course,
keep top secret projects secret
and don’t blab information
you don’t want utilized.

But don’t be paranoid either.

One of my buddies
is a brilliant writer.
Unfortunately her sales are a fraction of mine.
Why?
Because she writes the stories
SHE wants to write
and then tries to sell them to readers.
I write the stories readers want.

A juice company
I once worked for
was getting their ass kicked
in the orange juice business.
Why?
Because they produced
orange juice from concentrate,
an easier juice to manufacture
but a juice customers didn’t want.
The competition produced
orange juice NOT from concentrate,
the juice customers actually wanted.

Giving the customers what they want
is a FAR easier sell
than convincing the customer
to want what you’re selling.