Category: New Business Development

In writing, we often ask the question
“How big is the world?”
The size of the setting we create
and the restrictions we place upon it
will determine what stories we can tell.
If no paranormal creatures exist in the world,
we can’t write about vampires or werewolves.

I currently am writing a series with five men
trapped on a tropical island.
I know, at the maximum,
there will be five romances
(as each man finds his significant other).
If these stories do really well,
I’d have to break my self-imposed rules
to extend the series
(and readers REALLY get ticked
when writers do that).

Michael Godard paints olives.
If he painted olives simply being olives,
his world would have been very, very small.
He would have only produced
a couple of paintings,
and then been forced to move onto
his next big idea.

Instead, he paints olives in rock and roll settings.
Boom.
His world expanded.
He gives the olives human characteristics.
Boom.
His world is massive.

So why limit worlds at all?
Why not allow everything?

It comes down to branding.
A world that tries to appeal to everyone,
appeals to no one.

So when developing products,
make your world big
but not too big.

I’m managing a not-for-profit writing group,
and am busy putting in new systems
and building membership.

It is going well.
Too well.

Why too well?

Because it is human nature
to want to be involved in successful projects.

Currently, I’m left the hell alone
by the board,
but I know once the board hears about my success,
they’ll either take over my group,
or they’ll micromanage the hell out of it.
So I’m in a race to put in my systems,
and set up the group
to run itself,
before the board takes the project over.

When you manage a successful project,
you always run the risk
of having your project taken over
(and not always taken over
by the most competent project managers).

If you care about the project,
design it so it can run itself.

I can guarantee
you did something this week
you shouldn’t have done yourself.
I know I did.

We, humans, tend to be control freaks,
especially those of us
with entrepreneurial tendencies.
We want to do EVERYTHING,
control EVERYTHING,
and it can be one of our biggest barriers
to success.

The hot topic in the writing-world today
is self publishing.
Quite a few of my buddies
are taking graphic design
on top of their writing courses and schedules
so they can design the covers they want.

Okay, first…
these authors shouldn’t be designing the covers THEY want.
They should be designing the covers READERS want.
And in order to do that,
cover artists need to know the market, trends,
and how to achieve that design.

Which leads to the second issue…
As a writer, I have a potential to earn more money
with every additional word I write.
Mastering a complicated skill like cover design
will suck writing time,
a task I can’t easily delegate to anyone else.

In contrast, successful writers
delegate as much as possible.
They have cover artists, editors,
research assistants, marketing folks.
Heck, James Patterson doesn’t even WRITE
his own books any more.

Fight the tendency to do everything yourself.
Get out of your own damn way
and delegate as much as possible!

In the May issue of Men’s Fitness,
Tyrese Gibson,
star of Fast & Furious Five,
shares

“You can often tell the way
your career or life is going
by looking at the five people
you spend the most time with.
Your inner circle is
a direct reflection
of who you are.
Change those
– if you aren’t all on the same page –
and it will change your life.”

I know, I know,
we’ve talked about this before,
and we will talk about it again
in the future.

Why?

Because it is true.

It is damn difficult to work all weekend
when your five best buddies
are sending you drunk texts
from their cottages.

On the flip side,
you will feel like a lazy bum
if you take the weekend off
and your five best buddies
are busting their humps
working to make their dreams come true.

So success is easy, right?
Simply surround yourself with five successful people,
and you’re likely to be successful too.

Sure, but WHY would these five successful people
want you to be one of THEIR five?
Ahhh… you see the challenge.
You have to earn your spot as one of their five.

Surround yourself with success
and justify your place in that circle.

You have a good day job.
You’re growing a business after hours.
Your business does better
and better
and better.
So when do you leave the cushy day job
and work the business full time?

You don’t have to decide now,
you say.
You’ll know when it happens.

Yeah, right.

Two dangerous things can happen.
You have a sucky day at the day job
and you quit way too early
Or
You get scared
and hang onto the day job too long.

Right now, I’m feeling the fear.
Lucky for me,
I set up perimeters years ago.
If I landed two contracts
with the biggest publisher
in my genre,
I’d pursue the writing full time.

I’ve landed those contracts
(and the publisher is asking for more stories).
I’m scared,
but friends are keeping me honest.

You won’t ‘know’
so put in perimeters now,
and assign gatekeepers to hold you to them.

A reader emailed me yesterday
and asked why,
if self publishing is so inexpensive,
writers don’t simply publish everything
and let the readers decide
whether or not the story works.

First, self publishing isn’t free.
There’s the cost of the cover,
and the cost of editing.

Second, readers will normally
only try an author once.
If they don’t like that one story,
they won’t buy any more stories… ever.

So by putting out stories that don’t work,
authors are reducing the number of readers
who will buy future stories.
Do that enough times,
and you won’t have much of a readership base
to sell to.

Businesses have the same issue.
I worked for a beverage company.
We launched a stinker of a product.
The next time,
we went to the grocery stores
with a new product,
it was a much tougher sell.
One chain gave us an outright ‘no’
BECAUSE of the previous failed product
(and I was working for a major company
with years of successes).

So yeah, try new things
but take every opportunity to decrease
the chances of
disappointing your customers.

The biggest trend
in publishing right now
is self publishing.
Established authors are self publishing
their backlists.
Brand new authors are self publishing
stories they can’t sell.

There is talk about
the importance of
great covers
and great editing.
But one thing that isn’t discussed
is the importance
of having someone
who will tell you
“This is a dumb ass idea”
or
“This story simply doesn’t work”
BEFORE all the other work happens.

I have 30 stories published.
I’ve written many more.
I thought all of them were wonderful.
They weren’t,
and luckily my publisher/editor declined to buy
the disastrous stories.

This is true of all new product development.
Product developers think
ALL their ideas are wonderful.

Which is why we often rely
on the executive team
to give proposed products
the thumbs up or the thumbs down.
We pitch them 5 products.
They give the thumbs up to 1 of them.

What if YOU are the executive team?
Then set up a team
consisting of people whose opinions you trust,
and give them the challenging task
of saying ‘no’.

It might be the best ‘no’
you ever hear.

Shakespeare is a must read
for most high school students
but how do you make
Shakespeare interesting
to the iPod generation?

One creative English teacher
is doing this
by mixing Shakespeare
with social media.

He has set up a chat room
for his students
where
he posts questions
and assignments.

Students earn marks by making comments
and by replying to comments
made by other students.

Because students don’t want
to look like idiots
in front of their peers,
they go to class
and pay attention.

And by framing it
in a familiar, fun environment,
old Shakespeare becomes new Bill.

Can you make an old product
new again
by selling it with social media?

Every day
I receive at least one email
from someone
who doesn’t know me
yet hates me.
She tears my books apart.
She tells me to do the world a favor
and stop writing.
She (and she is a different person every day)
spews awful words,
and tries to crush me.

Success comes with many costs
but one of the most challenging costs
to deal with
is the attraction of haters.
It is difficult, almost impossible,
to create
in an environment of hate.

One of my buddies,
a New York Times bestselling author,
hires someone else to deal
with the haters.
She tells this employee
she doesn’t even want to hear about it.

What I do is
only allow the haters access to me
AFTER my creating is done.
I don’t read emails
or check message boards
or look at reviews
until I’ve reached my creation quota
for the day.

When you’re successful,
some people won’t like you.
Learn to deal with it.

Seth Godin has more thoughts on this.

I was on a publisher chat today.
The chat was for
all of the publisher’s authors
yet only 3 authors (myself included)
showed up.

One author decided to
give a book away.
Great.
I don’t have a problem
with that.

When her contest was done,
she asked the other author and I
if we’d be giving books away also.

What the hell?
If we said no,
we’d look like greedy, selfish people.

So the other author gave a book away.

I didn’t.
I don’t give entire books away
to individuals.
I give linked shorter stories away
to everyone.
So that’s what I offered up.

The thing is…
even though I had a response,
I didn’t like being put in a corner.
I hated it, in fact.
I thought it was sneaky
and underhanded of her.

Before you put someone
in the corner like that,
THINK about it.
Think
“Do I truly want to
make an enemy of this person?”