Category: New Business Development

One of my loved ones
is going through a messy relationship breakup.
He’s embarrassed about this split
and he doesn’t want to talk about it.

The thing is…
his significant other
has rallied her girls around her.
She’s done her research.
She has all her prep work done.
She can take him
to the financial cleaners
if she wants to.

A writer friend of mine
is working on his first novel.
He is surrounded by writers
but he’s too embarrassed to ask for help
because he’s not quite at their level
(so he feels).

The thing is…
we all asked for help
when we were starting out.
We all continue to ask for help.
We have critique partners and beta readers
and multiple levels of editors.
The myth of the solitary writer
is just that,
a myth.

I can guarantee
that, at this moment,
there’s some knowledge you’re lacking
because you’re too embarrassed to ask.
This lack of knowledge
is hindering your success.

Ask yourself…
Is avoiding a moment of embarrassment
worth compromising your success?

When I first started writing,
I’d write whatever came into my brain.
Although they were great stories
and I marketed the hell out of them,
the thing was…
nobody was interested in reading the stories.

Now,
I write what people want to read.
I write the story my way
(usually with plenty of humor)
but I’ll latch onto the big trends
readers are looking for
(vampires, shifters, etc).

Chris Garrett has a great post
on the four myths of information products.

One is the build it and they will come myth.

The truth?

“Most people create something nobody wants
Out of the people who do
create something,
the next hurdle is getting people to buy it.
The instant success that flies off the shelves
is more dream than reality for most.
While it is possible to create a market
if you have the time and marketing budget,
I find it much easier
to serve a ready-made audience.”

Unless you have unlimited marketing dollars,
consider creating your product
for a market that already exists.

I went to school for accounting.
I used my degree to get my first full time job
and I progressed to other endeavors.
I did business development
and product launches for a while.
Currently I’m in marketing.

Every task, every job
leads you
to a different task or job.
Nothing is permanent,
even when you’re living
what many may call the ‘dream’
because when you achieve
one dream,
another dream emerges.

Some people believe Rapper Frontstreet
is living the dream.
Does he wish to rap forever?
Nope.
He has different dreams for his future.

“In five years,
I see myself so far from rapping.
I see myself acting;
rapping is just a stepping stone for me.
I see myself owning things,
not like a clothing line
or the particular things
that everybody else owns.
I want to own buildings.
I see myself owning a building
in downtown Atlanta right now.
I’m not even gonna say see myself,
I know I’m going to own a building.”

Use the position you have now
as a stepping stone
to achieve your dreams.

My dumb ass boss has the brilliant idea
to dock employees $5
for every mistake made.
It is supposed to be a ‘fun’ bet
to encourage quality.

The thing is…
We’re not making widgets.
We’re playing with ideas,
managing information,
launching new programs.

So what this bet really does
is discourage employees from
trying anything new
and from taking risks.

If you want innovation,
you have to tolerate,
maybe even encourage mistakes.

One of my co-workers recently got engaged.
She’s known the man
for five months,
she met him online,
and it is a long distance relationship.
Other co-workers are making noises
like it is a mistake,
and it won’t work.

Maybe it is,
and sure,
they could do things
to increase their odds of relationship survival
but…

The thing is…
we can’t predict whether or not
a relationship will work .
I fell in love with my other half
at first sight,
and we’ve been happily together over 18 years.
A buddy of mine married
a man she’d known
for over a decade,
and their relationship didn’t last three years.

That is how it is
with business startups also.
We do a lot of
prep work and research
and other things
to increase the odds of survival
but in the end,
we can’t predict
which companies will survive
and which will not.

So if you’re waiting for certainty,
you’re going to be waiting a very long time.

Sometimes we forget
in this cult of me,
realty TV world
that brand building
is about the brand.

Do you know what the CEO of Coca-Cola
looks like?
I don’t.

How many times have you heard
a CEO of Coca-Cola or GM
or any other long lasting brand
talk about themselves?
Never.

They talk about the brand first.
And that’s the way it should be.

The company or brand should be
the focus,
not the leader.
Why?
Because the brand is bigger than the leader
and a company consists of
more than just one person.

Fred Smith,
founder, chairman, and CEO of FedEx
told Justin Menkes,
author of
Better Under Pressure:

“As a founder,
you must be able to resist
any temptation
to let the organization
become a cult of personality
built around you.
FedEx isn’t about me.
When I walk out the door here,
this organization won’t miss a beat.”

Put the focus on your brand
where it belongs.

(BTW… as an author,
I focus on my characters, and my stories,
because THAT is what
my readers care about
and THAT is what
I’m selling)

I was watching an episode
of Property Ladder today
(a great show for anyone
involved in project management).

A couple was flipping a house.
The husband had years
of building experience.
The wife,
although gifted with finances,
had no building experience.

The wife insisted
on having equal say
on each renovation decision
and made a fuss
if her ideas weren’t used,
stating that
she was an equal partner.

This, of course,
was a dumb ass argument.
She may be an equal partner
but her husband
should clearly have been the leader
on renovation decisions,
just as she should have been the leader
on financing decisions
(an equally important role).

One of the big reasons
we partner with others
is to gain experience and skills
that we don’t have.
Let these partners lead
in the areas they are strong in.

BTW… ironically the flip lost money
because, surprise surprise,
they ran out of financing,
the area the financing-savvy wife
should have been
focusing on.

Although I love writing,
starting to write is
a very painful process for me.
It IS work, and
it is difficult to choose work
over doing nothing.

To ease these hard starts,
I employ a trick many successful writers use.
I stop writing a scene
in the middle of the action.
Although I really want to finish it,
I don’t,
leaving that last bit
for the next writing session.

I often do this with my to-do lists also.
I’ll deliberately assign a task
to every day’s to-do list
that I absolutely love.
When I wake up in the morning,
I do that task,
and that throws me into work mode.
Once I’m working,
it is easier to continue working.

Consider assigning yourself
an enjoyable task
to start your day,
even if that means
leaving a task uncompleted
from the day before.

According to Reuters,
“Google launched
an online music locker service
this week
that allows users to store
and access their songs
wherever they are,
similar to one launched by
amazon.com in March.
And like the Amazon Cloud Drive player,
the Google music service
is being introduced
without any prior licensing deals
with major music labels,
following months of fruitless negotiations.”

In a loved one’s town,
the town council blocked Costco
from building a store there.
Costco simply took their store
and jobs elsewhere.

Another loved one pulled a diva move
and made it very difficult
for a company to interview him.
The company decided
he wasn’t the right fit
WITHOUT an interview,
and hired someone else.

Business is going to be done with or without you.
If you want to be involved in this business,
make it easy for the key people to include you.

If I read another post
by a pretentious writer
talking about how she won’t sell out her art,
I’ll scream.

They have a word
for stuff produced
that no one wants.

It is called…

Garbage.

If you can’t sell a product
(i.e. selling out),
because no one wants it,
you’re producing garbage.
The world doesn’t need
more garbage.

Go ahead
and produce something
fresh, creative, exciting
but please make sure
it is something people
actually want.