Category: New Business Development

I’m aiming to have
two stories a month published
in 2012
(these stories have to be written
and submitted to publishers
NOW
in order to be published in 2012).

When I tell people that,
they tell me I can’t maintain that pace
because I’ll run out of ideas.

Bullshit.
I’ll run out of life
before I’ll run out of ideas.
I have my most marketable ideas plotted out
for both this year’s writing
and next year’s
and a list of possible other ideas
for future years.

Ask any entrepreneur
and they’ll tell you the same thing.
In a survey of 1,000 people
by Intuit Inc.,
70% of those questioned
said generating an idea is easy.

70%
and these weren’t ‘entrepreneurs’.
These were regular folks.

So if you’re stifling your doing
because you’re worried about
running out of ideas,
don’t.

And if you don’t have any ideas,
ask around.
Many of us have more ideas
than we’ll ever develop.

The buzz in the romance publishing community
is that vampires are dead,
as in not breathing
AND
not selling… in the future.
They ARE selling right now.

It is interesting because
on a reader forum yesterday,
readers were asked
for their favorite types of characters.
The number one type by far?
Vampires.

Vampires aren’t dead.
They simply aren’t new.

The thing is…
Coca-Cola isn’t new.
Hamburgers aren’t new.
Barbie isn’t new.
Yet these ‘old’ things sell
very well,
thank you very much.

Ditching a selling product
because it is ‘old’ is silly.

Seth Godin has a great post on this topic

I was watching the 25th Anniversary
performance of Les Miserables
on PBS.
Nick Jonas plays Marius.

I immediately thought
‘oh, he landed that role
because he’s a Jonas Brother’
and I was surprised
that he was marvelous in it.

Then I found out
he has been performing
on Broadway
since the age of 7,
and that he has played other roles
in Les Miserables
and yes, played Marius
in theater-loving London.
He EARNED that spot
in the Anniversary performance.

Recently, I snagged a great promotion opportunity.
My author buddies asked me
how I got so “lucky”,
hinting that it was
because of my relationship
with the site owner.
Sure it was,
but I built that relationship
by providing her with free content
and supporting her projects.

Some opportunities are due to luck
but more opportunities
are due to hard work.

If you want it,
really want it,
you need to work it.

I grew up with not much material things.
We didn’t eat every day.
We didn’t have indoor plumbing.

I did some really shitty jobs
and you can take that literally.
I’ve cleaned up more feces
than a gal should even know exists.

So when things go wrong,
I KNOW I will survive.
I’m not scared to lose everything
as I’ve been there
and come back from it.
The lack of fear
and the knowledge that I will survive
makes me a better business gal.

As Pete Luckett,
founder of Frootique stores,
says
“You’ve gotta go through hardship
to be able to survive.
It may be tough at the time,
but it builds character
and helps you get through
the next challenge you face.”

Don’t fuss too much about hardships.
You’ll survive them
and when you do,
you’ll never be scared
of that possibility again.

Director Anna D. Shapiro
recently said of working with
comedian Chris Rock
“The day is filled
with a lot of laughing
and hard work
and generosity,
and all of that is
because of who he is.
He’s refining a skill
he already has.
He understands
the technical demands of that now
every day better and better.”

Y’all might be sick
of me mentioning
that ya gotta keep your tools sharp
but I repeat it
because it needs repeating.

If the best in the world
are working on getting better,
you should also.

Take a course.
Ask for a stretch project.
Try something new.

Tom Clifford has a series of articles
on how to conquer the world.

One of his tips?

Use the Pomodoro Technique.
The Pomodoro Technique slices time
into 25 minute intervals.

“When we focus intensely
on only one task
for 25 minutes,
we immediately feel a sense of accomplishment.

In addition:
• You strengthen your resolve to continue applying yourself.
• Your anxiety to accomplish difficult projects is lessened.
• Your motivation to do more increases.
• Your concentration deepens with fewer interruptions.

All this changes how we see time.”

I use something similar,
taking the 5 minutes out of every half hour
to recharge and switch gears.

Concentrate on tasks,
25 minutes at a time.

The investment community
constantly talks about the concept of
paying yourself first.
You set aside a portion of your salary
for investing
and you invest it immediately.

It works better than paying yourself last
because when you pay yourself last,
little expenses here and there
gobble up your investment funds.

That is the strategy I use
for my time.
The first hour of the day,
even while working a business gig,
is spent working on my own projects.

I’ll write for that hour,
giving my project
my fresh brain and my best creativity.
Everyone else gets what is left over.

I’ll come home exhausted,
with little time left to spare,
because small tasks have eaten it up.

That’s okay,
because I put the time in
for my own projects first.

Spend your time wisely.
Allocate a portion to your projects first.

A loved one
believes he would make
a wonderful entrepreneur.
He has some great ideas.
He has the intelligence.
What I fear he’s missing
is an entrepreneurial strategy for self discipline.

Currently, he needs the structure of a job,
with a manager holding him
to deadlines.
He doesn’t know how to achieve
the same results solo.

So I suggested
he work his self discipline issues out
while continuing to work his day job.

How to do this?

Simple.
He gives himself an aggressive extra project
with a concrete deadline.
If he achieves the results on time,
he has a good grasp on self discipline.
If he doesn’t,
he has work to do.

I suspect it will take him
several attempts at different strategies
until he finds one that works.
That’s to be expected.

Don’t quit your day job
to become an entrepreneur
until you know you have the self discipline strategies
to BE an entrepreneur.

I sat in on a writing seminar
where two successful romance writers were brutally honest
about their writing lives.
They said that they worked,
hard,
writing for over eight hours a day,
and THEN promoting and editing
and doing the zillion other things writers do.
One mommy writer said she took edits
to her kid’s soccer games
and when her kid wasn’t on the field,
she was working.

Mompreneurs, despite media perception,
have it as rough.
They work long hours for their success.

Danielle Botterell,
one of the co-authors of
Mom Inc.,
says
“Mompreneurship has been in the press
for the past few years,
but sometimes we find the accounts
in the press are a bit one-sided.
‘I’m with my baby all the time
and I’m making so much money.’
We wanted to let people know
spending time on the floor
playing with your baby
and making money
is sometimes mutually exclusive.”
“If you’re planning on
having your children around
when you’re starting your business,
like we did,
that’s working part time
and that means part time money,
but of course children grow
and things change
so it’s really about finding the right balance.”

Having it all isn’t a myth.
Having it all at the same time IS.

The Spring
Daylight Savings Time
isn’t my favorite time of year.

Folks say things like
“We lost an hour’s sleep.”

Ahhh… no.
For doers,
we lost an hour of doing.
Sleep, we can only sacrifice
so much more of
before we stop to function.

For me,
that hour less on the weekend
translated to 1,000 less words written.
That was the promotional short
I wanted to submit to my publisher’s ezine.

Sure, it will even out.
In the Fall,
I’ll have an hour more.

But if your fellow doers are grumpy today,
it is likely
due to that one less hour of doing.