New Business Development – Page 79

If You Can Be Kind

A writer contacted me yesterday.
She is now a big name writer.
Her books are awesome.
They sell a gazillion copies.
And she recently landed
a movie deal.

She confessed yesterday
to almost quitting
after her first published story.
It had sold very few copies.
And it was being critiqued hard
by some readers
and other industry professionals.

She endured a week
of that misery after her book release,
decided her career as a writer was doomed.
That would be the first and last book
she ever published.

Then I commented on
one of her social media posts.
I told her
I was cheering for her.

Between you and me
and the internet,
that is something
I tell a lot of writers
…because I DO cheer
for a lot of writers.

But, for her,
it made a difference
between quitting
after that first failure
and continuing
onto eventual success.

She told herself
she couldn’t quit
because
if she did that,
she’d disappoint
(k),
a USA Today Bestselling Author,
an author she admired.
She didn’t want
to let me down.

And today,
she is an author
other writers admire.

If you have a choice,
if it doesn’t hurt you,
be kind.

You could change a life
with a mere one line message
of hope.

A Scorekeeper Is Necessary

One of Greta Thunberg’s gifts
to the world
is
she is a carbon usage scorekeeper.

She regularly reports
(with help, of course)
on
how we are doing
vs
what we promised to do.

Many politicians
and business owners
hate her for this.

Being a scorekeeper
is a much reviled job.
But it is necessary
if we want to achieve
our goals.

In business,
the scorekeeper job
is often held
by the finance folks
and yes,
they are also
hated for doing this task.

But they are part of the reason
businesses achieve their goals.

We all need a scorekeeper.
If you don’t have one,
assign the task
to someone.

And try
to shelter them
(or compensate them)
from the hatred.

Tell Them Who Is Calling

Buddies tease me
because,
when I call them
on the phone,
I start with
“Hi (X)! This is (K).”

I do this
because I’m humble enough
not to expect them
to guess who I am
using my voice alone
(if they don’t have
caller ID,
and many lower income people
don’t have it
on their landlines).

I also do this
because it saves other people
the additional mental work
of trying to figure out
who is calling.

People are overloaded
with mental AND physical work
right now.

They’re still dealing with
the fallout of the pandemic.
They’re dealing with
the increasing impacts
of climate change.
They are likely understaffed
and overworked.
They have other worries.

They shouldn’t have to worry
about figuring out
who is calling them.

Extend them some grace.
Tell people
who you are
when you call them.
Don’t make them guess.

Funding IS Doing

A climate change activist
asked people on social media
what they were doing
to stop climate change.

I said I donated regularly
to Mote Marine Laboratory
to help them save coral reefs.

I was told
by multiple people
that donating money
wasn’t ‘doing.’

Being business builders,
we know
that’s complete bullsh*t.

Funding projects
is often the most important type
of doing.
It makes everything else
possible.

As Nicole Kidman
noted
about the film industry.

“I knew there were great stories
out there
for women,
but they weren’t being funded
and everyone kept saying,
‘There’s no interest…
they are going to flop’”

Money allows projects
to be completed.

Your funding,
your donating,
your sponsorship
IS doing.
You’re making a difference
in this wonderful world.

Grouping Requests

Today, I sent the cover requests
for the next five books in the same series
to my cover artist.

The stories will have very similar covers.
Colors will be different.
The hero’s image will be different.
But other aspects like font
and logos will be the same.

I sent the requests all at once
because it might be
easier and faster
for my cover artist
to craft them all at once.

That will save her time.
I will receive the covers sooner.
This benefits both of us.

But it does require
some forward thinking on my part.
I had to get my sh*t organized.

That effort is worth it
if it makes both of our lives
easier.

Consider grouping similar requests,
Allow the requestee
to work more efficiently.

Date Check

For the first couple weeks
of every January,
many of us will put
the wrong year on documents.
We’ll write 2021
instead of 2022.

This is normal.
This is expected.
Many of us do this.

Yet very few programs
will flag this
as a possible error.

If I spell any word wrong
here on this blog
or in a word document
or in an email,
the programs indicate that.

That word will be underlined in red
or the program will try to autocorrect it
or I’ll be asked if I want to use spell check.

If I use the wrong date
with most programs,
nothing happens.
There’s no indication
we’re dating something in the past.

I think of this
whenever people claim
all the big advancements
have been done.

One simple large improvement
hasn’t yet been implemented.

Someone has yet to ‘invent’
date check.

The Market Share Your Business Needs To Be Successful

The market share
our businesses need
to be successful
is MUCH smaller
than we think it is.

As Seth Godin
shares

“If you write a book
and it sells a million copies,
it will be one of
the bestselling books
of the year.
It will also reach
far fewer than 1%
of the country’s population,
never mind the world.”

Those big market share numbers
that large companies
express
are usually calculated
using smaller markets.

The market they use
isn’t everyone
in the world.

The market is usually.
for example,
something like
American males aged 18 to 24
who have gone to at least 3 movies
over the past 12 months.

We don’t need
to sell to everyone
to be a success.
Small shares of large markets
are significant.

An Opportunity To Start New

Every year,
on January 1st,
we are given a reminder
– it is possible to start
something new.

We are starting a new year.
We can go one step further
and start a new business,
a new habit,
a new relationship,
a new outlook on life.

We might have been solely employees,
for example,
in 2021
but this is 2022.
In 2022, we are different people.
We’re business builders.

In 2022, we work on our dreams,
we strive to achieve
the goals we have always wanted
to accomplish.
We take action.
We make a bigger difference
in the world.

This is a new year.
Do something new during it.

Year End Review

Every year,
on December 31st,
I review what happened
over the past year.

This year wasn’t my best.
Sales were down.
Production was down.

But that was expected.
We continue to deal
with the pandemic,
are dealing
with intensified climate change.

The big wins are…
the writing business survived
these challenges
and,
most importantly,
I survived these challenges.

Not every year
will be stellar.
Some years,
merely surviving is a huge win.

And that’s okay.
That’s part of building
a business.

Plan For Bad Things To Happen

I’m crafting my plans
for 2022
and they’re awesome.

They’re TOO awesome.

I’ve assumed everything will go right.
And, as we all know,
that’s not realistic.
Things WILL go wrong.

This should be in our plans.

Financially, I usually either
increase costs by 10% or more
or I decrease sales by 10% or more
or I do both.

Time-wise, I give myself a buffer
for things not going smoothly.
If it takes a month to write a story,
I ‘budget’ for a month and a half.

And emotionally, I prepare myself.
I expect some things to go wrong.
Because I expect that,
it isn’t as much of a crisis
when they do go wrong.

Things will go wrong.
Plan for this.