Category: New Business Development

This week,
I’m planting some fall perennials,
plants that should last forever
in my garden,
never having to be replanted.

These are investment plants.
I buy them once
and they give me a yield,
a return
for the rest of my lifetime.

I can count on that yield.
When I have no funds
for new plants,
they will ensure
my garden remains full.

I have products like that,
books that are semi-timeless,
that sell every day
without much marketing
or effort.
They help pay my bills
while I’m working on
other products.

When building businesses,
consider developing
a few
perennial products and services,
offerings that will yield sales
year after year
with little new investment.

Pessimistic people don’t build businesses.

Their attitude is
those businesses
(and everything else
they do)
will fail
so why bother
trying to succeed?

If success interests you,
it is important to cling to
and to nurture our optimism.

One of the ways I do this
is to limit
my consumption of news.

As Carmine Gallo
shares
“I worked as a television anchor
for 15 years.
“Good news” wasn’t on
my daily news agenda.
People want to see bad news
and that’s what
the media feeds them.

There’s a famous study titled,
Bad is Stronger Than Good.
The research demonstrates how
we, as humans, are hardwired
to look for the negative
because it benefited us
from an evolutionary perspective.
Today, constantly searching
for the negative
can be quite damaging
to our mental health
and
to our long-term success.”

Protect your optimism.
Limit your consumption
of the news.

When I craft a projection
for a new product or service,
I look at historical data
and then I adjust that information
for any new developments.

But…but…k,
it is a NEW product,
you point out.
There isn’t any
historical data.

There is ALWAYS historical data.
If the product is a new type of juice,
I use historical data
for other types of juice
as a base.
If the service is a new type of medical treatment,
I use historical data
for other types of medical treatment
as a base.

This isn’t the first product launch.
This isn’t the first pandemic.
This isn’t the first flood or drought
or other climate disaster.

History repeats.
The future won’t be identical
but it is likely to be similar.

Use the past
to help you predict
the future.

I keep track
of the people around me
who are great judges of character
and who are terrible
judges of character.

Recently, for example,
a loved one accused
another loved one
of something that person
would never do in a million years.

I put the accusing loved one
in the terrible judge of character
category.

He is not someone
I would trust
with that task.
If drama happens in the future
around character judgments,
I know to discount his views.

That’s okay.
No one is good
at everything.
He has other skills,
other abilities.

We’re surrounded by people
with different gifts,
different abilities
(or lack of them).

That neighbor two doors down,
the one who is always
fashionably dressed?
He’s great at evaluating
graphics.

That cashier at the local store,
the one who always chats with you?
She’s great at
calming irate customers.

Note their abilities.
Know who you can contact
when you need someone
with those skills.

Don’t merely build
a network of names.
Build a network
of abilities.

Do people,
especially those
you feel you know well,
constantly surprise you?
Are you often fooled?
Do your early impressions
of people
turn out to be wrong?

If you answered yes
to some
or all of these questions,
you are likely
not a good judge of character.

And that’s okay.
Not many people are
good judges of character.

You can learn to evaluate
people better.

You can watch for signals,
guess what people
will do in situations.

If you’re right,
you noticed
the right signals
and you interpreted them correctly.

If you’re wrong,
figure out
what you interpreted incorrectly
and try again.

While you’re gaining your skills,
ask the opinions
of people
who already have them,
who already are good judges
of character.

These people are usually successful,
are usually surrounded by great people,
have power teams
and great advisors.

If you aren’t yet
a great judge of character,
find someone who is.
That will save you
a lot of heartache and problems.

Something put in writing,
in email or text message
or in comments,
is forever.

It is meant to be unchanging.
It is meant to be examined.
It is meant to be saved.

This is disastrous
for relationships
if that something is an argument.

Every word typed
in the heat of anger
will be awarded more importance
by the recipient.
They will be looked at
again and again,
given more meaning
with each re-read.

Hurt will be magnified.
And it will last as long
as the message does,
which could possibly be
forever.

If you value the person
or/and the relationship,
argue live,
preferably in person.

Don’t put your grievances in writing
unless you’re okay with severing
that relationship
forever.

A buddy was lamenting
about how she has always wanted to get
her university degree.
She’s 58
and
she felt it was too late
to do that now.

I encouraged her
to go back to school.
Who cares if
others got their degrees
in their 20s?
They were different people
and life isn’t a race.

If you want to try something,
start something,
do something,
do it.

As Seth Godin
shares

“We’re not in a race
to check off
as many boxes
as we possibly can
before we are out of time.
Instead, we have the chance
to use the time
to create moments that matter.
Because they connect us,
because they open doors,
because the moments,
added up,
create a life.”

There’s no set schedule
for life
and
life isn’t a race
to get things done.

Create your own schedule
and your own unique life.

Tell the people
who are depending on that deadline.

My editor is in demand.
Every moment of her time
is scheduled.

As soon as I know
I won’t make my deadline,
I won’t send her
the manuscript in time
(this is rare
as I build in big buffers),
I let her know.

She can then
rearrange her schedule.
That creates a gap later
for when I DO send her
the manuscript.

If I didn’t tell her,
she wouldn’t have that gap.
I would likely be waiting
for months
and that would make
my schedule even more
of a mess.

Seth Godin
shares
“Wishful thinking is
sometimes confused
with optimism,
but you probably knew
more than four days
before the deadline
that you weren’t going
to meet expectations.
If people are building dependencies
around your promises,
then waiting until
you have no choice
simply makes the miss worse.”

If you aren’t making your deadline,
suck it up
and
tell the people depending
on that deadline being met.

I’m behind schedule
on writing a first draft.
A writer told me
to outsource that first draft,
to assign it to ghostwriters
to write.

That won’t speed up
the process.

Five people writing one book
slows the process.
It doesn’t speed it up.

Because the first action
(writing chapter one, for example)
has to be done
before the second action
(writing chapter two)
begins.

It requires less communication
and other work
to allow one person
to write the entire book.

As Seth Godin
shares
“The Mythical Person-Month
is a serious trap.
Nine people,
working together
in perfect harmony,
cannot figure out
how to have a baby
in one month.
Throwing more people
at a project
often does not speed it up.”

Adding people to a task
might not speed the completion
of that task.
Build that into
your schedule
and into your deadlines.

I had to restart
a project
after a month of working on it.
That was disappointing
yet it wasn’t super stressful
as I had built a buffer
of over a month
into my schedule.

I didn’t need that month
with the previous projects.
Nothing went horribly wrong.
But I knew
eventually
something would go wrong
and I’d need it.

That was certain
based on probabilities.

As Seth Godin shares

“A project with no buffers
is certain to be late.
Not just likely to be late,
but certain.
Better buffers
make better deadlines.”

Sh*t will go wrong.
Build buffers
into your projects.