Category: New Business Development

In the Romance Novel Industry,
there is an Indie bookseller
who,
every year,
crafts data on diversity
in Romance Books.

They are the only people
doing this.
It costs them
time and resources.

This year,
many people supposedly supporting
diversity in Romance Novels
critiqued them
harshly.
They critiqued
their data collection methods,
the words used in their reports,
etc.

If I was this bookseller,
I wouldn’t expend
the resources
to do this study next year.

And since they are the only ones
doing this study,
there will be NO data
to use.

If you critique the only ones
completing a task
while not offering
to help with that task,
you are truly critiquing
the completion of that task.

Don’t be surprised
if that task
is never done again.

I have a writing buddy
who sends me
a message
every week
telling me
I can’t succeed as a writer
without Facebook.

Facebook still has
my accounts in perma-review.
I email them.
I tweet at them.
They don’t respond.

I don’t know
what else I can do.

So these weekly messages
do nothing
except stress me out.

(I AM selling books
without Facebook
but not nearly
as many books
as I sold last year
with Facebook.)

If she wasn’t a friend,
if she didn’t sincerely
care about me,
if she didn’t help me
in many other ways,
I would block
her doomsayer a$$.

But she is all of these
so I put her emails
in a file.
When I feel strong enough,
confident enough
about myself,
about my writing business,
I respond to her.

You WILL have doomsayers.
The gloom and doom
is often about them,
not about you and your ventures.
But it CAN wear on you.

Manage it.
Don’t allow it
to manage you.

And don’t allow
the doom
to stop you.
Change the world
in your unique way.

In large companies,
there are employees
who do exactly what is outlined
in their job description
and
nothing more.

If they are asked to do
additional tasks,
they either refuse
or they want to be paid
additional cash
to complete those tasks.

You and I are building businesses.
Roles change every d@mn day.
Everyone involved
is required to help out.

I can’t afford to hire
Not My Job type of people.

There are things to look out for
when interviewing.

A person who doesn’t
hold the door open
for the next person
is likely to be
a Not My Job person.

If the person walks into our offices
and we’re frantically working
on a task
and they don’t ask if they can help,
they are likely to be
a Not My Job person.

If they want to know minute details
about their role,
about each task
they’ll be performing,
they might be
a Not My Job person.

When you’re building your business,
test prospective employees
for flexibility.
It will be a much needed attribute.

“Share a witty personal story.”

Writers get these requests
ALL THE TIME.
It feels like the requester is sitting back
and saying,
“Entertain me.”

And that’s HARD
because creativity doesn’t flow
constantly.
We have creative moments
and many more not-at-all creative moments.

Being creative on demand
is challenging.
It causes tremendous pressure,
can lead to great stress.

What I do
is I have a file
of entertaining personal stories.

I add to that file
when I’m feeling creative.
I take from that file
when I’m asked
to entertain on demand.

It is a cheat
and it works for me.
I am much happier
about the requests.

Consider keep a file
of amusing personal stories.
You will be grateful for it
in the future.

As we slowly emerge
from the pandemic,
from lockdowns
and social distancing,
there is an urge
to leave the past year
and a half behind us.

Resist that urge.

We’ve learned things
over this past year
and a half.
We’ve learned more
about our customers,
about how to reach them
when face-to-face contact
isn’t available,
about their fears,
their preferences,
their needs.

I’ve known my Mom
all my life.
(grins)
I learned over the pandemic
that she loves receiving packages.
She doesn’t care as much
what is inside those packages.
She merely loves receiving them.

I have set her up
with monthly deliveries
of supplies like toilet paper
and that will continue
long past the pandemic.

You HAVE learned things
during this past year and a half.
Hold onto those learnings.

Some people
look at Amazon rankings
as a determination
of a book’s or a writer’s
success.

That’s a bullsh*t
barometer.

If I didn’t offer pre-orders
on my books (products),
my Amazon rank on release day
would be VERY good.

If I enrolled my books
in KU (Kindle Unlimited),
Amazon’s subscription service,
my Amazon rank
would likely be VERY good
every dang day
(Amazon gives KU books
a boost in the rankings).

If I had a shorter pre-order duration
or I had aggressive marketing,
my release day rank
would likely be good or very good.

I can easily
manipulate my books’ ranks
without increasing or decreasing
total sales.

Rankings are a weak barometer
of sales success.
It is NO barometer
of things like happiness
or the quality of the book.

Seth Godin
shares

“A precision ranking is nothing
but a number,
an inaccurate
and ultimately useless
stand-in.
These proxies are created
and spread
and relied upon
by a system
that craves certainty and order.”

Your worth has nothing
to do with your rank.

People or businesses
that rank higher than you
aren’t necessarily doing better
than you are.

They have merely figured out
how to work the ranking system.

One of my buddies
is a super skilled
new business developer.

She is one of the people
I bounce ideas off.
Her insights are brilliant
and priceless
and world shifting.

She also happens to be
in a wheelchair.
That doesn’t impact her job
…unless she is forced to work
somewhere that isn’t wheelchair accessible.

She LOVED
the pandemic push
to work from home.
Suddenly, she could work
with EVERY client.

Now that some companies
are returning to
work from the office situations,
her client list has, once again,
shrunk.

Some clients won’t ever be blessed
with her insights
and that is a great loss
for them.

It doesn’t have to be
a great loss for you.

If you design your business
so the employees, the partners
who can do their tasks from home
are allowed to do that,
your choices become unlimited.

You can hire or partner
with the best person
for the task,
not merely the person
who can or wants to
trek to your office.

If you want to build flexibility
into your workforce,
think about always having
a work from home option.

I’m taking a workshop
hosted by
a New York Times Bestselling Author.
This author offers free critiques
with her workshops.

This is THE main reason
I sign up.
I usually have a scene
I’m struggling with
ready to be critiqued.

So few writers
took her up
on her offer
she told me
I could send her
another scene for critique.
(Which is a HUGE win
for me,
but a big loss
for the other writers.)

If someone successful
and trustworthy
in your field
offers to critique
your product/service,
I strongly suggest
you say yes.

Will they find areas
to improve?
Of course.
That is the entire point
of a critique.
They are there
to push you to the next level.

Accept that push.
Take that help.

I think most people
would agree
we’ve made some mistakes
(perhaps life-on-Earth-ending
mistakes)
on this planet.

Humans via rovers
are now exploring
other planets
(Mars).

Many people
are thinking
a new planet
would be an opportunity
for a fresh start,
a do-over.

Except,
judging by
our plans to do things
like mine
the moon,
we haven’t learned
from our mistakes
here on Earth.

If we start over
and continue
to do what we’re currently doing,
we will likely end up
in the same place.

This is true
of any restarts.

When I switched
social media platform focus
from Facebook
to Twitter,
I crafted a list
of things I had learned
and wouldn’t or would do again.

I check that list
every morning
and that prevents me
from slipping into old habits.

If you plan to restart,
think about what
you will do differently
and stick to that program.

There are investments
that earn interest
in which our original investment
is 100% safe.

Many people view
these investments
as being risk free.

They’re NOT risk free.

There’s inflation risk,
the risk our investments
will earn less
than inflation
and we’ll lose money
by holding them

There’s always an offsetting risk.

As Seth Godin
shares

“We can always
make a risk ever smaller.
But the cost is that
we will increase
other risks.

Please don’t avoid
appropriate caution.
It matters to you
and
to the community.
But seeking reassurance
and peace of mind
by trying to drive
risk to zero
doesn’t get you
either one of them.”

Know the offsetting risk.
There IS one.

And don’t try to drive
total risk
to zero.
That’s an impossible task.