Category: New Business Development

The risk of blood clots
from taking the AstraZeneca vaccine
is, at worst,
1 in 100,000.

The risk of blood clots
from taking birth control pills
is, at best,
30 in 100,000.

The US pulled
AstraZeneca
from use.

14% of American women
took a birth control pill
today.

Why were there
two very different reactions
to the danger of blood clots?

Well, the main reason
is the birth control pill danger
only impacts women
and rules are made mostly
by men.

But it is also because
we are aware of the danger
posed by the AstraZeneca vaccine.
It is new and exciting
and has been extensively covered
by the media.

The other danger has existed
for decades
and the media doesn’t talk about it.

This is true
of both business dangers
and business opportunities
also.

The newest one
gets all the attention.
It doesn’t mean
it is the greatest opportunity
or the gravest danger.
It is merely the newest.

Consider looking at
older opportunities
or dangers.

I am NOT
a morning person.
I don’t like waking up.
I prefer to sleep
all day.

But no one
who has ever
worked with me
believes this.

I am cheerful
when I deal with them.

This takes work
and intention.
I do things like…
giving myself extra time
in the morning,
avoiding the news,
reading the joke
of the day
etc.

Seth Godin
shares

“I think it’s fair
to assert that
sometimes,
our moods are handed to us.

But it’s also clearly true that
we can do things
to improve our mood.
Morning pages, meditation,
exercise, positive thinking,
the right audio inputs,
who we hang out with,
the media we consume
–it’s all a choice.

And if it’s a choice,
that means it’s a skill,
because we can
get better at it.”

Note: If you are
suffering
from clinical depression,
taking action might not make you
happy
but there are things
you can do
(like taking your meds)
to become happier.

If you don’t like your mood,
if your mood isn’t productive,
seek to change it.

Every time
I release a book,
I receive one standard comment
from a few readers
– the book has too much sex
in it.

I ignore those comments.
Steam is part of my brand.
The folks who don’t want
steamy books
aren’t my readers.

Seth Godin
shares

“If you serve
one audience,
you’ve let another down.
One focus means
that something else
got ignored.
If you create
something scarce,
someone won’t
get their hands on it.

The very act of creation
means that
it won’t be
the ideal solution
for everyone.”

You won’t make
everyone happy.
That’s impossible.

If customers
don’t want
aspects that are
core to your brand,
that other customers
want,
they aren’t your customers.

Ignore them.

I lost money
with the first
100 romance novels
I produced.

It was my passion project.
I invested time
and money
not expecting a return.

I continued writing,
continued publishing,
continued showing up.

And today,
I am,
what many writers
would call,
a success
at Romance Writing.

Seth Godin
shares

“Showing up
is something
almost every creative leader
has in common.
In business,
in the arts,
in society.
Consistently shipping the work,
despite the world’s reaction,
despite the nascent nature
of our skill,
despite the doubts.”

Show up.
That’s the number one
requirement
of success.

My ideal working schedule
is from dusk to dawn.

I’ve always been that way.
As a baby,
my Mom said
I was always up
all night.

Unfortunately,
the world’s schedules
are set
by morning people.

I had to train myself
to be awake during the day
to go to school
and, eventually,
to work as an employee.

It was an effort,
an additional burden
I had to carry
that morning people
didn’t have to endure.

But I did it
because that is
how the world currently works.

Now that I am
building my own business,
however,
I do my best work
at night.

Why am I telling you this?

Because some of your partners
would likely prefer
night meetings.

Some of your employees
might see
working the night shift
as a benefit,
rather than a chore.

Some of your prospects
would appreciate
seeing your marketing at 2 am
rather than 2 pm.

And some of your residents
will view a curfew
as a greater punishment
than you believe it is.

Night owls exist.
We’re often born,
not created.
Consider accommodating us.

My city designated some neighborhoods
as hot spots,
places where the infection rate
was super high.
They encouraged those folks
to get vaccinated.

They didn’t have
enough vaccines for everyone.
The supply ran out
within a couple of days.

People in these neighborhoods
are frustrated and scared
and VERY unhappy with
their leadership.
It is fast becoming
a dangerous situation.

If you create
a sense of urgency
in your target market,
ensure you have
the products/services
to ease that urgency.

Prepare for a response.
Assume your marketing efforts
will be successful.
And don’t assume your target market
will wait patiently
while you produce supply.

Around this time of year
in North America,
‘experts’ are advising
to clean your house.
Declutter it.
Organize it.

This allows us
to live more effectively,
more easily,
more comfortably.

For business builders,
spring cleaning
our email systems,
our bookmarks,
our to-do lists
can allow us
to work more effectively.

Look at your bookmarks,
for example.
Bookmarks exist
to allow us
to find information
more easily.
That won’t happen
if our bookmarks
are thousands of links
long.

Are all of your bookmarks still needed?
Can you create files
to better organize them?
Are you missing bookmarks?

I do the same thing
every so often
with my emails.

Spring clean
your systems.
Ensure they still work
for you.

When Fifty Shades Of Grey
became super popular
(this was long after it was written),
Romance Writers and Publishers
asked themselves,
“What type of story
will this huge group of readers
read next?”

I made a guess.
A publisher made
the same guess.
We teamed up
and released a series
(product).

We were wrong.

The readers went
in a different direction.

But if we had been right,
we would have
taken the ‘easy’ route
to launching a popular product.

Seth Godin
shares

“The most direct way
to become popular
is to serve the audience
that made the last thing popular.
By that definition,
popular almost always means
‘not better.’
It simply means that
you found a large group
and gave them
what they wanted.”

And there’s nothing
wrong with that strategy.

It works
if you can accurately predict
what these customers want next.

The ‘easiest’ way
to release a popular product/service
is to predict
what the customer base
of the current popular product/service
will want next.

I grew up
dirt poor
and have advanced
over my lifespan
through the different income classes.

The middle class
have a different financial skill set
than the poor.
The wealthy
have a different financial skill set
than the middle class.

It is unsettling
to discard
the financial rules of the poor
to embrace
the financial rules of the middle class.

I KNEW how to rent
a two bedroom apartment,
for example.
I was good at that.
It worked for me,
gave me shelter.

I had to learn
how to buy a house
and when I first started
learning,
I sucked great big hairy donkey balls
at it.

I went from being competent
to being incompetent
and that was scary.

But it was needed
to progress,
to get to the next level.

Seth Godin
shares

“If there are people
who are playing
at a different level
than you
who are embracing
an approach
that feels unnatural
to you,
you may have found
the technique
that you’ve been missing.”

Advancing feels unnatural.
Expect to feel uneasy
during the process.

As a romance writer,
one of my tasks
is to design my books
(products)
so the readers
(customers)
continue reading
…forever.

I have hooks
at the end of chapters
to prompt readers
to read the next chapter.

I have excerpts
at the end of books
to prompt readers
to buy and read
the next book.

Some writers
put cliffhangers
at the ends of their books,
leaving characters hanging off
the story equivalent of cliffs.

Almost every entertainment business
does something like this.

Casinos don’t have clocks
in their structures
because they want their customers
to stay there forever.

Video games have cumulative scores
which encourage us
to play longer.

One of my tactics
for dealing with diversions
(and we all need some sort
of diversion
to help us relax)
is to know that industry’s tricks
for prompting me
to spend longer
with their products
than I had planned.

Then I try to eliminate those.
I will wear a watch to the casino,
for example.
Or I will deactivate the save function
on the video game.
Or I will stop reading
on a random page number,
not the end of the chapter.

Learn how to limit
your diversions.
It will allow you
to enjoy them
guilt-free.