Category: New Business Development

I recently had
my water heater replaced.

We put the old water heater
on the curb
for garbage pickup
in two days.

The scrap metal salvagers
picked it up
within a half hour.

I once worked
in a gelatin plant.

The gelatin
was sorted into
numerous grades.

The highest grade gelatin
was sold to
pharmaceutical companies.

The lowest grade gelatin
was sold for
animal/crop use.

Not a drop of it was wasted.

Even the bins
and the pallets were sold
or reused.

If your business
is producing
garbage,
there is likely
a business
that would use
that garbage.

That might be
another income stream
or, at the minimum,
a means to reduce costs.

Investigate
whether or not
your garbage can be used
by someone else.

I unfollowed someone
on social media today.

She prides herself
on posting
“objective” opinions.
And yes, her stances
are always well thought out,
which is why I started following her.

The thing is…
her “objective” opinions
are ALWAYS negative opinions.

That’s impossible.
The odds of everything
objectively covered
being negative
is zero.

She’s not being “objective.”
She’s being negative
but with thought behind it.

I have enough
negativity in my life.
I don’t need more.

I suspect you have someone
in your circle
who disguises their negativity
as objectivity.

(The easy way
to figure this out
is to track their “objective”
opinions.
Are they always negative?)

See those people
for who they truly are
– negative people.

Note:
This also applies
to people
who claim to be
“truthful”
when they are,
in reality,
being hurtful.

I keep my ideas
for next stories
to myself.

I’m not afraid
of these ideas
being stolen.

Most writers
have more ideas
than they can ever
possibly write.

And, often,
sales are better
when many writers
use the same premise.
It becomes a trope
readers search for.

I keep my ideas
to myself
because I don’t want
to hear
criticism of them.
I don’t want them
to be picked apart
and analyzed
before I have the fun
of writing them,
of discovery.

That discovery
pushes me
to write stories faster
or to write them at all.
Once it has been done,
I don’t have an urgency
to write the story.

Seth Godin
shares

“An idea unspoken
is a safe one,
which not only
can’t be stolen,
but it can’t be
tested, criticized,
improved
or used in the real world.

It is okay
to keep an idea
a secret
if that makes
you MORE likely
to act on it,
not LESS likely.

When I lost my Facebook account,
I realized how dependent
I had become
on promoting my books
via this one venue.

I had stopped
trying other venues,
other tactics.

Losing my favorite venue
forced me
to try others,
to diversify my efforts.

As a result,
I reached new-to-me readers
and I have a more secure business.

Seth Godin
shares

“If we don’t even know
we’re doing things by rote,
when will we be restless enough
to try to make them better?”

Don’t wait until
you’re forced out of
your comfort zone
to explore other possibilities.

Do this
now.

There are no
perfect launches.
None.

And the more innovative
the product or service is,
the more flawed
the launch will be.

When I released
what would eventually be
one of my most successful
books,
I promoted to
the wrong target market
for it.

It was THAT innovative.

And yes, it was a disaster
at first
but I eventually got it right
and saw and continue to see
great success with it.

It wasn’t my first innovation.
I expected mistakes
and I recovered from them.

Seth Godin
shares

“If you’re working
on the frontier,
if you’re leading,
creating
or inventing,
you’ve signed up
for mistakes.
That’s the price
of innovation.”

You WILL make mistakes
and that’s okay.
Everyone does.

Focus on the correction
and what you can do
next.

When I graduated
from university
with an accounting degree,
I knew two things
– I wanted a career
in business
and
I eventually wanted
to write full time.

I knew I was likely
to make
a lot more money
in business
than in writing.

I knew business
favored the young
and the energetic.

I knew writing
favored the older
and the more experienced.

And I knew writing
would be more enjoyably done
from the comfort
of my own home,
a home that was
completely paid for.

My path was clear.
Business would be
my first career.
I would work at that
as long
as I needed to
be financially secure
and
to accomplish all
I wanted to do.

Then I would write.

And that plan
has, thus far,
(knock on wood)
turned out wonderfully.

Most business builders
have numerous businesses
they’d like to build,
experiences they’d like to have.

Think about the best order
to do this.

That will increase
your odds
of success.

When I first started
having my Romance Novels
(products)
published
(manufactured),
Indie publishing
(business building)
wasn’t easy
and finding a publisher
(finding an employer)
was the preferred route
to publishing
stories.

Much of my time
was spent
writing stories
I thought might
interest publishers,
finding publishers
for those stories,
working to craft
those stories
into my publishers’ version
of them,
and doing admin stuff
for those publishers.

Now, that Indie Publishing
is easy,
I write more
and
I publish more.

Doing both of these things
more often
makes me better at it.

Seth Godin
shares

“When we remove
the pre
(finding the pen,
the paper, the notebook,
the software)
and the post
(finding a way
to publish it),
it turns out that
we write more often,
and writing more
often leads to
writing better.”

Creating is easier now.
Consider
using that saved time
to create more.

A salesperson loved one
just lost a major deal
to the competition.

Why?

The primary reason
was
his competition
brought in their CEO
to speak to the prospect’s CEO.

My salesperson buddy
was unable to convince
his CEO
to meet with the prospect.
Instead, the CEO
sent a V-P in his place.

The prospect felt slighted.
They gave the
multi-million dollar deal
to the competition.

People want to speak
with people
at their same level
or higher.

It might seem humble
to promote yourself
as holding a less important role
but it will likely cost you
deals.

If you’re meeting
with a prospective customer’s CEO
and you’re the founder
of your business,
present yourself as the big boss.

I often tell loved ones
that writing
is the best job
in the world
but
it is STILL
a job.

We talk with readers
about muses
and being inspired
but that is marketing.
It isn’t reality.

Writing IS a job.

There are many days
when I don’t want
to write.

I have to force
myself
to sit at the keyboard.

Once I start writing,
I usually find the joy
but it is never there
at the start of the shift.

I found
new business development
to be very similar.
I loved those roles
but they were still jobs.

Creating isn’t all
sunshine and rainbows
and working
when we feel like working.

It is a job
and jobs require
we work,
whether or not
we feel like working.

Treat creating like
the job
it is.

There is a writer
on a writing loop
who is always asking
for additional things
like different formats for discussions
and for others to do things for her.
She claims it is
because she is blind.

The issue is…
there are MANY
writers
who are either fully blind
or who have seeing issues.

The industry has developed tools
to ensure these writers
can fully navigate within it
and find great success.

So I facilitated a connection
between her
and an experienced writer
who could show her
how to install
and use those tools.

(And who could also serve
as her mentor
in other areas.)

I waited a month.
The requests for special treatment
continued.
I reached out to
the experienced writer.

The newer writer
never contacted her.

The experienced writer
then contacted the newer writer.
Information was relayed.

The newer writer continued
to ask for special treatment.
She didn’t want to be self-sufficient.
That wasn’t her goal.

At that point,
both I and the experienced writer
labeled the newer writer
a pain in the a$$
and we ignored her.

Ask about tools
that will help you navigate
an industry, event, process
before asking for people to make changes
to accommodate your special needs.

Because if these tools exist,
others likely know about them
and they will expect you to use them.

If the tools don’t exist,
consider creating them.