They finally decided ‘yes’
and the membership breathed
a collective sigh of relief,
applying themselves to their true business
of writing.

There was about three months
of peace.
Then the leadership made the decision
to exclude any LGBT writing.

More distracting drama.

It is really tempting
as a leader
to constantly make changes,
tweaks here and there
that may or may not
be necessary.
We feel like we’re doing something.

The issue is…
changes create drama
and drama is distracting.
Distractions kill businesses.

Ask yourself
if your proposed change
is important enough
to distract your employees
from your core business.
Don’t create drama
for no reason.

I learned this
from new business development.
If an idea or project is too complicated,
it is more likely to die
before launching
or even worse, die AFTER launching.

People may live
complicated lives
but they follow simple ideas.
Great leaders know this.
They break down complicated problems
into simple projects.

They also simplify organizations
because they are people too
and it is easier to work
within an uncomplicated organization.

As a study by Bain & Company shows
when trying to achieve growth,
executives felt the
“biggest barrier by far
(about 85% of the time)
relates to the internal complexity
of their organizations and
the management of their energy
against that.”

Simplify, simplify, simplify!

When a blogger approaches me,
I first look at her blog,
noting how long she’d been blogging
and the quality of her posts.

When an entrepreneur pitches
to a venture capitalist,
she’ll be asked
what companies she has started.
The V.C. will confirm
these companies did, at one time, exist
and her involvement
with the company.

Doers do things
and in today’s environment,
that doing creates a trail.
Why make that trail difficult
to follow?

Seth Godin has a great post
on visible bodies of work.

(eye roll)

Sure, I work whenever I want.
I can choose
any 12 hours
of each and every day.

The freedom myth is just that…
a myth.

Entrepreneurs (writers) answer to customers (readers),
partners (editors/publishers), media, etc.
They have deadlines to meet
or they don’t get paid.
They need to do things,
ship product,
or they don’t get paid.

There are a lot of wonderful reasons
to become an entrepreneur
(my favorite is to make the difference
I want to make)
but absolute freedom is not one of them.

Even
(or more accurately, especially)
entrepreneurs have tasks
they have to do.

When she shared
that she couldn’t wait
to get paid for writing,
I corrected her.

Writers don’t get paid
for writing.
They get paid
for selling completed stories.
If we don’t complete stories,
we don’t get paid.

You’re unlikely to be paid
for an idea.
(unlikely because
I’ve lived long enough
to know
anything is possible)
You’re unlikely to be paid
for a prototype.

You get paid
for shipping,
for completing.

Get ‘er done.

Many commercials have released early,
to tremendous success,
and there’s worry that
viewers, having seen the ads,
will skip the commercial breaks.

WTF?

Folks having SEEN your ads
is a worry?
To whom?
Not the advertisers.

To the networks
certainly.

Because if 10 million of the
100 million expected viewers
have already seen your ad,
does buying a commercial slot
make sense?

Does it make more sense
to spend the $3.5 million
simply creating a great ad?

Sounds groovy, right?

Maybe.
IF that company is one
you want your brand associated with.
By partnering with a company,
you’re sending a signal
that you approve of that company.

Which gets VERY interesting
when the company you’re partnering with
is your competition.

That’s the situation
Barnes & Noble is in.
Barnes & Noble will be stocking
Amazon-published titles
in their e-Store.

So all of B&N’s trash talking
of Amazon
looks silly now.
They must approve of Amazon
or they wouldn’t be partnering with them.

Be careful about who you partner with
especially if that prospective partner
is your competition.

She planned around dessert
because she knew
that the dessert,
as her last bite,
would be most remembered.

As new product developers,
we should plan
around this last touch also
because
as Seth Godin states

“Research shows us
that what people remember
is far more important
than what they experience.

What’s remembered:

–the peak of the experience
(bad or good)

and,

–the last part of the experience.”

Make that last part
of the experience sing.

Plan around dessert.

Some of my writer buddies
tell me I should choose
one of the pen names
and have it published under that one.
“No one will care,”
they tell me.

I will.
I’ll care.
And readers might not vocalize
what they’re buying
when they buy that pen name
but I know.

Seth Godin has a great post
on this lack of feedback.

“Caring,
it turns out,
is a competitive advantage,
and one that takes effort,
not money.

Like most things that are worth doing,
it’s not easy at first
and the one who cares
isn’t going to get a standing ovation
from those that are merely phoning it in.
I think it’s this lack
of early positive feedback
that makes caring
in service businesses
so rare.

Which is precisely
what makes it valuable.”

Just because
you don’t receive feedback
doesn’t mean
it is unimportant to your customers.

Caring comes first.

Yesterday, one of my buddies
landed a prime teaching position.

There are thousands of romance novels
published every year.
The odds of having a bestseller
are slim.

Yet I know many writers
who had a bestselling novel
last year.

We’ve all heard the stats
about starting businesses and succeeding.
They’re dismal and can be discouraging.

Yet business start ups succeed every damn day.

If you wait for the odds
to be in your favor,
you’ll never accomplish anything great.

Start NOW.