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.

“Any innovator deploying
any prototypes in the field
can’t possibly assess
the economics and costs
of staggered roll-outs,
staggered builds and
optimization trade-offs
independent of the people
who will actually be using those prototypes.
Their level of training,
their abilities to observe and report,
their mistakes and misunderstandings,
the natural variability they individually introduce
are costs and risk factors
that invariably influence
design decisions around the prototype.”

***

“The great German General von Moltke
once observed that,
“All plans evaporate
on contact with the enemy.”
For serious innovators,
that aphorism becomes,
“All prototypes evolve
on contact with the user.”"

Marketing copy, programs,
heck, ANY project
should be tested
with the end users
as soon as possible.

Did she tell him?

No.
She said he had to learn.

That might be great TV
but it is bullsh*t advice.
The matchmaker is the millionaire’s consultant.
He is PAYING for her advice.
Her job is to give him that advice.

Last year, I wrote a Valentine’s Day romance.
Valentine’s Day romances don’t sell.
My publisher knew that.
I didn’t.
Every time I see the zero sales
on my royalty summary,
I get pissed off.

Did I learn something?

Of course.
I learned my publisher sucked
at giving advice.

If you want to be seen as an expert,
BE THE EXPERT.
That means giving your client/business partner
the information they need
to be successful.

At the end of the chat
(and the readers didn’t want it to end),
readers said that wasn’t a chat.
That was fun.

In other words…
that wasn’t marketing
because it was fun.

On another writer loop,
I announce new releases by members.
With every new release,
I ask the writers what they learned.

Recently there was a ban
on promotion/marketing
with the exclusion of new releases.
Because members learned things
from the marketing,
they didn’t consider it marketing.

So when you hear
from customers
that they don’t want you marketing to them,
that’s bullshit.
What they really are saying
is that they don’t like the way you’re marketing to them.

If your marketing is entertaining
or educational
or ???,
it will not only be tolerated
but requested.

In romance writing,
writers know that one hot, memorable scene
will not only sell a novel,
but make readers satisfied.
If there is no “money shot”,
there won’t be any sales.

With Apple products,
beautiful design is the money shot.
That is the feature
that sells their products.

No product is perfect
but every successful product
has a money shot.
Find out what your’s is
and market your product with it.

(winces)

Don’t.
Please don’t.
Your customer doesn’t care
about your mission statement.
Your mission statement is about you.
Customers care about themselves.
What is in it for them?

One of my author brands
stands for tolerance.
I don’t communicate this theme to readers.
EVER.

Why?

Because readers don’t buy romance novels on tolerance.
They buy love stories,
interesting character and worlds,
light-hearted entertainment.

Themes and mission statements
are for internal use only.

One filter is by the source of information
and whether or not
we trust it.

If I don’t trust someone,
I discard the information
they’re sharing outright.
I don’t investigate it.
I completely erase it from my brain.

On the flipside,
if I trust the source completely
and I’m in a rush,
I’ll act upon that information.

Turns out…
other people do that same thing.

A study performed by Martin Lindstrom
for his book
Brandwashed
shows that
“Deep trust is communicated
subconsciously.
It’s rarely expressed explicitly,
nor is imparted loudly
or didactically.
To trust deeply
not only can change our minds,
but it has the power
to alter our most ingrained behaviors.”

If you’re a trusted source,
people will act upon your information.
Think before you speak.