First Word

Hello First Word Friend-Os! We are on the "eve" of New Year's Eve. Can you believe another year has passed? I'm not sure if time is speeding up or slowing down. At the end of the year I always like to do a roundup of things that have happened that amuse me. This year though I think I'm going to end the year by helping you get prepared to conquer 2016 Friend-O style.   Here are some tips and tricks to get your new year off to an effective start. Since my newsletter readership is a mix of authors and business people, these tips apply to your business and your efforts to promote and help your book succeed in a competitive marketplace.   Strategic planning - time to do what most executives and managers do, which is plan for the New Year. Most managers though will do the strategic plan and start the year off with gusto and quickly abandon the document in favor of "wing-it" management. The idea of planning is to plan and execute not fa...

I started watching the new HBO series Silicon Valley , and I was surprised about the great information about creating a start-up company. Young entrepreneurs will learn a lot from this show. My favorite scene was when the lead character takes his $200,000 check made out to Pied Piper (his product's name) to discover he cannot deposit it because he hasn't established the name yet. My first thought was LLC or S Corp. (not that it was mentioned in those terms). Our clueless hero is dumbstruck and doesn't know what the bank clerk is talking about. Seasoned business people were nodding. The show also covered the need for a business plan as our hapless hero is asked by the incredulous billionaire Burke, "Where's your business plan?" You then see one of the other more business-like nerds helping our guy write one and explore the facets of it. But I loved it when Burke sneers, "What's your go-to-market strategy?" Of course, I know what "go-to-mark...