Rick Frishman's Blog

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Rick Frishman — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:15:01 +0000

Don’t Wait for Everything to Be Just Right!

Rick Frishman — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:25:54 +0000

Because we live in a less-than-ideal world and usually fall well short of being omniscient, it is usually not feasible or realistic to wait until all the facts are in before making a decision or launching a new venture or project. Perhaps Napolean Hill, America’s original positive-thinking guru, said it best: “Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”

WHAT IT MEANS: Last month, a friend of mine left his full-time job to pursue his eBay sports memorabilia business full-time-something he had been thinking (and agonizing) about for several years. What made him do it now? I wondered. “Because I finally realized that it was now or never,” my friend replied. “There was never going to be a guarantee of success-nor was there much chance of me being able to do everything right. Sooner or later, it just comes down to taking a deep breath and doing it. You can plan until the cows come home, but until you actually do it, it’s just a dream.” My friend had come to realize what many successful managers already know: you usually don’t have all the right tools or information or perfect plan to do what needs to be done. The challenge is to get things done anyway-maybe that’s why it’s called managing. Don’t get bogged down by the idea of perfection. It doesn’t exist. Take action now.

ACTION PLAN: Think about two or three places in your business life where you’re waiting for things to be “just right” before you take action. Consider what can be done to make progress in those areas. It is always reasonable to consider the risks of any endeavor and strive to minimize them, but “paralysis by overanalysis” can delay or prevent you from implementing the changes your business needs to grow-and that’s also risky.

EVEN BETTER: Don’t be a perfectionist! As a manager and a human being, you will rarely if ever have all the resources you need (including information) to make easy, foolproof decisions. There is a difference between making well informed and fully informed decisions-and the latter can be a lot more unrealistic and unnecessary than you might think.

PUBLISHING IS A BUSINESS…PERIOD

Rick Frishman — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:12:37 +0000

What if you wanted to open a Sally’s Sewing Shoppe? Wouldn’t it make sense that you knew about sewing?
About the machine and how it works? Maybe an inkling about fabric types?
How about sewing accessories? Publishing is a business. Period.

When you self-publish, and you contract with an AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris or a LuLu, you are sharing the profit.
Their name is on the door, not yours. Whoosh—with the use of their name, you could see 50 percent plus
of your profits exit overnight just because you used their name … and you didn’t think you knew enough to do it yourself …
or your didn’t think you had enough money (or didn’t want to) to front the startup expenses of your publishing enterprise.
With self and independent publishing, you are opening a business. If Sally’s Sewing Shoppe needs a sewing machine repair person,
a seamstress or a specialist in designing kid’s costumes, it hires a person who can fill the bill on a fee basis—each job has a cost to it.
Hopefully, the cost of the services will be far less than the revenues that are created. What’s left over is the profit. Yours—all of it.
It’s the same in publishing. Seamstresses, sewing machine repairs and kid’s costume designers can be likened to
editors, cover designers and printers. You have a job that needs to be done; they bid on it.

You hire who you want and pay them on completion. You don’t share your profits with them.
When you use today’s modern vanity presses—LuLu, AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, etc., your profitability is severely limited.
As the owner of Sally’s Sewing Shoppe, you could hire, and fire, vendors and suppliers. You make all the decisions.
If you don’t want to work with or use someone, you go somewhere else. It’s still your place,
Sally’s Sewing Shoppe. When you publish through anything that doesn’t have your name, you lose that option.
You get to start over if you decide you don’t like the establishment. New ISBN, new files, new cover design—
new, new, new. More money, more money, more money.

Hold the dates Oct 25-28 in Las Vegas

http://www.author101university.com