Latest / The Daily Writer / What Kind of Business Should You Have?

Transcript

What Kind of Business Should You Have? · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to The Daily Writer, where we help writers become authors of their own lives.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking with my friend, I'm going to call him Mike the other day.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Mike is a writer and educator who's really smart and accomplished.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in our conversation, he shared with me how he wanted to get his business up and running in the next couple of years, but he wasn't sure how all the pieces would come together.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Mike wants his business to consist of some combination of speaking, teaching, and writing in the nonprofit world.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that he could be really successful, but he's going to need to make some decisions about how to structure his business and make it really profitable.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: After our conversation a few days ago, I started thinking a lot about how I could help and what I could offer to anybody who's trying to figure out their business.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what today's podcast is all about.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm working on the assumption that just like Mike, you're probably a writer at heart.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Creating and communicating content is what you do.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that can take a lot of different forms, but the heartbeat of what you probably do is writing.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, after all, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you were not interested in writing, correct?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So to that end, here are three questions that you must ask yourself when you're trying to figure out what your writing-based business is actually going to consist of.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And these questions represent three dimensions of your business.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you can envision these almost like a Venn diagram where you have three circles that overlap, and the middle spot, I'm going to call it the sweet spot, represents the heart of your business.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's where all those circles overlap.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really going to be, I think, where your business is potentially going to thrive.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive into these three questions.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, what do you enjoy?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going to build a business around a certain activity, you better enjoy doing it like crazy because if you enjoy something, it's going to give you a lot of energy and focus.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you enjoy something, you're going to be able to press through hard times.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't like doing something, it's going to be really hard to press through those inevitable difficult periods.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you might be great at writing sales copy, but if you hate writing sales copy, building a business around that is going to suck the life out of you.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And another example is that I don't speak at conferences.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've never positioned myself.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Another example is I don't position myself as a keynote speaker for conferences.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really part of my business because I don't really enjoy traveling that much.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't enjoy the hassle of travel and the interruption of it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not really naturally wired to be a keynote speaker on stage.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm much more wired to be a writer at heart and a behind-the-scenes type of guy.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So those are a couple of examples of this question and the importance of asking this question, which is what do you enjoy?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Second question is, what are you good at?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, what comes easy to you?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what do people consistently compliment, appreciate, or ask you to do?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And here I'm talking about a high-value skill or a set of high value skills that you have developed through years of hard work and training.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And keep in mind this is different than question number one, which is what do you enjoy?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: When you ask this question, what are you good at?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm getting at is you can enjoy something, but you cannot be very good at it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I like playing golf, I enjoy playing golf, but I'm not very good at it, and nobody's certainly going to pay me to do it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can definitely like doing something, but not have a lot of skills in that area.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But on the flip side, you can also be very good at something, but not enjoy it.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you can be very good at a certain thing, but if you don't like doing it, then that's probably not going to make a good business because, again, you're just not going to feel a lot of energy from that.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then the third question is what will people pay you to do?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And here I'm talking about the market demand.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are people willing to pay you to do something that you enjoy and that you're also good at?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, you've got a really viable and potential business.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And a good way to gauge this is by asking whether other people are making a living at what you want to do.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, there is a paying market for you to probably do the same thing or at least a similar thing.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of writers miss this third question because they believe that people should pay them to do something that they enjoy and that they're good at, but that's not necessarily so.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: For example, an audience might enjoy your poetry, they might love the poems that you write, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to pay for those poems in book form or for you to recite those poems or create products or services around those.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean they're going to enjoy that enough to support you in developing a real business.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're thinking about starting or growing your writing-based business, I think these three questions are a really, really good place to start.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind, though, that your sweet spot isn't necessarily something that you discover just one time and then you're done.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that it's just a one-time thing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's something, rather, that you have to test and refine over time.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you might learn that something you love doing doesn't have a lot of commercial potential.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or the opposite could happen.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: You could learn that you have a really profitable skill, but doing it doesn't fit the life that you want to build.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I was a college professor for a long time before I got into ghostwriting.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I was a pretty good college professor.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that lifestyle and that job structure is no longer interesting to me.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, that's not a viable business pathway.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So everything that I'm saying here in today's podcast episode goes back directly into a theme that I have repeatedly talked about here, which is the idea of authorship.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And authorship means taking the initiative to build the life that you want.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's becoming the author of your own story, which is exactly what I say at the beginning of every single episode of this podcast.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you're probably tired of me hearing, you're probably tired of me talking about it by now, but this is the whole emphasis of what we're doing here is we are taking control of our lives.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are creating the life that we want.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And rather than chasing down every writing opportunity or following somebody else's business model, you're intentionally picking a direction based on your strengths, your interests, but also, and perhaps most importantly, the market realities.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So your assignment, if you choose to accept it, this is a mission impossible moment for you.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your assignment is to complete this exercise by asking yourself these three questions.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to, you can let me know the results.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'd actually be really interested in this.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to hear what you come up with.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can shoot me an email at Kent at KentSanders.net, and I would love to hear from you.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right, my friend, as always, thanks so much for listening.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Keep writing and keep showing up, and I'll see you tomorrow.