Being a publishing curator – a fancier term for being an editor who decides whether to accept a manuscript for publication – isn’t the same as being a curator who works at a museum and searches for yet another masterpiece to hang on the walls. You know, the actual definition of curator. Editors don’t curate. They buy. They edit. They make business (and sometimes artistic) decisions.

Publishers are important for many, many, many authors. Many fine editors work at the big six publishers, and these editors have helped shape the works of countless authors. Sometimes publishers even manage to do something to break through the wall of noise and create a buzz around a new book.

But they don’t curate. They edit. They acquire. What an acquiring editor does isn’t curate. Unless to curate means to accept a manuscript that the editor thinks: A) will fit in with the list of books that the publisher wants to present to the world and B), that the editor thinks will sell. Both are well within what an editor should do. But this isn’t curating. This is making a business decision.

After all, publishers publish many books, many well written, many badly written, that go on to sell well (or not). It’s the rare museum curator who finds and convinces a museum to buy a work of art because it “feels right” for the market. Many people go to a particular museum because they respond to the art that a curator has chosen. No one buys a book because it’s been published by a particular publisher. Readers don’t care. Authors and editors (and agents) care, because among them a publishing house’s name signifies something. But readers care about what’s on the page (or on the screen), not what’s on the spine or the name of the imprint.

So, what does this all mean for an entrepreneurial author (as all authors really should be), who’s building a platform for his or her work? It means that your decision to try to get published at a traditional publisher or to decide to self-publish should be based on what you want to get from either. You shouldn’t have to rely on the word of an editor who calls himself or herself a “curator” to determine whether what you’ve written is good.

If someone is trying to convince you that you need to publish one way or another, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s because publishers have a lock on quality.

Your audience is already telling you what’s worthwhile.

publishers are going the old-fashioned route and stressing design of the physical object

This isn’t likely to have much effect against the rise of e-books, but for publishers, it’s become a niche worth exploring: books as more than their content. This is somewhat akin to what a few record labels, and some rock groups, have done, in releasing their latest recordings in several formats – downloadable tracks, physical CDs and “collector” vinyl.

These beautifully designed books are a means of catching the eye of consumers in that split second when they decide whether to buy or not (it’s like the click of a mouse online, converting an online browser into a consumer). Beautifully designed books such as Huraki Murakami’s 1Q84, which feature alluring covers, or Stephen King’s 11/23/63, which has within it photographs (unusual for a novel by an American writer), are for people who might buy an e-book but also appreciate the actual book. (Of course this is for consumers who use bookstores as more than browsing areas – many shoppers check out the books in a brick-and-mortar store and then go home and buy the same item online.

This is nothing new – beautiful book design has been around for a while, at least since the Victorian artist William Morris began printing books that were as much objects of admiration for themselves as for their content. And publishers are aware that e-books, with their lower margins and lower price points, necessitate a rethinking of their business models.

Books will long be collected, I feel – even as they are not read in the same way. For myself, I tend to read more e-books these days (or listen to audio books). Space is at a premium in my home, and it is the rare physical book that finds a space on my shelves. But I, like many lifelong readers and writers, take comfort in holding, regarding and, yes, even reading, physical books.

But what’s a new writer, or an entrepreneur who’s facing the new publishing landscape, to do? Continue as before: build the platform to get people to respond to your message. These new beautifully designed books are, for now, limited to writers who already have established themselves, such as Murakami and King.

As your platform builds, and as your name recognition grows, you may be in a position to offer your book in a variety of formats, too – to meet the demands of your base. In the meantime, concentrate on refining your message, conversing with your readers, and guaranteeing that you will have an audience for your book, in whatever format it’s published.

Barnes & Noble’s retail sales are still slipping (down 1% during the second quarter compared to last year), though not as drastically as they had been. That’s thanks to sales of Barnes & Noble’s e-reader, the Nook – whose sales increased 85% during that same period, on sales of $220 million. People who live near Barnes & Noble stores have probably seen how the stores have been reworked to make room for in-store Nook boutiques, and a host of non-book related merchandise, from coffee mugs to toys. That’s the nature of the world today: stores can’t live by books alone. At least Barnes & Noble has come up with a way to offset the loss of income from the sale of traditional books. But for how long? The stores may undergo further redesign, as the “e-verse” grows ever larger.

And publishers, who’ve been surprised by the speed with which e-books have been accepted by consumers, are trying to reorganize their business models. They are well aware that the time and expense that goes into the editing and marketing of a book must change from a system where it can to take a year or more from the acceptance of a manuscript or a proposal to the actual publication of a book. They are aware that today’s world of instant publishing can, in effect, pass by traditional publishers.

But, as a friend who heads a giant publishing concern told me, publishers are trying to emphasize what they’re good at: the editing of books and working with authors on various aspects of their book projects (from rights to personal encouragement). Publishers are becoming more attuned to the need to work with authors, especially nonfiction authors, as managers rather than the company that prints their books.

What does this mean for authors who are just starting out or entrepreneurs sticking their toe into the publishing waters? It means that publishers are becoming more amenable to the digital representation of authors’ ideas, and the idea of platform-building. The book tour is likely becoming more and more of an old-fashioned event, to be replaced by a greater reliance on social media and interaction with readers through online conversation.

The retail landscape is still littered with the corpses of failed enterprises, but the battle for the reading public is not yet lost.

All three are valuable. But only one of them holds the keys to thriving in tough economies.

If you let the other two dominate, be prepared to struggle.

The visionary Entrepreneur asks, “How can we make/do this better? What is the market demanding?”

The pragmatic Manager asks, “How can we systemize this? How can we control the chaos?”

The hard-working Technician asks, “How can I get the Entrepreneur and the Manager to leave me alone so I can just do it how I want to?”

During recessions, cash isn’t king; innovation is king. The companies who adapt and shift resources the quickest crush slower but more capitalized companies.

“But trying new and different things is risky.”

Not nearly as risky as maintaining the status quo, crossing your fingers, and hoping that the economy will turn around.

“Think of risky undertakings as ‘experiments.’ Regardless of whether your experiment succeeds or fails, you’re going to learn something useful.” -Roy H. Williams

Change is Your Friend

The Entrepreneur faces reality and acts boldly. He’s never content with stagnation or mediocrity. He thrives on growth and creation.

But growth requires change, and Managers and Technicians detest change.

You’ve heard it before: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

Are you content with your current results? If so, stop reading this and get back to work.

If not, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wait for the stars to align? Are you going to let external circumstances dictate your results?

Or will you take charge and keep innovating until you figure out what works? What other option do you have?

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” -Winston Churchill

What Do You Have to Lose?

If your business is declining or simply maintaining, then what you’re doing isn’t working

So what do you have to lose? Money? You’re losing money already–and you’re only going to lose more the longer you wait.

This doesn’t mean you blindly throw stuff up against the wall and hope something sticks; innovation need not be reckless.

It means you set your box aside and brainstorm long and free to think in ways you’ve never thought before. It means you dig deep and analyze market trends. It means you execute, watch your data, then shift your strategies based on what the data tells you.

The Manager and Bean Counter in your head will warn, “Now, let’s not be hasty. Those new ideas don’t have a track record. We don’t know if they will actually work.”

Never let your skeptical Manager make strategic decisions when decline is imminent and change is required.

Put your Entrepreneur in charge. You may get a few scrapes and bruises along the way, but he won’t quit. He’ll pull you out of the wreckage of temporary failure time and time again. And eventually, you’ll succeed. It’s inevitable.

“The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us. The dreamer. The energy behind every human activity. The imagination that sparks the fire of the future. The catalyst for change. The Entrepreneur lives in the future, never in the past, rarely in the present. He’s happiest when left free to construct images of ‘what-if’ and ‘if-when.’” -Michael Gerber

The “Box” is Your Enemy

We were recently in brainstorming mode while consulting with a company.

We threw out idea after idea after idea, only to be immediately shot down on each of them by one of the owners. She was in Manager mode, so she only saw all the reasons why we couldn’t do them.

Whether or not the ideas are feasible isn’t the main problem in this scenario. The problem is the endemic skepticism. The immediate discarding of any idea that’s even remotely outside the box.

Our question for the owners was, “Okay, if not all the ideas we’ve presented, then what? How will you grow? What are you willing to do differently than anything else you’ve ever tried? Because everything you’ve tried in the past isn’t working.”

What will make or break your business during recessions is how you make decisions.

Is your Manager making your decisions, or is your Entrepreneur?

By definition, Managers don’t use the thinking processes that instigate rapid, fundamental, and drastic change. Managers and Number Crunchers are highly creative when it comes to proving why ideas won’t work, yet astoundingly deficient when it comes to generating the ideas themselves.

This isn’t a criticism–it’s simply not their job to innovate. But when innovation is critical, you must learn to defer to your inner Entrepreneur.

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” -Dr. Linus Pauling

Crush the Box

When the economy is great, you have the luxury of being comfortable. You no longer have that luxury.

If you’re not dedicating people, time, imagination, money, energy, and other resources to a growth strategy, either accept the reality that your results won’t change or start putting resources to innovation.

Managers and Technicians have their place, but to innovate and grow you need to put the Entrepreneur in charge.

“The Entrepreneur is our creative personality–always at its best dealing with the unknown, prodding the future, creating probabilities out of possibilities, engineering chaos into harmony.” -Michael Gerber

Ready to rock the new year? Buckle your Manager in the backseat. Put your Entrepreneur at the wheel. Slam on the gas pedal of innovation.

It’s going to be a wild ride.

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and writer with KGaps Consulting. His firm uses their methodology Hub Mentality to help small businesses generate more leads, sales, and referrals while making their marketing budget more efficient.

Stephen is the co-author of as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interactions as well as the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

What do you say? “Oh, everything is fine, thanks.”

Your customers are doing the same to you — they’re not telling you what they don’t like about you to your face.

But with the rise of social media, they’re going home and sharing their negative (and positive) experiences with their online connections.

What if you could overhear what your customers were saying about you?

How could that improve your business? What would it highlight that you’re overlooking? How much power would that give you?

Yes, this is possible. It’s called social media monitoring.

Simply put, social media monitoring is using technology tools to identify what people are saying about your company online.

Social Media Monitoring Tools & Resources

Here are a few free and simple ways to do this:

1. Twitter Search

Click here and enter keywords relevant to your business, particularly your company name.

2. Google Alerts

Click here and enter your relevant keywords. Google will email you any time in encounters those keywords online, based on your preferences. (You need a Google account to set this up.)

3. RSS Feeds

Set up a Google Reader (or other RSS reader), then set up RSS feeds from social media sites as generated by searches.

For example, when I search for “KGaps” on Twitter, you’ll notice the RSS icon on the top right. A specific RSS feed is generated for every search.

4. Facebook Page

Set up a Facebook Page for your business, then simply check the wall daily for comments.

Read this introduction to Facebook for business.

5. Free Monitoring Platforms

There are a number of free social media monitoring platforms to take advantage of, such as Addictomatic, Socialmention, and Tweetdeck.

There are also tons of companies who offer social media monitoring services, such as Spiral16, Radian6, and Trackur, but I wouldn’t recommend these for most small businesses; it’s simply unnecessary.

This social media monitoring solutions wiki lists every available tool.

Here are a few more great articles on the subject:

• How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day
• 10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring
• The Problem(s) With Social Media Monitoring Technologies

Your Customers are in Charge

Knowing what your customers say about you is vital. It tells you what you’re doing wrong and right and how to improve.

As my business partner and I write in our book, Hub Mentality:

“Not only has power itself changed, but also who controls it has shifted. In the past, it was business that wielded power to achieve its ends. Now, the power lies with customers.

“It is customers who dictate the creation and disposition of information. It is customers who determine not only what things get produced, but also how they get produced (note the rise in social-oriented and environmentally-friendly businesses).

“Customers are firmly planted on the new throne; businesses are their servants. Those that understand and adapt will survive and thrive. Those who don’t will disappear, leaving only a memory.”

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and writer with KGaps Consulting. His firm uses their methodology Hub Mentality to help small businesses generate more leads, sales, and referrals while making their marketing budget more efficient.

Stephen is the co-author of as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interactions as well as the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

The problem is, you can’t see these limiting factors.

You’re stuck in the “box” of your business. You see all the wonderful reasons why customers should buy from you.

Unless you can get out of the box, you’ll never pinpoint your limiting factor. And you can’t overcome your limiting factor(s) until you identify it/them.

Consider these examples of limiting factors:

• Competition. Are your competitors good? Do you have a lot of them? Perhaps you need to radically differentiate.
• Population. Perhaps you’ve simply gained all the business you can in your current location. Time to expand to a new location?
• Poor systems. Maybe your systems are too slow and outdated. Time to improve?
• Answering the wrong questions. Advertising fails when you answer questions nobody’s asking. Find out what your customer’s actually care about and speak to their felt needs.
• Hidden, un-leveraged assets. Many businesses conceal gems, the power of which they’re not even aware of. Revolutionary messages that aren’t being shared in a powerful way. Time for a M.E.S.S. analysis?
• Niche markets. Perhaps your offering simply isn’t mass-marketable and you need to either 1) find better ways to reach your target market, and/or 2) expand your offering to appeal to a broader customer base.

My friend Garrett Gunderson tells the story of driving with his friend on the freeway. He started to merge into the right lane and his friend shouted, “Watch out!” There was a car that he didn’t see in his blind spot.

Perhaps you need someone in the passenger seat shouting “Watch out!” in your business?

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and writer with KGaps Consulting. His firm uses their methodology Hub Mentality to help small businesses generate more leads, sales, and referrals while making their marketing budget more efficient.

Stephen is the co-author of as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interactions as well as the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Systems must be in place to ensure perfect delivery. If you don’t execute and keep your promises, these customers will tell everyone about it, and they have the web to spread their bad experience.

We call this “front stage” versus “back stage.” It doesn’t matter how pretty and flashy your front stage is if your back stage doesn’t deliver.

Front stage is your high-profile executives and spokespersons, events, website, materials, and media.

Back stage is your people and systems—the inner workings of your company that customers don’t see, but the results of which they experience.

I once purchased a training course from a company with an excellent front stage. The speakers were persuasive. The events were flawless. The results seemed inevitable.

However, after engaging with them for about a month, it quickly became apparent that their back stage was a mess.

They wouldn’t return phone calls. They never delivered on their promises. What looked like a golden opportunity was quickly exposed as fool’s gold.

I wasn’t the only one with a bad experience. The company went out of business a couple years after opening.

Carl once had a conversation of the leader of the execution team for a major self-help author.

The author had written many books and had phenomenal success. He had the ability to speak magically to the hearts of the audiences to whom he regularly spoke.

He put on his own events where he offered and sold a number of in-depth solutions for personal growth and financial success.

Unfortunately, he had the bad habit of biting off more than he could chew. In other words, he over-promised on stage and his staff had no other option than under-delivering.

They couldn’t create nearly as fast as he promised. In the end, customers felt slighted. His staff felt the pressure and ended up leaving.

My marketing firm is unique in that most marketing and advertising firms focus solely on your “front stage” messaging.

Using our proprietary M.E.S.S. Method, we help you build your “back stage” so that it supports and synchronizes with your front stage.

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and writer with KGaps Consulting. His firm uses their methodology Hub Mentality to help small businesses generate more leads, sales, and referrals while making their marketing budget more efficient.

Stephen is the co-author of as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interactions as well as the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Most people confuse branding simply with the external imagery of their business.  Their logo.  Their website.  Their tagline.  Their company name.  All these things are important but they are all, or at least should be, extensions of what is going on inside the business.

The mistake comes from branding your company from the outside-in vs. from the inside-out.

What do I mean by that?

When a company gets started and they want to get their name out.  What are some of the first things they think about? They start worrying about business cards, pamphlets, one sheets, etc.  Then they realize they need a logo to go on all these things and make them look professional.

They may get all of this information in place and then they realize they need a website because they went to a book publishing workshop with my friend Michael Drew and he told them that if they don’t have a website they don’t have a business.  So now they panic and rush out and find their brother in law who studied web development at a community college for two years.  Website?  Check.

During this whole process, not once did the business owner really take the time to consider the following as it pertains to their brand:

Mission, Vision and Values:  I don’t care what business you are in.  You have to articulate where you are going, why you exist and what you care about.  These terms were bastardized in the mid-to-late nineties but when done right these are powerful tools.

Your audience:  Before you create visuals for your company take some time to consider who is going to care about what you do and then craft visuals around the people that you want to do business with.

The client experience:  How are people going to interact with you and your company? Will there be many levels?  Online or offline?  Are your relationships going to be quick and shallow or slow and deep?  You need to spend some time to create the client experience process around your business.  Nothing kills a companies’ credibility faster than getting people excited about your business and then failing to deliver on your customer’s expectations.

Your team:  What type of people are you going to have on your team?  What skills do they need to have?  Put together a team that’s going to deliver on your mission and values.  Don’t skimp on this area.

In the end your brand is promise of what people can expect when they do business with you.  To be able to effectively deliver you must have clarity, high performing team as well as well thought out systems and processes.  You don’t want to sell people a car that has the body of a Ferrari with a Pinto engine.  That’s bad for your brand.

How have you experienced this either in your business or with someone else’s?

Incision means to cut into something, excision means to cut out something, and decision means to cut off something.

If you want your business to grow, you must decide which customers to keep and which to cut off.

In other words, you must choose one business model. There are only four.

This choice may seem painful. But just as pruning trees makes them grow bigger and healthier, so will making this choice increase your revenues and market share and decrease your stress.

In their groundbreaking book The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, consultants Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema detail three of these four:

1. Operational Excellence
2. Product Leadership
3. Customer Intimacy

Operational Excellence

Operationally excellent companies provide standard products at the best price with the least inconvenience. They’re defined by low prices and hassle-free service.

Henry Ford epitomized this model when, after being asked what color of Model T’s could be ordered, he quipped “Any color you want as long as it’s black.”

Ford’s assembly line was regimented, proceduralized, rule-driven. The system was such that virtually any person could replace another at any point on the line.

Wal-Mart, Dell, Southwest Airlines, Costco, 800-Flowers, and FedEx are also examples of operationally excellent companies.

This operating model is based on four distinct features:

• Processes that are optimized and streamlined to minimize cost and hassle.
• Operations that are standardized, simplified, tightly controlled, and centrally planned, leaving few decisions to the discretion of rank-and-file employees.
• Management systems that focus on integrated, reliable, high-speed transactions and compliance to norms.
• A culture that abhors waste and rewards efficiency.

Such companies produce no-frills products for the middle of the market where demand is huge and customers are more interested in cost than in choice.

Product Leadership

Product leaders are bleeding-edge innovators, always pushing past the realms of the known, the expected. Their value proposition is the best product, period.

Think Apple, Google, Nike — always coming out with new, better, and surprising products that raise the bar. When they release a new product, they’re already plotting how to make it obsolete with their next product.

The main features of product leaders are the following:

• A focus on the core processes of invention, product development, and market exploitation.
• A business structure that is loosely knit, ad hoc, and ever-changing to adjust to the entrepreneurial initiatives and redirections that characterize working in unexplored territory.
• Result-driven management systems that measure and reward new product success and that don’t punish the experimentation needed to get there.
• A culture that encourages individual imagination, accomplishment, out-of-the-box thinking, and a mind-set driven by the desire to create the future.

Customer Intimacy

Customer-intimate companies are highly flexible and in tune with the needs of specific companies. Everything they offer is customized to each customer.

Their value proposition is “We take care of you and all your needs,” or “We get you the best total solution.” Such companies don’t pursue transactions; they cultivate relationships.

Examples of customer-intimate companies include Home Depot, JetBlue, and the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain.

At Ritz-Carlton, every employee has automatic authority to spend up to $2,000 resolving issues for any one guest — without having to obtain permission from anyone. While other businesses are afraid to justify such expenses, customer-intimate companies consider the customer’s lifetime value, not just the profit and loss on a few transactions.

The features of this model include:

• An obsession with the core processes of solution development (i.e., helping the customer understand exactly what’s needed), results management (i.e., ensuring the solution gets implemented properly), and relationship management.
• A business structure that delegates decision-making to employees who are close to the customer.
• Management systems that are geared toward creating results for carefully selected and nurtured clients.
• A culture that embraces specific rather than general solutions and thrives on deep and lasting client relationships.

The Fourth Model

Roy H. Williams adds a fourth model to this list: distribution dominance. In this model, companies thrive by dominating distribution channels in their category.

For example, suppose you’re driving 300 miles in the middle of nowhere and you need gas. A gas station appears in the horizon with no competitors for miles around. Guess where you’re going to buy gas?

Other examples would include airport restaurants and gift shops. These companies don’t have to provide exceptional service or products — they just have to be in the right place at the right time.

Make the Choice

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can lead in all or multiple categories. You can only be a market leader in one.

According to Treacy and Wiersema:

“…no company can succeed today by trying to be all things to all people. It must instead find the unique value that it alone can deliver to a chosen market…

“…if you decide to play an average game, to dabble in all areas, don’t expect to become a market leader. Thus, choosing a discipline is the choice of winners.

“Not choosing means ending up in a muddle. It means hybrid operating models that are neither here nor there, and that consequently cause confusion, tension, and loss of energy.”

Pick one operating model — just one. Improve on that model obsessively. Maintain threshold standards in the others.

Dominate your market.

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and writer with KGaps Consulting. His firm uses their methodology Hub Mentality to help small businesses generate more leads, sales, and referrals while making their marketing budget more efficient.

Stephen is the co-author of as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interactions as well as the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Business owners can’t help but be a rugged individualist, especially in the area of accounting.  We do the books ourselves because we think we are saving ourselves money.  Doing the books yourself is one of the top 10 don’ts when it comes to small business bookkeeping. We don’t do them right and it ends up killing our business.

The reason is that as a business owner we have plenty to worry about and doing the books is always an afterthought.  A good bookkeeping system has some of the following elements:

• Actually hire a bookkeeper.  There is a time when doing your own books makes sense and I will talk about that later this week.  For now, assume that you won’t do your books forever.
• Up-to-date books that can be accessed at any time.  You should be looking at your books at least once a week if not more depending on your industry.  If your books aren’t current this makes that difficult.
• Have a communication system for receiving the different reports you need from a bookkeeping standpoint.  Make sure that when you set up a standard of communication for you and your bookkeeper.  Let them know how often you want reports and what reports you need.
• Keep an eye on the most important numbers for your business.  Make sure you understand what you are looking at and how things are trending.  If you don’t know what the numbers mean then find out.
• Share the important numbers with your team.  Too many small businesses don’t share their results with their team.  This is a mistake.  There is also an art to this but that topic is for another time.

Ultimately, just make sure that you have a solid bookkeeping in system in place that allows for timely reporting and analysis on behalf of the owner.  Knowing the score financially is the difference between succeeding and failing in business.  Take a look at your system and ask yourself how you can do it better for your business.