Author: admin

Whilst preparing our Business Life radio show last week, I chatted with Julie Bishop (my co-host) about the difference between goals and tasks and how some people confuse the two.

If a goal is to reach the top of a mountain, then climbing for an hour is a task.

If a goal is to grow our business to a certain size then a task is to sell more units.

Without clear goals to keep us pointing in the right direction we might get lost amongst the tasks on our to-do list and forget where we were trying to reach.

Now, I know this is day-one content of any business course and yet I wonder how many of us confuse goals with tasks?

One goal that I reached this year was to publish my fifth book. Tick. Only taken me 10 years …but well worth the effort!

I now have a contract for book six, which is in the planning stage. However, I’m aware that I need a new goal, or my writing could just become a repetitive task.

I’ve decided that my next goal (and book six is a task to help get me there) is to have my own national BBC radio show. I love radio and I’m good at it and am sure my style will find a home there somewhere.

So, that’s my goal: BBC.

Everything else is a task that gets me closer to my goal.

What’s your goal? Do tell me! If we name and share our goals then we’re more likely to make them happen!

I’ve learned something this week – namely that the power of a big price discount linked to the power of Twitter can produce great results.

Book selling is a tough game. With 200,000 new titles (yes, all new to the market) published each year in the UK and 2,000,000 published in the USA there’s a lot of people waving their arms about to attract attention towards their title.

And good for them! We all have to sell to eat and if you love your book then it’s natural to tell the world about it!

Marshall Cavendish, my own publisher, has reprinted My Boss is a Bastard this year in their Business Solutions range. This week they decided to offer it under a promotional deal on Kindle at only 73-pence. Amazing! I took four years to get that book written, edited and brought to market back in 2006 and now you can buy it for less than £1 and read it in two hours.

Even more amazing is that Twitter and Kindle didn’t exist back in the old days!

And I’m thrilled, because the promotion and lots of Tweets have driven the book up the Kindle charts from 100,000 to 7,500 and up to No.15 in the careers chart.

Interestingly, I earn less than 2p per copy sold. Yes, really. However the promotion is bringing in new readers for me, some of whom have gone on to buy Job Hunting 3.0 or How To Keep Your Job or Bouncing Back.

And that’s the point of a promotion – to attract new customers – so I’m happy-writer-Rich, just not rich-writer-Rich.

It’s been a great learning experience and I’m looking forward to more special offers in the future.

The 73p deal is open this week too so take advantage of it and save over £6.00 …but please don’t send a copy to your boss as part of the secret Santa in your office, or buy 100 copies of the print edition and leave them scattered around the office. That would be a bad idea…

However, what you could do is think about your products and services and offer a great promotional offer to encourage new customers to buy! Be daring and go low! Make it an offer that they can’t refuse!

And then go wild and spend 73p today!