Stay Focused

So I’m working on a book project with a friend of mine.  Now, I should say up front, this woman is a friend of mine, I love her dearly, and this project would not happen without her support.  Having said that, I have to tell the story of what just happened yesterday because it perfectly illustrates one of those moments that everyone will face, and the need to get past it.

We brainstormed about the value of the project for a little while.  Soon the ideas were stretching way out into the future, into that world where “people want to market you because you’re valuable” rather than “you need people to market you in order to get some value”, if you know what I mean. There’s an inflection point there.  The local television station doesn’t want to talk to you on day one, they want you to gain a following first, and then they’ll talk to you.

Trying to bring the conversation back on target I said, “This product is real when people pay money for it. For that to happen I need to get it into an Amazon or Lulu or some other publishing house that can outsource that for me. To do that I need an ISBN number. To do that I need the content to be at a place where I want to stop fiddling with it. What we need to do is focus only on what will get us there – content ready for publication.”

“Absolutely,” said my friend. “Agreed. Let’s do that.  Ooooo, video!”  And once again we were back into projects that would take money and resources and be months away.

Your product, be it a web site or a book or whatever, only exists in a meaningful sense if people can buy it and give you money.  So whenever you’re working on that task list, ask yourself whether the task at hand is needed for that to happen.  Do I need a video to go with my book? No.  If I was selling a video course, then yeah, maybe kinda sorta.  Obviously.  But a book is words on a page, so I need to focus, at least for now, on exactly just that.