A Challenge Fully Ignited My Marketing Spirit

I won’t mention any names, as I don’t want to incriminate my wonderful and helpful counselor from SCORE. But, we were talking about the new edition of my book recently, and he said, “If you sell 600 copies you’ll be lucky.”

I was incredulous. I immediately responded, “I intend to sell 5000.”

He said, “If you sell 5000 copies, I’ll give you a million dollars.”

The interesting thing was what happened to my marketing spirit when he put out that challenge. It fully ignited. What could I do to sell 5000 copies? My mind went into full gear, high speed calculating and asking-for-help mode.

Then he amended this, by adding, “And my wife goes with the offer.” (This is why I won’t mention any names.)

My spirit sagged when he hedged his offer.

My job here is to stay connected with the energy he sparked with his first statement. I’m fully capable of selling 5000 books. I loved the extra motivation of his dare. I’m a real I’ll-show-you kinda gal. I realized I’d need help to accomplish this goal.

Please send along any tips you have for large order book sales. I’d love to sell (52 copy) cases at a time along with the onesies. I’ll show him!

(Some of you may remember when my husband bet me $1000 that he’d never watch the Oscars from beginning to end again. I put that hand-written wager in my tickler file and pulled it out just in time to collect the following year. I’m good at holding people to their word.)

Highlights from My Blog

I Used to Wish I Were a Princess
When I was little, the paper dolls and trading cards I played with were all ballerinas and princesses. It surely looked like everything was perfect in their pristine, prettily-dressed lives. And, given that this was the 50′s, there was little else to aspire to. Now a full-grown woman and business owner, I had the opportunity to see a princess’s life played out on national television last week. After watching these shows I made a gratitude list thanking my lucky stars that I am not a princess... Read more.

Connecting With Lucy – Exclamation Point
I had my wonderful reunion walk with Lucy this morning (see Wednesday’s blog for details). I told her I had blogged about her and gotten a tremendous response regarding her energized, pro-active connecting abilities. She looked at me and said, “Connecting is my oxygen.” Read more.

Connect Like Lucy Does
I’ve talked about Lucy Hedrick on many occasions, but her re-entry to Connecticut this season prompts another side of Lucy I’d like to share.  Enviably, Lucy spends over six months a year as a snowbird in Sarasota, FL, taking her writing and book proposal coaching business with her. Once the Northeast warms to her liking, Lucy returns to her Greenwich home for the spring and summer months. Lucy doesn’t sit around and wait for her friends and colleagues to notice that she’s back. Read more.