Herman: John L. Herman Jr., Author

It's Brian Oates Turn

One of our readers is Brian Oates, a gentleman I met through his website where he does Business Author Interviewers. Click on www.Daxle.net and go check out his site, he does great work to help you pick out some reading material. And since I always ask readers to email me with topics, today I will answer his inquiries.

1) How to find/pick a partner: my first choice is to never have a partner as I like being the captain of the ship. Partners should complement you if you need one, such as, one has money and you have the idea. Or you are a Chef and the other partner handles the business side. You will always end up feeling like one partner is doing more, or is worth more, than the other one…so my advice is to start any partnership with a buy-out agreement in place so when it is ready to explode either you or your partner can own the business on some formula. One way we split up one company was to simply bid each other for the rest of the stock, if he wouldn’t take my offer to buy him out, then he would have to pay me that amount and I would leave. Be careful what you bid, because you might not get the outcome you want.

2) How am I gauging success for my project; page views, book sales, etc? I have a year long measurement of fifty thousand dollars as a goal for book sales and speaking engagements. I know that equals ten thousand book sales, minus fees made from speaking. As for measuring the rate, I have hired the college team of BLACKBOOK MARKETING and expect ten to twenty bookings for colleges, and my PR guy, Brooke Halpin is dealing with articles, news media, TV and radio gigs, and my radio advertisement in BEST GUIDE should have me on over 100 radio interviews this year (14 radio for January and 1 TV appearance are already booked). Brian points out that I should discuss how you should measure your success. Until you know how many appointments it takes to get a sale you can’t have a definitive measure for income…but you can start measuring as many stats as possible as you go through a project and when enough outcomes are there, you will have a roadmap telling you exactly what you need to be doing to obtain a desired outcome. # of calls, # of meetings, # of presentations, etc.

3) Finally, he asks when I turn off the light each day, and is it sun up to sundown no matter what. Truthfully, my day does stretch from early morning when I write for at least an hour of each day, and I check emails and comments all throughout the day, sprinkled in with stock watching or trading, I view a lot of what is on MSNBC to keep up with stock news, and I never close up shop before about ten at night, and always check emails and voicemails before turning out the lights. But, I am not working all hours of the day at this point. I might take in a movie weekly with a few other retired friends. I go to lunch with my wife several times a week. I go to a gym called BRICK BODIES five times a week, because there is no gym called ROLY POLYS, which is where I probably belong.

Brian closes by asking if there is anything he can do to help. This shows the professionalism and concern he shares with authors, and readers at his site. I always accept any help in exposing my work to more readers, so anytime anyone wants to help, please do share this site with others. Thanks Brian, and there are emails from other readers that we answer sprinkled in with other postings.

• Posted: 21 January 2008
• Comments: 1
• Category: Blog

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