How to Create, Develop, Test, Produce, Market, and Sell a Unique Product

I would like to welcome "guest blogger"—Bobette Kyle—whom I have mentioned many times in The Writing Life as a marketing and Web guru, among the many hats she wears. If you are interested in "living your best day, every day," read on.

Four St. Louis women recently started Daysteps LLC, where our mission is to help women live more balanced and fulfilled lives. The company is very nontraditional in that all four of us balance work and personal time independently--and very differently--according to what works best for each of us. Additionally, our "office location" changes continually; meetings are held wherever our lives intersect (whether that be at one of their homes, online, or a local restaurant).

• How this day planner for women is different from other's in the market today

In a broad sense, Daysteps is a lifestyle. It is the personal desire to become more accepting of life right now while achieving life balance, self-improvement, and personal fulfillment. It is the process of making these changes part of a daily routine and integrating them one day at a time, one step at a time.

Our first product--the Daysteps Personal Lifestyle Planner--helps women do this. This planner is different because it combines lifestyle, appointment tracking, and goal setting features. It encompasses many key aspects of life and is designed to motivate the user to become the person she wants to be.

• The target market for Daysteps

Our ideal customers are women who run households and have significant other responsibilities (a home business, for example). Yet, it is flexible enough that each woman can "make it her own" by using each section as she prefers.

Daysteps empowers women by giving them tangible ways to move toward their own goals on their own terms each day. We recognize that each woman has a unique set of values that should define her personal vision of success.

• How Daysteps came about

The concept began when Kelly Wagner recognized an unmet need: a lack of tools to easily integrate positive life changes on a daily basis. Kelly knew each of us from different parts of her life and recognized that our different strengths could contribute differently to this project.

• The main challenges we faced in creating Daysteps

Creating a unique product, then getting the message across. We literally began with blank paper and built this planner from the ground up. The iterations, rewrites, and testing took more than a year.

• How we are marketing Daysteps

Our marketing plan includes a combination of strategies for reaching our ideal customers; both short- and long-term activities, plus different distribution channels. We are focusing on direct distribution channels (local shows and direct, face-to-face sales through our individual networks), online ordering (through our Website, Amazon.com, and other sellers), and sales through independent retail stores or professionals. Longer term, we are beginning the process of gaining distribution in retail chains, who have a longer decision-making time frame for planners.

Our marketing programs are primarily social media and public relations related. We issued a launch press release, are offering opportunities for reviews, sponsoring several giveaways, and can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

• Our plans for Daysteps in the next five years

We're planning to roll out new versions for different user types, if surveys and market research indicate a need. We also plan to continue publishing our Personal Lifestyle Planner (current offered in 2010 Full-Year, Jan-June 2010, and July-December 2010 editions).

• Lessons we can share other entrepreneurs

There will always be more to do than you can physically accomplish. That's why prioritization is critical. Every second spent on one activity is a second *not* spent on another. If the latter activities are more profitable than the ones you are doing, that has a direct impact on the bottom line. To prioritize marketing and sales activities, ask yourself if that activity has a direct, positive impact on reaching or satisfying your ideal customer. If not, there are more profitable ways to spend your time.

A misconception held by many entrepreneurs is that successful businesses run smoothly. In reality, being in business comes with bumps and challenges along the way. Keep in mind that implementing a business and marketing plan is an ongoing process--implement, evaluate, adjust, implement, evaluate, adjust, etc.--and success does not require perfection.

Another lesson is to believe in you. Many times others will not "get" your vision, especially if it involves a completely unique product or new way of thinking. That's OK. Continue to focus on your ideal customers, and understand how your company meets their needs, and you will be successful.

Your Best Day, Every Day
http://www.Daysteps.com

A Writer's Challenge: Juggling Work & Family

I must begin this blog with a disclaimer: at this time in my life, I do not have to juggle my business and a live-at-home family. I am no longer married, and my daughters have their own homes. So, what I have to say about this particular balancing act obviously does not reflect my current situation. Nonetheless, for many, many years, my life revolved around work and family, each of which demanded 100 percent of my effort and energy. The memories are vivid.

The family came first; the writing didn’t make its appearance until almost a decade later. I had a husband and two very active young children. Writing, which began as a lark, turned into an adventure and ultimately became a consuming passion. In the meantime, I was a wife and a mother with all the myriad responsibilities that role demanded. It was still the era of “Father Knows Best” and “The Donna Reed Show,” which meant shirt-waist dresses, dinner on the table every night at six, and driving a station wagon full of little people to and from nursery school. I wrote in stolen moments, when the girls were in school or after they went to bed.

In the beginning, writing had to be squeezed in between all of the other stuff of life. I’m sure it was viewed by my family as a “hobby,” but all of that changed when I landed my first job as a full-time writer. That’s when the competition between the two halves of my life really intensified. By that time, I was a single parent, in addition to being a floundering new editor of a city magazine. My little girls were probably the original latchkey kids. They could let themselves in the house and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but that didn’t stop them from calling me 100 times a day. There never seemed to be enough of me to go around. The hours at work were long and stressful; my salary was a joke; and my health zigzagged all over the place.

Each step in my career brought more responsibility, less flexibility, and longer commutes. Guilt became my constant companion. I was never a Brownie leader or a room mother. I didn’t go on field trips or take an active role in the PTA. I remember being 20 miles away, interviewing a college president, when my editor called to tell me my youngest daughter had broken her arm, falling off the top of the cheerleaders’ pyramid. The president was very gracious when I left suddenly.

On the bright side, I allowed gymnastics meets and disco practice in my living room; encouraged having friends sleep over; and subtly forced my daughters to learn to cook, the alternative being starving to death. I took some great pictures at real gymnastic meets and of the cheerleaders at football games, helped with many English papers, and learned to “edit on my eyelids” when the girls were in college. I tell you this because I now know this is how many writers live — employed, moonlighting, full-time, part-time, male or female. In today’s world, juggling roles is simply the way it is.

It was and is useless to haul around a bag of guilt and, obviously, beyond stressful to think you can do everything, be everywhere, and keep all those plates in the air without dropping one now and then. If I had it to do over again, I would do things differently.

• I would face reality and kick the guilt. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” as they say; and feeling that you are failing your family doesn’t help you, them, or your work.

• I would communicate more assertively and less defensively. If your family (husband, children, parents, whoever) understands the challenges you face, and you understand theirs, you can work together to help each other over the rough spots.

• I would make and enforce a simple agreement. When I’m working, please don’t disturb me unless it is a real emergency; when we are together as a family, I won’t let work interfere.

• I would strive for balance in my life. I would figure out what is truly important and what is extraneous. If you have your priorities straight, even if there are only two or three of them (work, family, yourself, not necessarily in that order), you won’t constantly pour your energy down the drain.

• I would put self-care high on that list of what is important. If you run yourself into the ground, stress out, or get sick, you will be of little good as a writer, mother or father, spouse, or caretaker of an aging parent.

• I would ease up on the perfectionism. If you can’t do it all, you certainly can’t begin to do it all perfectly. When you die, do you really want your epitaph to read “She died with a bottle of Windex in her hand”?