IN THE BOX PODCAST

Episode 53: Momentum, Communication Styles, Saying No And More (Podcast)

On this episode of In The Box Podcast we chat about momentum and when too much of a good thing is a bad thing, how to adapt your communication style to fit different generations and audiences, the process of saying no to someone at work, a tip on being an effective leader, and a tip for what to do when you don’t want to do something you’ve been asked to do. Enjoy.

Episode 53: Momentum, Communication Styles, Saying No And More

Doing It Anyway – What is one tip you have for someone who has to do something they don’t want to do?

Momentum – Is there such a thing as too much momentum (if so, then what do you do?)

Communication Style – One tip on how to adapt your communication style to your audience?

Saying No – Easiest way to say no to something at work?

Bonus – One tip on being an effective leader?

 

Stay Positive & Listen To More

Unlocking Potential: Q&A #8 With Zachary Lukasiewicz

Unlocking Potential: Q&A #8 With Zachary Lukasiewicz

Zachary LukasiewiczThe only direction Zachary Lukasiewicz knows is forward. He’s never in the same spot twice and he never backtracks. He’s a dreamer and a doer who understands progress. Through hustling, he sweats passion.

After connecting with him on LinkedIn, we had a Random Call where we chatted entrepreneurship, tackling fear, and staying positive. He’s a cool cat to know. One that’s going places.

That is why I chose Zachary for my eighth Q&A in my Unlocking Potential series.

Welcome, Zachary.

Q: In just a few sentences, tell me about yourself, better yet, what would others say about you if asked?

Zach has a passion for hacking together community-focused subscription-based products and growing companies through social media and content channels.

Q: What do you do?

I start conversations that revolutionize products and raise profits. Currently I’m working with Think Digital (ad agency) on building a product to creating more knowledge leaders via LinkedIn, and working with Hatchlings (Facebook application) to optimize customer funnels for conversion.

Q: How do you define marketing?

The total defined experience and interaction with a product – from search optimization to purchase behavior to delivery to my favorite part – building evangelists through continued customer interaction. Each piece is essential, and without any a product is destined to fail.

Q: What is one of the most valuable experiences you’ve had?

Putting myself through a $3,000 copy-writing course taught by expert John Carlton. A friend and I went through the course in a week, and it taught us how to frame components of your product to create a beautiful sales page and create compelling content that converts.

Q: What are two habits you deem necessary for any entrepreneur?

Habits change, but the mindset that you need to maintain has two major themes, summed up in the following quotes.

– Imagine that there is someone working 24 hours a day to BE BETTER THAN YOU. If you don’t believe that, then entrepreneurship isn’t for you.

– You should always be embarrassed by your first iteration of your product. While it isn’t perfect, its miles ahead of most “wantrepreneurs”.

Q: What are three life lessons you’ve learned a long the way?

– Stand on the shoulders of others. Learn from their mistakes and don’t make them yourself.

– Your network is like a muscle. Stretch it, and it will grow and strengthen. But atrophy will take its toll if you don’t exercise enough.

– Have others build your product. Humans by nature are always willing you to tell you what’s wrong. If you can solve that problem, and they are willing to pay for it, then build it. REMEMBER: Validation isn’t when the problem exists, it’s when you can get others to pay you for the solution.

Q: What are some common mistakes marketers make and how could they resolve them or prevent them altogether?

Most marketers don’t give a darn about anything yet have an opinion about everything. Learn to break through the clutter and you will be successful. This leads directly into my next point.

Most marketers will waste – yes, WASTE years, possibly even decades stumbling to learn how to market and sell products that others create. Be remarkable YOURSELF – Create your own product, learn from others and become your own legend.

Q: Anything else you want to add that starting entrepreneurs should know?

Befriend the most successful people in your network. Then shut your mouth and take in everything. Then take what you’ve learned and apply it to yourself and your company. If you do this correctly, your network should change every 6-12 months. If it’s not, you either aren’t stretching yourself, aren’t reaching out to enough successful entrepreneurs, or aren’t following the advice that you need to be following.

ps – There is a simple solution to get rich: Find out how the rich got rich.

Q: Where can people find you and your art?

Follow me or connect with me on LinkedIn . That is my social network, my blog, etc.

 

Stay Positive & Get Out There And Make A Ruckus

How Are You At Directing?

How Are You At Directing?

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I hope your solid. After all, you should be with all the practice you’ve had up to today. You can make yourself a hero. In fact, have you made yourself a hero lately? I’ve felt we’ve needed some more heroes.

Your life is yours to direct. So let me ask again. How are you at directing?

 

Stay Positive & You Create Your Own Tranquility, Your Own Tale

After Years Of Arguing It

After Years Of Arguing It

Writer Garth Beyer

I’ll finally admit it… Identifying your passion, discovering what it is you really love to do, finding your purpose is a damn difficult thing to do.

For some it seems to come so natural. That, too, I once believed. I don’t anymore. Being more forward with you, I thought I knew I always wanted to be a writer, an entrepreneur and a PR guy (even though I didn’t know the term PR at the time). “It’s  just who I am!” I would tell people.

Investigating my past, though, I can’t recall the moment when I knew. There was no epiphany, no wide-realization, no godly pronouncement of my passion.

After scrutinizing my past, I realized that it was through a series of forcing, tricking, and driving myself to love the things I did that lead me to declare I was a writer, I was an entrepreneur, I was what I now know is called a public relations strategist.

I didn’t always love writing, but I was always finding ways to love it. (Still am.) It started with poetry because I knew I couldn’t fail. It moved on to bullshitting school papers because I could mock the system when I received the same grade as someone who spent weeks on the same paper, and I, only hours. Writing became more fun when I could write love letters and make women blush. And starting this blog? Best decision of my life for reasons it would take a book to detail.

I didn’t always want to be an entrepreneur either, but I always found ways to love it. (Still do.) I started my own vending machine business with my dad because I loved eating the leftover candy. I helped run a card shop because I loved collecting pokemon cards at the time and got to watch old batman movies when no one was in the shop. Instead of a lemonade stand, I had a beanie babies stand because it connected me with more kids my age.

I didn’t always want to go into Public Relations, but it was a knack of mine finding ways to love it. (Still is.) Meeting new people and going to events alone was rough, but I made business cards for myself. They made me feel I deserved to be there even though I didn’t have an established PR business. I went to dozens of Toastmaster (public speaking org) meetings, not because I was fearless, but because I could learn from others’ failures so I didn’t make the same when I finally forced myself to the podium.

Passion isn’t really something you seek out on purpose, it’s more of something you come across. You don’t need an “aha” moment to realize what it is you’ve been put on this world to do. You get there by finding reasons to love what you’re already doing.

 

Stay Positive & You’ll Do What You Love, When You Love What You Do

You Don’t Have To Be An Extrovert, But…

Every now and then I question whether I know more than my dad or not. It seems that I tell him new things, correct him, and remind him of what he said a week earlier quite often. This makes it difficult to pay attention and listen to him when he talks to me about a topic (as if he knows more than me).

And yet, I do listen and pay attention for one reason: I may be 20, but I’m not young enough to know everything. (HT Oscar Wilde)

Aside from a handful of small lessons I’ve learned from my dad over the last week, I want to share the largest one, and it’s this: talk.

Talk to whoever is around you, talk to who you are dealing with, talk to who you’re buying from, talk to who you’re sitting by. Hell, talk to yourself. Get in the habit of talking.

I’ve decided to quit using the word negotiation or any spinoff of it. Just as fine print is dying, so are negotiations. Sure, one can make a sale by going back and forth, but it’s the most unpleasant, unfulfilling, and frustrating interaction in the sales world. Naturally, I want to say my dad is a great negotiator, but he’s not. He’s a great talker.

Just this morning he got my motorcycle insurance lowered by nearly $200. I asked how and he responded, “I talked a lot.”

I am sure this guy has saved more money talking than others have scamming, saving, or negotiating.

 

Stay Positive & A Lesson Worth Passing On

Garth E. Beyer

 

Now

is always the best time to start.

There’s a wonderful reminder that I’ve worked up to counter the most common reason to not start now: you’re already behind.

I call it the One Bite Away reminder.

Imagine you start a diet (maybe you are currently on one) and things are going great. You’ve lost a few pounds, built some muscle, and even feel better. But then you begin snacking over the weekend.

Now you’re behind.

And since you’re behind, you might as well toss the diet plan. You messed up. You failed. Forget it. Maybe next year. Maybe in the summer. Maybe when you get enough motivation to ask someone to do it with you. Maybe when you build up to it again. Maybe when you get your feelings hurt.

Why we don’t realize that being slightly behind is a lot better than continuously getting further behind, I don’t know.

What I do know is that when you are behind, you’re only One Bite Away from getting back on the diet, back in the groove, back in the zone.

Seems pretty simple when you put it that way doesn’t it? One bite – not one hundred bites, not a week behind, not five pounds. One bite.

That’s how it is with any “diet.”

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Beat Yourself Up. You’re Just One Bite Away

Garth E. Beyer

Enjoying The Journey

Have you tried non-resistance?

It’s much like the old simile of water flowing down the river. The water doesn’t force itself to try to push the rocks out of its way. The water simply flows.

I don’t like it. Those who live by the motto, “go with the flow,” aren’t living life. It’s a tacky way of going about. These are the people who fail to realize something massively important about living, loving, and learning.

You can live stronger, wilder, free-er, love more passionately, more intimately, more loyally,  and learn differently, zen-ly, interestingly when you are lost and confused than when you know where you are and want to be, when you’re single or even broken-hearted than when you’re on a date or moments away from asking your special one to marry you, when you’re broken and failing than when your right on track.

The only determination whether what you’re going through is a better lesson than what you would rather be going through is you. And the only decision you have to make is to be non-resistant.

 

Stay Positive & Learn From The River: Rifts, Waves, Stillness, And All

Garth E. Beyer