Creativity

Variant Feedback For Effective Communication

Garth Beyer

Martin Luther

Martin Luther revolutionized German culture and made a dent in standardizing their language. He would travel and read his translation of the Bible into the vernacular and ask each audience that listened, “How did this sound? Was it too banal? Was it strong? Did it sound good?”

He rewrote and rewrote and continued reading aloud until he got “yes” as a response from everyone from the baker to the welder to the merchant. His writing was a variant of German, intelligible to both northern and southern Germans, his target market solely because he had his system of feedback, he listened, he rewrote.

Note, Luther didn’t change the message of his writing, he merely changed the wording to effectively communicate the message he wanted. (He did get in some heat for adding some words when he shouldn’t have. Remember, this is a translation of the Bible, not much room for creativity.)

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. – Martin Luther

Who was Luther and why does he deserve this blog post? He was a constant seeker and recipient of feedback. He didn’t take criticism personally. He ignored the naysayers. If some commoner expressed a dissatisfaction with his words, Luther didn’t begin to question whether he himself was right or wrong, he merely wondered what he could do better to communicate his beliefs.

Now-a-days I see people quit, toss their business plans, and remove their books from Amazon because their message didn’t resonate with whom they thought it would. I witness speakers decide not to speak in front of an audience again because their first audience wasn’t convinced by their message. I miss out on seeing a starting blogger become influential because they stop blogging. Why continue if no one is reading, right?

Wrong.

By doing what Luther did and sharing our ideas, our blog posts, our podcasts, our business plans, our art, we have the opportunity (I mean, come on, there are more than seven billion connected people on this planet) to check whether our way of communicating is effective for the audience we’re reaching for. Why are we not doing this more often?

Why are we limiting ourselves to mastermind groups, to people who already think like us, to our idols or our best friends when it comes to seeking feedback and tweaking the way we communicate? Certainly I’m not suggesting reaching out to all seven billion people, but the group you’re now letting influence your communications can increase in size and as a result your words, your art, your message can get stronger.

 

Stay Positive & Send Something My Way, I’ll Give Some Feedback thegarthbox@gmail.com

* Worth a read: The social Origins of Good ideas. Essentially the best ideas come from outside communities, just as often as the best feedback.

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If I Told You Exactly How

If I Told You Exactly How

Garth Beyer

Follow Instructions

If Milton Glaser walked you through how to create a masterpiece, step by step, every minute detail by ever minute detail, your art piece couldn’t make the same impact.

If Taylor Swift held your hand throughout the entire songwriting process, your finished product won’t feel unique.

If I told you exactly how to write with voice, you would feel like your writing is a cheap knockoff.

How others feel using your product or service, looking at your art, listening to your songs starts with how you feel using your product or service, looking at your art, listening to your songs.

If you paint by numbers, color within the lines, and follow every “how-to” guide, you’ll ship work and you’ll learn a thing or two, but it won’t feel right.

And the feeling is why we make art.

 

Stay Positive & Make Remarkable Art, Not Remakable Art

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You’re Surrounded

You’re Surrounded

Garth Beyer

Surround Yourself With People Who Care

There are people all around you. To your left. To your right. You’re surrounded.

How do you feel about it?

It pays to really think about the answer because you’ve decided who you’re surrounded by. It’s your decision to work with people with low standards. You’ve decided the friends you will hangout with are the ones who don’t inspire you to work creatively.

We’ll never stop being surrounded by people. Whether we succeed in our endeavors or screw up, there will be people all around us, prodding, interacting, asking questions.

We owe it to ourselves to surround ourselves with people who will challenge us to go to the next level, to think differently, to answer the tough questions.

You’re surrounded. Is it a good feeling?

 

Stay Positive & If Not, Change The People

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A Riff And Reward For Reading (Self-Promotion On Twitter)

Garth Beyer

I use Twitter to interact with people and it peeves me when people use it to spam. I can deal with the links and self-promotion in my feed. What I can’t stand is when I get a direct message that is so obviously programmed. There’s a picture of a person, but the message is robotic. The latest is from Alex Mathers who is exceptionally smart and produces really sweet content, but his promotional methods are…questionable.

So impersonal

Occurrences like this remind me of my post about Pandora advertising its alarm option even after I had set the alarm up.

If you’re going to promote, then quit promoting once your customer does or buys what you’re promoting. Think of the last thing you sold to someone. Once the exchange was made, you didn’t keep telling them that they should buy what is now in their hands. Right?

Anyway, to thank you for reading this rant, I’ve taken the common questions asked by working creatives that Alex answered on his blog and have answered them in my way here.

1. How do I find my first clients if no one knows me?

Try making a better product or service first. If that doesn’t work, then you need to create something different. Skip all this hassle by figuring out what people in a tribe want before you establish a product or service.

Getting clients isn’t hard. Creating something people want is.

2. Should my style appeal to what is in demand or be about what I enjoy?

You know the answer to this. Both.

3. How do I earn more?

Easy things aren’t scarce. Hard things are scarce. Scarce things have value. By doing something hard, you’re creating something of value. The more value, the more you can earn.

4. How do I know what to charge for my creative work?

Charge what you would pay for it. It’s damn difficult to sell something for $1,000 if you don’t believe it’s worth that much.

5. How do I move from full-time employment to going freelance?

Slowly. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to work your ass off for it. Wake up earlier. Go to sleep later. Cut the little things out of your life until you make the transition.

6. How can I sell more of my stuff without being too pushy and ‘salesy’?

Read one book on sales. That’s all you need. They all say the same thing. After you read it, go take a job in sales. I did for a month and practiced what I read in the book. The only reason you don’t know how is because you’re not forcing yourself to figure it out.

7. I don’t have any time to spend on my creative career. What do I do?

Quit lying to yourself. We all have 24 hours in the day.

8. How do I network with people if I’m introverted?

 Watch this

9. Do I need to understand the basics of running a business to succeed?

Do athletes need to understand the basics of their sport in order to perform at the Olympics? That’s where you want to go, right? To the top?

10. How long do I need to spend working to become an expert at my craft?

If you simply won’t move forward without knowing, they say 10,000 hours. How long isn’t important though. What matters is how well you work to become an expert, not how many hours.

11. How do I balance my job, social life and creating in my spare time?

Understand that you’re on a teeter-totter and you’re on it with someone who weighs a bit more than you. No one consistently balances. Prepare for the constant give and take. It’s what makes it worth it.

12. Why can’t I get motivated about what I do?

You’re afraid of something. Figure out what it is and proceed to dance with it. (Also search “fear” on my website, I write a lot about it.)

13. How do I freelance without getting lonely?

By creating something that makes people feel less lonely.

14. I never get any jobs through social media. What am I doing wrong?

You need to use social media to make connections and meet people. It’s when you meet people that you get offered a job. More people get jobs from people, not tweets; they get them in person, not online.

15. How do I get more likes on Facebook?

First ask yourself if that’s where most of your revenue is coming from. If it’s not, then spend more time where the revenue is coming from, likes will follow from that.

If you do get most of your revenue from likes on Facebook and want more likes, then offer more on Facebook, showcase people who use your product or service by giving shout outs or uploading photos (people love sharing photos that they are in) and be entertaining. Most Facebookers go on to escape the real world. Ask yourself what you have to offer.

16. I have disrespectful, crappy clients. What do I do to change this?

Fire them.

17. I lack the confidence to share my creations with the world. How can I increase belief in my work?

There’s no solution to this. Don’t listen to people who say there is a solution, all they are setting you up for is an uphill battle. What you can do is start by not caring who believes in your work – so long as you do. Build it and they will come.

18. How do I get more traffic to my blog?

Ads work. More content works. Multimedia helps. Getting content published elsewhere will guide others to your blog. The two best steps you can take, though, is to connect with more people outside your blog and to wait (but don’t stand still, that’s not what I mean by waiting. People die standing still).

19. Is it better to be a jack of all trades, or a master at one?

People will ask you what you are an expert at or what your superpower is. Have one. Then know a little about everything else. Enough so you can make friends with people who are experts in all those other things. Now you’ve built a team. Now no one will ask what you’re good at. They will see you as a leader.

20. What is your single biggest tip for succeeding as a solo creative?

Know what success means to you.

21. How do I develop a unique style?

It’s a pain, but writing as much as possible helps. And try caring just a little bit less on whether people approve of your unique style. I laugh when someone calls someone else weird. They make it sound like it’s a rare thing. We are all weird.

22. Do I need a university degree to succeed in this game?

Not exactly in this game. But, in the game of life, it helps a ton.

23. There is so much competition out there. How do I stand out?

You don’t need a million followers to make a million dollars.

24. Why does no one follow me on social media?

Well, I would follow you if I’ve heard about you and like you. If this is the same for others, then either they haven’t heard about you or don’t like you.

 

Stay Positive & Follow Me @thegarthbox (but don’t expect spam messages)

Higher Education Gatekeepers Restrict Innovation

Garth Beyer

Two Yale students made news recently with their creation of a better version of the school’s course catalogue.

The site didn’t make Washington Post news for being a useful website. It made news for being blocked and shutdown by Yale. Just another example of higher education gatekeepers restricting student innovation.

It’s frustrating that while universities endorse the idea of innovation and creativity, they don’t provide the instruments to effectively create within policy guidelines.

Instead, school systems use their policies to restrict innovation. It’s their glass ceiling to creativity.

Some might argue it’s not a ceiling; that it’s the last roadblock to success. I say no.

Ideas aren’t like cars with a cinderblock pressing down on the gas pedal. Ideas have momentum, but when stopped, have to work at building the momentum again. And when two students get so far with an idea, restarting (to accommodate school policy) is more daunting than building some new idea.

The positive part?

It’s much more difficult to stop a passionate idea fueled by frustration.

 

Stay Positive & Take The Dyson Approach