Author: Garth Beyer

A business plan, a conversation, a program is much more clearly communicated when it starts with what it’s not. It gives not only context, but actual meaning around what you are/ it is.

Just as important is who you’re leaving out.

Before you go into who your target is, tell me who you’re excluding.

The biggest brands are better described by what they are not and who they exclude than what they are and who they’re working to attract.

Exclusion builds hype, a tribe, a core network of people and widgets that believe in their importance and self-worth.

And that’s all brand building really is: getting people to have more self-worth by feeling included in something that’s bigger then themselves.

 

Stay Positive & You Can’t Have The Feeling Of Inclusion Without Exclusion, So Own It

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Many of my friends in highschool thought outsmarting monotonous work was done by figuring out how to not have to do the work. Practicing the same math formula was dumb to them, so they used the odd number answers in the back of the book and split up the even number answers among one another to lighten the load.

The reality of it is the actions they took were making them less smart. When it comes to the grunt work of any industry, the only way to outsmart it is by doing it so many times that it becomes easy, it becomes quick, and, if you’re really smart, you’ll find a better way of doing it.

Outsmarting an activity is about making it better, not about avoidance.

In the case of the math-adverse friends, they’ll never learn how to make the formula better, shorter, stronger because they’ve never invested the time in learning how it works to start.

Conquering the monotonous is a privilege, it’s also a gateway, not to showing your peers that you can handle the bigger more dynamic items that life and work have, but that you can construct a wear resistant foundation, a tight-knit understanding of how something simple works.

I’ve found that improving the simple is often more difficult (and rewarding) than improving the big and complex.

 

Stay Positive & Learn To Love The Grunt Work

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Marketers are often quick to assess where to spend the advertising fund.

This platform versus that platform.

Native advertising or referral marketing.

Better, I believe, to take a step back and question where the advertising fund might be better spent in establishing deeper connections.

Where can you delight more?

How can you make your product more remarkable than your advertising?

Often times, the best way to spend an advertising budget is in making your product or service greater, so much so that it advertises itself.

 

Stay Positive & Remarkable Products Are Better Than Remarkable Ads About An Average Product

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There are two kinds of businesspeople.

The first is always at battle with competitors. She believes all other businesses are competition. She doesn’t want to give business advice to anyone for fear of them stealing market share. This type of business person is always full of qualm. She’s often in it for the sake of money above anything else. Don’t get her wrong, she loves the grind. She is in her happy place when she’s dominating her rivals.

The second type of businessperson is fighting a war. She doesn’t get lost in the battles of competition because she’s trying to make more people aware of her industry. The more people who are aware, the likelier they will try her business and fall in love. She believes similar businesses are her partners and friends. She’ll give advice to anyone who shows they care and want to increase the value of the market. This type of business person is always optimistic, caring and grateful for the challenges that push her to be better. She’s often in it for the sake of loving what she does above anything else.

I firmly believe you need to decide which type of business person you will be and work to be the best in that personality. Most, by default, end up being some insufficient form of the first. Every market needs business people like that. It’s not necessarily that they are bad people, they are merely narrow-mindedly driven to be the best at whatever cost.

You can be successful either way, but please decide which it will be for you because you’ll face business problems and forks in the road and it’ll make addressing them much easier when you already know how you will.

Deciding now also makes it easier to grow, to seek out those who are like you. It helps you choose who your real competitors are. It assists you in carving your special piece of the market.

 

Stay Positive & Which Will It Be? What Are You Doing Now To Own That?

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There is passion and there is what helps fuel that passion.

Consider what often drives your passion. Is it the monotonous flow of thought during work? Is it the routine of your life that pushes you to break the mold and give your all to something?

Passion often dies when the yang of it does. Passion 100 percent of the time is exhausting. We need something to keep us going, even if it might be something that feels like it is holding us back.

What is your contrary force that is actually complementary?

 

Stay Positive & Hold Onto That

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One of the most important marketing questions to ask when figuring out how to market a product or service is: what does the customer want to do?

The problem isn’t that one gets flustered by the question. The problem is that the answer gets longer and longer.

“The customer wants to try something new and be included in a group of linkminded people and go home to share the product with others and feel good waking up each morning knowing that they have the product and can feel secure about it not breaking for a while and maybe they can even pass it on to their kids and…”

This story could go on, but the best marketed products don’t.

They acknowledge a single problem and devote energy to being that single solution.

Smart marketers let the customer tell the rest of the story themselves.

As a marketer, if you try to extend the story too long people begin to call bullshit.

You can’t be everything to everyone.

 

Stay Positive & So What Exactly Does The Customer Want To Do?

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If you consider what persuasion is, it’s not manipulation or an improper use of control.

Persuasion is really communicating the meaningful.

You persuade by relaying emotional benefits and explaining how what you have to offer impacts an existing worldview.

Persuasion is about being human, vulnerable and showing that you don’t just know, but actually feel how the other person feels, what challenges they’re facing, what motivations they have.

The facts and details and the “what” of what you have to offer matter, but not to start.

 

Stay Positive & To Start, Show You Can Wear Their Shoes

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