Author: Garth Beyer

The quickest way to grow your team is to encourage them to teach one another.

Not through lunch and learns or organized meetings to recap something that was done. These events make others aware of knowledge that is out there, but it doesn’t contribute to the experience of the team.

At work we’re focusing on a cycle of learning, doing and teaching. Most organizations rock at doing, it’s what each employee is employed to do. Learning is often done on the go, out of desire to grow individually, and to gain an advantage over other businesses. The weakest link is teaching.

The strongest action you can take is to ask someone if they want to learn something new. To walk them through an action; not to recap it in a group setting, but to repeat the doing in a 1-1 environment.

You may be a rock star, but what are you doing to teach others to be?

 

Stay Positive & Your Workplace Needs You More Than You Know

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The shoes of success are always larger than the entrepreneurs feet.

If the shoes you’re wearing now fit your feet, then there’s no room to grow.

The entrepreneurs secret to success is that she always wears shoes two sizes too big.

It’s uncomfortable. Tough to walk in. People notice and may make fun of you.

That is, until you grow into them.

 

Stay Positive & You Will Grow Into Them

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All remarkable work is criticized at first. Great work is shunned. Real art and the creators of it are always castigated by the naysayers when their work is first shipped.

Those who are now famous, successful or just plain happy with their lives are so because they didn’t wait to be told they were great.

They kept performing after being boo’d off stage, they kept creating after one art gallery said their art wasn’t good enough, they kept brewing even after one beer connoisseur sent a video of them dumping the brewery’s beer down the drain.

These moments suck, but why let anyone stop you from doing your best again and again?

Perhaps, next time you’ll do even better. In fact, it’s certain you will.

 

Stay Positive & Ignore The Naysayers

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The next step, level, raise, promotion, situation will always be uncomfortable.

It is always a bit risky to make progress, and with that risk comes fear.

Fear of not being good enough or not being able to handle it.

Remarkable thing is, you always can.

 

Stay Positive & Keep Moving Up

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When there’s downtime, you may want to relax, keep to your comfort zone, maybe your lizard brain motivates you to clean your inbox and complete some busy-work.

That’s no way to get better.

Nor is looking to others that are on or near your level. Doing what they do, offering to help them with their workload since you’ve completed yours keeps you from getting better. You may be able to do your work quicker and stronger, but you’re not doing bigger more remarkable work.

One seamless path to getting better is to look to what those way ahead of you are doing and do that. If you see them going to meetings with potential clients to talk about their business, schedule some yourself.

If you see them crafting a message strategy for a big brand, craft one too and run it by them. “Hey, I saw you were working on a message strategy for the local brewery. Here’s something I came up with in my downtime.”

The only way to get better is to

1. Do things you’ve never done before
2. Take actions that scare you
3. Play outside your comfort zone
4. Use downtime to get better

By all means, if someone asks you for help, do the right thing. But if you’re wondering what to do with your downtime, don’t spend it doing what you always do. Invest it in something different, something better.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Wait To Be Asked, Pick Yourself

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I encourage those writing a business plan to do the marketing last. Takes notes of all the ideas you ponder while working on the rest of the plan, but spend your energy on your story instead of your marketing.

Doing so shifts the business, your mentality and your customer base.

It goes from being a business that needs to advertise to a business that it’s customers will talk to others about. It goes from a series of publicity events for awareness to being a brand that fits perfectly into the story customers are telling themselves.

The most important part of the business plan is the business itself; it’s the source of every signal, every communication, touch, feeling, newsletter, email, receipt…

Frame your scarcity and paint it with value. In doing so, you create a business that markets itself and the “marketing” portion of your plan is just for fun, it’s not out of necessity.

 

Stay Positive & Start With Your Brand Story

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In the fast-paced world of people creating something that’s different and others craving it, the riskiest move one can make is to do nothing at all, to stay in the safe zone, to keep comfortable.

 

Stay Positive & The Real Risk Is Standing Still

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