Every action you take is a drip.
A drip to mediocrity or a drip toward excellence.
A drip to above average or below.
A drip to overcoming fear or surrendering to it.
Stay Positive & Careful Which Pale You’re Filling
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Author: Garth Beyer
Cake
The point of growing in the workplace isn’t to get to the point where you can have your cake and eat it too.
The point is to get to the balance of the one making the cake and the one eating the cake. Not at the same time, but a back and forth.
After all, if you eat all the cake all the time, you’re not much of a team are you?
This goes for grunt work too. Sometimes you’re the one setting up the fireworks for others to watch and sometimes you’re the one watching.
Not sure about you, but I like the back-and-forth of it all. It keeps one humble.
Stay Positive & And More Grateful For The Times You Get To Eat The Cake
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Enlighten Others
What Do They Want To Be
Whether you’re looking to build a successful partnership or a profitable business, you won’t get there unless you understand your target.
It’s a balance of giving and receiving, of asking and answering, of caring and giving a reason for them to care about you. Sometimes you’ve got to be selfless, and sometimes you’ve got to seek what’s in it for you (especially when it comes to asking for feedback).
There are many ways to understand your target. You can guess what they want. You can read their purchase history. You can scan their “liked” pages on Facebook.
Or…or…
You can ask them what they want to be.
Once you know what a person wants to be, you can ruminate what will get them there, then sell (or give?) them that. Nothing strengthens a relationship B2C or B2B more than providing what is already desired rather than attempting to convince people they want something you made.
The other benefit of asking someone face-to-face is you skip all the research that gets you to the same conclusion. I suppose you could do the research of a large group of people, but is the masses what you’re really after?
Just as success happens moment by moment, so does business, only person to person to person.
Stay Positive & Treat Different People Differently (And Everyone Is Different)
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Enlighten Others
When “I Don’t Have Time” Is A Valuable Excuse
Here’s a shortlist of acceptable things to not have time for.
- Listening to the devil’s advocate (or playing it)
- Being sad it didn’t work out the way you imagined
- Listening to your lizard brain
- Doing work you don’t love
- Hearing someone complain
- Sleeping in
- Making more powerpoint slides
- Feeling bad about the feedback you got
Stay Positive & Yes, They Are Valuable Excuses
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Enlighten Others
If You Look At Marketing As Spending Money
then I hope you are looking at it as spending money on giving people what they want, delivering the already-desired, or at least spending money on getting people to think about things differently.
The wrong way to look at marketing is in the way of spending money for attention, expanding unfocused reach, appealing to the masses.
You won’t make it in the marketing world if you believe in the latter.
Stay Positive & It’s A Big World Out There, Are You Marketing Right?
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Enlighten Others
Episode 25: Feedback, Stopping Business Growth, Convincing Vs Converting And More – Podcast
On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we chatted about when you should stop growing your business (Yup, STOP growing it), the tiers of keeping in touch with people, the difference between convincing and converting as well as the difference between being defensive and seeking to be understood. As always, we had a bonus topic (bonus in the sense of always random, thought of in the moments before starting the podcast) where we talked about what advice we would give someone who has a tough time asking for or receiving feedback.
Enjoy. Then enjoy some more.
Episode 25: Feedback, Stopping Business Growth, Convincing Vs Converting And More
Growth – What is one indicator that you should stop growing your business?
Keeping in touch – Is sending an email considered “keep in touch”? or does one need to meet another face-to-face to keep a strong relationship?
Facts – What is the best way to convince someone to accept a fact is true?
Defensive vs Understanding – What is your interpretation of the difference between being defensive and seeking to be understood?
Bonus – What advice would you give someone who has a tough time asking for/receiving feedback?
Stay Positive & Experience Trumps Facts And Figures
Enlighten Others
Plating What People Want
You may want the lifestyle the scene above portrays.
If you do, I can tell you how to get there. Interested?
If you don’t, is it poor marketing?
A poor marketer’s instinct might be to wonder how she can advertise this is the lifestyle you want until it’s the lifestyle you want. It’s a great thing this method doesn’t work despite the not-yet-smart marketers of the world insisting it’s an effective strategy.
It’s important (if you care any bit about the marketing world) that you realize the marketer’s job is not to get attention so you can sell what a company has already made, rather the marketer’s job is to think up how to plate something the market is already interested in.
If you think you have a weird product, it’s likely something the market will want. Why? Because people are weird. Now, the best way to market it? Weirdly.
Stay Positive & Constant Ads Telling People What They Want Is Not Weird
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