Author: Garth Beyer

The Most Important Mindset For Building Your Skill Set

The Most Important Mindset For Building Your Skill Set

Garth Beyer

Mindset, Skill set, Success

There’s a particular mindset that makes you indispensable, a true linchpin.

It is a commitment to see a project through.

I’ve had (emphasis on past tense) team members who started a project with me, but then ran away when real work was in order.

We’ve all had people tell us they will do something, then fail to do it.

I’ve made my own mistakes of sitting back, too. A perfect example is Curb Magazine.

As managing editor, I’m involved in the entire process of making a magazine from scratch. From philosophy ideation, all the way through the launch and distribution of the final product. I work with four different teams (editorial, online, creative, and business) to reach distribution.

After we submit our design to the press house, and before distribution, the press house gives our publisher a proof copy of what they will print. Instead of getting involved in the last proofing process (the last chance to make any corrections to the magazine), I let my other team leaders handle it.

I didn’t see the process through, and, as a result of leaving the rest of the project to them (and no insult to their talent), two words are missing at the bottom of the first page of my story in the printed version of the magazine… all 10,000 of our one-time printed version. #lessonlearned

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All of the skills businesses, companies, agencies, and leaders look for… they all make up the mindset of one’s commitment to a project, to their work, to passion.

When you get in the habit of seeing things all the way through, there’s no doubt you learn and strengthen all the skills employers and team members look for.

When you don’t follow through, you bring everyone down and hold yourself back.

 

Stay Positive & They’re Not Kidding When They Say Success Is A Mindset, Not A Skill List

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What To Price It At?

Garth Beyer

The book I published at the start of the year costs $3.99. It’s what I would pay for it.

Fivebucks coffee… I mean… Starbucks coffee costs $5.00 because you’re paying for the mental energy (confidence, not caffeine) that believing in Sbuxs’ story gives you.

The Who’s Up? app my team and I are pitching to investors costs people $4.99 to download, not because of a specific profit we want to make, but because it’s the price point we believe people will pay as proof of their determination to be go-getters in the morning.

The value of mass is calculated.

The value of art, of passion, of worthwhile purchases is perceived.

 

Stay Positive & Listen To Your Perception, It Saves Time

Who’s Up? An App In Need Of Investors

Garth Beyer

I’m throwing this idea out there in hopes someone can make it happen.

Who’s Up?

 

Stay Positive & Steal Our Idea

Unlocking Potential: Interview #7 With Dana Arnold

Unlocking Potential: Interview #7 With Dana Arnold

Garth Beyer
Dana Arnold

I’ve ran into a handful of linchpins since my last segment of Unlocking Potential, and I am ecstatic to be sharing these interviews with you again. Remember, linchpins are people who are essential to business success.

One of the easiest ways to check if you are doing work that matters, if you’re a linchpin is to ask yourself if your business and the people you work with can continue without you around? Are you essential?

Dana Arnold is a linchpin at Hiebing, an integrated marketing and brand development firm in Madison, Wisconsin. She is remarkable. While typically we start by giving some background, I’ve jumped the gun and wrote a profile feature on her already.

In short, she’s a Public Relations guru, mentor, and a woman who started her first PR business at 25. Without further ado, welcome Dana Arnold.

Q: What are three main skills you need to do what you do?

Dana: Strong communication – writing, listening, speaking; empathy helps on two fronts – understanding a target market and counseling clients; creativity – I’m in the idea business and finding new angles and opportunities moves the brands I represent forward.

Q: I have my own reasons, but what do you think makes you indispensable, a true linchpin?

Dana: This is a tough one! On my best days, I hope that it’s my constant pursuit for what’s possible. I think that any team (including mine) wants to be inspired and pushed. I think I do that on a pretty consistent basis. It makes the individual better, the team better, the work better and ultimately our clients better.

Q: Where do you find inspiration to test new waters and walk past boundaries?

Dana: I can’t help but want to push past boundaries… fiercely independent and really curious (just ask my mom!) Daily inspiration I find most often in reading, which I do constantly – mostly digital reading at this point of articles, blogs, tweets. There are some people I read who are in the business – but most of what I find inspiring is reading things on leadership.

Q: What are a few habits that are critical to becoming a remarkable PR pro?

Dana: Reading, daily. Getting out from behind the computer to TALK to people: co-workers, clients, media, vendors.

Q: In one sentence, what is your life calling?

Dana: In every interaction, live positively.

Q: What are four life lessons you have learned from following your calling?

Dana: 1. You can just go with what surrounds you – or influence it. I choose to influence it. 2. Perseverance.  3. Everything matters – every word, every gesture, every piece of interaction has an impact. 4. LAUGH – a lot – and surround yourself with people who want to laugh along with you.

Q: How do you push your client’s or your team’s imagination and motivation?

Dana: With clients, I regularly share new ideas, opportunities and approaches to what we’re doing – and being sure to connect those items to why their target audience cares about it (and how it can move the needle for their business). I hope that I inspire my team’s motivation and imagination by leading by example… and asking a lot of questions (not giving them the answers)

Q: What do you do to continue your growth as a PR pro?

Dana: I’m a member of PRSA and Counselor’s Academy (a sector of PRSA for PR agency leaders); I read voraciously; I surround myself with a really smart team that pushes me; I attend key conferences such as SXSW

Q: What motto do you live by?

Dana: As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. (An excerpt of a full quote that I LOVE from Marianne Williamson)

Q: If you got to write a test for those who want to go into heaven, what is one question that would be on the test?

Dana: How much did you love?

Q: What couldn’t you live without?

Dana: Coffee (you’ve got this!) + Wine (hey, you gave it your best shot!)

Q: What is a project you’ve wanted to create, but haven’t had the time to do?

Dana: Something that helps set up young, professional women to succeed in the workplace.

Q: Where can people find you and your art?

Dana: @BigKitchen and www.hiebing.com/blogworthy

 

Stay Positive & Let Your Light Shine

Who Is The Hustle For?

Garth Beyer

Hustle For Yourself, Do What You LoveAlex wrote a good piece about marathon hustling. My reminder to all is to fail fast. The quickest way to figure out your perfect marathon hustle is to sprint, burnout, then sprint at just a bit slower speed, burnout and repeat until you’ve found your pace with no burnout.

After finding your pace, still find ways to fail, of course.

But then you’re at the point that defines you as an entrepreneur. Once you’ve figured out the perfect method for success on one path, it’s on to the next.

This is what makes entrepreneurship so exciting. Once you’ve found your marathon hustle, your off in a new direction, a new race, finding new ways to fail, to learn, to grow.

And as Alex reminded us: make sure the hustle is for you. It’s the only way you can guarantee others will benefit from your work, your art.

 

Stay Positive & Follow Your Heart, It’s The Best Business Coach Out There

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Your Consumers Are Only Getting Smarter

Your Consumers Are Only Getting Smarter

Garth Beyer

Branding

The uninformed consumer is passé.

It’s ever more important to put a story out that matters (if not because you actually have one that matters, but because it is becoming the only way to survive in business).

The days of advertising and appealing to the mass are over. Now people are steadily searching out brands, reading about stories, seeing reviews from people who worked at the company of the product they want to buy. They actively ask what their friends think of a particular product before making a purchase. They read the “about us” page before they continue looking at what to buy.

Very soon Unilever will lose customers to their brands because people will see that they run provocative ads for their Axe brand that directly counters the messages they are trying to get across with their Dove brand.

These conglomerates that are trying to reach the mass by switching what brand they slap on a product won’t benefit them in the long run, simply because people are now realizing how one company is running the majority, and they’re not happy about that.

Take the beer industry for instance. The rise in craft brewery sales can be pinned (among other things) to consumer’s realization that Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors are the parent companies to some of their previously favorite beer brands.

Now people are starting to go to the restaurant that has a family story over the chain restaurant where computers rule.

In the past, having 20 brands owned owned by a parent brand worked. Now people want one brand (the parent) with one product. And that’s good for you and me because it offers us the chance to tell a story that truly matters, resonates with humans (not robotic consumerists), and allows us to pour our hearts into one bucket.

 

Stay Positive & Being Passionately Forward Leads To Consumer Attachment

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Where To Find Your Muse

Where To Find Your Muse

Garth Beyer

Find Your Muse, Stay In Your Flow

The feeling of boredom comes to every linchpin, artist, and entrepreneur from time to time. The reason is quite clear: actions have become easy, challenges are few and far between, and there is less need of a growing skill.

As a result, the impresario seeks out larger challenges that require focus, additional connections, and an incessant need to learn new skills to accomplish the goal.

But once the artist sets down that path, she realizes she has set too lofty of a goal, too large of an expectation of herself, too tough of a challenge, so she returns to the start of this post, desiring a calmer path, a quieter challenge, an easier goal.

As Peter Turchi writes, it’s a cycle of satisfaction and frustration. To find our muse we must find the flow between the anxiety of a difficult practice and the boredom of an easy task.

The real problem isn’t doing what it takes to stay within your flow, your muse; it’s noticing when you’re outside of it, when a task is too easy or a challenge too large. Both of which are slippery slopes that lead to failure and resentment.

 

Stay Positive & Be Aware Of Your Flow

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