Author: Garth Beyer

A Chance For Change

Garth Beyer
Just one activity at the DreamBank. Drop the disc and it flips a card at the bottom, then you read the card. Ironically when I dropped my chip down the "Perspective" column, my chip got stuck.
Just one activity at the DreamBank. Drop the disc and it flips a card at the bottom, then you read the card. Ironically when I dropped my chip down the “Perspective” column, my chip got stuck.

With every event, PR strategy and celebration, you have a chance to create real change, not just make a profit, not just get new customers, not just have more people subscribe to your newsletter.

During the Madison Winter Festival, American Family Insurance opened their DreamBank office on the square to divvy out free inspiration and hot chocolate. I would bet 90 percent of folks who went inside the DreamBank had no clue what it was and won’t remember that it was American Family Insurance. If I didn’t have the goal to share stories like this, I doubt I would have saw or remembered that it was American Family Insurance either.

If the majority of people won’t remember the brand, then what’s the point of contributing to the Madison Winter Festival? Surely the 10 percent are meaningful (heck, I’m blogging about it). But that’s an added benefit, not the intention.

The intention of the DreamBank is to get people thinking about their dreams. That’s what all the activities inside were about. Pulling from DreamBank’s (American Family Insurance) website, “Dreams. They are the most valuable things we will ever own. They are the embodiment of our hopes, goals and aspirations. They empower us, drive us and define us – as individuals and a nation – and the pursuit of our dreams is a part of what makes life rich and meaningful.”

As freelancers, as business owners, as crafters, as “insert passion/occupation here,” we all have a chance to create real change. I don’t know a lot about American Family Insurance’s history, but I know enough that I can confidently say they didn’t get to becoming the success they are now by just selling insurance.

They sold the most valuable currency there is. Dreams.

 

Stay Positive & What Are You Selling?

Photo taken by myself

The Pickier You Are

Garth Beyer

Pick the Gold

Here’s a piece of advice you won’t buy (until you finish reading the post): don’t be the agency with the most accounts, don’t be the client service team with the most clients, don’t be the business that tries to appeal to the masses.

If you’re shooting for success, whether it’s in entrepreneurship or freelance, you have two options. You can be the best in terms of producing a select few outstanding accounts/clients/products or you can be the best in terms of producing the most accounts/clients/products.

With the latter, you sacrifice a lot. You take on clients who don’t have high expectations of themselves. You end up running client services for clients you don’t care about. You create products without any heart, without a story worth buying.

With the former, quite plainly, you get to practice your best. Now, I can’t express enough how important it is to define success for yourself. Even if it’s an assorted list of things, feelings or goals. You don’t need some four paragraph structured mission statement. Life isn’t cut and dry enough for that to work anyway. To define success is to understand what being the best really means.

Success – or growth of that matter – are not always by the numbers. Think of yourself as a publisher. Do you take on 5,000 novels a year, pushing them out the door as quickly as possible? Or do you get picky and cater to the 100 novels that are sure bestsellers?

This example is about to get interesting, so keep up.

Perhaps you’re going into PR. Are PR agencies looking to hire as many aspiring specialists as possible to build the agency up? Or are they going to seek the few specialists who actually represent their title of “special”its? Let’s flip this around now.

You’re looking for a job in PR. Are you going to shotgun your résumé to all the big agencies that run through new interns like a laundry list? Or are you going to seek the small agency that pours every drop of their heart into the work they do (after all, they have the time since they aren’t trying to baby an intern a week)?

You have an option to be remarkable, to be picky.

 

Stay Positive & Why Waste It?

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There’s No Point In Complaining About What Is Or What Was

Garth Beyer

Hell

I’ve joked around about complaining, but other than that, I don’t bring it up too often. The reason is simple. I don’t surround myself by people who complain, thus, I don’t feel obligated to find something to complain about. Nor do I end up complaining that so many people complain. There’s just no point in complaining. Let me share a quick story of why.

I was chatting with some colleagues yesterday when one of them recalled me tweeting about the novel I was wrapping up edits on. I proceeded to tell her about National Novel Writing Month and how I wrote all 50,000 words in one month to produce my first novel. I broke it down to her and the other colleagues now listening that it comes out to roughly 1,700 words a day. A different colleague then asked me how I did that. I said to him, “It was hell.” (It really was.) He shook his head. He didn’t believe me.

The fact that I had written 50,000 words in one month seemed like a miracle to them. But when I stated that I went through hell to do it. All the sudden they didn’t believe it. They couldn’t. All they saw was a completed novel. All 50,000 words. (How could it be hell if you did it? I’m sure they thought.)

There are two lessons I really want you to take from this. The first is the majority of people who complain while they are working, don’t finish. In a sense, they complain themselves out of the goal they originally had. They complain themselves into quitting. They complain until everyone they complain to doesn’t care about what they are doing and so why continue doing it?

The second is no one is going to believe you when you tell them all that you could have complained about before you met your goal, shipped your novel, painted your masterpiece, booked that NYC gig. They will gladly accept words of inspiration and encouragement. But complaints? Forget about it.

If you’re afraid to go through hell, by all means, go through it afraid. But don’t by into the idea of once you’re in hell, you’re stuck. There are people all around you everyday coming out the other side (whether you hear them complain about it or not).

 

Stay Positive & Flame Resistant Clothing Helps

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How To Become A Breakthrough Blogger

Garth Beyer

You’ve got to do crazy shit that other people wish they had the courage to do. It’s really as simple as that.

You can blog every day for years, but that’s no guarantee you’ll attract the following you want.

Travel bloggers get popular (and make bank!) because they dropped everything to travel or they had a heartbreak, travelled to get over it and blogged along the way. Their blogs tell not just any old story, but one other’s wish they could live. Like reading a book you can’t set down.

Business bloggers with all the readers have all the readers because they’ve made some extremely risky calls or have dealt with some outrageous ventures, customers, competitors, etc.,. No one visits their blog to hear that it was another uneventful day in the office.

Life and style bloggers… they don’t just have good taste. They get others to look at them like style gods. Do you get it yet?

That’s why we read the blogs we do, isn’t it? We want to live like the authors of them. And in an almost indescribable way, we feel as though we are when we read their blogs.

 

Stay Positive & Bloggers Take Ridiculous Risks

Aggression

Garth Beyer

Some use it to fuel their writing. Others use it to push themselves during their workouts. I suggest you use it to get a job.

I’ve spoken to Jack Craver, journalist for the Capital Times. He told me, “If you want to make it [in journalism], you’ve got to be aggressive.”

I would argue that if you want to get anywhere in life, you’ve got to be aggressive. That line you’ve heard about, that line you get into after you get a degree, it’s nonexistent. No one hires passive prospects. Getting in a line is a joke. Knocking down the door of where you want to work, that’s what you’ve got to do.

In a simplified version, the easiest way directors cut the applicant pool of any job opening or opportunity is to toss out everyone who they feel doesn’t want it, who they’ve never heard from. And how does one know that?

Have you sent follow-up emails? Have you called them? Have you toured the agency, friended any of the Director’s friends, asked for an informational interview?

Getting a job is easy. Having the balls to do so, being aggressive, that’s the hard part.

 

Stay Positive & “Want” Is An Action Verb, Not A Silent Desire

What Are They Admitting To?

Garth Beyer

Flappy Bird

You’re searching for customers. Your marketing. Your advertising like crazy to get new folks to buy your product or service or enroll in your seminar or MOOC. To get anyone to try whatever you are offering requires them to admit to something. But what is it? Do you know? You need to.

It’s hell trying to top your competitors, it’s even more difficult to get your competitor’s followers to follow you. Why? Because to do so, those followers have to admit that they want more (most don’t) or that they made the wrong choice to begin with.

Take a second to realize how monumental of an internal confession that is.

I keep wondering why so few people who loved Flappy Bird aren’t trying anything similar like Ironpants, Super Ball Juggling or Red Bouncing Ball Spikes. To do so is to admit that they made a wrong choice of playing Flappy Bird to begin with. Either they don’t want to admit to that or they simply don’t want better, they want Flappy Bird.

I don’t suggest you find a niche because you can’t compete with someone like Apple or Zynga. You could certainly make something as good or better than them. Getting people to admit they like you more or that they were wrong to like the other competitor first, that’s the exhaustive (and endless!) battle.

Unless of course, Apple or Zynga die and there’s room in the market for you. Then again, like I said, not everyone is flapping over to different games after Dong Nguyen took Flappy Bird down.

Niches are important. Find them.

*UPDATE: since writing this post IronPants and another flappy bird spinoff has made the top app list. I would be fascinated to see how many users of these apps know of flappy bird.

Stay Positive & It’s Easier To Get People To Admit They Wanted Something Your Competitor Didn’t Offer

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Fear Pursues You

Garth Beyer

The inherent trouble with your pursuits is not that they can be broken down into either your pursuit of security or your pursuit of gratification, but that by definition, there is bound to be fear in your pursuit of either.

It’s the fear that not only stops you in your tracks, but it also isolates you. The effects of fear are to isolate you, separate you, cripple you, make you feel anxious, desperate, like you need to run away.

But fear is a fickle thing. One moment you fear this, but as you notice it, your fear leeches onto something else. Do you ever stop to notice that you’re arguing with yourself?

“I’m afraid of A.”

“No I’m not.”

“Right, because I’m actually afraid of B.”

And through the alphabet you will go, again and again. You may run away at A. Or you may argue endlessly to prevent action (which, in my opinion is the same as running away, if not worse). Or you can accept every letter in the alphabet.

“Yes, I’m afraid of A, B, and C, but I’m going to see if this works.”

That’s really all we can do in life isn’t it. Just see if it works. Perhaps it’s this mindset that makes the whole alphabet pointless. Perhaps it’s the best way to dance with fear.

 

Stay Positive & HT to Krishnamurti