Author: Garth Beyer

Hyperlocal Is The Way To Go

Garth Beyer

What would you do if you ran your own news organization?

I’ve thought this over many times. I would take Seth Godin’s advice and create a local newspaper. I would want it to be community oriented and focus more on making people feel important by listening to their stories. I’ve come to find that everyone (and I mean everyone) has a remarkable story to tell. It would be our job to tell it.

Remarkable stories get read. Remarkable often comes from that which is close to theheart. Simple as that.

 

Stay Positive & Home Is Where The Heart Is

Select, Don’t Compress

Garth Beyer

I was previously notorious for interviews that lasted an hour and a half or longer. Then add the time for a tour (if applicable) on top of that. After I was satisfied I would find someone who my interviewee mentioned and interview them as well. I covered a lot of ground and it allowed me to write a lot.

Similarly, when I wrote articles that I used online sources for, my article typically contained a plethora of sources, quotes, and information related to the topic. My efforts were to try to pull information from as many sources as possible then connect all the dots.

Both of these methods have led to some of my worst work. In fact, a recorded hour and a half interview I did, I lost when my phone crashed. Thinking back on the interview, I had what I needed within 10 minutes of the interview. Not that the other one hundred and twenty minutes were not valuable, they simply were not necessary for the article I was writing.

“News stories work best when they are narrow and deep, not wide and thin.” – Al Tompkins

It’s still a battle to cut and not cram every detail into an article. I no longer do interviews over an hour. (Multiple interviews are acceptable.) If there is a tour, I schedule it for 30 min on another day. As for all the online sources, a HT to editors.

 

Stay Positive & I’ll Skip Dinner, I Just Want The Dessert

At The End Of The Day

Garth Beyer

Your imagination is not kaput. Your creative tank is not drained. Your intellect is not exhausted. Your talent has not waned. Your skill has not faltered.

At the end of the day, what is stopping you from continuing to create what you create, from doing more of what you do, is willpower.

We only have so much willpower each day. If you find yourself with little to no willpower at the end of the day and you spent it on your art. Well, high-five to you. Not many people exhaust their willpower on a daily basis, let alone on what’s truly important to them.

 

Stay Positive & Tomorrow Is A New Day (with your willpower restored)

Garth E. Beyer

Chaos

Garth Beyer

Swim in it, strive in it, bathe in it. Chaos is the playground of success.

From years of observing and analysing what the successful people in the world do (whatever the definition of success might be), I’ve realized that you can run around like a chicken with its head cut off… and still get creative work done.

Heck, some might argue that’s the best condition to act in.

 

Stay Positive & Cluck, Cluck

Garth E. Beyer

If You Can’t Change The Paint…

Garth Beyer

then change the surface.

I was sitting in a café that had some brilliant art hung up on the walls. With closer inspection, I found that its acrylic paint on sandpaper. Yes, on sandpaper.

Why, you ask?

Simple. The painting artist has a limited number of paints she can use. However, the number of items that paint can be used on is endless.

You don’t need to discover a new tool or paint to use, you just need to change the surface.

 

Stay Positive & Use What You Have On Something Different

Garth E. Beyer

Doing More Than You’ve Done

Garth Beyer

Of course that’s not possible, but feeling like you’ve done more than you have is.

Shoes tell a lot about a person. I always say that you never have to step in anyone’s shoes to know what their life is like, you’ve just got to look at the bottom of them.

Tried and true… until recently.

I’m wearing my second pair of Steve Madden shoes and I feel bad. I feel like I’ve done more than I actually have. You look at the bottom of my shoes and all traction is worn flat. Oh, and the soles are cracked, creating a hole for my heel to nearly touch the pavement with each step. (They actually did with my last pair!)

Alas, I’ve done very little of anything exciting while wearing these shoes. A few dress-up events here, a few nice dinners there and that’s it. No parkour, no carnivals, or community interactive events. In other words, I’ve done little while wearing these shoes. They seem to reflect the opposite.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe most people will only think the shoe is poorly made, and it is, but one thing is guaranteed: everything you use makes you feel something.

People love products that make them feel good, make them feel motivated, better-than-average, and like they accomplished something. Whether you think about how you feel when you use something or not, if you’re creating something for someone else to use, you don’t have a choice but to consider it.

 

Stay Positive & How Does That Make You Feel?

Garth E. Beyer

A Tribal Puzzle

Garth Beyer

We are all programmed to find, build, and invest in tribes. It’s just one natural order of being human. Seth Godin proves it in his book Tribes and Lee Richard states the obvious of it in his introduction to Jack Reacher’s Rules.

What puzzles me, though, is that we work best in smaller tribes, yet strive to make large tribes. In businesses, the rule is 150, Dunbar’s number. It’s the maximum number of people who can work socially and effectively in a group. Yet, most businesses do their best to fit as many employees in one large building as possible.

There are three major startup curators in Madison, WI. (100state, Sector67, and gener8tor.) All are working to come together under one roof. To that, I ask, why?

When all data reflects the smaller the better, why strive for more, more, more?

The way I see it is this, if you release a product, make sure it targets a small audience. Focus all your attention on the 20 percent that you can profit from and forget the other 80 percent that will take all your time and energy. And if by some chance, your product begins to appeal to the other 80 percent as strongly as the first 20 percent, then open it up. But until that day, quit striving for it.

I guarantee more creative projects will come out of the three startup curators while separated than when under the same roof.

 

Stay Positive & Less Is More, More, More

Garth E. Beyer