Life Lesson

What Makes A Successful Garage Band

Garth Beyer

(If you don’t want to read, click the last hyperlink in this post.)

There’s no lack of talent when it comes to vocals or who can play a guitar or win over an audience with a ridiculously fast paced bass solo. It’s no longer about who can play an instrument and how well, but how many instruments they can play, how they can incorporate the multiple instruments into a show, and how they can show the audience their passion.

Times have changed but very few garage bands are falling behind. They’re excited to try new instruments, mish mash sounds, and – generally speaking – have fun. Something that is hard to say for those entering the professional world of freelance.

Last night I had the honor to see a handful of bands play at a Launchpad event. Launchpad is a statewide, alternative music competition for Wisconsin high school students who are in bands formed outside of the traditional music classroom ensembles. (view some of the bands here.) These high schoolers were incredible performers, showmakers, and artists.

But the truly exceptional ones brought out different instruments: extra drums, key board, violin. Now it’s now more common to have an extra instrument in a band, but the way these students incorporated them into their songs, well, that was real talent. (One band actually switched their trumpeter with the vocalist, vocalist with the drummer, drummer with the keyboard, and keyboard with the trumpeter. Impressive!)

The status quo is being kicked and bruised by those living the garage band or what I like to call, garage project workstyle/artstyle/lifestyle. There are no longer boundaries. You can no longer bring your one “instrument” and perform. You have to bring everything (all of your “instruments”) and perform some instrumental alchemy.

The worlds changing. Best to be a leader of it.

 

Stay Positive & Rubber Bands Are Still Accepted

Garth E. Beyer

 

That’s Not Really A Guest

Garth Beyer

At your first encounter with someone, whether it’s online, during work, or – in my case – at a Toastmasters meeting, you may think they are just a guest. What is a guest, though?

A guest is someone whom you meet outside of your routine life that you may or may not see again. Furthermore, a guest gives you two options to choose from. You can either treat them as a friend and connect with them, or you can carry on with your day without getting to know them.

Interact or ignore.

Laypeople base this decision off the degree of certainty that they think they will see the guest again. Those who expect to see the guest frequently will often choose to sit down and have a conversation. Those who expect to see the guest just this once will often choose to go no further than “Hello there.”

The linchpins of the world know that they need – no… they feel that it is only right to treat guests the same way they would a janitor or secretary, which not coincidentally is the same way they treat the average layperson or CEO.

Successful people don’t look toward equality, they look toward being human, connecting, and igniting positive responses. The only perk is that later down the line, having a conversation instead of ignoring a guest may come to benefit you. Heck, it’s just a simple real-world application of Pascal’s Wager.

Engaging in the life of a guest may or may not benefit you, but it’s always best to interact than to not.

 

Stay Positive & You Never Know When/Where You Will See Them Again, Trust Me

Garth E. Beyer

Not Settling But Keeping Where You Are At

Garth Beyer

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I’m a strong advocate for never settling, for accepting what you get whether you think you deserve it or not, and always striving for more.

However, there have been moments a dear friend reminds me not to settle with something. What is hard to convince him is that I’m not settling, I’m merely making the most of what I have at the moment.

I think to my Uncle who I continuously learn from. He once told me that although he is married and madly in love, he knows that there may be someone better out there for him. For one with a “do not settle” mindset, it’s hard to understand why he would stay with my aunt, but I get it, he is making the most of what he has now.*

When you make the most of what you have, it’s not settling.

Often times, making the most of what you have now is what leads to greater things in the future.

 

Stay Positive & Love Like There Are No Other Options And Your Options Will Multiply

Garth E. Beyer

*There are also points in life where you will have the chance to reach for something better, but you won’t take it. There is a type of satisfaction when settling that involves a sense of comfortability and there is a sense of satisfaction when settling that involves pure happiness. My uncle has the latter.

Trust Issues Be Gone

Garth Beyer

I still hear people say that they have trust issues; that they have a hard time trusting anyone until they work hard to earn it. These people are missing out… big.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” — Ernest Hemingway

I have always thought: you can either go through life trusting everyone until they lose it or you can go through life trusting no one until they earn it. Hopefully you can see the better of the two. But in the case you don’t (or you’re denying that you do), if you’re going to get screwed either way, wouldn’t you rather have your character be observed with the fact you have always given people the benefit of the doubt before you judged them without knowing their story?

Forever will I argue that trust is not solely earned – it can be given too.

Trust people, not cookies.

When it comes to people, trust, just trust until they give you a legitimate reason not to. As for cookies, well, raisin cookies that look a lot like chocolate chip cookies is why I will never trust another cookie again.

 

Stay Positive & Trust, You Can Always Stop If Things Don’t Work Out

Garth E. Beyer

Connect To Connect To Connections

Garth Beyer

Yesterday I participated in a Twitter chat that a dear friend of mine put together.

For some it was their first Twitter chat, for others, far from their last. #cxchat is where connectors, entrepreneurs, creatives and makers share resources on topics such as networking, relationship management, professional growth, and community development.

Hosted by Michelle, she came up with a question every ten minutes that introduced a new topic. Rather than going through my reaction to the chat, here are three notes I really want to make.

1.

2. (What I believe is) the most powerful moment of the chat – when Karthik tweeted “Knowledge is on wikipedia, what’s not is the courage to apply it.”

3. You can find the #cxchat summary here.

Oh, yes. Can’t end without saying that Michelle will be putting on another #cxchat Tuesday the 11th at 4:00p.m. eastern time.

 

Stay Positive & Looking For Role Models?

Garth E. Beyer

*Yes, number 1 was left blank because I was speechless. Speechless that there really are people out there that want to connect with you, hear your ideas, share them, nurture them, and encourage you in return for your encouragement. There are people who are not looking to make it big, but working to make it – whatever “it” is into something remarkable. I’m speechless because after connecting with these impresario’s, they connected me to even more.

What Makes A Successful Blog

Garth Beyer

Those who have said that content is everything, to focus on content first, that content matters most were partially wrong. Wrong, mainly because information is already infinite. Content is already there and all blogging is about is presenting information in an original way.*

What makes a successful blog is not so much the information you provide as how you provide it. Yes, of course it needs to be valuable information, but do you present it in a blunt, matter-of-fact way? Or, how about presenting it in a comedic, captain obvious way? Or, be extremely passionate. Or, express your message in 10 words or less.

Anyone can deliver, but how you deliver means everything.

*The restructuring of information is often misinterpreted as content creation. No. Content is already there. Restructuring is about show, not tell.

 

Stay Positive & Not What, But How

Garth E. Beyer

What Makes Us Better

Garth Beyer

I came across this article in the New York Times, “Does Great Literature Make Us Better?”

It encompasses the effect reading great literature has on our morality. The assumption is that the more literature we read, the more moral we become, that is, until we arrive at a level of moral expertise.

At the end of the article, I had an immediate thought far apart from the initial argument Gregory Currie makes. In fact, I think it’s an argument that he meant to make, but, alas, he had a word count.

What triggered my thought – which I am just about to share – was Currie’s first line in his last paragraph. After showing that many of the studies on this subject lack evidence, he acknowledges, “But it’s hard to avoid the thought that there is something in the anti-elitist’s worry.” His final note is that those who dedicate their time to reading such strong works of literature must greatly benefit from it; that it is not solely a form of aesthetic stimulus. Doing so puts them in a group of the elite, singling out those who do not exchange their time for cramming their brain with words.

I believe that Currie has taken only one small piece of the Moral Pie of Learning. Take anything that one has dedicated long tenuous hours to, that he has ruminated on, or that she has prioritized acting on over other actions which may result in a quicker benefit, and you will discover that one has become “better,” more morally enlightened.

If one were to floss their teeth for as many hours as someone were to reads great pieces of literature, I guarantee they will have arrived at conclusions about morality, the way of life, and have obtained a plethora of applicable analogies with dental floss being part of them – different, but as many as the person who read great literature.

Currie brings forth the question of whether we are naturally moral people and as a result, read more great literature, or if the great literature we read makes us moral people.

The simple fact is that the more of whatever we do, the more moral we become.

So what if you don’t read as much as someone else? Just be sure that what you are doing as much of, is something that you love. Moral elites are not made from reading great literature, they are made from doing what they love and doing it often.

 

Stay Positive & No Need To Worry

Garth E. Beyer