GarthBox

It’s easy to find two of the same product or service out there. Actually, easy enough to find dozens of them.

How do you pick the one with more value?

Well, look to the maker, of course.

Who has more heart? Who cares more? Who loves, truly loves, the product they’re making or service they’re providing?

That right there is why brands matter as well as the culture and story of the people behind them.

(And if you’re the one that is the maker reading this, it’s worth double checking that you’re the one that’s worth being chosen over the others. If not, then let’s find a way to do what you love. People are incredible at detecting who truly cares and who doesn’t.)

Stay Positive & Love What You Do

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Too often information is placed in one spot and never moved.

Who has time for that, anyway? There is work to be done.

But information placement is part of design, and as part of design, needs your regular attention.

By all means, if no one is reading your information, make better information, but also try a different placement.

Your website might not be the best spot for it. The tack board might not be the best place for it. Your instagram account might not be the best place for it.

Don’t let information placement be an afterthought (I made this thing and put it here, so I need to put the info right next to it) or one that goes un-bettered (that pamphlet station has always been there, why would I move it?)

Stay Positive & Always Improve The What AND The Where

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Sharing is truly caring.

And we need more people who care.

Share what you learned. Share what you made. Share what others created.

Currency in the connection economy comes from what we share, not what we have.

Start a blog. A pseudonym Twitter account. A neighborhood weekly meetup. Whatever you need to craft your place to share.

Stay Positive & Care More Often

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Definitely seek out employees that have fantastic customer service qualities, but they also need to be capable of physically doing the job you need them to do.

Definitely use interest based targeting to hone in on the type of people that will resonate with your offering, but also include basic demographics to thin out your base.

Soft skills and hard skills. Interests and specifics.

You need them both.

Stay Positive & Zero In

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Little stories are the absolute best.

The hint about a hidden message behind the beer label of a brewery or the brief story of how the crayfish jerky is made (heads up, it’s not with actual crayfish, it’s with the water that they used to boil the crayfish) or the song of how Zeus’s bolts created the craters in the land we see today – they are all snippets of narratives that provoke emotion.

To boot, you don’t need to know all the things about everything to charm, convince or connect with someone. A few tiny narratives often do the trick.

Stay Positive & Have A Few In Your Back Pocket

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It’s incredible, the laundry list of reasons and excuses we can put together that stall us from doing the work.

I’m hungry.

I should answer our emails first.

If I put a load of laundry in now, it’ll be ready when I’m done.

Ope, did I just get another email? Better respond to it.

And, take writing a novel for example, there are some really good excuses, too!

Should probably figure out the plot first.

And maybe write some backstories.

And read what other authors in my lane have written.

Then let’s google about writers block. I think I have it.

And so on…

But here’s the reality: if you have enough time to do the distractions before you do the work, then you have enough time to do them after.

If it’s really that important to you (as rationale of an action as your brain is telling you it is) then do it – but after you do the work that needs to be done.

Stay Positive & We Need Your Art First, Excuses After

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You can have all the right people at the table: the CFO, the lobbyist, the alderman, the landlord, the marketer, the lawyer.

They all play a role in getting an idea approved for execution, no doubt.

But there’s no one more convincing than having the target at the table.

The audience that everyone can rally around, the tribe that everyone else is there to serve.

If you’re struggling to convince a gatekeeper, bring the one person they have to let in.

Stay Positive & Even Better, Start With The Target

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