GarthBox

It boggles my mind how much goes into advertising opportunities that are here today but may not be tomorrow or in spaces that folks can pay not to have ads.

When there’s a growing discipline of choosing what gets our attention, it makes sense to update our advertising matrix to reflect it.

Riddle yourself this: If you could no longer put advertising dollars behind a tactic that you can imagine going away, where would you choose to put those dollars?

Into your people? Into your product? Into your process or R&D division? A referral program?

There’s no definitively right answer; simply a new way to think about your advertising dollars.

(And to be clear; it’s not about a total shut off and pivot; it’s a new balance and should always be dialed in to where your target is at.)

Stay Positive & Yes, This Applies To Us And Our Personal Brands, Too

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Expertise is a treasure. Being a pro means that you’re the one they call when they need someone who knows X.

They call because it relieves their stress, takes the weight off their shoulders and puts the responsibility on someone who will make it better no matter what it takes – it’s their (your?) job.

Equally important to understand is who they won’t call.

They won’t call you if they think they can do X better. They won’t call if they are ignorant of the value of having an expert do the work.

This all means two things:

We can’t rest on our laurels when it comes to our work. We have to continuously strive to be better at what we do.

Second, we have to communicate our value. Whether that’s through testimonials or demonstrations or, yes, a little bragging.

No one is going to work toward convincing themselves they need an expert.

That’s on the expert to do.

Stay Positive & Stay Pro

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Surely you had some form of a game plan for this month, even if it was only a few ideas in your head.

Now the ones who are struggling are the ones sitting on their hands, frustrated the game plan they had isn’t being (read: can’t be) executed.

The ones thriving and surviving are the ones who have pulled the whiteboard out to actively game plan; in the moment, and maybe only for today and tomorrow.

But still game planning.

Thinking through possibilities, taking action and than reassessing with the given circumstances – whether created or forced upon you – that’s how to win.

We need you to be a game planner now more than ever.

Stay Positive & Then Get To Playing

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You don’t need an official kick off to get started.

You don’t need someone to approve an idea or give it to you.

You don’t need to get the resources together.

There’s plenty you can do with your brain and a keyboard or a phone and a friend or your hands and the tools in front of you.

Anything stopping you from starting is simply a way to hide.

Come on out and start. We need you to.

Stay Positive & More Starting

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No doubt, most routines we may have had established early in the year are out the window.

The lack of consistency leads to a overwhelmed, stressed out and noisy mind, and an overwhelmed, stressed out and noisy mind can easily lead to unhappiness and discontent – neither of which we want.

Alas, the quickest way to make room in the mind again is to establish new consistencies. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t take much.

Having the same thing for breakfast for the next two weeks or designating 8:00-8:30 a.m. as reading time is enough to ease your mind.

It almost doesn’t matter what you decide to do; what matters most is that it gets decided and upheld day after day because then there’s a window of time that your mind can’t wrestle and stress with.

Stay Positive & Create Your Peace

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There’s a tradition at Bierstadt Lagerhaus in Denver of a slow-pour pilsner. It’s the method of creating a lot of foam to release CO2 in a beer and then letting it dissipate before pouring more in.

It smooths the beer out, increases aromatics and impacts the flavor by breaking some proteins in the foamy lacing that remains on the glass.

It does all of that with the same beer, same glass, same faucet, same person pouring it. All that’s different is the time. It takes roughly 5 minutes to get a full glass of a slow-pour pilsner.

A lot of our executions could become better with the slow-pour method. When we give our focused attention to a project, but do it carefully and with patience; it’s ultimately going to lead to a better result.

Stay Positive & Haste Makes Waste

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During quarantine, here are a few things worth doing that you’ll thank yourself later for.

• Start a blog (or consistently pick up the one you had started).
• If you haven’t used something in your home in the last year, toss it.
• Order an external hard drive and backup all your important files.
• Write a letter to a friend & reach out to three others you haven’t talked to in forever.
• Plant a container garden.

Stay Positive & What Else Do You Suggest?

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