GarthBox

I’m going down memory lane this birthday and thought I’d share some projects I’ve shipped over the years. Enjoy and thanks for letting me share these with you. Plenty more to come.

Beer Beat Reporting – 2017 News Features

Blunt Reminders To Be Bold – 2016 Slideshare

In The Box – 2015 Podcast

Curb – 2014 Magazine

Transform: The Seminar That Saved Me From Myself – 2013 eBook

Start Schooling Dreams – 2013 Manifesto

Sleeping Above Your Dreams – 2012 Poetry

Parents Cost Us Money Too: What We Wish Our Parents Would Have Told Us – 2012 Riff

GarthBox – 2011 Blog

 

Stay Positive & Enjoy

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The beauty of the phrase “people like us, do things like this” is that it makes it easy to rationalize what to do as well as understand why others around you made the choice they did.

People like us wake up early in the morning.

And when your coworker leaves work early in the day? You can be upset or you can understand “people like us put family in front of our work.”

The deeper, more meaningful and beautiful part of the phrase, though, is the extension and connections it provides to who you are as a person.

Because people like us wake up early in the morning, we’re also more productive, feel more fulfilled and often tackle the toughest task of the day right away.

Turns out those who are generous, are often sincere, caring and inspiring, too.

People like us do things like this. Plural.

 

Stay Positive & People Like Us Choose Your Lifestyle Wisely

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The more you exercise your muscles, the stronger you get.

The more your heart races, the more calm you can stay when the pressure is on.

The more scenarios you can put yourself where the tension is high, the better you’ll be able to handle those situations in the future.

The list goes on …

 

Stay Positive & Some Situations More Means Better

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An Indian Run is when a team jogs in a single file line and then the last person in line sprints to the front. Once she reaches the front, the cycle repeats with the new last person in the line.

I think it’s a mighty fine metaphor for how teams can do better in the work place.

The team gets stronger when those in the back push themselves to the front. It’s one more way the law of averages makes sense.

Far better to turn laggards into leaders than to make the front of the pack run a little faster.

 

Stay Positive & Start Sprinting

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Their interest in you and your business might have to do with vanity metrics, your ability to turn a profit, and build an email list.

Moreover, their loyalty to you and your business is more likely to do with what you can’t measure: humanity, care, and warmth.

 

Stay Positive & People Do Business With People

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Not the stories you’re telling …

Not the stories you hope others tell …

What are the stories people are telling each other about the change you seek to make?

Google Home isn’t moving from the early adopter novelty to becoming widely used because Google can run ads year after year. It’s doing it because people are telling stories of it being able to turn their TV off when their remote broke or how it can share an answer a group questioned without singling one person out as the one who will go find the answer and report back.

If stories are just examples of the change you seek to make, then what are those examples?

There are examples, right?

 

Stay Positive & Design For Them

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Questions like “How was your day?” and “What are you trying to create?” are certainly directed at you. The answers expected are yours. Not the person’s across the table and definitely not your enemy’s. Yours.

But not all questions asked are made for your answer.

Questions like:

• Why does your business matter?
• What are the words, images and emotions that come to mind when people think about you?
• What is the best user experience here?
• What’s the perceived need of your target market?
• Why would a customer ever return?

The real answers to these questions don’t care what you think they are because they’re not about you; they’re about someone else, which means that your response is less about facts and what you think. Rather, the answers are someone else’s, shared through you. And to get those answers requires copious amounts of empathy.

You’ll run into confusion in answers like this anytime a brand is talked about. There’s the message the brand wants people to believe and there’s the message the target already believes about the brand. Who is right?

 

Stay Positive & If You Don’t Know Their Answer, Ask Them

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