GarthBox

Marketing is jazz, not classical music. It’s a tightrope walk, not a script. It’s improv.

And the best marketers? They know how to think on their feet.

Now is a great time to start practicing improv.

Adaptability = Survival

No campaign goes exactly as planned. Algorithms shift. Budgets get slashed. Trends change overnight. Improv teaches you to roll with it, adjust on the fly, and make quick pivots without losing momentum.

Audience-Centric Thinking

Improv is about listening. Great marketing is about listening. You don’t control the audience—you respond to them in real-time. Reading the room (or the data) is the difference between relevance and irrelevance.

Creativity Under Pressure

Deadlines don’t care if you have writer’s block. Improv forces you to always come up with something, even when your brain is empty. That creative muscle? Strengthened every time you say “Yes, and…” instead of freezing.

Better Storytelling

Every brand has a story, but the best ones unfold dynamically. Improv helps you craft narratives that feel organic, human, and engaging. You learn to ditch the robotic script and make messaging feel alive.

Stronger Team Collaboration

Improv is a team sport—just like marketing. It’s about trust, passing the mic, and making others look good. The best ideas aren’t solo acts; they’re built in the moment with a team that knows how to yes, and instead of no, but.

Handling Objections Like a Pro

Sales and marketing are full of pushback. Improv teaches you not to shut down but to engage, redirect, and turn objections into opportunities. When the customer throws a curveball, you won’t fumble—you’ll flow.

More Engaging Content

People crave authenticity. Improv-trained marketers know how to make messaging feel real, not forced. Whether it’s social media, email, or video, improv instincts make content feel human, not corporate.

Risk-Taking Without Fear

If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never innovate. Improv kills perfectionism. It rewards boldness. Marketing isn’t about getting it right the first time—it’s about experimenting until something sticks.

Real-Time Event Marketing Superpowers

Webinars, live Q&As, speaking gigs—improv makes you magnetic in the moment. No more boring, over-rehearsed delivery. You’ll react, engage, and make it feel like an experience, not a monologue.

Confidence in the Unscripted Moments

Marketing isn’t just about planning—it’s about how you react when things go sideways. Improv builds confidence in uncertainty. When the unexpected happens (and it will), you won’t freeze—you’ll thrive.

Bottom Line: Marketing IS Improv

The best marketers don’t just follow playbooks. They improvise

Stay Positive & Try That On For Size

Game-changing is a bit of an oxymoron.

You don’t want the game to change. You want to win it.

Most of the efforts you can do to be game-changing aren’t actually game-changing.

It’s like the owner of a coffee shop being present throughout the week; showing face and interacting with guests.

It’s not game-changing when you evaluate it on its own. It almost seems like an obviously necessary effort.

But all the owners of all the coffee shops around them don’t show up.

And so, it’s game-changing.

—

One of my favorite fitness influencers posted a video the other day of him walking up stairs while everyone else took the escalator.

His point was to succeed, you just need to do what only 1% of people do.

But walking up stairs? That’s not game-changing is it? Except…it is.

—

If you really want change the game, do all the things that on the surface are not game-changing, but collectively and consistently, they can be.

Stay Positive & Your Move

Speed is sexy. It’s thrilling, intoxicating…the business equivalent of an open motorcycle throttle on an empty stretch of road.

Sales teams chase it. Marketers obsess over it. Pipeline velocity. Deal velocity. GTM velocity. Everyone wants to go faster.

But here’s the thing about velocity—it’s just movement. What really matters is the impact of that movement.

Velocity In The Wrong Direction Is Just A Faster Disaster

A sales team pushing deals through the funnel at warp speed without ensuring the right customers are signing? That’s a company sprinting toward churn. A marketing team blasting out campaigns without refining the message? That’s throwing gasoline on a bonfire of wasted ad spend.

Velocity alone is chaos in a suit. It’s momentum without a map. And if you’ve ever seen a crash or fall in slow motion, you know that speed without control doesn’t just lead to impact—it leads to wreckage and layoffs.

Sometimes, velocity isn’t the problem; It’s the lack of infrastructure to handle it.

• Ever seen a company launch a product so well that demand crushed their ability to deliver?
• Ever watched a sales team push a new segment aggressively, only to realize too late they had no onboarding plan?
• Ever witnessed marketing scale so fast that brand quality got lost in the blur?

That’s not success. That’s just running before you learned to walk.

True go-to-market mastery isn’t just about how fast you move; it’s about how well you aim.

• In sales, speed is good—but only when targeting the right prospects, nurturing them correctly, and ensuring they stick around long enough to make the deal profitable.
• In marketing, launching fast is great—but only if the message lands, the audience is primed, and the strategy is built to last beyond the first spike in interest.

Stay Positive & Yes, Build Velocity, But Do So With Precision

The world is an open book, a never-ending movie, a cocktail waiting to be deconstructed—but only if you’re paying attention.

Most people coast through life in passive mode, absorbing information like a sponge that never gets squeezed out. They hear, but they don’t listen. They see, but they don’t study. They experience, but they don’t extract.

Passive information gathering is letting life happen to you. It’s scrolling, nodding, consuming without digesting. It’s sipping on an incredible cocktail, thinking “Damn, that’s good”, and moving on with your evening.

Active information gathering? That’s where the magic is. That’s stepping out of the background and into the mix. You don’t just drink the cocktail—you watch the bartender’s hands, note the ingredients, clock the ratios, ask a sly question or two. You observe the subtle shake versus the stir, the way they flame the orange peel just so. You take the experience and store it away, because who knows? One day, you may need to re-create it, impress someone, or simply delight yourself in a moment of nostalgia. And when that time comes, you won’t just have a recipe—you’ll have a story to go with it.

This is how you win. In business, in relationships, in the sheer adventure of being alive. The best strategists, the most magnetic personalities, the people who always seem a step ahead? They don’t just take in the world—they study it.

• In work, it’s not just attending a meeting; it’s noticing who commands attention, who hesitates, who has the real influence despite their title. It’s filing that knowledge away and using it when the stakes are high.
• In life, it’s not just tasting good food; it’s breaking it down, understanding why it works, and maybe one day using it to wow someone in your own kitchen.
• In love, it’s not just hearing words; it’s reading body language, sensing the slight shift in tone, the unspoken things that mean everything. The difference between a good partner and a great one is paying attention.

Look, you were going to order a second glass of that drink, anyway. Might as well make it a masterclass. The world is handing you knowledge at every moment.

Stay Positive & Are You Taking Mental Notes?

Ah, perception and perspective. Two words so cozy, they might as well be sitting on a porch swing sipping lemonade together or splitting a bourbon-barrel aged stout (not sure which season you’re reading this during!). But don’t let their charm fool you—they hold the secret to unlocking strategy’s sharpest edge. In marketing, understanding the difference is the difference.

Perception is how the world sees the target, but perspective? That’s how the target sees the world. And friends, if you’re not marketing to their perspective, you’re just shouting into the wind.

Let’s unpack this with the flair of an aged whiskey meeting a campfire story.

Perception is the reality people project. It’s the outer layer, the Instagram filter of human existence, the mirror that never lies. For marketers, perception is useful—it tells you how your audience appears. It’s the surface, the shiny veneer of assumptions. But relying on perception alone is like falling in love with the cover of a book you never intend to read.

Consider your target audience: Do you see a soccer mom? Great. But if you stop there, you’ve missed that she’s also a DIY homebrewer, an indie rock playlist curator, and quietly stockpiling sourdough recipes for the next apocalypse. Perception hints at the who, but it won’t tell you the why.

Now, perspective? That’s where the magic lives. Perspective is the cracked open diary, the world through their eyes. It’s the inner monologue whispering truths, desires, fears, and contradictions. It’s messy, human, and absolutely indispensable.

A soccer mom’s perspective might reveal this: she’s not just ferrying kids to practice—she’s navigating a labyrinth of time constraints, Pinterest-worthy snack pressures, and the simmering existential question of, “When did I stop dancing in the rain?” That’s a world you can speak to. That’s where your marketing earns its stripes, that’s where you find your strategic edge.

Here’s the kicker: When you market to their perspective, you stop selling. You start resonating.

Stay Positive & Switch Our Your Perception For Their Perspective

Most of the time the block we have (writer’s block, for one) is a block we put there.

That rut? We dug it ourselves. It didn’t just manifest out of no where.

Feeling down is a choice we make. Out of all the emotions in our arsenal. We chose that one.

The continuation of any is merely a habit we’ve formed based on taking an action the first time… and because it was familiar and not too painful, we did it again.

Block by block. Rut by rut. Down down down.

So what to do about it?

Find the trigger. The moment before you decide to slow, stop, descend. And change something about the trigger tomorrow. Maybe it’s figuring out how to remove it entirely. Maybe it’s rewarding yourself for breaking through it. There’s a hundred different ways you can go about it once you recognize the trigger. Ask ChatGPT to help ideate if you need to.

Once you change the action/trigger, you can change the habit.

Forward faster and faster. Drip by drip. Up up up.

Stay Positive & It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

What if any time you had a problem from here on out, your friend could be by your side to help you work through it?

What’s more, what if that friend had the smarts about the subject you need to talk through? Always.

What if their default setting was to listen and ask questions to fully understand before working with you to discover the answer that makes the most sense.

What if that friend was in your pocket?

Stay Positive & Haveeeeee You Met Claude?