GarthBox

When you wait to make a point about your business, you’re often left thrashing for proof.

Much of the time, the data is not there to support it or you have enough to act as a lead, but not sufficient enough to convince someone you know what your target caves.

With any business, you need to create a few hypothesis to begin so you’re not scrambling once presentation time hits.

If you expect to make the case that people care about toppings on a pizza, what can you do to start probing for the truth (or lack of truth)?

If you expect to make the case that people care about beer that tastes close to wine, what can you do to start probing for the truth (or lack of truth)?

Your quarterly review is not the time to search through your social posts and sales sheets to see if anything random stands out; it’s the time to look back to see if the assumptions you made and tested for hold true.

 

Stay Positive & It’s Called Trial And Error, Not Error And Trial

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“Because I feel like it…”

A smart marketer will dig deeper into this.

A smart marketer knows that feeling a customer has is why they come back.

Tactics then become less about getting attention or making a customer do something.

They become about them feeling that again and again.

A signature of a farmer on a milk carton doesn’t get one’s attention, but it does make someone who is already going to buy organic milk feel more… And when we feel more, we’re likely to come back and feel it again.

Don’t let someone stop at “I’m buying this because I feel like it.” You’ll miss one of the strongest insights beside hate that you can use to connect in your marketing.

 

Stay Positive & Ask The Customer, What Do You Feel?

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Having a signature from a farmer on your milk jug matters. It’s perceived that farmer’s cows produced that milk.

Having a logo for a business pitch isn’t necessary, but investors do perceive you as a person to take more seriously with one.

As marketers and entrepreneurs, we’re faced with the realities of making something better each day. Often times, we feel some tasks are more urgent than others, we become firefighters instead of artists, and, in so doing, we miss opportunities to be perceived the right way.

You can have all the right words in a speech, but you’ll be perceived as an amateur if it’s also filled with “um” and “like.”

Yes, the work you do speaks realities, but how you do the work often speaks more toward perceptions, and boy do perceptions matter.

 

Stay Positive & Dance Between Reality And Perception

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In most cases, hate doesn’t do us much good.

Hate doesn’t make us more creative.

Hate doesn’t build relationships.

Hate doesn’t force us toward smart decisions.

However, hate does help us craft the right message toward a target.

If you can dig into your target enough to know the feeling they hate, the situation they hate, the perception they hate to have… then you’ve struck a golden insight.

Every successful business can be summed with what the target hates.

I hate… giving up. (Nike)

I hate… bland beer. (Dogfish Head)

I hate… broken out skin. (Proactive)

Have you asked yourself: What does your target hate?

 

Stay Positive & Are You Doing The Opposite?

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1. Address what the audience will want to know first.
2. Shut the devil’s advocate up by stating what he would say before he says it (and why he’s wrong).
3. Say only the words you can back up with your passion; that your bound to improvise around because your emotions start doing the talking.
4. Keep it short and end before the allotted time. You’ll never cover everything they want to know, and, if anything, the longer you go, the more questions you’ll create and the less time they’ll have to ask and you’ll have to answer them. This leads to frustration and an uninformed vote. If there’s Q&A time, make sure you add to it or you’ll wish you had.

 

Stay Positive & 5. Pitch At Every Opportunity You Can, Learn From It

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There’s no shortage of information (often free) regarding any subject you can imagine.

What to do with it?

Many are still making a lovely income by organizing it. The best blogs you visit have gathered and sorted information that would have taken you days to find and consume.

There are dedicated study guides to Parkour, Tasting Beer, and Volleyball.

You no longer need to search through files and files to find the guitar tab for a song you like. Now it’s compiled neatly and even shows you how to strum each chord.

Sorting and redesigning information is a lucrative business.

More lucrative, I believe, is putting the information to use. Creating something remarkable.

Teaching a Parkour class for kids. Participating as a beer tasting judge for aspiring homebrewers. Kicking ass on your work’s volleyball team. Writing and performing your own song on a terrace to hundreds of people who don’t know you.

The problem about organizing information is that more information will come out and you’re Ultimate Guide To This or That will no longer be the Ultimate Guide.

The next person too afraid to do will create a guide better than yours and make a few bucks from it, leaving you wondering: what’s next?

If information is really just advice written objectively, than Oscar Wilde had it wrong: The only thing to do with advice isn’t to pass it on, it’s to act on it. Again and again until doing becomes what makes you a healthy income; not organizing.

 

Stay Positive & The Sorting Department Is Crowded Anyway

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“Good work.”

It’s the phrase we all crave to hear. We want the applause. The pat on the back. The nod of approval.

The problem is when we connect that desire with the work we’re doing.

The work becomes the path to the high-five instead of the path toward creating something remarkable.

It’s best to say, “Here. I made this.” and then move on.

Sure, accept the praise if it’s there, but don’t do what you’re doing for the praise.

Why give anyone the right to judge your work and evaluate what’s good and not good?

 

Stay Positive & Pat Yourself On The Back, And Move On To What’s Next

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