GarthBox

There are two kinds of businesspeople.

The first is always at battle with competitors. She believes all other businesses are competition. She doesn’t want to give business advice to anyone for fear of them stealing market share. This type of business person is always full of qualm. She’s often in it for the sake of money above anything else. Don’t get her wrong, she loves the grind. She is in her happy place when she’s dominating her rivals.

The second type of businessperson is fighting a war. She doesn’t get lost in the battles of competition because she’s trying to make more people aware of her industry. The more people who are aware, the likelier they will try her business and fall in love. She believes similar businesses are her partners and friends. She’ll give advice to anyone who shows they care and want to increase the value of the market. This type of business person is always optimistic, caring and grateful for the challenges that push her to be better. She’s often in it for the sake of loving what she does above anything else.

I firmly believe you need to decide which type of business person you will be and work to be the best in that personality. Most, by default, end up being some insufficient form of the first. Every market needs business people like that. It’s not necessarily that they are bad people, they are merely narrow-mindedly driven to be the best at whatever cost.

You can be successful either way, but please decide which it will be for you because you’ll face business problems and forks in the road and it’ll make addressing them much easier when you already know how you will.

Deciding now also makes it easier to grow, to seek out those who are like you. It helps you choose who your real competitors are. It assists you in carving your special piece of the market.

 

Stay Positive & Which Will It Be? What Are You Doing Now To Own That?

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There is passion and there is what helps fuel that passion.

Consider what often drives your passion. Is it the monotonous flow of thought during work? Is it the routine of your life that pushes you to break the mold and give your all to something?

Passion often dies when the yang of it does. Passion 100 percent of the time is exhausting. We need something to keep us going, even if it might be something that feels like it is holding us back.

What is your contrary force that is actually complementary?

 

Stay Positive & Hold Onto That

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One of the most important marketing questions to ask when figuring out how to market a product or service is: what does the customer want to do?

The problem isn’t that one gets flustered by the question. The problem is that the answer gets longer and longer.

“The customer wants to try something new and be included in a group of linkminded people and go home to share the product with others and feel good waking up each morning knowing that they have the product and can feel secure about it not breaking for a while and maybe they can even pass it on to their kids and…”

This story could go on, but the best marketed products don’t.

They acknowledge a single problem and devote energy to being that single solution.

Smart marketers let the customer tell the rest of the story themselves.

As a marketer, if you try to extend the story too long people begin to call bullshit.

You can’t be everything to everyone.

 

Stay Positive & So What Exactly Does The Customer Want To Do?

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If you consider what persuasion is, it’s not manipulation or an improper use of control.

Persuasion is really communicating the meaningful.

You persuade by relaying emotional benefits and explaining how what you have to offer impacts an existing worldview.

Persuasion is about being human, vulnerable and showing that you don’t just know, but actually feel how the other person feels, what challenges they’re facing, what motivations they have.

The facts and details and the “what” of what you have to offer matter, but not to start.

 

Stay Positive & To Start, Show You Can Wear Their Shoes

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The quickest way to grow your team is to encourage them to teach one another.

Not through lunch and learns or organized meetings to recap something that was done. These events make others aware of knowledge that is out there, but it doesn’t contribute to the experience of the team.

At work we’re focusing on a cycle of learning, doing and teaching. Most organizations rock at doing, it’s what each employee is employed to do. Learning is often done on the go, out of desire to grow individually, and to gain an advantage over other businesses. The weakest link is teaching.

The strongest action you can take is to ask someone if they want to learn something new. To walk them through an action; not to recap it in a group setting, but to repeat the doing in a 1-1 environment.

You may be a rock star, but what are you doing to teach others to be?

 

Stay Positive & Your Workplace Needs You More Than You Know

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The shoes of success are always larger than the entrepreneurs feet.

If the shoes you’re wearing now fit your feet, then there’s no room to grow.

The entrepreneurs secret to success is that she always wears shoes two sizes too big.

It’s uncomfortable. Tough to walk in. People notice and may make fun of you.

That is, until you grow into them.

 

Stay Positive & You Will Grow Into Them

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All remarkable work is criticized at first. Great work is shunned. Real art and the creators of it are always castigated by the naysayers when their work is first shipped.

Those who are now famous, successful or just plain happy with their lives are so because they didn’t wait to be told they were great.

They kept performing after being boo’d off stage, they kept creating after one art gallery said their art wasn’t good enough, they kept brewing even after one beer connoisseur sent a video of them dumping the brewery’s beer down the drain.

These moments suck, but why let anyone stop you from doing your best again and again?

Perhaps, next time you’ll do even better. In fact, it’s certain you will.

 

Stay Positive & Ignore The Naysayers

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