GarthBox

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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There are a few layers of hard work.

The first is being busy. Checking boxes. Sort of the monotonous must-dos.

The next layer of hard work is putting focus, intention, and care into each action.

The third layer is developing a process so strong that an observer may think the series of tasks that you’re completing is done effortlessly.

Sometimes the process is a long one, but that makes the end result worth giving.

 

Stay Positive & For Others, Worth Buying, Every. Damn. Day.

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Decision-making is difficult at first.

What color should you paint the wall? Does the logo need to be larger? Do you ask friends and family to give you money before you ask for investors? Do you pull the trigger now or wait until a better time?

Our lizard brain immediately seeks to put the weight on someone else’s shoulders.

So we ask others what they think. We ask them “if you were in my shoes, what would you do?”

The problem is that they are not in your shoes. And, once you ask enough people, you’ll likely be left with a split-decision that you still need to make.

Better to decide yourself. Decide early. Decide often.

Decision-making is difficult at first.

 

Stay Positive & Key Words: At First

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