GarthBox

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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The next step, level, raise, promotion, situation will always be uncomfortable.

It is always a bit risky to make progress, and with that risk comes fear.

Fear of not being good enough or not being able to handle it.

Remarkable thing is, you always can.

 

Stay Positive & Keep Moving Up

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When there’s downtime, you may want to relax, keep to your comfort zone, maybe your lizard brain motivates you to clean your inbox and complete some busy-work.

That’s no way to get better.

Nor is looking to others that are on or near your level. Doing what they do, offering to help them with their workload since you’ve completed yours keeps you from getting better. You may be able to do your work quicker and stronger, but you’re not doing bigger more remarkable work.

One seamless path to getting better is to look to what those way ahead of you are doing and do that. If you see them going to meetings with potential clients to talk about their business, schedule some yourself.

If you see them crafting a message strategy for a big brand, craft one too and run it by them. “Hey, I saw you were working on a message strategy for the local brewery. Here’s something I came up with in my downtime.”

The only way to get better is to

1. Do things you’ve never done before
2. Take actions that scare you
3. Play outside your comfort zone
4. Use downtime to get better

By all means, if someone asks you for help, do the right thing. But if you’re wondering what to do with your downtime, don’t spend it doing what you always do. Invest it in something different, something better.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Wait To Be Asked, Pick Yourself

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I encourage those writing a business plan to do the marketing last. Takes notes of all the ideas you ponder while working on the rest of the plan, but spend your energy on your story instead of your marketing.

Doing so shifts the business, your mentality and your customer base.

It goes from being a business that needs to advertise to a business that it’s customers will talk to others about. It goes from a series of publicity events for awareness to being a brand that fits perfectly into the story customers are telling themselves.

The most important part of the business plan is the business itself; it’s the source of every signal, every communication, touch, feeling, newsletter, email, receipt…

Frame your scarcity and paint it with value. In doing so, you create a business that markets itself and the “marketing” portion of your plan is just for fun, it’s not out of necessity.

 

Stay Positive & Start With Your Brand Story

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In the fast-paced world of people creating something that’s different and others craving it, the riskiest move one can make is to do nothing at all, to stay in the safe zone, to keep comfortable.

 

Stay Positive & The Real Risk Is Standing Still

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It’s apparent that marketers sell hope, but to know what kind of hope to sell is the real challenge.

Smart marketers ask and wonder and amuse the idea of what people are longing for.

Is it that they’re longing to be looked up to by their peers? Is it a mother who longs for her husband to say how much he appreciates her cooking a meal? Is it an artist longing for his parents to approve his career choice?

Smarter marketers, however, take it a step further by adding an element of connection.

The smartest marketers ask where the target wants to belong? What’s the group dynamic like? What is the hope that will be a group of like-minded people together?

It’s far more rewarding to build a tribe than it is to get a single sale that leaves a person feeling alone.

 

Stay Positive & Where Do You Belong?

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It goes without saying humility connects us to each other, but what about when no one is around. What about when humility isn’t a shared experience.

Here’s why humility is so important.

Each day we face decisions and situations that we’re afraid of.

What if you were to write down “I’m afraid of…” and to finish the sentence (however many times it takes). What if you forced yourself to put your fears onto paper.

It’s clear what you would read back to yourself would be ridiculous. You would laugh at yourself for believing or thinking such things could happen. You would embrace humility.

Seizing your insecurities and laughing at them is one of the best actions you can take to doing work that’s important, and by that, I mean doing that which you fear.

 

Stay Positive & Solo Humility Is Essential To Conquering Fears

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