How To Easily Accept Feedback

Garth Beyer

Getting Better

It’s quite natural for the lizard brain to ignite some crazy thoughts in our heads while receiving, waiting to receive, or after having received feedback.

Think about the email containing feedback and how it seemed so harsh when you read it. Think about all the things you’re thinking could be wrong. Think about how you’ve felt as if you’re not good enough. It all sucks.

I found two effective ways to get beyond the rush of blood one gets when feedback is imminent.

  1. WiiFM: What’s in it for me. Be selfish with the feedback. It’s your opportunity to grow as much as you can. Extract every piece of advice and reasoning for it you can. Feedback is a chance for you to get greedy and not care about what’s in it for them, focus on what’s in it for you.
  2. WHY: If you go into a feedback session with an open mind, curious about what, why, how things are, you’re bound to handle it better. When you’re genuinely interested in the feedback, it’s hard for your lizard brain to act up because you’re so focused on solving a problem.

If you’re one that doesn’t handle feedback well, one who has a lot of self-doubt, consider working on your focus. When you focus (seeing what’s in it for you and being curious), it’s impossible for negative thoughts to occur because there is no mental space for them.

 

Stay Positive & Put Your Mental Energy Toward What’s Important

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How To Focus Better Part 2

Garth Beyer

How To Focus Better

Most relationships don’t work to their fullest potential when all you think about is what you can get out of them.

Relationships, marketing, selling is all about giving.

Focus isn’t in that category, though.

As written in part 1, focus requires there to be curiosity. If you’re finding a reason to ask why and to dig deeper into something, it’s impossible not to focus. However, to carry it further, focus requires both curiosity and intention.

There needs to be a gentle motivation to stay with the object. What will you get out of it? What’s in it for you? It’s this intention that makes fishing such a focus-sport. The fishermen is curious if anything will bite, if this particular bate will work, if the weather is right as well as he’s thinking of having what he catches for dinner, that’s what’s in it for him.

For complete focus, be curious, but also maintain intention.

 

Stay Positive & What’s In It For You?

Marketing Change

Garth Beyer

Marketing Change

The more substantial the product, the harder it is to give away because it means accepting a change of perception or worldview or lifestyle.

However, it’s that change, which people care most about.

Products that don’t make profit fail to do so, not quite because of the functionality, but because it wasn’t communicated to the consumer exactly how it would alter their life and why they would want it altered in that way.

Arguably, the best products are the ones that fill a need already there, but I think marketing practices deserve to be challenged more than that.

So, yes. Please. Go make something so incredibly remarkable and substantial and life-changing.

 

Stay Positive & We Need More Of It

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In The Box Podcast

Episode 24: Serial Project Creator, Getting A Read Of Someone, One Word To Grow By And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about creating multiple projects versus one solid quality project every now and then. We also dove into what it means to turn from a freelancer to an entrepreneur, the mindset to have when loaning money, what to do when you simply can’t get a read on someone, and Michael shared one word to grow by (and why) Enjoy.

Episode 24: Serial Project Creator, Getting A Read Of Someone, One Word To Grow By And More

To be successful – Generally speaking, to be successful do you always need to be serially creating projects?

Freelancer to entrepreneur – What’s one way you can go from a freelancer to an entrepreneur?

Pay back – At what point (how much money) do you ask someone to pay you back?

Get a read – What’s the first thing you do when you can’t get a read on someone?

Grow – What is one word to grow by?

 

Stay Positive & What’s Your One Word To Grow By?

What Many Marketers Forget When Strategizing

Garth Beyer

Why

As marketers, it’s easy to get lost in social platforms, lost in creative ideas, lost in all the PR efforts you could be implementing. It’s all attention-worthy work. Shiny. New. Fun.

Yesterday I got asked to prove why social was a place we wanted to do work in for a particular client. I pulled an answer out of my ass because I hadn’t been working on supporting that case. Instead, I was busy working on slides that showed all we could do in social and less on why we should do it.

Why is the guy in the photo above where he is? What is he feeling? Thinking? What are his motivations? What’s the point of being there?

These are all questions we’ve got to ask when we work in the social and PR world.

Even harder to answer and prove: how do we know our audience is there? On Instagram? On FB? How do we know the target cares about the PR stunt we’re planning?

Yesterday was a great reminder that the work we do isn’t about just doing great work, it’s about showing people it’s great work that is in need of being done.

 

Stay Positive & Answering Tough Questions Leads To Better Results

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The Best Message Strategy

Garth Beyer

Something

“What’s the angle?”

I try to catch myself anytime I ask this question. Anytime I wonder how we can spin a message, how I can pitch something in a way that resonates.

I think there are a handful of other better questions to ask.

What do people deeply care about?

What really matters to the people who are going to experience this?

What feelings do they want to be left with when they leave?

The best message strategy is built off understanding the motivations of the target, not the motivations of the marketer or the benefits of the product.*

 

Stay Positive & Make Something That Does The Caring

*Unless they align. In which case, there’s rarely a need to do any marketing because the product/service markets itself.

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Two Types Of People

Garth Beyer

Make Something Remarkable

There are two types of people in this world.

There are those who order off the menu. Then there are those who ask for what’s not on the menu, what’s special, what’s unique.

Likewise, there are two types of people in this world.

There are those who make what the menu offers. Then there are those who go above and beyond, who do the remarkable work of making something not on the menu.

 

Stay Positive & Items “Not On The Menu” Are In Higher Demand Than You Think

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