25 Ways To Get A New Perspective

1) Talk to a homeless person

2) Go into a specialty shop, like the store that still cells cd’s and records, and ask the owner how he got into his business

3) Give someone your number

4) Ask someone from the opposite gender for theirs

5) Make eye contact through an entire conversation

6) Take public transportation

7) Go through the application process for a job you don’t want

8) Travel out of the country or just outside your town

9) Go into a store, ask a clerk what is the bestseller and figure out why

10) Ask a brewery, a farmer, a beekeeper if they could use a hand

11) Do something that you did as a kid, but haven’t in a long time

12) Visit an ethnic restaurant and order the safest thing on the menu and watch how other people eat

13) Take a walk through the nearest arboretum or botanical gardens

14) Fly in a small plane or helicopter, it’s worth the money for a birds eye view

15) Go to the movie theater alone

16) Fast for one full day

17) Make a really crappy craft and give it to someone who has never received a gift

18) Ask a group if you can join them: in frisbee, in bowling or in conversation

19) Watch a documentary this weekend

20) Bake cookies and bring them to your local fire station (ask for a tour if they don’t offer)

21) Read a poem from someone who is dead and someone who is alive

22) Ask a friend of a friend to put music on your ipod (or ask to borrow theirs for a few days)

23) Excessively tip a waiter/waitress and see how they react

24) Purge your living space of everything you haven’t used/touched in the last year

25) Write your own obituary

 

Stay Positive & Go Learn To Think About Things Differently

Does It Compound

Love compounds.

Learning compounds.

Skill compounds the more you ship.

It pays to ask if what you’re doing compounds. Failure, being right, submitting to the lizard brain doesn’t compound, so why are you spending your time there?*

 

Stay Positive & Love Learn And Practice More

*When it comes to failure, it’s impossible to compound because the more you fail, the less likely you’ll fail the next time.

Giving Is The New Advertising

Here’s advertising I think we can all get behind: advertising that gives viewers what they want.

PostIt follows you around so banner ads become a list of things you want to remember.

Businesses like McDonalds are now buying the ad space of Pandora to give you 30 minutes of no-ad listening.

Even podcast advertising is seeing the benefit of giving. It’s a podcast norm that hosts advertise products and services they use and care about – no pre-recorded voiceover here.

I did lead you astray with the title. Giving isn’t necessarily new advertising as it has always been the best kind of advertising, we’re just slowly catching on.

 

Stay Positive & No One Cares About Being Interrupted If They Get A Gift For It

All Good Marketing…

is consistent marketing.

Maintaining brand voice, which is hard, is only one piece of marketing. So is keeping up with customer service in terms of response rate.

When you demonstrate you know who your product is for by stating “people like us…,” you lock in consistency. But when you open the door to the masses, your marketing loses consistency and you customer service response rate tumbles and your brand voice is lost.

People respond to consistency. It’s how you build a tribe. It’s why they keep showing up.

 

Stay Positive & There’s No One Path To Remarkability, There’s Only Staying On A Path

In The Box Podcast

Episode 17: Team Building Failure, Brand vs. Customer Voice, Self-Reliance And More – Podcast

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we wrapped up our thoughts on luck, talked about why most startups fail, the difference between responding and reacting, and how much self-reliance is too much.

We also explored the idea of changing a brand voice to suit the voice of a publication one is pitching to and why many groups fall apart.

Give it a listen on itunes and subscribe.

Episode 17: Team Building Failure, Brand vs. Customer Voice, Self-Reliance And More

Luck – Trust that things will always work out.

Startups – Why do you think most startups fail?

Team building failure – Do many groups fall apart because of poor character dynamics or because the purpose of the group isn’t strong enough?

Brand vs Customer Voice – To get a publication or blogger to cover your business, should you choose your brand voice to fit their style or should you forget them and only seek out those who either speak or value your brand voice even if it doesn’t resonate with their own?

Respond vs react – How do you differentiate between responding and reacting?

Self-reliance – Is there such a thing as too much self-reliance?

 

Stay Positive & Is Your Purpose Clear?

No Is Free

It’s a curious notion how rejection is free.

It costs nothing to be told no. There are zero consequences to passersby doing what they’re labeled to do – pass by.

So it goes with hitchhiking or publishing a novel or booking a gig, all it takes is one person to ask you on board and the confidence begins to build.

Perhaps, though, picking yourself up, self-publishing and organizing an event to play at is more beneficial to one’s confidence than waiting to be picked.

After all, picking yourself is free too.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Wait For A Yes

Telling Your Story

It pays to work on your story, to figure it out before you launch or reach out to publications, but what entrepreneurs often forget is they don’t have as much control over their story as they think they do.

You can tell your story to every guest that walks in, but when they walk out, all that matters is the story they tell others, which may not be the one you told them.

The best stories are about businesses who listen and do, not those who profess their story before they ask you for your order or tell you their story as they’re checking out your items.

Listen and do. Let your guests tell the story.

 

Stay Positive & Talk With The Interest Of Listening More