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

Photo credit
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

Photo credit

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.

Photo credit

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

Photo credit

Four Tips To Excel In The PR World

Garth Beyer

Learn About Being Human

A PR pro with more than 30+ years experience reminded me of these tips in a 10 minute chat we had. They’ve helped me develop my PR credentials and thought they’d help you too.

1) Find the potential in everything

To find the potential, you have to be interested, to be interested, you have to be curious.

Even dust can be exciting. You know how when you clean the dust off an object it feels new, it’s like you’ve given life to the object again? Dust is sorta neat that way isn’t it?

2) Have the guts to get into a brand

You might not be interested in what the brand offers, but you’ll never be able to help it grow unless you become one with the brand.

See first tip.

3) Be brave enough to have weird conversations

The best way to learn how a brand can help people is to learn about people, which sometimes requires you to have weird conversations.

Jeane, the PR pro who reminded me of these tips, retold a story about how she was at a convention and talked to a dominatrix for more than an hour. Jeane learned more about how strongly pride plays a role in the choices people make in that hour chat than what she could Google in an hour.

Most weird conversations only start weird, which can be scary. Whenever I’m pitching, the first few sentences with someone feel so weird, but once there is just one episode of back and forth conversation, the weird dissipates. Be brave.

4) Learn about stuff you have not lived

Not only does it give you insight into people you may be working to get the attention of, it also provides conversation topics for any event, and we know how important being liked and relatable is.

I have not lived through a new business pitch that I didn’t pitch to the client face-to-face on their home turf, but I have learned that not visiting the client on their turf has led to an agency not winning their business.

See third tip.

 

Stay Positive & People Do Business With People (They Like)

Photo credit