[The Important] Steps To Building A Business

Garth Beyer

1) Build your business backwards

Why do you exist? What is your mission? How can you see your mission changing from when you start it to five years from now?

2) Trash the map

But still set goals. You don’t need an exact step-by-step plan. Why? If you didn’t know already, plans change. They always change.

3) How you sing in the shower

is typically the voice that will resonate best with people. It makes you vulnerable, humble, and human. You need to have a voice that sets you apart.

I also suggest dressing the same way each day, too. Steve Jobs built his image around the black turtleneck, jeans and white shoes. Seth Godin has his bald head. And I have my hair. Here’s a good read on this.

4) Clear the fog

Be forward with potential clients and customers. Tell them exactly what you can do for them. Be sure it’s remarkable. Don’t hold back, but still find ways to go the extra-mile.

5) Wear cologne

People can smell your enthusiasm, your excitement, your passion. If you don’t have those characteristics, you’re not doing what you really love. Anyhow, a great chunk of what fills customers with joy is simply seeing you filled with it. Use them as a mirror.

6) Acquire a dislike for vanilla

Do what others are not. Try what others have not. Dream like anything is possible, because it is.

7) Don’t get attached

Be ready to change, adapt, and overcome. You can prepare for this by returning to step #1.

8) Stay Positive

It always works out. But more importantly, it always works out for those who keeping working at it.

 

Stay Positive & Start Incorporating These Steps Now

Take The Time To Provide Feedback

Take The Time To Provide Feedback

Garth Beyer

You're Doing It Wrong (Feedback)

Feedback is one of the many practical, but often difficult practices of a leader, manager or the alike. It’s often ignored because it’s an uncomfortable practice to criticize someone’s work meaningfully; to provide legitimate advice that doesn’t pain the emotions of the one being critiqued.

To sit down with a person and carefully show them all that they’ve done wrong is not something anyone – whether  they are in a leadership role or not – looks forward to, which is why so many resort to sending an email instead. I plead you refrain from that method.

Providing in-person feedback is vitally important for the future success of those needing the critique. Not only do you both work through being uncomfortably vulnerable and leave having learned from mistakes, there’s also a behind-the-conscious interpretation of feedback on the receiver’s end.

By receiving feedback, they know they can keep improving, that you believe there’s more to them than what they’re showing, and it gives them something to strive for.

Consider this perspective: What are you telling them when you don’t provide feedback? When you don’t provide feedback, you communicate that you don’t think they can do better, that they can’t learn from their mistakes, that you don’t see them as capable of improvement. Is that how you want your employees, partners, friends to feel?

Feedback. Provide it.

 

Stay Positive & It’s Time Well Spent, It’s An Investment, It’s Worth It

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The Who And How Many

The Who And How Many

Garth Beyer

Audience Marketing Target

1,000 people may walk into your store today, may pick up your book, may scroll through your Tumblr. Do they all matter? Was your marketing strategy to reach the mass, to get eyeballs?

Who you’re already reaching and in what ways you’re moving them is necessary to know when evaluating your target market and marketing method for business success.

I can’t stand looking at my page view count on GarthBox for one big reason. How many doesn’t matter nearly as much as who does. The person who comments on a post or shares it on their FB to start a discussion is worth more than any number of eyeballs to me.

If given the choice to have 200,000 followers or 2,000, I’ll choose the latter because the 2,000 – I’m sure – are remarkable, personal, and are more “friends” than “strangers.”  Whereas, the 200,000 followers would feel disconnected. I would struggle to connect with them all.

Marketing is about finding the people who want to listen, who want to interact, and ignoring the mass who may read, but inevitably keep scrolling past your tweet.

When action, response, engagement matters, the who stands out.

 

Stay Positive & You Might Have Traffic, But Is Anyone Parking?

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Movement Tells A Story

Garth Beyer

Story Ladder

What you’re passionate about doesn’t necessarily come easy. No matter if you’re doing what you love or not, you’re still climbing a ladder, trying to reach the top, trying to make progress.

Creating art is a method of taking on problems from an outer level with complete focus and forming them into an almost subconscious solution process that allows you to then focus on the next problem. Each step of the ladder presents a new problem to solve. At face value, it’s not enjoyable, not fun, but what sets an artist apart from others who climb is that they find a way to love the process, to enjoy the struggle.

We build value in ourselves when we climb the ladder, when we accomplish goals, when we are moving. When we stop moving up the ladder to say “look at me now,” we tell the wrong story. Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives, Cody Delistraty at The Atlantic writes. Storytelling when standing still is an oxymoron. It doesn’t resonate well, it doesn’t inspire, it doesn’t tell the message you really want to be telling.

People view you differently when seeing where you’re at now, compared to where you’re going. Sure, saying where you’ve been and what you’ve accomplished and how you got to where you’re at now can be remarkable, but only if people know there is more to come from you; that where you decided to stop and shout down is not the highest you will climb.

Movement tells a story, and people die standing still.

If tasks start seeming easy, if you tackle all your problems subconsciously, if there’s no longer need to focus, no struggle with a problem, it means you’ve stopped climbing, that you’re standing still.

 

Stay Positive & Is That Really The Story You Want To Tell?

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When Offering Something Difficult To Acquire Elsewhere

When Offering Something Difficult To Acquire Elsewhere

Garth Beyer

Unique Business

If you’re just starting your business and selling something that’s difficult to acquire elsewhere, you’re appealing to a certain type of person.

Bill Gates won’t be interested. Nor will the farmer who has used the same mixer for his feed for years. I doubt the company that has a daily “business” meeting will want to invest either. They may discuss it at a meeting, but it’ll just be a way to spend time avoiding their real work, sadly.

Being remarkable comes with its setbacks. Those who are detail-intensive might not buy into what you offer. Nor will those who spend their time trying to avoid failure. They’re too busy planning, too busy avoiding doing what they’re not used to doing.

However, Robert Herjavec might be interested in what you have to offer. That avid blogger who is scanning for something new to write about, she’ll try what you provide. Other innovators definitely will give you a shot. After all, they often see people like you as an opportunity to learn from.

You want the type of person who scans Pinterest for a recipe to try that day, not later. You want the lady at the dinner table who, when she doesn’t know what animal’s poop is used to make coffee, googles it right away. (This actually happened to me the other night.)

To be clear, you’re not marketing to the impulse buyer who grabs the reindeer antlers at the checkout line. You want the person who cares, who notices trends, who will try what you have to offer because it’s difficult to acquire elsewhere.

I write all of this so you can answer the following question honestly.

Are you marketing to the right person?

 

Stay Positive & A Special Business Markets Special People

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Easier As You Go

Easier As You Go

Garth Beyer

Do Something That Scares You

When was the last time you committed to doing something that scared you out of your shoes?

It’s national novel writing month. 50,000 words in a month. Maybe give it a try?

A friend of mine just ran a 50-mile race. What distance scares you? Give it a go?

Michelle hosted a dinner in NYC from Nepal. Read about it. Replicate it in your town?

The concept, the tendency of staying in our shoes, our comfort zones is a cheap one. As Godin wrote, “It’s tempting to say, ‘this is who I am, habits are hardwired, it’s in my DNA, I’m going to live with it.'” Tempting, and an easy way out, he writes.

Getting from point A to point B gets a lot easier once you accept getting to point B is possible.

 

Stay Positive & Easier Once You Commit, Easier Once You Start, Easier As You Go

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Three Phases Of Trends

Three Phases Of Trends

Garth Beyer

Trends

First, people start a trend. Naturally they don’t know it’s a trend yet. Massive quick adoption of the act makes it a trend. Political blogging only had a trending impact once many others started blogging.

Second, people begin noticing the trend. Journalists start writing about political blogs. People other than the bloggers themselves talk about the impact of political blogging.

Third, people start following the trend. The increase of political blogs, not necessarily the immediate early flood of them, but the later consistent growth of them is a representation of following a trend. Instagram, Toms shoes, #scarystoriesin5words, Apple products – all examples too.

Although it is difficult to predict what action will become a trend, it is not impossible.

I had a dream the other night where I ran into Seth Godin at an eyewear store. Although he was dressed up as if he worked there, he wasn’t working. Instead, he was watching everyone who walked by, everyone who came inside and picked up frames to try on, and everyone who voiced their issues.

He was observing all three phases of trends.

1. He listened to the problems people came in with. After all, most trends are just solutions to a problem.

2. Those who entered the store to try on the frames were the ones noticing the trend. After all, the store pushes and showcases what they see is a recent trend in eyewear design.

3. Lastly, everyone who made the purchase of a showcase item or knew full well what they wanted when they entered the store were followers of a trend. After all, there’s not much convincing needed for followers of a trend.

I see it as this: there are actions taking place, things happening that are waiting to be written about, pointed out, learned from, and shared. We can play a role in any of the three phases of trends. We can start them by creating the solution to a problem or we can jump on the bandwagon.

 

Stay Positive & Do You See These Phases Happening?

if not, perhaps you need new glasses

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