When People Come To You With Problems

When People Come To You With Problems

Garth Beyer

Solving Customer Service Problems

Zappos and a few others revolutionized the way to handle problems. It’s not merely about their shipping policy. Nor is it how nice they are when you call them.

Say you’re at Target or Culver’s or some other physically established business, and you have a problem with a product or your meal. You have to go to the customer service desk or they have to phone the manager to get a solution. You’re fighting a battle on enemy territory. Most of the time you win, but does it really feel that way? Do you leave happy?

Where a solution gets hashed out surely is as important as how it gets hashed out, but neither are as important as how the person feels while hashing it out. When you walk up to the customer service desk, you’re on that store’s turf and, perhaps, feeling mad and uncomfortable. Zappos (and so many other online retailers now) do so well because they meet you at your home, where you feel more comfortable. But, we can’t all be online businesses, nor should we.

What if the restaurant resolved your problem in a remarkable way? What if they tried accommodating you in a way that leaves you feeling it wasn’t a big bump in your day? What if they replicated in person the same phone experience you might have with Zappos when you call with a problem?

Sure Zappos and online businesses meet you at home, but what’s stopping other businesses from making you feel the same?

 
Stay Positive & Seems The Best Solution Is To Make Your Home Theirs

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Find Your Chokepoint And Learn From It

Find Your Chokepoint And Learn From It

Garth Beyer

Chokepoint Chokehold

When you begin having more followers than you can handle, more orders than you can supply, more promises than you can keep up with, and you’re feeling the stress of it all – you’ve reached your chokepoint. It’s a positive thing to know where that point is for two reasons.

It’s a reminder that you can stop trying for quantity, and to start focusing on quality.

I’ve written multiple blog posts in one day. I’ve crashed more time’s I would like to admit. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I’ve learned from all of these moments.

There’s a reason I only write one post a day. There’s a reason I take a walk, do yoga or meditate each day. There’s a reason I stretch, before I take on a large workload. I’m not saying don’t make my same mistakes. I’m saying make sure you learn from your own chokepoint. The chokepoint is only a negative, detrimental phase if you stay there.

The chokepoint also reminds you that you’re human. When you recognize your chokepoint, your style of writing, interacting, working, changes. You think more on a personal level. By becoming more aware of how you spend your time, you also consider the time of your audience. By default, it will be easier for you to connect with people.

 

Stay Positive & Everyone Pushes Themselves Too Hard From Time To Time, It’s Okay

(as long as you learn from it)

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You Will Be Amazed

Garth Beyer

If you started building your product

If you started reaching out to idols

If you started sharing your art

If you started hopping on podcasts and vlogging

If you started messaging people on LinkedIn asking to Skype

If you started telling people what your goal is

You will be amazed at how much people will naturally want to help you along the way, who will provide positive constructive feedback, who will share what you share with them. If you’re not starting, not shipping because you’re afraid no one will want what you offer, no one will listen, no one will care, then by all means, prove me wrong.

 

Stay Positive & Go Be Amazed. Please.

The Follower Outbreak

The Follower Outbreak

Garth Beyer

The Follower Outbreak

If your goal is to get to the phase where you have 100 new followers a day or that moment when you finally go viral, you may be missing the point of why you do the work you’re doing.

The remarkable writer, lawyer or any artist for that matter doesn’t need 20k followers to make a living off their art. They don’t need an outbreak of followers to be successful. What they need is a tribe.

A tribe is a group of people like you. That’s why it’s great to make your “about me” page more of a “people like me…” page, as in, people like me are fearless or people like me live to debate or people like me just can’t help but write. It lets people who come across you know you’re just like them, that they have found the right tribe.

There is no specific cap on the number of tribe members you can have. There is, however, always a breaking point when you can’t turn the strangers that follow you into friends because you’ve exceeded your capacity of engagement.

Imagine you are getting 50 new strangers following you a day starting tomorrow. How will you make them feel part of your tribe?

Difficult, huh? And time consuming.

If the follower outbreak is what you’re going for, reflect on how much experience you’re giving up. By aiming for the mass, you miss making the smaller connections with people who really care about your work, and who you may even learn from.

And if you’re looking for monetary success, the number of followers you have rarely indicates how much you will make. If you were to divide your followers up by friends and strangers, it is the friends who you can rely on to download your ebook, to share your starter kit, to call on your for consultation services. These friends make up your tribe. Treat them well.

Building a tribe is a slow process, but far more rewarding than an outbreak of followers.

 

Stay Positive & They Are Only Strangers Until You Turn Them Into Friends

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It’s A Science, Well, Sorta

Garth Beyer

Building your business and brand is a lot like baking brownies or brewing beer. You can get all science-y. You can have everything perfectly measured, perfectly timed, and at the perfect temperature. It takes a ton of work, attention, and, arguably, stress. But it can be done.

The catch is by following the rules so closely, you don’t produce anything new.

Sure you can brew an incredible beer and build an incredible business, but nothing is as remarkable as something that is both incredible and new.

When you know where you’re going to arrive, it’s best to try new ways of getting there.

Certainly learn from science, but don’t stick to it.

 

Stay Positive & Skip Science, Try Art

Effective Strategy Questions

Effective Strategy Questions

Garth Beyer

Communication Strategy

1) What’s the ultimate objective? Can you cut it down to 3-5 words?

2) Who is it you want to communicate with?

3) What do you want them to do? What action should they take after hearing from you?

4) What’s in it for them? Is there a reward to taking that action?

5) This will help you decide the best time to send an email. When is the best time to send your message? And where? Perhaps it’s not email.

6) What is the best tone for this message? Does it align with your voice on other platforms?

7) What’s the central idea? What’s your one word? What’s the point?

 

Stay Positive & Is This Strategy The Best Strategy?

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Down In The Dip

Down In The Dip

Garth Beyer

It’s quiet where you’re at. No one is patting you on your back. You’ve been at it long enough now that you believe you should be getting the attention you deserve (and I’m sure you really do deserve it!), but for some reason it’s just quiet.

That’s the dip. That’s when you need to reapply the mindset you had when you first started. Certainly you didn’t expect to be seen by thousands right away, you didn’t expect to get constant DMs and calls for interaction, right?

The dip is entered through a door of discouragement. The dip is the real challenge, the real point in time to show just how badly you want success. The dip is like waiting in line to go on a rollercoaster, but they shut it down because of some rain. How long are you willing to wait out the storm?

Only those who bear the storm, the dip, get to ride.

 

Stay Positive & Be Discouraged, But Don’t Give In