Perishable If Not Shaken

Garth Beyer

Settling.

It’s what we do on the path to mediocrity. It’s what we do when we lack confidence. It’s what we do when we don’t want to guide our own life.

It’s what happens to the best of us. It’s what happens to the worst of us.

We settle for certain people in our lives. We settle for a particular job. Neither of which provides much joy.

We settle for “good enough,” for “next time I’ll do it better/right/with more flare,” for “it’s not my job.”

Don’t let nature fool you. A settled lake may look beautiful, but a settled lake is more likely to be frozen over come winter, a settled lake you wonder if it contains any life.

It’s those who strive for better, who never settle, who make it through the seasons. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to settle like the water does. Every day we have the choice to settle or not.

 

Stay Positive & Shake Well

Strangers

Garth Beyer

Stranger

You’ve got two choices to make in regard to strangers.

Turn a stranger into a friend OR

introduce a friend to another friend (who, to them, is a stranger).

Everyone is a stranger until they are not.

 

Stay Positive & Did You Know Progress Can Be Measured By The Number Of Strangers You Turn Into Friends?

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Assorted Links

Garth Beyer

1) Why I’m so negative about positivity (read)

2) Covered-up graffiti tags as art (short read)

3) It’s just cheese (short read)

4) Mob the house (event, Madison, Wis.) (Giving a little love to MobCraft Beer)

5) The free and the antifree (read)

Uncomfortable Is Original

Uncomfortable Is Original

Garth Beyer

Banana Comfort, Weird Is Good

Many blogs, many books, many talks are very, very unoriginal. The reason being is they are safe, they are familiar. Ever heard someone say every business book says the same thing, but in a different way? I’ve read enough of them that I would even push back on the “different way” part of the statement. I think all the writing was rushed.

Taking time

It is amazing how well one can write when one takes the time. Think about it. When rushed to write, you use and accept your clichés. Perfect example: journalism. The tight deadlines encourage the use of clichés, of simplification, of uniformity.

When you take time while writing, you find ways to say things better than a cliché can. If you decide to use a cliché, you at least spin it on its head and make it breakdance.

To craft something original…well, it’s scary, it’s uncomfortable, and it takes time.

When you write something original. It’s weird to leave it as it is. You want to change it for fear no one will understand it or like it. It sounds weird in your head reading it over because you’ve never read anything like it before. Orange frizzled daiquiri wedding cake looked sexier than a toucan during mating season. Wasn’t reading that fun? New? An adventure? I wrote it and it feels so weird keeping it.

Alas.

Weird is original and relatable.

The thing about weird I love so much is it will never go out of style. The world will always contain compartmentalists, always produce naysayers, always attract keepers of the status quo — those who are satisfied with the comfort of everything unoriginal. There will always be those resistant to new things and those who fear anything other than what is routine, common, and banal. Yet! There are and always will be those who love and connect with the weird.

Even in light of it all, I still say do what has never been done before. Word the sentence the way you’ve never read anyone word it. If you question whether anyone will like your writing, if you think it’s too far out there, then it’s complete. Ship it. The people who matter in this world (at least who matter to you, to your art) are out there. Wayyy out there. (Think Long Tail)

Build it and they might not come. Build it weird and more will arrive than you ever expected. The freaks shall inherit the earth.

As a dear PR-wonderwoman-friend-of-mine said, “Weird is in. Weird is good. Weird is awesome. Weird is essential. Weird is where the magic is.”

 

Stay Positive & Go Bananas

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p.s. this goes for more than just writing

What Do You Rely On

What Do You Rely On

Garth Beyer

Hashtag social media in the water

If Twitter ceased to be and whether or not something new took its place, would your business, your brand be doomed?

If Facebook finally got old, if people quite trusting businesses who use it for sponsoring ads, if millennials ditched it and you were left with the other kind of seniors, would your business, your brand still strive?

If the social media medium you rely most on disappeared tomorrow, would you need to revisit and redo your branding strategy or have you developed a plan that’s medium-versatile?

While there’s no guarantee any of the current social media outlets will dissipate, there is a guarantee that a new one will become hip. It will only serve you success if you build your business, your brand in a versatile, universal, liquid form that can fit the shape of any new social online medium.

Better to build in adaptability than to be swallowed up by the next big thing.

 

Stay Positive & Be Ready To Ride Any Currant That Comes Your Way

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Monopoly, Anyone?

Monopoly, Anyone?

Garth Beyer

Monopoly

I’m not particular to “what if” situations, but I’ll make an exception here.

What if you looked at all the barriers, all the red tape, all the content creation you have to do to get ranked high on Google search results as a way to challenge yourself, to prove your or/and your business’s value, to exceed expectations the gatekeepers have set for you?

What if, instead of trying to find a loophole in the search engine’s logic, instead of posting ads on craigslist to pay people to click your links, instead of trying to skip ahead in your journey, you play the game and play it better than everyone else who is playing it.

We’re all just about past the age when we are impressed by those who hack in the untraditional aspect. We’re more impressed by those who can hack success while playing by the rules.

Anyway, the system rewards those who stick around for the long run. Rather than cheating or flipping the board over on the winners, why not see if you can get to their level first.

 

Stay Positive & Do Not Pass Google, Do Not Collect $200 Adsense

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The Momentum Deception


					

				Garth Beyer			

			


			

			
As you consistently do something, it gets easier to continue doing it.


Write a blog post a day for two weeks and it becomes easier to do so for four weeks. After four weeks, it becomes easier to do so for two months. Before you know it, it’s been two years.


The Momentum Deception is once you’ve got a lot of momentum going for you, it becomes more difficult to stop. In reality, it’s just as easy to stop your momentum as it is to continue it. If anything, it gets easier to do both.


You don’t need a computer virus to break your blogging momentum, you only need to think “oh, what’s one day off going to hurt?”


Well it can hurt more than you can imagine.


 


Stay Positive & Stay Strong