You Know What They Say About People With Big Shoes

Garth Beyer

Odd connection here, but I was fortunate to have ordered big shoes with my tuxedo for my best friend’s wedding this weekend. Who would have guessed I would jam my toe the night before the wedding and be in pain with my nicely-fitting gym shoes? (I’m still not convinced it’s not broken.) I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to bust a move on the dance floor because my toe would be pressing against the side of the dress shoe. As I said, fortunately the shoes I ordered were big and gave my foot space to move and slide around without the pressure leading to pain.

The experience made me think how it really pays off when we have big shoes to fill: when we put ourselves in positions above what we believe we’re capable of, when we take on more than we think we can handle, and when we put ourselves in large uncomfortable situations.

I’ve taken a freelance job that requires more skill than I have, that someone older or with more years of experience could do better, and that has made me a bit nervous. Big shoes to fill.

Yet, I’ve got space to explore, room to stretch (and grow), and nothing to lose. Great thing about big shoes to fill is no one expects you to fill them. Great thing is you now have a great source of motivation to fill them. It’s not so much about proving them wrong as it is proving yourself right.

 

Stay Positive & Remember, You’ve Got Room To Breathe

Downtime

Garth Beyer

It’s very unlikely your business will be finished if you don’t have a sale today or a bare minimum number of sales throughout the week. When you’re having a rough start or there’s downtime when it comes to sales, you have an incredible opportunity. You have time to make your business remarkable for a few, rather than trying to gain the attention of the mass.

It’s far better and more fun to take that time to reach out to the few people who made purchases and make their experience better. You’re better off spending the down time focusing your message on the people who matter. Forget the mass. You can’t please everyone.

Instead of rushing to get as many messages about your business in front of everyone, begging for attention and asking all your friends to give your website a shoutout on their social networks, you have the privilege to find the few sneezers who will make your business grow. You have time to make your business something worth sneezing.

 

Stay Positive & ACHOO!

Can You Do More?

Garth Beyer

For most, doing more doesn’t matter.

In fact, if you go to pitch to a client, they’re likely not to notice if you had two more strategies than planned. What’s the point when you can say quality over quantity?

The thing is there’s so much evidence showing those who do more (without sacrificing quality) succeed faster, grow more, and move forward past those who just do enough. On top of that, the most important judge knows if you did all you could do. That judge is yourself.

Wouldn’t want to get on the judge’s bad side, right?

 

Stay Positive & Impress Yourself

 

Use All The Advertising You Want

Garth Beyer

Or save that money to make sure you can keep your business afloat and add value to your product while you reach out to the users and establish relationships. Start conversations. Send emails. Make contacts. Show up.

Instead of paying for ad space in Denver, drive there.

Instead of paying for ad space in the Silicon Bayou News, contact a reporter, share your story and establish a relationship. Your story is advertising enough. (right?)

Instead of paying for ad space where your target audience hangs, go hang there yourself.

Instead of paying for ad space between television shows, go create an incredible (sharable!) YouTube video.

Advertising is great fun when you have the money to try remarkable things with it, but when you don’t, money is better spent adding value to the experience, to the story than it is trying to show the experience to people with an ad.

After all, if you have to pay for a product to be in someone’s face to get their attention, is your product really worth it? A lot of people are beginning to wonder the same thing.

 

Stay Positive & Experience Speaks For Itself And People Are Happy To Relay The Message

Reach Out, Connect, Care

Garth Beyer

connect

I’m not sure why I still get amazed by it, but I do. I get amazed by the friendships I have with people who, one day long ago, I reached out to on a whim, with no expectations for what might come from it. They were strangers at the time. Just names.

An email has connected me with people all around the world and people who travel around the world (see above). My response rate to emails is 92 percent and 90 percent of the strangers became friends.

On top of that, every job offer and all freelance work has come from me reaching out to someone. No applications, no resumes, no formal letters. Just a considerate email. (Or tweets. The freelance work I’m doing now came from tweeting to a business letting them know I would be happy to work with them if they wanted to expand their PR team. Yup, it’s that simple.)

If there’s one thing to take from this, it’s care.

Care is why the response, rather, connection rate is what it is. You show someone you care about them, they’ll be happy to connect with you.

Not only do people love knowing they are cared about, they also love caring. Every person I’ve reached out to has helped me in a way because they cared that I cared about them. It’s a crazy spiral of success (and, corny as it may be, of friendship).

Just wanted to let you know how worth it it is to reach out to… anyone, really.

Reach out, connect, care.

 

Stay Positive & Go Send An Email To Someone You Think Is Interesting

Almost forgot. My email is thegarthbox@gmail.com in case you didn’t click the “connect” tab at the top of this page

Awesome By Accident

Garth Beyer

I wrote about voice yesterday. When a group of mine (who did the same activity) commented on my short essay, they expressed how crafty I was by neglecting indentation. As you will read in my response about voice, I talk about not needing to be perfect because it takes the humanity out, the voice out. They went on to say how not indenting made my writing flow better and drive home my point. To be forward, I simply forgot to indent.

Goes to show many might love what you thought was a mistake. If that’s the case, might as well try making a mistake on purpose to make your writing or your work more alive. An accident isn’t always a bad thing, and an accident on purpose may be just what you need.

For those interested, you can read my short essay on voice here. (3-min read)

 

Stay Positive & Give Your Work Some Voice

PR Freelancers Don’t Neglect The Last Phase

Garth Beyer

Public Relations Phase

A PR strategy can be broken down into three phases. The last, the most important and often neglected.

1) Ideation

Write down everything. Brainstorm. Read about other products’ PR strategies (not just similar brands to the one you’re working with). Talk with a different person each day and ask for help. You can do it alone, but you can do it better with others’ help. Here’s a site I read a lot when brainstorming.

2) Evaluation

No one loves to redo something because they forgot a piece. Nor does anyone enjoy scrapping work they’ve spent hours on because while it may be good work, it doesn’t fit the overall strategy. Evaluation is easy, but dealing with the criticism may prove difficult to handle. You can get attached once you start creating, not before.

3) Creation

Here’s the spot a lot of PR freelancers neglect before pitching their strategy. It’s easy to suggest a business sends out a newsletter. It’s much more difficult to write that newsletter yourself. It’s easy to suggest how to use Twitter and Facebook, but much harder to think of 30 tweets or 24 Facebook posts they can use. It’s easy to suggest building a clock a bird pops out of each hour and sings, but … you get the idea. No business wants to hear what they should do they want to see it. After all, they are hiring you to do it, not just think about doing it.

 

Stay Positive & Go Create Something Special