What To Do With What You Observe

Garth Beyer

Relentlessly you’re advised to observe, to notice things, to really see everything that is happening throughout your day, throughout your life. What do you do with your observations?

Write about them? Smile at the moment, then forget about it?

Or invest them, shape the observations into something remarkable, turn them into insights that you can then use to build, to create, to share. Perhaps the best thing to do with your observations is invest them.

 

Stay Positive & See The World With Your Own Eyes First

When Your Audience Is Too Small

Garth Beyer

Usually, so is your impact.

When you’re so motivated to get a big audience, reach the mass, have as many people as you know plus all of their friends to attend an event you’re putting on or even something as simple as following you on a social network, you lose out on leaving the impact the few who show up deserve.

Once they are there. So should you. No point in thinking of how you can get more people to attend the next event during the one some are attending.

This goes for Twitter chats, seminars, book readings, classes, and even get-togethers with friends.

 

Stay Positive & Impact Was Your Intention In The First Place, Right?

Incremental Appreciation, Do You Have it?

Garth Beyer

There’s no tried and true way to reach the massive audience you desire to reach and to have your message effect them equally. There is, however, a tried and true way to reach the massive audience you desire to reach and to have your message effect them all differently. Incremental Appreciation is working on appealing to individual after individual, one by one, person by person.

You’re not going to sell your work to someone. You’re going to sell them a feeling they desire. Once they make an exchange with you (be it money, time, subscription, etc,.), appreciate that moment, but don’t expect an immediate return on investment.

The saying all good things come to those who wait gets misread to mean if you stand by, stay sill, sit silently, what you want will come to you. That is false. The saying implies the good things will not come right after you take an action, place a sale, reach a member of your audience. Instead, they will come later. The idea of “waiting” is perceived as inaction. Again, extremely false.

Incremental appreciation leads to what Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping point. The moment when a certain number of people are buzzing about you or your product, so much so that a tip occurs and now the mass you felt was impossible to reach at the beginning now wants in.

Incremental appreciation is about stacking blocks, filling a bucket with water (drip by drip), or adding a contact to your rolodex. It’s about appreciating every contact, every sale, every new follower, but not wishing you could reach a thousand at once and not being pissed when you don’t sell as many products as you wanted last month and not giving up when you don’t get the praise you were hoping for within the first week of your startup.

Incremental appreciation implies a sense of some short-term effect. Actually, it’s quite the opposite.

 

Stay Positive & Be In It To Win It, But Be In It To Enjoy Each Increment First

 

Getting On The List

Garth Beyer

Every artist has a secret (and sometimes not-so-secret) desire to get on the list. The top 25, the best author, the VIP list. What does getting on the list say about you?

It says that you’re good at getting on the list.

Not that your talented with your craft, not that your making a dent in the universe, not that you’ve achieved the goal that you set out to achieve (unless, of course, your only goal was to get on the list.)

Lists are fickle things.

 

Stay Positive & If You’re So Inclined To Be On A List, Write Your Own

It Doesn’t Hurt

Garth Beyer

There’s a three-day, $250+ writing institute conference next month in Madison, Wis. I decided I wouldn’t go at that price. But I am going to the conference.

What? Yup. You read that right. I’m going. I’m also not paying $250+ for it. I’m paying $25. How? Simple.

I sent the conference coordinator a three sentence email stating it’s a shame certain people who would benefit from a conference like this cannot attend because of the price. Essentially I asked if she could give me a lower price without asking precisely that. Instead, I gave her a reason to charge someone a lower price.*

It doesn’t hurt to ask if you can get an extra, get a discount, get a letter of recommendation, get a raise, get a treat, get anything.

 

Stay Positive & If You’re In The Madison Area, I Hope To See You There

*I stated I could pay $60. She still only charged me $25. Gotta love how things work out when you ask.

The Bucket

Garth Beyer

Drip, drip, drip, drip, tip and everyone watches.quassy-bucket-dump

A bucket slowly filling with water doesn’t appeal too much to anyone. As the bucket gets filled to the brim, more people begin watching. As the bucket tips, everyone wants to be a part of the experience.

It’s a lot like doing what you love. No one pays much attention at first. You can write a novel, draw a master piece, give the greatest speech, but the audience is so small and they are watching from afar.

Write 50 novels (drip, drip, drip), draw 100 master pieces (drip, drip, drip), give 20 remarkable speeches across the U.S. (drip, drip, drip) and the more people will show up to  be part of the experience.

The tough part is we never know when our bucket will tip. Alas, if you keep creating (drip, drip, drip) there’s no doubt in my mind the bucket will tip. (It also does well to remember here that there are always people watching you fill your bucket. Again, you might not see them, but they are watching you.)

No one likes being sprayed with water. But everyone loves to be there when the bucket tips.

 

Stay Positive & Are You Filling Your Bucket?

Photo credit

First Get Good At Consistently Creating

Garth Beyer

So often you’ll not follow-through with a project or an idea because you know how much marketing you’re going to have to do when it’s complete.

To you, the world might not seem approving of someone writing a book and just throwing it on a digital bookshelf. No. You have to write the book, make sure it’s excellent, put it on the digital bookshelf, and then advertise it, get reviews on it, have bloggers cover it, give it out for free, set a Skype chat interview up for you to talk about it, make sure it’s translated to 20 different languages, beg the NYT reviewers to read it, and so much more.

It’s all a lie. It’s all a trick to stop you from creating. It’s fear speaking up. It’s an excuse and you and I both know it.

First get good at consistently creating. Write five books and throw them up on Amazon. Chat with friends about it, naturally, but don’t worry about heavily marketing it. Think about it in terms of time. If you create something, a book, an art piece, a business plan or a TED talk (and it takes you a month), then you spend the next seven months marketing it, getting people to see it, buy into it, subscribe to it, admire it, blog about it. You’ve just stopped yourself from creating seven more incredible works of art.

Obviously this post isn’t meant for the experts, the famous, the already envied. It’s for you, it’s for me, it’s for all the people out there who think things need to be perfect and need to have their total commitment for a year before they move on and create the next thing. It’s not necessary. The best marketing strategies come natural, the best art work doesn’t need to be pushed, the greatest connections often come from chatting about what you’ve done lately, not what you did six months ago.

And you know what? The act of consistently creating might be the greatest marketing strategy known to man.

 

Stay Positive & Interesting, Isn’t It?