Keep Your Client (Squaders)

Garth Beyer

Back in the day, if you were sitting in a room with friends and you had to go to the bathroom, you would hold it. After all, if you got up, someone would take your spot!

Then an act of seat reservation was adopted. It was called “squaders.” Before getting up from your spot, whether it’s a log around the campfire or the one of few fancy chairs around the dinner table, you call “squaders!” and no one can take your spot while you are away.

Sitting with friends the other night, I got up and before walking forward, asked, “do we call squaders anymore?”

Of course we don’t. More people, specifically clients, are naturally mobile and resourceful. (If they are not, then maybe you don’t want them as a client.) We have to understand that the client can shop around, that they are okay not staying in their chair, that, sometimes, they go off and build their own chair.

Squaders is about attachment – and attachment is about vulnerability – and vulnerability is what the chair maker should feel, not the one sitting in it.

 

Stay Positive & Since We’re Talking About Chairs And Success

Garth E. Beyer

Are You Cereal?

Garth Beyer

Why have they not made cereal bags that you can open without ripping the bag in half?

Or why have they not made spoons that prevent milk from trickling down your chin?

Because of some very important factors.

  • 99% of the time, seeing someone trip is funny. So is watching someone try to open a bag of cereal or when milk trickles down their chin.
  • Broken things are remarkable, as in, worth talking about whether it’s bragging or complaining.
  • They let people connect with each other. Nothing says we’re perfect for marriage than knowing you both can’t open a bag of cereal without tearing the side of it.

It’s not just cereal. As long as the real thing – whether it’s cereal or your own invention – is great, the trouble getting there is worth it. Think about your art as a toy at the bottom of a cereal box. It sort-of sucks to get it. It’s not convenient, but it’s an accomplishable and sometimes entertaining challenge.

It gets people talking about the toy without actually talking about the toy. By having them share their stories about how they got the toy (and almost vomiting while finishing an entire box of cereal in one sitting), your “toy” becomes part of a real, emotional, personal memory.

This is why perfect art is worthless. You can’t have remarkable cereal without the bag.

 

Stay Positive & Your Art Is Never Just Art To Someone

Garth E. Beyer

A Dangerous Reminder

Garth Beyer

We’re all crazy.

I can say that because we love destroying things – rather, when we do destroy things, we have fun with it – a lot of fun.

Finally getting rid of your old desktop computer? Smashing it in the driveway sounds like a great idea. Stereo-system broke? Time to tear it to pieces and see how it works. Need room to build something? I’ll get the sledgehammer.

A few months ago my dad and I had to get rid of some wasp nests. Naturally we tried wasp spray, but it was ineffective. Then we bleached the nests. Still alive. So we poured gasoline and set it on fire.

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A couple of months ago my dad and I took apart my original droid. (After five years, it finally broke.) This is the outcome.

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It’s easy to break something, to dissect it, to experiment with what has already been created. It’s much more dangerous to build something from scratch, to experiment with your own creativity.

What puzzles me is how we can have so much fun destroying things, yet not be as insanely excited to create something.

There’s a few different ways to overcome this. All dangerous.

1. Build to destroy it.

2. Build to let someone else have fun destroying it.

3. Build knowing that you will already be building something new, thus, not caring whether it gets destroyed or not.

Bonus: If you want a real challenge. Build something new from the remnants of what you destroy.

 

Stay Positive & Whatever You Do, Just Have Fun With It

Garth E. Beyer

You Can Land, But Never Settle

Garth Beyer

If the chair is uncomfortable, find a new one.

If the book is uninteresting, quit reading it and toss it away.

If you don’t like what you ordered, get something else.

Settling is a habit that we get ourselves into. Settling does not occur sparingly – it’s not just about relationships, or classes, or traveling, or other worthwhile situations. We only find ourselves settling in the high risk situations because we settle for all the little things each day instead of changing them, redirecting, restarting, giving something new a try, or simply walking away.

When we land somewhere new, it’s sometimes a combination of anxiousness and excitement. When we settle somewhere, well, being drastic, we’re giving up.

 

Stay Positive & Never Give Up, Never, Never Give Up (HT to Chuck for teaching me this)

Garth E. Beyer

It’s Not For Everyone

Garth Beyer

My writing doesn’t resonate perfectly with everyone who views it. I have dozens of very close friends that never read what I post. I have family that – and I can say this because they won’t read it – doesn’t care that I write or what I write.

I’ve overcome this, but I do know how it can sometimes hurt. A lot. When those you think care so much about you, don’t get involved with your passion.

One of the myriad admonitions I’ve learned about writing is that there are people you wish would read it that don’t and there are people you wish wouldn’t read it and do.

Remind yourself of the long tail. It helps.

 

Stay Positive & HT To Those Who Don’t Force Themselves To Read It

Garth E. Beyer

References

Garth Beyer

Sometimes I don’t put contacts that I know practically have a script prepared on a reference list. I’ve come to find that it’s really easy to find a few people who will talk you up. All you have to think is who cares most about you and has a different last name.

Sometimes I put contacts that don’t know me too well because they are forced to share what little they know. After that, they assume, they predict, they judge honestly.

It’s often more remarkable to hear where other people think you are going in life than it is to hear people say where you told them that you think you are going in life.

It’s a risk, definitely. Hasn’t failed me yet.

 

Stay Positive & Truth Will Out

Garth E. Beyer

Chasing A Dream

Garth Beyer

While we are chasing our dreams, we can’t forget that there are people around us also chasing theirs. And you know what? You may be working on different projects, but you’re still in the same boat.

Tim Gallen is a friend of mine who is chasing his dream. Here is what he has to say about it. (Thank you, Tim, for writing this up.)

Stay Positive & Enjoy The Read… And The Chase

Garth E. Beyer

 

Enter Tim: 

They say a funny thing happens when you chase a dream.

They say the more real you try to make it, the more you try to birth an idea, make a dream come true, the more doubt gets in your face.

I didn’t NOT believe this, of course. I mean, I’ve been around the InterWebs, have heard through the digital grapevine whispers of such incidents. Times when people – excited, energetic, passionate people – pursued their dream but kept feeling uncertain: What if this doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if I’m not cut out for this?

But reading and hearing about something is completely different from feeling it firsthand.

I know this because I’m experiencing it right now.

For years, my brothers and I have had aspirations to tell stories using video. In other words, we’ve wanted to make movies.

This is a dream we’ve talked about ad nauseum. And for the longest time, that’s all it was: talk. Short bursts of excitable, dreamy-eyed chatter that gave way to the pressing obligations and reality of day-to-day life.

Until last year, when we finally reached a point of enough-is-enough. It was time to make a go of this dream of ours. We planned and plotted, recruited and recorded. It took us longer than we originally hoped and wanted, but we created a promotional video for a spoofy web series called Harbor Shores. It was an idea we’d had for a while and one we thought was perfect for launching our foray into visual storytelling.

I can’t speak for my brothers, but you’d think at this point, I’d be feeling the doubt creep up my spine. Well, honestly, I didn’t.

You see, we used this promo as part of a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to produce our first season of our show. From the middle of March through the middle of April, my brothers and I – along with some amazing support from friends and family – blasted social media and talked up our project. We managed to raise enough to fund our project.

And, while ecstatic about chasing the dream, a tiny voice called from my subconscious: “Why are you wasting your time?”

Truthfully, I may not have heard it the first few times. But you gotta hand it to forms of resistance – fear, doubt, anxiety, et al. – they’re nothing if not persistent. They gnaw away at you like a dog chewing a bone. They wear you down, tire you out. Persistent.

My brothers and I are knee-deep into our dream: putting together our Kickstarter rewards, securing locations, and filling the final remaining roles in the cast. We begin filming later this month.

And ever-present, I hear that voice whisper inside: “You’re a fake! Why waste your time with this? You’re going to fail!”

In my weaker moments, I wish I could somehow eliminate it completely. But I know all too well how resistance never goes away.

Knowing I will never completely be free of the fear and doubt, I choose to use them as a signpost. When I hear that whisper of doubt, when I sense the prickle of fear climb up my spine, I know I’m on the right track, chasing a dream.