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Slow Fail, Quick Fix, Overnight Success

Garth Beyer

All organizations are prone to fail slowly, although it may not seem like it at times.

Just like the overnight success of Amanda Palmer, which is anything but an overnight success (it was a consistency of getting the little things right over a long period of time), failures appear to happen fast. One day the restaurant is there, the next day it’s not. One day the business manager is in charge of 20 employees, the next day it’s just him. But, truly, you and I know failure and success don’t happen that fast.

All agencies, organizations, businesses are bound to be cut and bruised just as we are. Are you treating the wounds of your business as you would a wound on your body? Or are you waiting (like so many now-failed businesses) until it’s time to patch the wound with a giant band-aid, a redesigned website, a new PR campaign, a new motto or “about us” page? It may seem logical to care for all wounds at once, but it’s not.

A drop in office productivity, a minor employee-client clash, one regretful tweet are cuts that need mending immediately. Even more importantly, we must view the boring things of business just as wounds that need our immediate attention.

When we begin ignoring the little things, we set ourselves up for a fail: a slow fail until the day it hits you.

You can certainly jump ahead success-wise with a broad stroke, a bold move, but to stop a slow and painful death that every organization, every person in business is susceptible to, we must make the little things a little more remarkable, we must apply, not just quick-fixes, but improvements to the banal, to the cumbersome, to the “not my problem” problems of our business.

Don’t just think “how can we fix this?” think “how can we fix this in a way that leaves a positive impression?” If we ask and answer this enough, we may just find ourselves getting referred to as an overnight success.

 

Stay Positive & Turn The Little Things Into Big Things

The Problem With Advice, Suggestions, And Orders

Garth Beyer

It’s one thing to give them out to someone; to think critically before doing so with a selfless goal in mind.

It’s another to be given advice, suggestions or orders from someone. Most of what people recommend, suggest or oder 659315_5ba9794c89you to do is what they would have liked to do themselves. In essence, they are attempting to live and learn from the experience through you. It’s a great way to learn, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a great way for you to learn.

So many of us have a curious tendency when it comes to decision-making, especially when its other people making the decisions. We’re more risky when giving advice to someone because we’re not the ones who will follow through with it, receiving consequences and all.

I’ve even given advice that I would never do for the single reason of wanting to know how it would have turned out. (Full disclosure: We were both interested in what would happen if he took my advice.)

Quit plainly, we’re reckless when it comes to advice, suggestions, and orders.

Which is why I’m telling you of a solution to it. Ask.

 

Stay Positive & Ask, Ask, Ask

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

Here’s A Cup, Go Measure

Garth Beyer

If it’s so difficult to bake a cake or make cookies from scratch, how do you expect to read results that are hard to measure? (Obviously this post is more for those like me, who can’t bake a cake or make cookies. Alas, I hope this to still be noteworthy.)

We can look at the number of cups of flour and water and chocolate chips you need just like you can keep track of the number of visitors to your website and the clicks you get on each page.

Very easy to measure.

What about a cake without a recipe? Or the personality of each individual who visits your blog and what they actually want or if they were satisfied with what they found?

Much more difficult.

Luckily, food writer Michael Ruhlman breaks down cooking into easy-to-understand ratios of ingredients, a method he says allows for more creativity in the kitchen.

“When you know a ratio, you don’t know a single recipe, you know a thousand.”

The same can be applied to your website, your product, or your own creation-without-a-recipe. All you really need to do is ask and connect to your audience. It’s hard to know a thousand audience members before you know what the single most common one is like.

 

Stay Positive & Start A Conversation

Garth E. Beyer