Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
They say showing up is half the battle and half the success.
Most of your audience are all still kids in some ways. One way being is that they only care about those who show up. It doesn’t matter how great of an idea you have or how much you love them. If you don’t show up, they won’t care about you.
Then again, showing up might mean you need a gift in hand.
Stay Positive & What Do You Have To Give
Garth E. Beyer
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Investors
Competition
Randos
Dog people
Critics
Your parents
People who buy hats
Readers
Blue collar folk
Your enemies
Your SO
Yourself?
There’s over 7 billion people out there.
It’s best you know which ones you’re trying to please.
Stay Positive & Be Honest
Garth E. Beyer
If you haven’t heard of the term “satisficing,” then it’s time to listen closely. It’s much like “good enough” if you define that as “Good. Now, enough.”
There are two sides to satisficing.The first is on you, the content creator. Perfection with your product or service might be able to be accomplished from time-to-time, but not consistently and it’s not what your clients or customers want. Understanding your audience is the second side of satisficing.
Herbert Simon who coined the term “satisficing” maintained that “individuals do not seek to maximise their benefit from a particular course of action (since they cannot assimilate and digest all the information that would be needed to do such a thing). Not only can they not get access to all the information required, but even if they could, their minds would be unable to process it properly.”
In laymen’s terms, even if people notice perfection, they have difficulty interacting with it. Most of the time though, they don’t notice perfection. This leads to a series of questions you need to ask yourself.
Two extra bits about this:
1. Having an idea (not a goal!) of what perfection is at the beginning of a project puts you in a great position to start working. Beware, you will end up hairless trying to follow all the way through with that idea. (Either it will take so long to reach that you bald or you pull all of your hair out trying to make it perfect.)
2. Acknowledge the Juggler’s Perfection. The businesses and freelancers who make the most are those who create something that’s imperfect, perfectly.
Stay Positive & Don’t Fall Out Of The Running By Trying For Perfection
Garth E. Beyer
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When you create more connections, you’re bound to be more open. That’s something I love about the current state of society and the people in it.
Part of me feels that I have Facebook and Twitter to thank for making people more open. Another part realizes that it is just a beneficial byproduct of the connection economy.
Yet, I see businesses and freelancers running with their arms held close to their chest so they don’t hit anyone, so they don’t make themselves open, so they don’t seem vulnerable. This is trite and counterintuitive.
I can barely begin to tell you how many people have told me things about themselves and their lives that they would never have mentioned eight years ago. Respectively, I owe it to them to be just as open (which is in our advantage).
It’s not a matter of mutual generosity, it’s more a risk at creating a symbol of trust.
This calls for you to reciprocate that risk. When you see that others are doing or acting as you do, you feel comfortable, you feel in place, you feel more willing to trust and invest in what that person is offering.
Just the same. If you want the business of those who are very open about themselves and their lives, you need to be open too.
This is why storytelling has become the largest importance of businesses, why brand matters, why sales are made on trust, not shininess.
Stay Positive & Open Sesame
Garth E. Beyer
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I came across Shoshana Fanizza’s blog earlier today. In one of her recent posts, she mentions that she “went to a concert last night, a chamber music concert with Glass, Verdi and Wagner. It was a great mix of new and old pieces that are rarely performed.” She goes on, ” I looked around, and GenX me was the youngest one there! There were no millennials, except onstage.”
Confusingly, that’s both surprising and not. Not surprising because, it’s true, millennials have no time to be attending performances because they are out striving to gather an audience of their own. It’s a bittersweet tragedy, really.
Fanizza writes, “I remember asking a younger performer who was in town if he ever was able to be an audience member. He replied that he almost never had the time.”
I say it’s a tragedy for the same reason why it’s surprising to me. How can you know what an audience feels at an orchestra, how they interact with the composers and each other, how they listen to the music, if you’ve never been an audience member?
This is, more or less, a shout out to all the artists out there: you can’t be a successful businessperson without having ever been on the other side of a contract, you can’t be a composer if you’ve never sat in the audience of another composer, you can’t be a phenomenal writer if you’ve never read a book, and you will never truly connect with an audience member without first being one.
Consider being part of an audience like visiting family. At times, it may drive you crazy and you may other priorities and work to do, but you still visit, because, in the end, it’s in everyone’s best interest.
Stay Positive & Don’t Get Me Started On Standing Ovations
Garth E. Beyer
I often catch myself and others syncing and analyzing the specifics of what they want, only to forget the ones our audience/clients really want. Completely missing the sweet spot of specifics.
When we put ourselves first, we can have trouble pinpointing what exactly our audience wants. In the process of creating and delivering, one might touch the middle of the graph, but it needs to be centered and stabilized for success.
On the other hand, when we put others first, we put ourselves last and that becomes a problem when it comes to credibility, respect, and trust with our clients.
Stay Positive & Ask For Specifics If You Don’t Know Them
Garth E. Beyer
Quickly, don’t be confused. I didn’t say death of “spectator sports.”
Last night at Miller Park I watched the Brewers shut out the Cubs. Victory for the Brewers meant that the Cubs are officially the worst team in the league right now. Given that they were tied with the Brewers for that title before the game, victory was not as great to the Brewers as, say, it was to the Chicago Blackhawks.
What I realized though, was that the sport itself didn’t make the game. My great experience was not fueled by the talent and flare of the players. Heck, I could have watched a little league baseball game and been more impressed. That aside, place me in any stadium, field, or rink and what makes it remarkable is everyone in the stands.
Previously called “spectators,” that’s a dying phrase in sports.
A spectator is someone who looks on or watches. Simple as that. But when I scan the stands, I don’t see any spectators. (Worth noting, to be a spectator also implies being silent, taking it all in. It’s difficult to be a spectator when you are texting someone the score, high-fiving those behind you, making noise, and shouting “Let’s Go Brewers.”)
What I see is people connecting, relaxing, cheering, and making the most of their ballgame experience, not just the ballgame. “This spectator sport” and “that spectator sport” are simply categories for people to meet up with like-minded people, not to watch players pitch a ball or hit a puck.
The reason for this post is to note that it is easy to turn a business into a baseball game. The part oft forgotten is that you still need to build a stadium that certain types of people go to. This may mean that there’s a seating limit, certain concessions, and a place for people to purchase matching clothes.
The players/clients don’t make the game/business, the game/business makes the players/clients.
BallParkFood for thought: Maybe we don’t go to sporting events to watch them play. Maybe they play sports to get us (the audience/fans/families/superfans) to go crazy, interact with each other, and connect on what I consider a personal level.
Stay Positive & Take Me Out To The Ball Game
Garth E. Beyer
