Be Human

If People Like You

Garth Beyer

I might be wrong, but the best way to succeed at work is to have people like you.

I don’t mean this in the sense of giving gifts, manipulating emotions, and sacrificing your personal life to please those who have a say whether you move up the work ranks or not. Quite the opposite.

Getting people to like you requires you to always have an open mind, requires you to try new experiences, and you’re always putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. It requires you to share who you really are with another person, it gives an ambitious goal to work toward, and it helps you stay positive.

So much goes into getting people to like you. What I love most is that you get an instant return on your investment even if it’s not in the form of the person liking you just yet.

 

Stay Positive & Make Putting Yourself Out There The Type Of Person You Are

Dancing Personas

Garth Beyer

Personas are built, not bred.

Marketers establish their buyers’ persona to give them direction on how to communicate.

Kids establish their everything is silly and cute persona to get out of spilling the cup of juice you gave them in the pool.

I’ve established this persona of allowing myself to be vulnerable so it makes it easier to ship something each day.

Personas are incredibly interesting because they are ever-changing, always dancing. We, as marketers and as people, have the ability to influence the persona of others, but we’re also forced to update our persona when it doesn’t work anymore.

Leaving direct mail on the doorway handles of people’s homes used to work for a construction business. It fit their buyer’s persona…until it didn’t. Same with the kid and his juice. Silly and cute only works for so long. And it will be interesting to see if being vulnerable ever stops working for me. (I assume it will once it becomes constantly expected.)

While no persona lasts forever, we have a say in the longevity of it for ourselves and others.

I have a young friend who you would think is an old man by how much he aches, complains, and doesn’t care what comes out of his mouth. Not to mention how slow he drives. Since his friends (including myself) always call him a geezer and point out all the things that make him an old man, he continues to fill the shoes of that persona.

Michael and I chatted about this phenomena on our podcast (episode 9) when discussing why people become referees. Since recognizing my influence, I’ve started pointing out all the things that make my friend young and I holler at those who feed his old man persona.

Personas are simply a new name for category, and humans are naturally categorical in thinking, in acting, in deciding to buy product X or product Z, but they don’t often realize it.

Being the best you, making a positive impact on others, and crafting the greatest marketing message is almost all rooted in your understanding of the personas of those you’re engaging with as well as yourself.

 

Stay Positive & Now You Know, Leverage It

Glamorous, Gumptive, And Getting To The Point

Glamorous, Gumptive, And Getting To The Point

Garth Beyer

It’s easy to turn short writing into fanciful long form. A lot of books can be written in 100 fewer pages. A lot of speeches can be cut by 5, 10, 20 minutes. A lot of podcasts can say what they are saying in a five-minute personal video than a 50 minute scripted podcast.

That being said, it’s still easy to turn short writing into pretty, short writing. I call it glamorous writing, but what it needs to be is gumptive writing; writing that’s honest, transparent, and human. It gets the point of the emotional labor needing to be done and shows that you’re in whatever you’re writing about for the long run.

Glamorous long form: Through innovate endeavors we can seek and conquer the path of least resistance that winds us into a less competitive market allowing us to facilitate well-thought-out marketing strategies that will rope in the plurality of the masses and satisfy our unwavering desire for a consistently increasing profit, which in turn we can build bigger facilities and add to our paid advertising budget.

Glamorous short form: We’ll market to a niche group, increase profits and grow our company.

The long form is pretty, isn’t it? Full of buzz words, passive voice, and a lot of empty promises. As for the short form, it’s quick and to the point, almost like a bullet point on a slide with too many other bullet points. But what about the Gumptive form?

Gumptive form: We’ve found the people seeking the solution we offer and know they have friends sharing the same problem. By adding some design and marketing to this tribe, we can leverage the power of word-of-mouth because we’ve shown we care and we know the tribe is full of influencers. With profits, we can hire additional designers to increase the remarkability of our solution thus always giving people something new to talk to others about.

It’s a bit longer than the glamorous long form, but it’s more honest, transparent, and full of care. You can tell they meant every word they wrote and would be happy to talk about any part of it in depth. As for the glamorous writing, ask the writer of it any question regarding what they wrote and they’ll, well, either choke or give you another glamorous non-answer.

The reality is we don’t need to find artful ways to say very little or artful ways to say a lot. We don’t need to thesaurus every second word and overuse the rule of three. We need to be definitive about our passions and how they can benefit others on an emotional level, on a human level.

By being real we become trusted and by becoming trusted we can do work that matters for people who care about doing work that matters. And in the end, it’s really about the forwardness of intentions for all parties. As ol’ Zig said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

 

Stay Positive & Are You Sure You’re Helping?

Working To Make It Work

Working To Make It Work

Garth Beyer

People are turned off by opportunities they feel others will have to work hard to make work. They’re willing to put in the effort, but they assume (wrongly assume) the other party isn’t willing to work either, thus they pass the opportunity up.

If I avoided every opportunity, If I didn’t send in every application knowing it would take effort on their end to work it out, If I didn’t ask for what I wanted even knowing the other party would have to make a sacrifice too, I wouldn’t be where I am today. (And I love where I am today.)

Not so surprisingly, when you’re human, you show you care, when you work to make things work – in other words, when you give the other party a reason to put in the effort to make an opportunity work for you – they put in the effort too.

 

Stay Positive & People Care When They See You Do

Unlocking Potential #11: Q&A With John Saddington

Garth Beyer

John Saddington

I regularly write about the importance of being human, of momentum and of the need to continuously try new things. Top experimenter John Saddington is a living example of doing all the above.

John is linchpin who I recall wore a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirt to Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event in Tribeca, and asked Seth a question about blogging platforms. It should have come as no surprise to me that John was asking for input because he was in the process of developing his new (and awesome!) blogging platform app, Desk.

John has been blogging for more than 14 years, so it goes without saying how much of a privilege it is to have him be part of this series. Without further ado, welcome John.

Q: You’re a hacker and a human. Tell us how you got into hacking. What’s your story?

John: Yes, that’s my tagline. I think it’s important to let others know that I am a human being. This is one of those “duh” statements but it carries a lot of personal importance to me. It means that I suffer and struggle with just as many things as the next person. But, I have “hacked” my way to a solution that works for me.

I will always be looking for more solutions to life, just as the next person, to ensure that I can survive and thrive in the limited amount of time that I have on planet earth.​

Q: What qualities are needed in a person for them to become successful hackers, humans, entrepreneurs? 

John: A willingness to experiment, be wrong, and fail. A desire to get help, all the time, and to stay humble. To be curious about learning new things and tenacious about not giving up. To be a person of integrity, honest, and true.​

Q: For this next question, I’m sure there are hundreds of answers, but just write about the first two or three that come to mind. What are some hacks you can share about entrepreneurship?

​John: Time box everything. What I mean by this is create a “start” and “end” point to all your experiments and projects. This helps create momentum and helps you establish objective markers for whether or not it’s actually working.

Secondly, get help. Do more things with others and less alone.​

Q: Tell us a bit about Desk PM: How did you go about strategizing a publishing app so it would be as successful as it is? What sort of questions did you ask and answer before you built and shipped the app?

​John: There wasn’t a strategy. It was luck and a long marinating process (over 12 years) as I thought about this application as it tied so closely to my writing and blogging over the last 14 years. Then, I executed. That’s about it. I didn’t deliberate or try to do massive planning or anything like that. The only question that I asked was this (and one that I continue to ask): Do I still love this app? Am I using it every single day?

If the answer ever becomes “No” then I’ve lost the original vision and I should throw it all away.​

Q: What’s the most recent big decision you’ve had to make and how did you rationalize your decision?

John: The biggest decision recently was to join with some friends to work @ The Iron Yard.​ This was the culmination of long-standing relationships and a deep love for education (I got a Masters in Education). I joined them full-time in late 2013.

Q: Would you mind sharing one of your biggest failures and how you worked past it or what you learned from it?

John: I raised ~ $300,000 and spent much more than that on a failed iOS app that netted, over a two year period, just north of $1,300 dollars. I am still learning from this fiscal failure of an app and project. I am still recovering. I wrote a few things here.​

Q: Who and where do you go to for motivation? Any particular mentors or bloggers?

John: I go to my friends and most importantly my wife and kids. I find a ton of motivation in my quiet times as I reflect on spiritual topics, God, and through meditation.​

Q: Perhaps there’s a couple quotes or life mottos you live by?

​”Never give up.” – Dad

“Always have options.” – Dad

“It never hurts to ask.” – Dad

Q: What is the biggest challenge todays entrepreneurs are faced with? 

​John: I’m not sure. Does that matter?​

Q: This one might be a toughie, answer however you would like. What does it take to create something remarkable?

John: It starts with a decision to pursue it and then it requires the courage to not quit.​

Q: Where can people find you and you art? What’s the best way to reach you?

​John: My personal blog: http://john.do

 

Stay Positive & Publish On

Become A Remarkable Business Owner

Garth Beyer

“Instead of caring about everyone and taking what you can get, embrace a subset, find the weird, and love them more than anyone else ever could.” – Seth Godin 

Great Business Owner

Great business owners

… are determined to get it right even if it calls on them to change their worldview or do what they previously said they wouldn’t. No matter what the cost is, they will do it right.

… are in complete awe and fascination for the remarkable impact little things done just right can have on people. It’s not just noticing the little things, it’s being the source of them.

… are in cahoots with the requirement that to reach a higher level of achievement, they must focus their attention on systematizing the plethora of (what many see as) insignificant, banal, grunt work that makes up every business.

… are working more than they should for the monetary return they are receiving on their investment. But the intrinsic value they receive from working with passion is priceless.

… are providing the people who they work with and who work for them an idea that is truly worth working for. They tell a story worth believing in.

… are always imagining, dreaming, visualizing; are always in wonder.

… are absorbed by the people, and not the work. You will only ever love the game if you love the players.

… are seeing their business as a product and treating it accordingly. Yes, that means treating it as a system, defining all its pieces, and writing out a strategy, people, marketing, etc., plan.

… are treating all customers in a way that makes them feel right, even if they are not.

… are working to be the best they can be, to learning what they don’t know, to acting more human than their competitors.

… are aware of Lippmann’s and so many others similar conclusions that reality only exists in someone’s perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and conclusions. It is not subjective or definable to the mass. To understand a customer you must understand the images in their head.

“The problem with most failing businesses is not that their owners don’t know enough about finance, marketing, management, and operations, but that they spend their time and energy defending what they think they know.” – Michael Gerber

 

Stay Positive & All You Do Is A Reflection Of Who You Are

Photo credit

Out Of Place, But Interesting

Garth Beyer

Something remarkable about Cambodia is that there are a lot of broken objects lying around.

What was once broken, has since been integrated into the environment. Plots of land, homes, playgrounds all have objects that seem so out-of-place, but they make the space interesting. They make the land. It’s a perfect photo for an I Spy book.

The objects show the history, the humanity, and offer perspective on the progress people have made in the last ten years there.

It made me think how hard we all try to hide our pasts, to cast a shadow over our failures, to paint over bad memories with new ones instead of letting them make our lives more interesting.

When we let our failures stay in our box, they may seem out-of-place, but to others they are interesting, they tell your story, they show you’re human.

It’s a step toward happiness. A leap toward success.

 

Stay Positive & If It’s Broken, Let It Be Part Of Your Story