Business

How You Compete With 24/7 Service

Garth Beyer

You don’t.

There are only 24 hours in the day, most companies and businesses think that they need to work all 24 hours each day. If they aren’t there when you call, that’s bad business, right? There’s a great article that I will be posting after this in an assorted links post (link #2) that essentially shows people are smarting up and living a bit more humanly.

For some reason, we’ve lost the concept of

  • “family first”
  • “put what’s best for you and those closest to you first”
  • “friends and family first, product and business second”

Fortunately, we’re slowly getting our shit together as we focus on being more productive – not so we have more time to discover how to be even more productive (referring to link #2), but to have time to enjoy life and focus on loved ones, on what really matters.

I’m guilty of making this mistake when I was starting my brand. I lost more than I gained from it.

As a result, I want you to catch up on the story of Liberty BottleWorks if you haven’t already heard the buzz.

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Stay Positive & Go Ahead, Drink Up The Realization

Garth E. Beyer

If You Don’t Have Anything To Give

Garth Beyer

Have something to show.

If you don’t have anything to show. Hold your tongue.

It’s fairly simple that when you meet with anyone in your interested industry that you need something to give them or something to show them. (Best if you have both.)

However, time and time again I meet with aspiring writers, entrepreneurs and PR folk only to hear about their business plans, goals and ideas.

People care more when they see or touch something.

Not so much when all they do is hear it.

 

Stay Positive & Show + Give = Trust

Garth E. Beyer

Your Audience Is More Open Than You Think

Garth Beyer

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.

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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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A New Edge To The Publishing Industry

Garth Beyer

What I’m about to tell you is a fallout for publishing companies, sure. But the change occurring results in the thriving  publishing industry.

Brands are now publishers.

And for the sake of those who don’t consider themselves a brand: businesses, services, inventors, creators are now publishers too.

A product won’t sell well unless you provide a copy of the story of it.

A business won’t gather as many clients unless they first share their story with them.

A freelancer won’t get as many bids unless they pitch their story, not their service.

Stories are driving the economy, and the only way to get your story out there is to publish it*

 

Stay Positive & If You Don’t Know Your Story, You’re Behind (here)

Garth E. Beyer

*word of mouth storytelling, I’ve always considered a form of publishing too.

Art Isn’t For Squares

Garth Beyer

and this story isn’t only for painters. We’re all artists.

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Being an artist is simple:

1. You have something that you use

2. You have something that you use it on

“But the painter’s basic challenge, the manipulation of colors and forms and metaphors on the flat plane with its almost inevitably rectangular shape, is no longer generally seen as art’s alpha and omega, as the primary place in the visual arts where meaning and mystery are believed to come together,” said Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic

The square canvas has become the sign of an amateur. So has PowerPoint slide themes and fill-in-the-blank business plans and pre-written sales dialogues.

I’ve written almost exhaustively about the age of redesign that we are in. Artists of all kinds are experimenting not only with what they use, but what they use it on. I have noticed a fault, though. There’s a whitespace that needs to be filled.

3. Something new to say, express, or feel.

Michael Levenson, writer for The Atlantic said, “Brilliant new forms are good in themselves. But they’re even better when they inform new ethics, showing us how to acknowledge our contradictory modern selves and still marry for love (Woolf), or how to go on when you can’t go on (Beckett).”

Art isn’t for squares,

but it is for people who understand their “how” of making a difference.

 

Stay Positive & Find Your Whitespace And Fill It

Garth E. Beyer

Here are two articles that compliment one – another.

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Business Meets Soggy Cereal

Garth Beyer

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A friend of mine purposefully waits for her cereal to get soggy. Now, the way my mind works, I couldn’t help but relate it to businesses. Sure, some people love their cereal soggy, they love that a business is still there even after it gets drowned (e.g., by the economy, by critics, by amazon reviews).

This is fine, I don’t judge her for enjoying her soggy cereal or when people buy clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch. Nor do I judge those who only want the crisp, new; the top of the line crunch and taste of just-poured cereal or fresh creative clothing.

The real problem (aside from milk pouring down your chin when you take a bite) is that cereal gets soggy. Cereal will always get soggy.

You can fight it by putting less milk in the bowl, by dividing the cereal inside the bowl, or by eating the cereal fast, but always, every cereal gets soggy.

Or you can leave your business to run itself and go create a new type of cereal.

 

Stay Positive & I’ve Never Seen Cereal Get Unsoggy

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

There Will Always Be A Place For Them

Garth Beyer

Businesses that price high and skip connecting with their customers will be sticking around.

People are gullible, they want the credibility that a well-known business has over private owners, no matter how exciting it is to interact with private owners.

My advice, when making a purchase of any sort (a motorcycle for example?), visit the businesses that overprice their material first. Get a feel for the product and ask the technical questions, then leave to visit a private owner.

That way you are more knowledgeable about the product and will see how much of a price difference people sacrifice to have the (illusive) credibility that a big business offers.

Buy from those who sell, not from those who manipulate.

Oh, and the best price comes from those who care about what they are selling, not just about selling it.

 

Stay Positive & Go Personal

Garth E. Beyer