Connecting

A List Of 30 Lists

Garth Beyer

Lists

A list of…

  1. What you are thankful for
  2. The moments in life you felt most alive
  3. This week’s goals
  4. Goals to be met within five years
  5. 99 ridiculous things you want to do before you die (no limit on possibility)
  6. What is stopping you from doing what you need to do
  7. What is stopping you from doing what you want to do (yes, they’re different)
  8. Every book you have read (not a list of every book you want to read!)
  9. Sources of inspiration
  10. Places you want to visit (test: can’t be on the first page of a Google search)
  11. Websites/podcasts that you must visit weekly, if not daily
  12. Your top 10 bad habits to break
  13. All the contacts you have made and something special about them
  14. Songs that get you moving
  15. Every source you have been quoted or mentioned
  16. What you want in a significant other
  17. Ideas that have been rejected, laughed at, or you didn’t deem as “good enough”
  18. Things to feel okay about (here is a start)
  19. What you don’t need to make a list for (things you do naturally, habitually)
  20. What you want your kids to know that you didn’t know growing up
  21. Mistakes you have made
  22. What you learned from those mistakes
  23. Things to admit now that you will later, anyway (here’s some ideas)
  24. Hurdles that have stopped you in the past
  25. What you love
  26. How you are different from other people, what makes you a niche
  27. What is happening right now without your effort that is building your brand
  28. People you want to meet in the next 10 years
  29. Your personal bests (running, blogging, audience count, viewers, subscribers)
  30. What is stopping you from making these lists when you know it will only help you

Stay Positive & Get Going

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

What Is 9 To 5

Garth Beyer

I can tell you straight up that it’s not the hours you work at a job. I don’t remember the last person who told me they literally worked 9 to 5. No. 9 to 5 is a jobstyle, not necessarily a job.

9 to 5 entails monotony, redundancy, and banality. It’s rarely valuable, in earnings or in personal benefits. 9 to 5 signifies structure. There is no room for creativity. Clock in. Clock out.

The beautiful jobstyles are the 5 to 9 ones. The ones that you’re a part of throughout the day. They are more lifestyles than anything else. There’s no clocking in or out, there’s only waking up and going to sleep.

5 to 9 entails connecting, giving, producing, sharing, creating, being passionate, showing sincerity, and being you. Payment is partially in dollar amounts, but more often it’s in happiness, in that feeling when you do a good deed without the person knowing it was you.

This generation is changing the hours, the jobstyles, and what work really means.

 

Stay Positive & More Power To You

Garth E. Beyer

Getting Opinions

Garth Beyer

I’m an op-ed writer and one would think that I come up with my opinions and then spread them, adjusting based on feedback. As the saying goes, “my opinions change with new information.”

However, that’s only part of it. Before I have my opinion, I get others.

The problem with having your own opinion first and bringing it to your editor (your boss, your manager, your teacher) is that once you open it to them, it stays between you two; sharing it with others becomes the act of a traitor.

Your opinion becomes a treasure piece between you and the person toward the top of the hierarchy. Or in other cases, it becomes a piece that must be critiqued, but not by someone below their level of expertise.

When you have an idea, an opinion, or a thought for improvement, share it with as many people on your own level (or one close to it). By skipping this step, you turn your work into a commodity when it should be priceless yet free. When you skip sharing your opinion with others: your friends, your family, your coworkers, then you miss out on one of the most important aspects of having the opinion in the first place – they are the ones you are trying to reach/help/connect/improve. You’re not going to be picked by the editor, your boss, or the CEO, however, nor should you attempt to pick yourself for them. Get chosen by the millions of people around you, and trust me, if you’re opinion resonates enough, your boss will call you forward and you will know that you picked yourself for the sake of others, not for the sake of being called forward.

 

Stay Positive & Oddly Enough Opinions Emerge From Cooperation

Garth E. Beyer

Missed Connections

Garth Beyer

Successful businesses are built around the idea of connecting. And with new media, this has never been easier to do.

Just yesterday I posted on Seabird’s Facebook page and they actually responded with an honest and sincere update. I thought to them I was just a fan. Now, I’m a friend.

Today I posted a suggestion on Boulders climbing gym’s page. Instead of saying something along the lines of “great idea, we’ll consider it.” They asked me a couple of questions in an effort to make my suggestion happen.

I see business to stranger interaction on Twitter all the time. The result? No longer strangers, no longer consumers, no longer another person on the email list. Instead: friends, connections on an emotional level, and above all, real trust.

What I see is businesses connecting with strangers and turning them into friends. Next, what I believe businesses need to do is discover a way to then connect friends with other friends.

For example, a friend of mine is working on her first startup. She is building a website that you can rent graduation gowns from other students who graduated before you. She can connect well with the target audience, being a recent graduate herself.

But what matters most to her business plan is the level of social interaction and connection she is using to leverage herself. It’s not just about saving money on a cap and gown. It’s about inspiring, creating, aspiring, and sharing your story with other past and current graduates within your field of interest and geography. Beneficial connections for any graduate!

If I may throw an idea in. I think every Facebook page for a restaurant/gym/local shop/retail store/movie theater (you get the idea) should have a missed connection portion on their page.

Business to peer connecting has gotten easy. Now, to benefit more than your competition, it’s about businesses connecting their peers to other peers.

 

Stay Positive & Once You Connect, Connect Others

Garth E. Beyer

Connecting

Garth Beyer

Three is company, four is a party, but 10,000 doesn’t make an organization anymore.

It has flipped. Now there are more organizations than ever before. But more organizations doesn’t mean larger groups. You may recall this idea that what is next for the Internet is whatever will connect compact groups (organizations) with other compact groups, without fusing together.

There’s stranger connections and more gratifications from the tighter organizations. There is also more results form an organization of 20 than an organization of 2,500. More and more people are beginning to see the benefit of being uncomfortable, but connecting.

In a world filled with possibilities to connect, why are we not connecting on all levels?

 

Stay Positive & It’s More Than Just About Organizations

Garth E. Beyer

Why Read A Lot

Garth Beyer

Reading has a lot of benefits: you learn a different way to think, you learn important facts, you learn new things, blah, blah, blah.

Now, the real reason to read, is because reading is the best way to connect with an author. And if you can connect enough with an author, you will eventually come across something that you know that that author will like. Then, if you share it with that author, you will have created a stronger connection. Or you can ask the author a question. Or you may, if participate enough, stand out and the author will contact you.

See, sure reading is good, you get a lot from it, but to get the absolute most out of it, you need to connect with the author. With that there are two simple tactics to use.

1. Read current authors. It’s hard to talk to an author over a cup of coffee who is dead.

2. Only read what you truly enjoy. (This is where the exception of current author comes in.)

 

Stay Positive & If You’re Going To Read, Get The Most Out Of It

Garth E. Beyer

What’s Next For Internet

Garth Beyer

You already know my obsession with questions. (No? click here) So when I was asked a question that I had no immediate answer for, that I had to really sit down and ruminate on, I got excited.

A phenomenal freelancing reporter and great friend of mine, David Douglas, had asked me what I thought was next for Internet. Well, here is my response.

What’s Next For Internet

Better question is what new way can we connect more? People have yet to completely open up.

Since the digital revolution began in the early 90’s, a stigma has grown around face-to-face interaction. Even though we feel more and more connected online, people still have a difficult time connecting in person. Despite this setback, our minds remain open, we’ve become natural learners, and we continue to discover the extent of the simultaneously happening information revolution.

What’s next for the internet is based on our next need, desire, and the demand which I can tell you in a moment. First let’s look at how we started and where we are now.

– We began with individuals creating specific content for small groups.

– Then individuals began creating general content for a general audience.

– Then groups began creating specific content for other similar groups.

– Then we entered the age we are in now – the age of mass: mass groups creating mass content to other mass groups.

With recent years, the internet – side by side with the mass – has developed individuals who are creating specific content to specific groups, essentially connecting, creating tribes.

What’s next for the internet is what will assist us in partnering, grouping, and associating more than ever to create ultimate forms of content. Not just any content – content created for the peculiar, the individualized,  the artists. The internet has provided us unlimited information and it has provided us unlimited connection, but it has yet to harmoniously combine the two.

Of course, it’s not just about creating a medium that synchronizes information and connection, it’s also about creating more new groups to continue the cycle. What comes next won’t be something that can be monopolized when its goal is to continuously reproduce more of its kind.

Internet will have to morph into a medium where small groups get together to build on each others content with the assistance of other groups – not necessarily growing with them because they are focusing on a new idea already, but assisting in their artistic growth. It’s about the associated life in which the goal is to exit, meaning that the goal is to develop a new group, a new tribe.

It’s not just a melting pot of special people and great ideas, it’s artistic alchemy.

 

Stay Positive & What’s Next For Internet Can Be Predicted, What Will Be Produced From It, I Can’t Even Begin To Imagine

Garth E. Beyer