Connection

A Bit On Voice

Garth Beyer

Without any legitimate training in the understanding of artistic material, you can tell good from bad.

You may not be a graphic design expert, but I trust you can look at a website and tell if it is designed really well.

You may never have touched an instrument other than the pots and pans of your mother’s cupboard, but I will bet you can tell when an orchestra is in harmony.

You may think you’re a terrible writer, but when you read something someone else has written, I just know you can tell if the writer has voice or not.

Everything in life speaks to us, but only if it’s given a voice.

A lot happens, rather, doesn’t happen when a writer fails to have voice in their writing. When there’s no voice, there’s also no humanity in the piece, no node for the reader to connect to, no electricity.

Peter Elbow refers to voice as juice. “’Juice’ combines the qualities of magic potion, mother’s milk, and electricity,” Elbow said.

By ‘magic potion’ he implies there is power in the words, power to change the reader’s emotions, power to produce an entire world in one’s imagination, power to turn someone’s worldview over in a pan and call it sunny side up.

In mother’s milk you receive the nutrients you need to grow. Voice is a way of using words to express how much you care about a subject, and, by extension, the reader. Words that nurture the reader, giving them all they need and more, those words have voice; you might even say your mother’s voice.

As for the electricity I have mentioned, it’s about conversation and establishing an experience. Do you know what I mean?

That, right there is a question I’ve posed to you through the written word. Your engagement level rose, perhaps you answered the question, perhaps not. If you did, that is because there is voice in my writing. Maybe you wanted me to explain more of what I meant or in your mind added to my side of the conversation.

Conversations have energy and develop experiences.

Voice, in a way, is energy. Words can touch a person, pat them on the back, tap them on the shoulder, and stroke fingers through their hair. If you type words the way you say them conversationally, that’s how to find your voice. Then you can proceed to clean up the flow, but not too much.

Elbow also disccusses the potential and often-occurring action of overcorrection. You may have voice in your writing and through editing, remove the voice. Making all the corrections you can, editing something so it reads and looks perfect, takes out the humanity of the writing, and humanity is what people connect with. Notice the spelling mistake at the beginning of this paragraph. It reminds you I am only human.

While removing all spelling errors doesn’t quite remove your voice, reworking sentences so they are completely grammatically accurate can. When you make writing flawless, the reader thinks a robot is talking to them. No one wants to be spoken to by a robot. Unless, of course, they are a robot.

 

Stay Positive & Everything You Do, Do With Voice

What’s Missing?

Garth Beyer

‘What’s missing?’ isn’t specific enough. The real question you’re looking for is ‘what connection is missing?’

You don’t lack ideas. You lack your connection with those who have them. Perhaps a special dinner is in order.

You don’t lack courage. You lack connections with those who dance with fear. Perhaps a summer seminar is in order.

You don’t lack resources, hope, business skills or a precondition for taking risks. You lack the connections.

I don’t believe in inabilities. You are the sum of all of your connections.

 

Stay Positive & Go Build Your Tribe And Tell Me Your Goal Still Can’t Be Achieved

Be The A-Player They Want To Hire

Garth Beyer

Hiring A-Players is much more difficult to do in a rough economy. Simple fact of the matter is that with a flipped economy, there aren’t more A-Player resumes, there’s a massive flux of C-Player resumes. (Find a longer explanation here.)

This framing doesn’t put the problem on your shoulders, it puts it on the business’s shoulders. I don’t like that. It’s not fair. Businesses shouldn’t be looking for the A-Player to higher. They should be deciding between this A-Player and that A-Player. It’s not them, it’s you (and yes, it’s me too).

In light of this, here are four steps you can take daily to become that A-Player.

1) Connect with someone every day. It can be something as little as sending a Tweet at someone or friending someone on FB who you haven’t seen in a while. Or something larger: coffee with a CEO, scheduling a tour of an agency to talk with employees or asking someone to be your mentor. As Brené Brown has said, “Connection is why we’re here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.”

2) Blog. I can’t stress this enough. You don’t need to do it daily, although it’s likely better if you do. (It took me a year to acquire the daily habit.) If a blog is too big of a start, try journaling for five minutes. Advised by the best.

3) Know that blog or journal you started? Notice what’s happening around you and write about it. Are you a musician? Keep an ear and an eye out for what stands out most about other musicians whether it’s their actual melody or their marketing strategy. Share what you find interesting. The thing about being human is that if you find something interesting, their’s surely someone else who agrees. No matter how different it may be.

4) Be human. Seriously.

 

Stay Positive & Four Things, Is That Too Much?

 

A Quick Riff On Criticism And Allowing Comments

A Quick Riff On Criticism And Allowing Comments

Garth Beyer

Why allow comments on your website?

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For two reasons. One, people will try to piss you off, they will hate your ideas, they may even hate you for having them.

Ever heard of desensitization? Nothing makes it happen faster than allowing comments online. Being capable of handling any form of criticism pays off in the best of ways. You’ll see.

Second, percentage wise, we’re no shorter on critics than those in the 70s were. They just had the option of trashing (more commonly burning, I’m sure) letters of unpleasant and unhelpful criticism.

Now, today, the letters, the comments, they stick. What matters, though, is not the 100 letters of criticism, but the one comment that offers you an opportunity to connect.

If you’re going to burn any letters or delete any comments, let it be the ones that bash on the one person who is being human and giving you a chance to connect. Let’s face it, they’re more important than you are.

That’s the biggest problem with bloggers that I see. Authors will often guard themselves, but forget about guarding the ones stepping up and speaking out (commenting) in support of them.

Your eyes don’t deceive you. I don’t allow comments on my blog for two reasons. The first is this. The second is because if you really want to write to me, you can email me at thegarthbox@gmail.com If you want others to read it, by all means, start your own blog and email me the link.

Stay Positive & By All Means, Shun The Critics (don’t think it will stop the criticism though)

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Here’s A Quarter

Garth Beyer

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Now here’s a story about a quarter and his quarter friends.

A local art museum requires you to put your jacket and bags in a locker before you can begin browsing the gallery. You need a quarter to use the locker. (You put the quarter into a slot in the locker and then you’re able to turn and take the key. When you return the key and close the locker, you get the quarter back.) Fortunately the guards at the front desk have a lot of spare quarters for people to use and return before they leave.

This is fascinating to me for a few reasons.

1. It’s a reminder of how important everyone is – even museum guards. The interaction with the guards (the simple transaction of “you need to do ‘this’,” “here’s a quarter to do it,” and “just be sure to return it when you’re done.”) is paramount to the gallery viewers experience. There’s very little human to human interaction at an art museum, so any interaction that does occur will influence the experience of the gallery viewer.

2. If you’re going to promote safety, you might as well do it through human interaction. Signs telling customers what to do work, but they don’t add anything to the customers experience.

Lastly, the experience reminded me that “extra steps” are opportunities, not meant to be a hassle for customers, rather a chance to turn customers into friends.

 

Stay Positive & Quarter For Your Thoughts

Garth E. Beyer

The Faults Of Overtime

Garth Beyer

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The fault is all on you.

Quite recently in my career as a journalist, I decided that I would not do an interview that goes over an hour. Collectively, the interview may take more than an hour, but the total would not be one continuous effort to get all that I could out of it. I also hold this rule for team meetings or anything one does in groups.

When the hour is up. It’s up. Not a minute over. Sometimes – and preferably – it ends a few minutes short of an hour.

People are exhausting. So is caring, listening, and interacting with other people. I’ve come to the conclusion that speaking for an extra three minutes or asking people to stay late or staying on one topic when it was scheduled to change 10 minutes ago does more harm than good. Why does this matter?

Think about your work. What do you do? There are very (very!) few jobs that don’t require you to interact with another person or group of people. (For those few jobs that don’t, I guarantee they would only benefit by having human to human interaction.) The thought behind this is that while an extra two minutes may mean nothing to you, those you interact with may view their time as more valuable. (Not to mention, your inability to recognize this leaves those who you interact with with the impression that you don’t care about them, which is exactly what you set out not to do.)

To stay parallel with my recent writing on consumerism and positive emotionalism (that people buy products that make them feel certain ways and sacrifice leisure time to do so), overtime needs mentioning.

The concept behind normal working hours and being paid a larger amount if you worked over those hours (overtime) was introduced in 1937 by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The development overtime has taken in the workplace is outstanding, both in terms of higher pay for working overtime and pushing employers to heavily restrict the ability for workers to work overtime. In turn, offering workers more leisure time.

I argue that with this additional leisure time, people still participate in overtime. With “overtime” being defined as our pursuit of that which makes us feel the way we want to feel through working more than is reasonable and beyond meaningful. (Work, by my definition, is anything that we put effort into doing without passion.) One does not need to have a full-time cubicle job with benefits for one to be considered working. Many times, just doing dishes and vacuuming is work.

The pivotal point here is that overtime is an average object covered with a cloak of hope. Hope that if one works hard enough, that what is under the cloak will turn into something that makes them feel better; be it a bigger car, a better type of coffee brew, or just new dishes.

What puzzles me most is that we work overtime to perform this cloak-covered magic when we are better off performing the real magic of working with passion (making art).

The wand is in your hand.

 

Stay Positive & You Don’t Need An Object Just To Wave It

Garth E. Beyer

Ironically, Seth Godin touched on part of this post this morning. Full disclosure, I had the idea and began writing about this prior to my viewing of his blog.

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Sellers Need A Lesson

Garth Beyer

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I went to purchase a motorcycle over the weekend. While I wasn’t as knowledgable as the salesman at the motorsports store, I knew as much about the specific bike that I wanted as he did. Because I researched it and knew as much as him, he couldn’t upsell it.

The flaw with knowledge equilibrium between salesperson and customer is that the only connection remaining is price. There is nothing he can say to make me purchase the product other than giving me a number I want.

The catch is that if a customers knows more, they will pay less.

Dealers of all kinds need to spend the morning before work reviewing what has been posted online. The beauty about information when it comes to selling is that if the motorcycle salesman were to know as much as me, but told me they just read something about the bike online earlier that morning, I would certainly be more interested.

At the most simple form, it just shows the salesperson cares about the product, not just about selling it to anyone without half a mind to research before making a purchase.*

 

Stay Positive & Consider Buying Privately

Garth E. Beyer

*The internet is now the salesman. While there are still people with that title, their duties are much different. They are there to make a connection, show they care (about the product and you), and be the liaison of trust.

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