Creating

The Desire For Too Much Change

The Desire For Too Much Change

Garth Beyer

Too Much Change

I remained immobile the other day after realizing how much I want to change in my life.

While I’m not one that sees the new year as a time to start something new (because now is the best time to start anything), I can’t help thinking about all the changes I want to make and in such short time I want to make them.

It’s a problem I see with a lot of entrepreneurs, go-getters and people who just want to turn their life around.

By “turnaround,” I mean a quick turnaround. We want our new habits to form from the start. We want to be on all the healthy tracks of eating, exercising, meditating, working, creating, connecting, and so on, all at once, and in a short period of time.

Quite frankly, just thinking about it, trying to plan big change to happen fast… it’s paralyzing.

We have to remember the new year isn’t a 1-day event, it’s a 365-day event, some may even consider it a marathon of sorts.

Small consistent changes are fine as long as they lead you to the place you want to be. We don’t need to have everything happen at once.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t People Who Are In It For The Long Haul Just Make You Happy?

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The Best Way To Secure Success For Tomorrow

The Best Way To Secure Success For Tomorrow

Garth Beyer

Stock For Today

…is to secure success today.

Instead of creating, writing, designing for those who may not arrive tomorrow, care for those who show up today.

Instead of spending time stocking the walls for tomorrow, figure out how you can create an experience people can’t help but remark about today.

We lose sight of success when we look at tomorrow at the expense of today.

 

Stay Positive & “I’m here now, give me a reason to bring someone back with me tomorrow.”

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First Get Good At Consistently Creating

Garth Beyer

So often you’ll not follow-through with a project or an idea because you know how much marketing you’re going to have to do when it’s complete.

To you, the world might not seem approving of someone writing a book and just throwing it on a digital bookshelf. No. You have to write the book, make sure it’s excellent, put it on the digital bookshelf, and then advertise it, get reviews on it, have bloggers cover it, give it out for free, set a Skype chat interview up for you to talk about it, make sure it’s translated to 20 different languages, beg the NYT reviewers to read it, and so much more.

It’s all a lie. It’s all a trick to stop you from creating. It’s fear speaking up. It’s an excuse and you and I both know it.

First get good at consistently creating. Write five books and throw them up on Amazon. Chat with friends about it, naturally, but don’t worry about heavily marketing it. Think about it in terms of time. If you create something, a book, an art piece, a business plan or a TED talk (and it takes you a month), then you spend the next seven months marketing it, getting people to see it, buy into it, subscribe to it, admire it, blog about it. You’ve just stopped yourself from creating seven more incredible works of art.

Obviously this post isn’t meant for the experts, the famous, the already envied. It’s for you, it’s for me, it’s for all the people out there who think things need to be perfect and need to have their total commitment for a year before they move on and create the next thing. It’s not necessary. The best marketing strategies come natural, the best art work doesn’t need to be pushed, the greatest connections often come from chatting about what you’ve done lately, not what you did six months ago.

And you know what? The act of consistently creating might be the greatest marketing strategy known to man.

 

Stay Positive & Interesting, Isn’t It?

 

Self-Taught, It’s All On You To Create

Garth Beyer

I’m self-taught. Half because I don’t think school teaches enough of the important stuff. Half because it’s expensive to have others teach you. (Naturally, the younger you are, the less money you have to invest in your private education.) It’s not just tuition that’s pricey, but seminars, learning programs and teaching kits too.

It does well to remember, though, you can read up on books, watch YouTube and TED videos. You can ask a smart friend to mentor you or you can establish a club where you teach each other what your superpower is and learn together. But none of this compares to the impact, the lessons, the power of creating.

When you start creating, the lessons seek you, the connections find you, the success follows you. What you take in is half of your education. What you give out is the other half.

 

Stay Positive & Quite Possibly The Most Important Half Of Your Education

Keep Your Client (Squaders)

Garth Beyer

Back in the day, if you were sitting in a room with friends and you had to go to the bathroom, you would hold it. After all, if you got up, someone would take your spot!

Then an act of seat reservation was adopted. It was called “squaders.” Before getting up from your spot, whether it’s a log around the campfire or the one of few fancy chairs around the dinner table, you call “squaders!” and no one can take your spot while you are away.

Sitting with friends the other night, I got up and before walking forward, asked, “do we call squaders anymore?”

Of course we don’t. More people, specifically clients, are naturally mobile and resourceful. (If they are not, then maybe you don’t want them as a client.) We have to understand that the client can shop around, that they are okay not staying in their chair, that, sometimes, they go off and build their own chair.

Squaders is about attachment – and attachment is about vulnerability – and vulnerability is what the chair maker should feel, not the one sitting in it.

 

Stay Positive & Since We’re Talking About Chairs And Success

Garth E. Beyer

When To Talk About Your Work

Garth Beyer

Running it by someone who might not understand is waste of your time.

Sure, you may get some variant input, but no serious support.

Instead, follow the motto: run with it and review.

Talk about your work after it’s shipped, not while you’re working, not while you’re creating, not while you can be manipulated by poor forms of criticism.

“Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.” Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street

 

Stay Positive & Until It’s Shipped, Follow The First Rule Of Fight Club

Garth E. Beyer

Visitors, Clicks, Subscriptions

Garth Beyer

Visitors, clicks, subscriptions, pinbacks, emails, tweets, retweets, follows, facebook impressions, favorites, stars, ratings, statistics, forwards, reblogs, and bookmarks are all great. All fantastic. All give the ego a boost, maybe your moral too.

But do they matter?

If you create out of the necessity for subscriptions, if you create solely because you have people reblogging your creations, if you create to see your stats rise, you’re working, not creating.

If you can take out all stats, trackers, measures, feedback, impressions, reach, views, and audience and still create – that’s what defines an artist. A creator for the sake of creation, a creator that will follow through no matter what, with no guarantee of it working, and no expectation of it meaning anything to anyone but you, the artist.

 

Stay Positive & Artistry Is Always A Lonesome Process At Its Core

Garth E. Beyer