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Morning Stream Of Awesome Better Than Coffee

Garth Beyer

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Checking Facebook when you first wake up can be a good thing. I’ve read articles that suggest you shouldn’t check your phone right away (FB,email, texts,etc,.), that you should wake up on your own schedule, enjoy life a bit, and deal with all the work that your phone is blinking at you at a later time. But then, ignoring these suggestions, this morning I read the following on Facebook,

“All artists should be treated with respect I always see many people getting put down at doing what they love and lose confidence to making music,making art, dancing , and whatever you do, keep your head up and chase your dreams, because every person out there has the capability to do anything in life!”

This is as livening as a cup of coffee, if not more.

Those suggesting you don’t check your phone right away are half right. I am all for staying unplugged a couple of mornings a week to take a walk down to the lake or do a workout without any distractions, but what people fail to recognize is our need to evaluate what calls our attention in the morning.

There are negative consequences to checking our phone as soon as we wake up when we read a Facebook feed filled with complaints, an RSS feed of the days most negative news, our work email instead of our personal email.

Give yourself a morning stream of awesome on your phone and I don’t see a problem with checking it before we all get out of bed.

 

Stay Positive & Combine It With Coffee, You’ll Be Set To Go All Day

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

Examples Of Awesome

Garth Beyer

In case you were wondering, here are some examples of awesome. I’ve seen too much in the last week to let them go by. These are remarkable (Obviously. Here I am telling you about them.)

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“Everyone was expecting us to make Modern Warfare 4, which would have been the safe thing to do. But we’re not resting on our laurels,” said Mark Rubin, executive producer of Infinity Ward.

Below is a picture of the letter and gift card I got from H&R Block. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that most people don’t expect their tax information to be processed in one day. It’s not really the money that matters, it’s really not even their apology. What is remarkably awesome is the simple fact they took the time to construct a letter, set up the mailing, invest their time and energy (still in the middle of tax season, I might add!) to send the letter.

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And to top it off, Nicholas Hanson is my professional photographer. He’s incredible, but for more reasons than just his photos. The other day I got a txt from him saying that he noticed that the pictures I have on my website still have his watermark and that they didn’t need to. (He gave me a collection of photos with and without the his watermark.) Naturally, I told him that it was an honor to have them on there but the noteworthy part is on his humble and professional end.

There is awesome everywhere and if you don’t see it… go be it.

 

Stay Positive & This Must Be Here

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

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

“And I Thought About You”

Garth Beyer
I like to leave an artistic impression

Lately, if you have noticed, I have been on a long riff about how information is being shared. After months of observance, I had the experience that gave me the ultimate understanding. I owe this post to every single persons experience because you have had it hundreds of times but specifically this post is the story of mine that happened to me a few days ago. I sent a link with the words “and I thought about you”.

A couple of times a week I stop by MentalFloss. I clicked a post about banana art and thought about my brother who refuses to accept he’s an artist because of what he would have to give up (his bad habits) to have his dream. I saw the bananas and had to share it with someone, someone special, someone whom I thought about immediately after seeing the bananas.

That’s the aim of content isn’t it? Or at least, it’s supposed to be the aim. Great content does good to one person but can only change the world if it’s shared with everyone on it. Whether changing the world is done through banana art or any of the billions of artistic niches, it has to be shared. To be shared, you must have the reader or viewer think of those five words.

Those five words are the most powerful words in the world because they employ action. The moment a person thinks about someone else after reading or viewing some form of content, they are held accountable to share it with that person.

Thinking about it again, this happened the other month when I sent a picture of this tiger to my friend whose favorite animal is a Tiger.

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As a writer and creator of valuable content, the aim of having it shared is not based off the most Tweets, the most “likes” or the most reblogs. While the content can be shared with thousands of people this way, the connection of the shared knowledge is void of character, void of passion, void of care. The aim of providing invaluable content is to fit into someones worldview and you can only do so when you say or type those 5 words.

 

Stay Positive & I Wrote This Because I Thought About You

Garth E. Beyer

SocialMediaNoise& White Space

Garth Beyer

The problem at large with social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, is that it is all noise and no white space.

Twitter is averaging less and less on click-throughs and I’m not surprised. Half the content shared is ridiculous (go click a couple of links if you don’t agree). The other half just blends in with all the other feed and the value is lost in noise. As for Facebook, all the content that is shared are pictures rarely offering any insight in which you seek. The terrible part is there is no white space in either.

Social media is about a constant flow of admired information but admired information is meaningless if there’s no white space after it to digest. That is why you may learn an idea, try to share it with someone, forget half of it and forget where you got the idea from. There was no time for it to cultivate and for the source to get credit. The noise and lack of white space is why more people are deleting “friends” on Facebook and unfollowing people on Twitter.

 Of course everyone is still using the constant feed stream, it’s one of the most valuable sources of information…when used correctly. Those who use the content stream properly are those who only click-through on valuable content tweeted, posted and shared by those in their tribe. Content they can interact with and the interaction is what creates white space and a further understanding of the content. The interaction turns the content into an experience which sticks to the memory.

Social media gives too much of an overload of info. If you are looking for something new without an expectation of solid content, then click a few Twitter links. If you want content, stick with Google. If you want an experience, use Twitter, Facebook and any social media with those who connect with you, that interact, that both, you and the person you’re interacting with, can expand and learn. That is why Twitter was held at such a high value, until too many people created too much noise. Curse the followback button

 

Stay Positive &    Make     More     White    Space 

Garth E. Beyer