New

Business Meets Soggy Cereal

Garth Beyer

3920972699_0ce9b91293

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

What Makes A Successful Garage Band

Garth Beyer

(If you don’t want to read, click the last hyperlink in this post.)

There’s no lack of talent when it comes to vocals or who can play a guitar or win over an audience with a ridiculously fast paced bass solo. It’s no longer about who can play an instrument and how well, but how many instruments they can play, how they can incorporate the multiple instruments into a show, and how they can show the audience their passion.

Times have changed but very few garage bands are falling behind. They’re excited to try new instruments, mish mash sounds, and – generally speaking – have fun. Something that is hard to say for those entering the professional world of freelance.

Last night I had the honor to see a handful of bands play at a Launchpad event. Launchpad is a statewide, alternative music competition for Wisconsin high school students who are in bands formed outside of the traditional music classroom ensembles. (view some of the bands here.) These high schoolers were incredible performers, showmakers, and artists.

But the truly exceptional ones brought out different instruments: extra drums, key board, violin. Now it’s now more common to have an extra instrument in a band, but the way these students incorporated them into their songs, well, that was real talent. (One band actually switched their trumpeter with the vocalist, vocalist with the drummer, drummer with the keyboard, and keyboard with the trumpeter. Impressive!)

The status quo is being kicked and bruised by those living the garage band or what I like to call, garage project workstyle/artstyle/lifestyle. There are no longer boundaries. You can no longer bring your one “instrument” and perform. You have to bring everything (all of your “instruments”) and perform some instrumental alchemy.

The worlds changing. Best to be a leader of it.

 

Stay Positive & Rubber Bands Are Still Accepted

Garth E. Beyer

 

The Catalogue Effect

Garth Beyer

There’s a problem with overserving, with overshipping, and with overcreating.

Do you know what a catalogue is? They used to be extremely popular because every week, month, or year, the catalogue would present everything new that is being sold. Yes, they would contain older products, but companies don’t send out catalogues to show you their old products, they send them to show you the new products.

A catalogue is the greatest 18th and 19th century way to overserve, overship, and demand overcreation. I’m going to let you in on a secret. The secret why catalogues have died off – it’s not because of the internet. No.

When people would receive catalogues, they looked at them to see what was new, but contrary to the seller’s belief, the consumer wasn’t looking to see what was new to buy it. The catalogue became a news source. All the consumer was left with after receiving a catalogue was wonderment with what the next catalogue could possibly contain.

Where does that leave the seller?

It’s neither positive or negative. The seller makes money as she always does.

The real person you should be questioning is the creator. Where does that leave her?

It’s a positive thing to serve, create, and ship with some form of regularity. However, when you overserve, overcreate, and overship, you produce the catalogue effect. Yes, people will value your work, but merely appearance wise. After you begin to deliver excessively, they will only be interested in what you will concoct up next. (Not what they will pay for next.)

 

Stay Positive & Creating More, Makes Your Audience Want More, But Not Spend More

Garth E. Beyer

Choose, Don’t Cheez-It

Garth Beyer
Vote for Cheez-It? No. I vote for something entirely new!

If you’re going to create something – as everyone must during some point of their lives – don’t create a new variety of something that already exists. Create something which you can create a variety from.

Creating a new flavor of Cheez-Its won’t get you far. I’m not even sure it will get you anything except a snack to munch on while you contemplate your next “genius” idea.

Maybe after a few new flavors of Cheez-Its you will decide to create an entirely original cracker snack instead. In which case, you can showcase all your new flavors with your cracker snack.

If that’s the case, or rather, if that’s the box, then I’m in. Just because something has 20 different flavors doesn’t mean I’ll choose it.

You know what people (you included) love? New. They love change, mishmash, and variety – after all, it’s the spice of life! The illusion is that they love a variety of originality. They don’t.

I’ll cut to the point and stick with the Cheez-It theme:

If you were given the choice between a new flavored Cheez-It or an entirely new cracker snack, which would you choose?

There is always more of a craving for something original than a new flavor, new type, new color of something already invented.

 

Stay Positive & I Call It The Flavor Of Originality

Garth E. Beyer