Opportunity

“What’s The Opportunity?”

Garth Beyer

We can rant about a lot.

On an almost daily basis you can hear me ranting about original content, stealing ideas, and poor marketing, but I follow it up and challenge others who rant to me to, at the end of the rant, state what the opportunity is.

Work scenario

Rant: There’s not enough Back To School content online to repin, stupid 80/20 rule on Pinterest

Opportunity: We can own the Back To School realm of Pinterest by creating 50 pieces of original Back To School content

Life scenario

Rant: It’s so difficult to make friends!

Opportunity: I can’t be the only one who feels this way. I suppose I can work more on being a friend to people instead of trying to find someone to be my friend.

Next time you catch yourself complaining, ranting, angry about a situation, ask yourself, what’s the opportunity?
Stay Positive & There’s Always An Opportunity

Moments Of Downtime

Garth Beyer

The motto, “how do you act when no one is looking” has sort-of run dry. With how plugged in we are, we know someone is always watching, we just care a little less or call making a Facebook post being productive.

Better to ask what one does when one has a moment of downtime. When there’s five minutes that no one is emailing you, the phone’s not ringing, you just wrapped up your latest task… what do you do then? I think that’s way more predictive of a person’s character than what they are doing when no one is watching.

Do you let the opportunity to start a new venture pass you up? Do you scroll through twitter instead of writing a thank-you letter to someone special?

 

Stay Positive & Downtime Is An Opportunity, Not A Break

 

Working To Make It Work

Working To Make It Work

Garth Beyer

People are turned off by opportunities they feel others will have to work hard to make work. They’re willing to put in the effort, but they assume (wrongly assume) the other party isn’t willing to work either, thus they pass the opportunity up.

If I avoided every opportunity, If I didn’t send in every application knowing it would take effort on their end to work it out, If I didn’t ask for what I wanted even knowing the other party would have to make a sacrifice too, I wouldn’t be where I am today. (And I love where I am today.)

Not so surprisingly, when you’re human, you show you care, when you work to make things work – in other words, when you give the other party a reason to put in the effort to make an opportunity work for you – they put in the effort too.

 

Stay Positive & People Care When They See You Do

Variant Feedback For Effective Communication

Garth Beyer

Martin Luther

Martin Luther revolutionized German culture and made a dent in standardizing their language. He would travel and read his translation of the Bible into the vernacular and ask each audience that listened, “How did this sound? Was it too banal? Was it strong? Did it sound good?”

He rewrote and rewrote and continued reading aloud until he got “yes” as a response from everyone from the baker to the welder to the merchant. His writing was a variant of German, intelligible to both northern and southern Germans, his target market solely because he had his system of feedback, he listened, he rewrote.

Note, Luther didn’t change the message of his writing, he merely changed the wording to effectively communicate the message he wanted. (He did get in some heat for adding some words when he shouldn’t have. Remember, this is a translation of the Bible, not much room for creativity.)

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. – Martin Luther

Who was Luther and why does he deserve this blog post? He was a constant seeker and recipient of feedback. He didn’t take criticism personally. He ignored the naysayers. If some commoner expressed a dissatisfaction with his words, Luther didn’t begin to question whether he himself was right or wrong, he merely wondered what he could do better to communicate his beliefs.

Now-a-days I see people quit, toss their business plans, and remove their books from Amazon because their message didn’t resonate with whom they thought it would. I witness speakers decide not to speak in front of an audience again because their first audience wasn’t convinced by their message. I miss out on seeing a starting blogger become influential because they stop blogging. Why continue if no one is reading, right?

Wrong.

By doing what Luther did and sharing our ideas, our blog posts, our podcasts, our business plans, our art, we have the opportunity (I mean, come on, there are more than seven billion connected people on this planet) to check whether our way of communicating is effective for the audience we’re reaching for. Why are we not doing this more often?

Why are we limiting ourselves to mastermind groups, to people who already think like us, to our idols or our best friends when it comes to seeking feedback and tweaking the way we communicate? Certainly I’m not suggesting reaching out to all seven billion people, but the group you’re now letting influence your communications can increase in size and as a result your words, your art, your message can get stronger.

 

Stay Positive & Send Something My Way, I’ll Give Some Feedback thegarthbox@gmail.com

* Worth a read: The social Origins of Good ideas. Essentially the best ideas come from outside communities, just as often as the best feedback.

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Short Stack Opportunity

Garth Beyer

Short Stack Eats

Breakfast joint Short Stack Eats in Madison has a weekly blind special. If you ask them what’s in it, they charge you $12.95. If you order on good faith, it’s only $6.95.

The real perk of going to Short Stack Eats is if you ask once, you can always be braver next time since the special changes each week.

Think about that for a moment.

Is it an opportunity or a risk? Will we be braver next week? Can we change the way we see something from risk to opportunity?

We can certainly afford the risk of a breakfast, but if we have the mindset of risk instead of opportunity about something as simple as breakfast, do we wear those glasses when we look at larger decisions regarding entrepreneurship, leadership or creativity?

Can we afford to have that mindset?

Thing is, with decisions that matter, we can’t pay extra to know whether something will work for us or not. We may not have the chance to be braver next week in the same capacity. And in the real world if we end up getting something we don’t like, it’s not as easy to find someone else who will take it off our plate (pun intended).

Seems to me the only way to look at big decisions and blind specials is as opportunities.

 

Stay Positive & Be Brave

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The Opportunity Has Always Been Here

The Opportunity Has Always Been Here

Garth Beyer

Opportunity

The opportunity to poke around, to try new things, to experiment, to create something remarkable has always been here, but there’s a fundamental change sweeping the notion in terms of people’s perceptions.

In the past, the opportunity was seen as a risk.

See, there’s really no difference between an opportunity or a risk except in how you look at it.

More and more people are changing their perspective, altering their worldview, choosing themselves instead of waiting to be picked by someone else, waiting to be handed an opportunity. Instead, they’re making their own.

They’re flipping the switch of “it’s too much risk” to “this just might work.”

The beauty of this movement, this moment, is that the opportunity will always be here.

The opportunity to create your own job, do what few others are doing, to play chemistry with your hands (work), your legs (hustle) and your heart (art/passion).

There’s a reason every post ends with a reminder to stay positive. I’ve chosen my perspective. Have you?

 

Stay Positive & Unlike A Mediocre Job, This Opportunity Will Always Be Here

HT to all my idols who through them I’ve learned to take the opportunity. I’m alive. I’m an artist. Thanks.

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