Perception

In The Box Podcast

Episode 35: Real Time Marketing, Trying Something New, Perception And More (Podcast)

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about the effectiveness of every brand getting into real-time marketing given how much of an uphill battle it is. We also heard from Michael one thing he suggests you try. Additionally, we chatted about if it matters how others perceive us, if experiences are earned, and getting angry at people for abusing your time.

This was a pretty fun podcast (yea, well, they all are). Enjoy.

Real Time Marketing – Should brands be trying to publish content in real-time?

Something new – What is one thing you suggest our 11 listeners to try?

Earned – Are experiences someone has earned / unearned?

Perceived – Does it matter how others perceive you?

Bonus – Do you have a right to be mad at someone for taking advantage of your time?

 

Stay Positive & Sometimes It Is More Questions Than Answers

What Is Efficiency Anyway?

Garth Beyer

When you say you’ve done a lot, do you also say how well you did it? Likely didn’t think about it.

On the flip side, when you’ve done something really awesome, borderline remarkable, you’re sure to say just how long it took you.

In the game of making things better, we swap quality out with speed. We call ourselves efficient in terms of how much we get done instead of looking at the quality of our work. Speed instead of quality.

Speed is an objective community perception, easily recognizable and measured.

Quality, though, is more subjective. Quality can be compared with what everyone in the agency has made or it can be compared with your personal average. A bit more hard to measure.

In the marketing world, we have enough of the pace-type efficiency. We’ve spent years mastering it, creating charts, laying out entire office cultures based on it. In terms of speed, I’d say we’re near maximum efficiency.

Now that capacity has been met, we have an opportunity to redefine efficiency and pursue filling the void we’ve ignored all these years. We can stop trying to check more boxes and start starring them because we’ve done work that matters, work that’s special.

Being forward, it’s hard to create remarkable work (art) because it’s easier to see ourselves working faster, checking more boxes, getting to more meetings than it is to image ourselves making something remarkable.

To do so, we have to think differently, talk differently, and start seeing things differently.

The neat thing about remarkable work is it’s rooted in the saying, “we’re doing X, but just a bit differently.” No need to invent a new wheel, just think differently about the one you’re using. Only then can you begin giving meaning to the term “efficiency” again. And for that, thank you.

 

Stay Positive & A Little Different Can Go A Long Way

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

Photo credit

Life Is Short

Garth Beyer

If time flies when you’re having fun and having fun is all you do, life is short.

If you’re a person that is having tragedies in your life and think life is short. You have another thing coming: one longgg life of living with those tragedies.

Which statement do you hear more people respond with “life is short”? I feel that I hear a lot more people say life is short in response to tragedies: A close friend dies from driving drunk, a grandparent falls and gets amnesia, you get heartbroken by the one you loved for years. Those are logical reasons to note that life is short.

Then you have those who use “life is short” as an excuse. An excuse to not do well in school, an excuse to be reckless, to risk their lives without realizing they are risking putting their tragedy on someone else’s mind, as explained in the paragraph above. Though they may not say it aloud, an underlying factor of why people do “stupid” things is that life is short.

And it is. It should be. Life NEEDS to be short. Scroll back up and read the first contention of this post.

There’s a variable that very few realize about time flying when you’re having fun. Think about this for a moment, remember a time that you said “time flies when you have fun” in response to an experience you had. In that experience, was time going fast? Or were you lost in it? It’s more than likely time didn’t even exist during that experience, in your mind, it was going to last forever. It’s not until the experience is over do you state that time flew.

Did it really though? Or is it just a perception. Yes this is getting deep, but bear with me, there’s a point.

You can have two people that live to be 78 years old. One lived every single day having as much positive fun as possible but ended the day with saying how short life is. The other lived every single day, averagely, blindly, safely, and at her deathbed, she had realized how short life is.

Did either have a short life? Yes and no. They both lived to by 78 years old which is a fair amount of years to live, not short at all. But only one person really lived those years. Only one person made the absolute most out of every day, that made time fly, and at the end of each day wished they had more time to continue doing the fun things they did, that thought life is short, when realistically it wasn’t shorter than anyone else’s.

Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. You can live each day and think that 24 hours is really short or you can go through life and once on your deathbed, wish you would have lived every set of 24 hours more.

 

Stay Positive & A Short Life Lived Is Better Than A Short Life Lost

Garth E. Beyer

Creativity, Changing The World And Being Original

Garth Beyer

It’s true we feel that in order to make any change in the world, any real impact, any worthwhile improvement that we have to be original.

We can’t change the world in a massive way by donating $5, volunteering 20 minutes of our time or inventing an imitation drink of Pepsi and Cola.

Naturally, deep down, we want the next big thing and anything less than that we want nothing to do with.

We use the fact that we’re in this huge technological and inventive revolution that we have to create something completely original to make an influential ruckus in it. In other words, we can’t be part of the revolution if we aren’t original in our work.

That’s all good but so many forget how to be original. They don’t know what original means.

You must understand that the more experiences and perceptions of the world you have, the more original you become.

See here,

You have to be a part of everything to be different, to be original. It’s the greatest paradox of creativity and ingenuity.

In other words, originality is alchemy of life. It’s about combing different things, thoughts, perceptions, experiences, etc., together to create something original.

Only in that originality can you change the world.

After all, something can’t come out of nothing, yet that’s what so many think “original” is.

 

Stay Positive & Go Change The World

Garth E. Beyer

A guru once asked me to think a thought that no one has ever thought before. If there is anything that is impossible, it’s this false definition of originality.