Product

In The Box Podcast

Episode 16: Luck, Being Early, False Equivalency And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we discussed the concept of luck, the need to experience something to passionately sell it, whether life mirrors business or if it’s the other way around. We also talked about the advantages of being early and argued about false equivalency (fortunately never settling to agree to disagree).

On an earlier podcast Michael and I chatted about how so little surprises us anymore. On this podcast Michael stuck a check-up question about surprises in the box. It was a good time. Well worth the listen.

Episode 16: Luck, Being Early, False Equivalency And More

Selling – Does one have to experience a product themselves to sell it passionately?

Luck – Is luck something that finds you randomly or something you create?

Early – Do you believe it pays to be early? (early to a meeting, early to send email, early to say I love you?)

Surprises – Been surprised by anything lately?

False equivalency – How can we eliminate false equivalency?

Mirror – Does life mirror business?

 

Stay Positive & Refresh Your Life, Refresh Your Business

 

The Inevitable Scarcity Effect

Garth Beyer

If you think the scarcity effect doesn’t play a role with your product or service, you’re wrong.

If there are two cookies left in the break room, we’re unconsciously motivated to desire one even if we didn’t want a cookie to begin with. Have you ever heard someone say “I had a sweat today and I’m not even sweet-tooth kind of person.” Scarcity played them.

If only five people in your organization could try a new product out – one you wouldn’t normally use – you would still sign up to try it out.

There is a shortage of grapefruit La Croix in the office today and all the sudden it’s my favorite flavor La Croix. Damn scarcity effect.

People don’t have a choice but to be victim to the scarcity effect. Are you leveraging it?

 

Stay Positive & Make Your Product/Service Scarce In Small Ways

Become A Remarkable Business Owner

Garth Beyer

“Instead of caring about everyone and taking what you can get, embrace a subset, find the weird, and love them more than anyone else ever could.” – Seth Godin 

Great Business Owner

Great business owners

… are determined to get it right even if it calls on them to change their worldview or do what they previously said they wouldn’t. No matter what the cost is, they will do it right.

… are in complete awe and fascination for the remarkable impact little things done just right can have on people. It’s not just noticing the little things, it’s being the source of them.

… are in cahoots with the requirement that to reach a higher level of achievement, they must focus their attention on systematizing the plethora of (what many see as) insignificant, banal, grunt work that makes up every business.

… are working more than they should for the monetary return they are receiving on their investment. But the intrinsic value they receive from working with passion is priceless.

… are providing the people who they work with and who work for them an idea that is truly worth working for. They tell a story worth believing in.

… are always imagining, dreaming, visualizing; are always in wonder.

… are absorbed by the people, and not the work. You will only ever love the game if you love the players.

… are seeing their business as a product and treating it accordingly. Yes, that means treating it as a system, defining all its pieces, and writing out a strategy, people, marketing, etc., plan.

… are treating all customers in a way that makes them feel right, even if they are not.

… are working to be the best they can be, to learning what they don’t know, to acting more human than their competitors.

… are aware of Lippmann’s and so many others similar conclusions that reality only exists in someone’s perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and conclusions. It is not subjective or definable to the mass. To understand a customer you must understand the images in their head.

“The problem with most failing businesses is not that their owners don’t know enough about finance, marketing, management, and operations, but that they spend their time and energy defending what they think they know.” – Michael Gerber

 

Stay Positive & All You Do Is A Reflection Of Who You Are

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5 Don’ts Of Business Success

5 Don’ts Of Business Success

Garth Beyer

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1) Don’t ask a group of people to do something you won’t ask your friend to do. Make better surveys. Target the right tribes. Create evaluations people get something from.

2) Don’t think the conversations others have are the ones you want to have. Not everyone cares about what you care about.

3) Don’t start with the product then come up with a story for it. If you don’t have a story to start from, then go out and experience more.

4) Don’t stand in front of your product. Get behind it, engage in the conversation that’s happening, be part of the avant-garde users.

5) Don’t put the spotlight on those who dislike you, your business or your product. Instead, put and keep the spotlight on your best customers.

 

Stay Positive & Simple, But Easily Forgotten

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You Will Be Amazed

Garth Beyer

If you started building your product

If you started reaching out to idols

If you started sharing your art

If you started hopping on podcasts and vlogging

If you started messaging people on LinkedIn asking to Skype

If you started telling people what your goal is

You will be amazed at how much people will naturally want to help you along the way, who will provide positive constructive feedback, who will share what you share with them. If you’re not starting, not shipping because you’re afraid no one will want what you offer, no one will listen, no one will care, then by all means, prove me wrong.

 

Stay Positive & Go Be Amazed. Please.

The Worst Way To Get New Customers

Garth Beyer

is to tell people that they’ve been doing something wrong. Especially to tell them they’ve been doing it wrong all their life.

Doing It Wrong

Electric can openers don’t sell because their marketing team call people who use the hand-held can openers dumb.

Ipods don’t sell because they say people using Walkman’s don’t understand what it means to have music in their pocket.

Even pizzerias don’t get new people to try their pizza by advertising that people have been going to the wrong place.

If what we do, use or eat gets done what we need done, the how doesn’t matter and surely doesn’t make it wrong. Hell, some even take pride in their traditional ways.

Yet, over and over I see people advertising their product or service by announcing someone has been doing it wrong.

  • “You’ve been baking that cake all wrong! Read our step-by-step guide on how to bake that cake!”
  • “You’ve been doing it wrong all your life! Buy our ten-in-one tool!”
  • “Can’t sleep in hotels? You’ve been doing it all wrong!”

A lot of the products and services that use this marketing approach might be right, but saying someone is doing something wrong doesn’t scale.

What scales is telling a story, showing what the product or service does (letting the user choose if what they’ve been doing is actually “wrong”) and marketing the feeling that the user will have when they use the product or service. That(!) scales.

 

Stay Positive & Seriously, Marketers, You’ve Been Doing It All Wrong

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A New Edge To The Publishing Industry

Garth Beyer

What I’m about to tell you is a fallout for publishing companies, sure. But the change occurring results in the thriving  publishing industry.

Brands are now publishers.

And for the sake of those who don’t consider themselves a brand: businesses, services, inventors, creators are now publishers too.

A product won’t sell well unless you provide a copy of the story of it.

A business won’t gather as many clients unless they first share their story with them.

A freelancer won’t get as many bids unless they pitch their story, not their service.

Stories are driving the economy, and the only way to get your story out there is to publish it*

 

Stay Positive & If You Don’t Know Your Story, You’re Behind (here)

Garth E. Beyer

*word of mouth storytelling, I’ve always considered a form of publishing too.