Professional

In The Box Podcast

Episode 19: Interpretation, Delight, Place Of Anger And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about the concept of forgive and forgetting. We also chatted about handling situations where someone interprets a situation differently than you, why it’s hard for businesses to delight customers, what it means to be a professional and if it’s possible to do good work when you’re angry.

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Forgiveness – Forgive and forget?

Interpretation – How do you handle a situation where someone interprets something completely differently than you?

Delight – Why is it so hard for businesses to delight customers?

Expert/Pro – What does it mean to be a professional or to go pro?

A place of anger – Do you find you do good work when you’re angry, fed up or frustrated?

 

Stay Positive & Focus On The Passion

Tired Of Professionals Saying They Were Lucky

Garth Beyer

I meet with a lot of reporters, journalists, and PR folk. I hear their stories, I heed their advice, and I ask a lot of questions.

The two most common things that I hear professionals say is

1. Learn to write well, really well.

2. I was lucky that…

The first is a “duh.” The second, well, is a lie.

None of these professionals were lucky that they ran into the headhunter of the PR firm they wanted to work for. They were not lucky that they had the credentials they needed for the job. They were not lucky that they got this or that internship. They were not lucky that the news editor had heard about them already.

These professionals didn’t land in their position by luck. They worked their asses off for it.

The real question is why do these professionals lie? Luck is a curated event, luck is the light at the end of the road, luck is a goal you meet after days, months, years(?) of hard work.

My thought is that everyone knows how difficult it is to become a doctor, yet, people still do. Then why do those in journalism and PR fear that the knowledge of how much work it will be to become a renowned journalist or PRS will stop people from becoming one.

At an even deeper level, why are these professionals not proud of how hard they worked?

I don’t have the answers for you right now. I’m not in their position. I know how difficult it is. I know how much I need to work to get where I want to be. I know the difficult leaps I need to take. I know that where I end up won’t be from luck.

When I find out the answers to these questions though, I will let you know.

Repeating Levels

Garth Beyer

They say life is a game, so why not continue with the analogy?

Life is a game that many people just repeat levels. They do the same work (their best) at different locations. Becoming a professional has been entwined with producing the same amount of value across the board.

Ruckus makers, the artists, those who make the most out of life, though, don’t repeat levels. They just so happen to complete each level in a different way. No, maybe it’s not their “best” work. No, maybe they took too big of a risk. And, yes, maybe – just maybe – they failed.

Beauty of it though, is you just pick yourself up and try a different way.

There’s no “replay” button, but there is always a “restart.”

 

Stay Positive & Most Artists, Though, Never Have The Need To Press It

Garth E. Beyer

Progressional Hierarchy (professional food chain)

Garth Beyer

We constantly view the food chain from left to right or bottom to top, with each animal to the right, triumphing or feasting on the animal to the left in order to survive and grow.

The same goes for the professional food chain, which we try to soften by calling it a hierarchy to establish a sense of “order” rather than “dominance.”

There’s a plot twist to this view of positional establishment – rather a perfect 180 degree twist.

In the professional world, it’s not about feasting on the work of those lower than you. (Although some people decide to take this dark side to development, alas, it pays to recognize that whatever success they acquire is short-lived) In the professional world, it’s about feasting on the work, the success, the ways of growth from those above or to the right of you.

Climbing on the shoulders of giants isn’t a “bad thing” when the giants help you on to their shoulders. It’s what I call the progressional hierarchy of the truly professional world. It is a food chain, if you want to call it that as well, which brings us to greater heights in our lives, in other’s lives, and in the world.

In the wild, growth is developed through the consumption of all that is lower, slower, less necessary, and less important.

In the real world, growth is developed through gathering all the knowledge and experience of those who are above us, bigger than us, better than us, more educated than us, and – dare I say it – more passionate than us.

 

Stay Positive & They Are More Passionate … For Now At Least

Garth E. Beyer

You Can’t Go Through Life Thinking

Garth Beyer

that the one occupation you want is the only one you can ever have.

Nearly every day I walk down E Gilman Street and am mesmerized by the view of the city between two apartment complexes. It’s something I know not a single architect, when designing any brick of Madison had thought of. Who would care that someone walking down a street could see a piece of the Capitol and nine other buildings, all beautiful architecture, between two apartment complexes? I’m fascinated by it. Every time I see it I think how I want to be an architect; that I can design – really, truly, passionately design. I catch myself thinking that if I were to restart my life, architecture and free style dancing would be my two passions I would build my life from.

Of course I mentally slap myself right after thinking that I can’t do those things during my life, this life. Despite my ambitions to become a well-known published author, Pulitzer prize recipient for my journalism, and world-renowned PR specialist and creator of the worlds best PR agency, there are still plenty of years in my life to study architecture and dance and to become really good at it.

We all get stuck with this preconception that the career we have is the one we have for life. There is no turning back, it’s too late to become great at anything else. We also think that to become great in one thing involves focusing on it, and only it, all our lives, and maybe, just maybe we will die a professional and be remembered for what we did.

Let me tell you how it is. If you want to be a professional, you must have experience, and experience comes from doing, not from reading a book. When you first start off down the road of your passion, you read books, then you take actions. Why do we not think that while we are taking actions, we cannot also be reading books on something else?

You can’t argue that it’s damn near impossible to study marketing, study skateboarding, study a second language, and study family sustainability and expect to be a professional in every area in a year. You can, however, study skateboarding then when you are finished researching and reading up on it, start doing it and gaining experience instead of studying about it. Then, you start to study a second language. Once you are done studying the second language, you keep skateboarding, you start using the second language (gaining experience) and then you begin studying your next interest.

We can do a lot in one day but we can’t study a lot in one day.

I’ll be a pretty good architect someday, a great freestyle dancer too.

What else will you be?

 

Stay Positive & Dream Big

Garth E. Beyer

A few days after writing this post I was walking home from the café and found someone standing off the sidewalk in the spot with the best view of Madison. She was taking a picture of this view, my favorite. I told her how remarkable it was that she was capturing the view and we both agreed it was a breathtaking sight and close to the best in all of Madison. I’ll have to snap a pic for you next time around.

Safeguarding Confidence

Safeguarding Confidence

Garth Beyer

My personal life is like searching something on Google, just without my overconfidence in suggesting what you will finish typing. Regardless of how personal your search or question is, I’ll give you an answer.

Going into PR, thankfully, I learned that I can keep my personal life as open as I want. However, areas of my professional life, of the PR realm, confidential information of clients has to remain seal tight. There are two reasons this was tough to do at first.

1. I believe in communication being the foundation of everything successful, whether it’s good or bad, nothing should stay unsaid.

2. You never know what someone else may be able to help you with or add to what you know if you can’t discuss it.

It did not become so easy to keep confidential matters confidential until I did an interview with Michelle Welsch in which she touches on the concept of protecting the names of everyone who attends her Project Exponential events. She says,

“I want to create a space where everyone’s on the same playing field. This anonymity allows people the freedom to step away from their work and whatever preconceived notions or judgements someone might have about what they do for one evening and connect with others in a meaningful way. There are plenty of events that list of the names of attendees. You go, hoping to meet specific people there and may walk way with a few business cards that, if you’re lucky, turn into something remarkable. You may also miss meeting a handful of incredible people who didn’t have the job or the title you wanted to see.”

Michelle made confidentiality a key supporting factor in making her events work so well. It’s a skill, a mind-set even, to be able to leverage confidentiality. Not only does she build trust and credibility at every event when she keeps items confidential, but she creates real connections between people, not connections based on status, prestige, name, income, etc.

As well as in Public Relations, you not only safeguard the confidence people have in you when you keep material confidential, but you enable yourself to discover a new way to leverage something very few people attempt leveraging in the PR world.

Michelle has an event coming up and you’re invited to connect in a different way! You can buy your tickets here