Profit

Lost Glove. One Cold Hand.

Garth Beyer

Glove

At least 18 people felt bad today. I counted.

I waited for the bus to pick me up and transport me back to work. I noticed a single glove in the middle of the sidewalk where people get on and off the transit. It appeared not stepped on, stirring me to assume it was recently dropped. Perhaps from someone who loaded on the bus moments before I arrived at the station. Not sure what to do with it, I watched it and noticed something peculiar.

Every person who walked past the glove looked at it, stared at it just long enough to think something like “well, that sucks for someone. I wonder if they figured out they lost it yet.”

Similarly, no one knew what to do with it. They just left it there.

It surprised me to find that Jennifer Gooch tried finding a solution to this problem with onecoldhand.com. The hyperlink goes to a shout out at Carnegie Mellon University (where she attended) and not the actual website because the website no longer exists. (You can see what the website looked like by using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.)

To keep this post short, I’ll keep my argument short.

Jennifer Gooch had the business plan backward.

Today, one person lost one glove. I then watched 18 people empathize until the 19th person actually stepped on the glove, picked it up and handed it to the bus driver. The bus driver shrugged his shoulders and tossed it on the council, certainly to stay there until he decides whether it’s better off being tossed or brought to the transit’s lost and found office. (More likely the former.)

In Pittsburgh, Gooch focused on finding the owner of the one glove, only sometimes relieving it’s owner of the minimal stress of having lost it. Both her and my own’s take is to satisfy one person is, well, satisfying. However, not remarkable.

To satisfy 18+ people in one swoop is remarkable. Instead of creating OneColdHand to meet a demand that isn’t much of a demand (most don’t think, how can I find my glove. They think, when can I go buy a new pair), Gooch could have created OneColdHandTwoWarmOnes – pairing one lost left-handed glove with one lost right-handed glove, then giving them to someone without any.

A reason so many businesses flop when trying to find a niche market is that they go after the wrong long tail. Yes, there are people who use spinoff OneColdHand websites, but there is no profitability in something that is (rarely) at most, satisfying.

Consider when you’re trying to define who you want your audience to be, that although there are people wanting to reunite with their lost glove, there are far more people who have none. The question every entrepreneur or freelancer needs to ask is “who cares more?”

Ask that question enough and you’ll have your target audience. (A profitable one.)

 

Stay Positive & If Mixmatching Socks Is A Thing, Why Not Gloves?

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

What Really Pays

Garth Beyer

–  Cash isn’t important to a successful career, connections are.The only money that matters is money that is invested. Whether you invest it in someone to give them a chance to show and grow their skills or when they invest it in you.

–  Time is only valuable when it’s either used to create honest art (not multi tasking, not clicking interesting link after interesting link, not taking halfass notes) and it’s only valuable when you interact with someone in real time (meeting for coffee, talking on the phone, skyping).

–   Having thousands of friends, followers, and visitors doesn’t mean you will instantly profit off of advertising. When it’s between making .002 cents off a stranger or $20.00 from a friend. I hope that it’s obvious what you should be making: friends or strangers.

–   When it comes to advertising, before anything, work on advertising yourself. That’s where the money is. (Or isn’t? Then you need to work on doing more creative work.)

–   Hard work pays off? Determination, motivation, perseverance, commitment… sounds like something you have to convince yourself to do that you just don’t want to.

What about connections, challenging fear, making yourself uncomfortable, revealing yourself, sparking emotional interactions, and taking risks?

Now tell me: What do you think really pays?

 

Stay Positive & Turn Strangers Into Friends

Garth E. Beyer

Progress While You Wait

Progress While You Wait

Garth Beyer

As much as we Public Relations Specialists pride ourselves with always being busy, there is a fair amount of waiting involved in every project.

It may be waiting for your source to tell you to come into her office, it may be waiting for the elevator to open for you (or the ride on the elevator), it may be a phone call that you absolutely can not miss, so you wait right next to it. The moments of waiting come in all sorts of variations of time, place, circumstance, and so on.

These moments of waiting are vital to your firm, agency, company, or organization you are representing. It’s in these moments of waiting that you are stripped of your title, any recognition people may have of you, and authority. To everyone passing by you, riding in that elevator, or wondering why you are hovering over your phone, you are just another normal blob in their world. You’re just another human being with nothing special to offer them. Or are you?

I just got home from the coffee shop. Waiting at the door of the apartment complex was a delivery person from a restaurant called Burrito (how original, but that’s not the point). We exchanged only a few sentences, but in those sentences, I could tell he made the most of his job, that he remained positive, that he was grateful for me even noticing him. He was sociable and wished me a great night.

You may be reading this and think that it’s normal. Is it though? When was the last time you actually talked to someone else’s delivery boy and left with a smile? It’s not normal, but it’s memorable.

Let’s jump back. What was the delivery boy doing again? Waiting. And no, I’m not going to order from the restaurant, simply because of the fact that I’m not fond of burritos, but what I will do (am doing) is talk about this experience.

Ask anyone in business which profits them more, one person buying a burrito, or one person writing and speaking to a thousand people about someone who works at the restaurant, basically promoting it? You obviously already know the answer, word of mouth is what makes businesses the most successful.

The delivery persons success could possibly be the same as anyone’s in PR. We all have to wait, but in that waiting, we can make a hundred little ruckus’, we can get people to talk about who we represent, we can very simply, provide an experience for them to remember – and of course the name of the company we are representing.

Next time when you tell someone you are waiting, don’t feel bad. Don’t feel that you’re not making any progress because you’re not working. Clearly, sometimes profits come more from waiting than they do working. It’s all a matter of you making it so.

What Comes After “The Next Big Thing”

Garth Beyer
Awesome. Now what’s next?

I noted yesterday that the more you know, the more original you can be and in being original, with a bit of intuition, you can create the next big thing.

(As I was writing this, a commercial came on for the new galaxy SIII and the final words on the screen were “The Next Big Thing Is Here”.)

What’s after that then? What are your plans now that you made the next big thing? So you made an awesome book-page-open-holder or you found a way to connect the photos taken from one person’s phone with all the other friends immediately after taking it. Now what?

You have two options.

1. You can cash out and do your best to make the money last.

2. You can use the cash from your creation to start working on the next big thing.

One decade ago choosing number one was viable. Not only would you make a lot of money from creating the next big thing, but it would be a long time before the next big thing trumped yours and cut your cash flow.

But in a world that people are making something bigger and better than the person next to them every day, option one just isn’t an option anymore.

That leaves option two. And option two takes dedication, creativity and more hard work as you invent more of the next big things. Which is perfect not just for your tribe, but for your passion, for your income, for your life and the world we live in.

This idea, this concept, this law that guides what is successful couldn’t be a better one for us. It ignores those who only create something that is cheap, that is an imitation, that is only meant to fulfill option one and that has no art in it.

 

Stay Positive & Hallelujah

Garth E. Beyer

What Makes It Different

Garth Beyer
Justins Peanut Butter Cups

I have never seen or heard of these until I went to Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event and had one.

Then I had another, this time the milk chocolate kind, as opposed to the dark chocolate.

Then I had another, the same day within a span of four hours.

Then I grabbed two more and put them in my journey bag, I gave a third one to someone else and grabbed a fourth to eat while I grabbed a fifth one to eat on my way out of the event after I finished the one I was holding.

I then presumed to eat the two that I stored in my journey bag throughout the evening. Note: By “one” I mean the two chocolate peanut butter cups in the “one” package.

Total: 16

Depressing? I could fight and say they were organic although it doesn’t help my case too well. (More on organic in a moment)

To say they are delicious is an understatment which is something people often say about Reece’s peanut butter cups.

However, to say that Reece’s peanut butter cups are the most delicious ones in the world would be half-true. (As is the case for Justins) They are the best if you ask the niche audience that they are marketed to and consumed by.

Whereas, if you ask the niche group Justins markets to, they would say Justins chocolate peanut butter cups are the best.

What I’ve learned about products, not just chocolate peanut butter cups is that:

1. You can always improve but what you can improve on may not be exactly the product itself, the chocolate. It may be the shipment, how the ingredients are grown, the graphics of the wrapper, the mission statement on the box or in this case, the audience you are targeting.

2. All in all, precision meets profit. You can always find a niche market to make a profit, especially in organics. In other words, there is always a way to make it different for that special tribe who likes it that way.

Justin’s chocolate does just that. They reach out to the audience who doesn’t buy just cheap chocolate.

Afterall, for some people, going big means buying not just buying any kind of chocolate. If they are going to go big buying chocolate, they are going to spend an extra 40 cents or a dollar for the good chocolate, the rich chocolate, the organic chocolate, the chocolate that makes them feel they are benefiting the world by eating.

This is a small niche audience and Justins makes their chocolate different so it’s target is precise.

Stay Positive & Thought It Was Worth Sharing

Garth E. Beyer

Is there something you have had too much of?

The Type Of Business That Profits

Garth Beyer

If you make your business possible to replicate, others will replicate it.

To create a business that can be replicated is to base it off the collection of “ordinary” people, with ordinary means that contain the lowest level of skill required for the job because they cost less than someone remarkable.

You will profit, but only until the business is replicated by another, faster cheaper one. It will be. Someone is always willing to go cheaper.

Creating even five businesses that can be replicated is exhausting and still won’t make you enough profit to take an extended vacation. You couldn’t anyway because you are the only one with real managerial skills.

Creating one business, one that can’t be replicated, one filled with extraordinary people, with the highest skill level, self-motivation and passion, even though they may cost more to employ, will be able to pay for 5+ vacations a year for yourself.

In addition, this allows you to pay for the indispensible people to work for you. Basically these people pay themselves and then pay you because their work is so full of art and is irreplacable.

In a world where someone is always willing to work for less, the only way to make more is to run a business like no other.

 

Stay Positive & Start An Unreplicatable Business

Garth E. Beyer

The Overlooked Variable Of “Show and Tell”

Garth Beyer

It’s easy to show and tell.

You can give any person a red dipping bird and have them place it in a position for all to see and begin telling about it. Not only will they show and tell about the red dipping bird, but they will do it perfectly.

“It is a red plastic bird that for some reason dips forward and puts its beak into a glass of water “emulates the movement” and dips back and continuous going back and forth. You can purchase them in all different sizes, colors and with goofy extras like flamboyantly colored feathers or an old Abe Lincoln hat.”

Done. They showed and told.

But there’s a flaw.

It’s boring.

Everyone who’s seen one knows this. Everyone who owns one, probably laughed at the flamboyant feather color comment but still thought the presentation was dull. Everyone else who were shown and told to, they could get up and do the same exact thing.

Show and tell, which is ultimately done in k-5 grade levels, can set incredible examples and offer intelligent insight into creativity – if done right. There’s a often an overlooked variable to show and tell that can make the experiences result artistic, unique and altogether attention-informative (Information people actually want to pay attention to). Simply showing and telling doesn’t do this. Doing it the old school way is bland and banal.

The correct format is to figure out THEN show and tell.

Figure Out THEN Show & Tell

Having to figure something out taps potential on the shoulder and tells it to get to work. In the case of the red dipping bird and according to How Stuff Works, The Dipping Bird (also called the Drinking Bird or the Dunking Bird) is a popular novelty item or toy in the United States and other countries.

A Dippy Bird has the following parts:

  • Two equal-sized, hollow glass bulbs
  • A long glass tube that connects the bulbs
  • Fuzzy, water-absorbent material covering the head
  • Two plastic legs with a pivot connection
  • Methylene chloride in the abdomen. Methylene chloride is an industrial paint stripper and solvent (one thing that dissolves easily in methylene chloride is caffeine, so you can use methylene chloride to decaffeinate things). Methylene chloride helps makes a Dippy Bird work because it evaporates very easily — it boils at just 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

To operate the Dippy Bird, you get its head wet. As the water evaporates, fluid moves up into the head, causing the bird to become top-heavy and dip forward. Once the bird dips forward, fluid moves back into the abdomen, causing the bird to become bottom-heavy and tip up.

Here is how a Dippy Bird works:

  1. When water evaporates from the fuzz on the Dippy Bird’s head, the head is cooled.
  2. The temperature decrease in the head condenses the methylene chloride vapor, decreasing the vapor pressure in the head relative to the vapor pressure in the abdomen.
  3. The greater vapor pressure in the abdomen forces fluid up through the neck and into the head.
  4. As fluid enters the head, it makes the Dippy Bird top-heavy.
  5. The bird tips. Liquid travels to the head. The bottom of the tube is no longer submerged in liquid.
  6. Vapor bubbles travel through the tube and into the head. Liquid drains from the head, displaced by the bubbles.
  7. Fluid drains back into the abdomen, making the bird bottom-heavy.
  8. The bird tips back up.

Show And Tell No More

Rhetorical questions :

Which show and tell of the red dipping bird did you like more?

Which one did you learn more from?

Which one was presented in an interesting way?

Which description do you think there was plenty of effort behind?

Figuring It Out

We are doing the world a great injustice when we don’t incorporate this critical variable to the Show and Tell process we teach our youngest students. What makes matters worse is that more than three quarters of adults still follow the same routine system of show and tell that they were taught as kids.

The variable of “figuring out” how something works, what something is, or why it does a particular thing is essential to producing real results. Results that are human, that are original, and that are backed with experience. These are the results that create profit.

The market used to be in the pocket of those who could show and tell well, even more so to those who mastered it. Now it goes to those who figure it out, who provide content and experience it, who make sure that what they are showing and telling is their art, their invention and their creation.

 

Stay Positive & You Have Some Figuring Out To Do

Garth E. Beyer