Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
You’re not just being watched, you’re being branded.
Before you ship a product, why not ship yourself? Create a personal page. Think of it as an ad for yourself that conveys important information about you, demonstrates your creative ability, conveys unique elements of your personality and professional skills.
Scrap the résumé, scrap your VC, scrap your cover letter.
Stay Positive & Sell You, Not Just What You Can Do
Crappy television series, crappy hyped up box office movies, crappy books, crappy food, crappy insurance plans, crappy businesses, crappy ordinances, crappy cars. There’s a lot of crap out in the world. How did it get there?
You can’t tell me you haven’t seen a movie that you wondered, “How the hell did this ever make it to the big screen? Who would buy this?” Let me tell you.
People know how to sell their crap. Producers, companies, publishers, they all buy crap from time to time. The thing is, they don’t know they are buying crap. What they think they are buying is a really great idea. And you know what, it’s not their fault. If someone has mad sales skills, mad storytelling skills, mad ethos-persuasion skills, then heck, they deserve to have their crap bought.
A well-known publisher in Madison just told me today she knows one author who has had a handful of books published, but never any of them really selling well. She said, “He will come into a meeting and say to the agents ‘Yea, that one didn’t do very well on the shelves, but here’s this other book idea.’ He would go onto pitching [selling] this new book and would end buying that one too.”
You can make it big in this world, but you have to know how to sell.
The same publisher also told me she had read hundreds of books that were exceptional, but the author just couldn’t sell them to the agents.
Only when everyone learns how to sell well, will the real content of any art be taken as serious as it deserves.
Stay Positive & This Is Why It Doesn’t Make Sense To Me When Someone Says Their Work Isn’t Good Enough, It Can Be If You Learn How To Sell It. Bittersweet Isn’t It?
I’m slowly becoming more comfortable making the statement that it’s someone’s loss when they don’t buy into an opportunity I’m offering. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming them. Their choice to pass on my offer is my fault, not theirs. But it is their loss. It is.
The more I read, write, and sell, the more I notice people are persuaded by what they will lose if they don’t “buy into” whatever it is you’re offering. People recognize what they can gain, but this recognition does not cause confirmation. What causes people to buy is showing them what they will lose if they don’t.
With whatever product or service you’re offering, you have to figure out what is unique, what is uncommon, what is it that your customer, friend, client can’t get anywhere else. What is it that if they pass up your offer, it really will be their loss?
Remarkability is often built off the foundation of scarcity.
Stay Positive & What Do I Have To Lose
Photo credit
With every event, PR strategy and celebration, you have a chance to create real change, not just make a profit, not just get new customers, not just have more people subscribe to your newsletter.
During the Madison Winter Festival, American Family Insurance opened their DreamBank office on the square to divvy out free inspiration and hot chocolate. I would bet 90 percent of folks who went inside the DreamBank had no clue what it was and won’t remember that it was American Family Insurance. If I didn’t have the goal to share stories like this, I doubt I would have saw or remembered that it was American Family Insurance either.
If the majority of people won’t remember the brand, then what’s the point of contributing to the Madison Winter Festival? Surely the 10 percent are meaningful (heck, I’m blogging about it). But that’s an added benefit, not the intention.
The intention of the DreamBank is to get people thinking about their dreams. That’s what all the activities inside were about. Pulling from DreamBank’s (American Family Insurance) website, “Dreams. They are the most valuable things we will ever own. They are the embodiment of our hopes, goals and aspirations. They empower us, drive us and define us – as individuals and a nation – and the pursuit of our dreams is a part of what makes life rich and meaningful.”
As freelancers, as business owners, as crafters, as “insert passion/occupation here,” we all have a chance to create real change. I don’t know a lot about American Family Insurance’s history, but I know enough that I can confidently say they didn’t get to becoming the success they are now by just selling insurance.
They sold the most valuable currency there is. Dreams.
Stay Positive & What Are You Selling?
Photo taken by myself
I use Twitter to interact with people and it peeves me when people use it to spam. I can deal with the links and self-promotion in my feed. What I can’t stand is when I get a direct message that is so obviously programmed. There’s a picture of a person, but the message is robotic. The latest is from Alex Mathers who is exceptionally smart and produces really sweet content, but his promotional methods are…questionable.
Occurrences like this remind me of my post about Pandora advertising its alarm option even after I had set the alarm up.
If you’re going to promote, then quit promoting once your customer does or buys what you’re promoting. Think of the last thing you sold to someone. Once the exchange was made, you didn’t keep telling them that they should buy what is now in their hands. Right?
Anyway, to thank you for reading this rant, I’ve taken the common questions asked by working creatives that Alex answered on his blog and have answered them in my way here.
1. How do I find my first clients if no one knows me?
Try making a better product or service first. If that doesn’t work, then you need to create something different. Skip all this hassle by figuring out what people in a tribe want before you establish a product or service.
Getting clients isn’t hard. Creating something people want is.
2. Should my style appeal to what is in demand or be about what I enjoy?
You know the answer to this. Both.
3. How do I earn more?
Easy things aren’t scarce. Hard things are scarce. Scarce things have value. By doing something hard, you’re creating something of value. The more value, the more you can earn.
4. How do I know what to charge for my creative work?
Charge what you would pay for it. It’s damn difficult to sell something for $1,000 if you don’t believe it’s worth that much.
5. How do I move from full-time employment to going freelance?
Slowly. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to work your ass off for it. Wake up earlier. Go to sleep later. Cut the little things out of your life until you make the transition.
6. How can I sell more of my stuff without being too pushy and ‘salesy’?
Read one book on sales. That’s all you need. They all say the same thing. After you read it, go take a job in sales. I did for a month and practiced what I read in the book. The only reason you don’t know how is because you’re not forcing yourself to figure it out.
7. I don’t have any time to spend on my creative career. What do I do?
Quit lying to yourself. We all have 24 hours in the day.
8. How do I network with people if I’m introverted?
9. Do I need to understand the basics of running a business to succeed?
Do athletes need to understand the basics of their sport in order to perform at the Olympics? That’s where you want to go, right? To the top?
10. How long do I need to spend working to become an expert at my craft?
If you simply won’t move forward without knowing, they say 10,000 hours. How long isn’t important though. What matters is how well you work to become an expert, not how many hours.
11. How do I balance my job, social life and creating in my spare time?
Understand that you’re on a teeter-totter and you’re on it with someone who weighs a bit more than you. No one consistently balances. Prepare for the constant give and take. It’s what makes it worth it.
12. Why can’t I get motivated about what I do?
You’re afraid of something. Figure out what it is and proceed to dance with it. (Also search “fear” on my website, I write a lot about it.)
13. How do I freelance without getting lonely?
By creating something that makes people feel less lonely.
14. I never get any jobs through social media. What am I doing wrong?
You need to use social media to make connections and meet people. It’s when you meet people that you get offered a job. More people get jobs from people, not tweets; they get them in person, not online.
15. How do I get more likes on Facebook?
First ask yourself if that’s where most of your revenue is coming from. If it’s not, then spend more time where the revenue is coming from, likes will follow from that.
If you do get most of your revenue from likes on Facebook and want more likes, then offer more on Facebook, showcase people who use your product or service by giving shout outs or uploading photos (people love sharing photos that they are in) and be entertaining. Most Facebookers go on to escape the real world. Ask yourself what you have to offer.
16. I have disrespectful, crappy clients. What do I do to change this?
Fire them.
17. I lack the confidence to share my creations with the world. How can I increase belief in my work?
There’s no solution to this. Don’t listen to people who say there is a solution, all they are setting you up for is an uphill battle. What you can do is start by not caring who believes in your work – so long as you do. Build it and they will come.
18. How do I get more traffic to my blog?
Ads work. More content works. Multimedia helps. Getting content published elsewhere will guide others to your blog. The two best steps you can take, though, is to connect with more people outside your blog and to wait (but don’t stand still, that’s not what I mean by waiting. People die standing still).
19. Is it better to be a jack of all trades, or a master at one?
People will ask you what you are an expert at or what your superpower is. Have one. Then know a little about everything else. Enough so you can make friends with people who are experts in all those other things. Now you’ve built a team. Now no one will ask what you’re good at. They will see you as a leader.
20. What is your single biggest tip for succeeding as a solo creative?
Know what success means to you.
21. How do I develop a unique style?
It’s a pain, but writing as much as possible helps. And try caring just a little bit less on whether people approve of your unique style. I laugh when someone calls someone else weird. They make it sound like it’s a rare thing. We are all weird.
22. Do I need a university degree to succeed in this game?
Not exactly in this game. But, in the game of life, it helps a ton.
23. There is so much competition out there. How do I stand out?
You don’t need a million followers to make a million dollars.
24. Why does no one follow me on social media?
Well, I would follow you if I’ve heard about you and like you. If this is the same for others, then either they haven’t heard about you or don’t like you.
Stay Positive & Follow Me @thegarthbox (but don’t expect spam messages)
It’s not coincidence that wine tastes better in a wine glass. Not scientifically, of course.
Scientifically, the wine tastes the same in a wine glass as it does in a styrofoam cup.
The same goes for how you feel wearing a suit. When I put one on, I feel like I’m important, I feel like I can walk into a room and own it, I feel respected. Are we any different wearing a suit as we are wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt, scientifically? I’m still me. You’re still you. Scientifically.
One more example,
Treat yourself to a cold can of bud light. Then treat yourself to a cold glass of bud light. Which tastes better?
We have these world views, these wonderful world views that in the most simplest form are summed up into that which we want to believe, is true.
We become more outgoing and astute when we put on a suit because that is what we believe a suit will do. The wine, the water, the beer, the tea, the coffee – tastes great in whatever glass we have it in because we believe that it will. So it goes…
The single best story punctures through the noise in two ways:
1) It parallels a worldview that we already hold.
2) It makes a promise that we will feel a certain way when we have or use the product.
Marketing, branding, advertising – whatever you want to label it – has one goal. To get people to attribute a feeling with a particular product or service. It’s damn difficult. That’s what makes marketing so valuable.
Stay Positive & In Marketing, Numbers Are Little, Worldviews Are Huge
I played an odd game last night with family. The game Faces. Basically you try to associate a particular attribute “the flirt” with one of the seven faces. If you guess the same as the dealer, you both win.
I also watched Shark Tank (worth watching otherwise I wouldn’t mention it).
Combining the two made me think a few things.
1. If given the chance, people can read your face. They are constantly analyzing every feature to see if it fits the world view you’re trying to sell. No, the grumpy looking women is not going to be the flirt. No, the stock faced men trying to pitch a tie business based on the Netflix platform are not passionate about their product.
2. Most will get close to understanding the face of your brand, but the more you stand out, the more they will all agree on what the face represents. That’s when you can call your branding a success. Everyone looks at Apple and sees the same face. It took years and plenty of differentiation and risk to get there.
3. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re pretty.
Stay Positive & But Some Makeup Never Hurt
Garth E. Beyer
