Starting

IN THE BOX PODCAST

Episode 49: Slow Progress, Navigating Foolish Laws, Breaking Bad Habits And More (Podcast)

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast we explored reasons why people love to start new ventures rather than see any of them through, if there is such a thing as a healthy obsession, how to navigate outdated or foolish laws, how to break bad habits, and how to deal with the realization that you’re progressing in your life, career, relationship, work, etc,. but slowly.

Episode 49: Slow Progress, Navigating Foolish Laws, Breaking Bad Habits And More

Starting Fascination – Why are people so fascinated with starting and less on seeing something through?

Obsession – Is there such a thing as a healthy obsession?

Laws – How do you navigate outdated or foolish laws?

Habits – Best way to break a bad habit?

Bonus –  What is one tip you have for people who feel that their progress is slow?

 

Stay Positive & Subscribe Me Up, Scotty

It Starts Today

It Starts Today

Garth Beyer

Starting

Every day can stand for the start of a new year.

You’re only one good meal away from eating healthy on a regular basis again.

You’re only one dead-lift away from getting back on your workout plan.

All that matters is today and if you do what you’ve set out to.

The new year? It doesn’t start on January 1st. It starts when you do.

 

Stay Positive & It Starts Today, It Starts Now

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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.

Feedback Frequency

Garth Beyer

Here’s a tip you can keep in consideration next time you’re self-evaluating yourself after just starting a new project or venture.

Feedback

If you’re just starting out, trying something for the first time, if you really are a noob, then be sure to take the learning curve into account when you self-evaluate.

Critiques, improvements, self-assessments are simply a distraction when you’re first learning something. It’s a distraction because it takes real effort, focus and energy to assess yourself; attention and spirit better put toward playful progress.

In other words, when you’re told to “play around first,” take it seriously. The playing, that is. Instead of so much feedback, why not seek out the feedbag?

 

Stay Positive & You Don’t Always Need Feedback To Advance

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Where You Start

Garth Beyer

What can you make from this chart?

Where you start

There are businesses, writers, artists that start when they still haven’t perfected their craft. They create crap art and develop sketchy business models. They write well but make countless grammatical and mechanical errors. But according to this chart, there’s no correlation of where you start in terms of a perfect craft to how successful you are down the line.

What about those who are perfect at their art when they start. What about those writers who practice in the shadows and refuse to come out until their novel is perfect? How about those businessmen and women who study model after model before they develop their “perfect” model. Is there any guarantee of success for them down the line? Nope.

Where you start doesn’t matter much down the line.* What matters is that you start.

 

Stay Positive & Go Start

*If you’re looking for a short-term investment or if you’re looking for a place to perfect your practice before you truly launch yourself, where you start matters very much.

 

 

 

Why Where You Start Matters

Garth Beyer

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As much as I would love to say that just starting is all that matters, it’s not.

Where you start matters a lot.

Where you first gain experience solidifies your future path of experience and work.

If you began working at an ad agency and your campaign focused on advertising McDonald’s to five year-olds, it will be a lot easier to then work for Arby’s and Dairy Queen targeting a similar age group.

If you passionately support this advertising campaign, wonderful. But, if you’re like me and don’t quite approve of five year-olds eating that type of food, it’s more difficult to get an advertising job targeting the elderly for the fitness industry afterward. They are complete opposites!

Your first client will be your first real branding experience. Ad agencies looking for someone to target the elderly for the fitness industry (what you really want to do) is going to have a difficult time being convinced that you can use similar strategies on getting five year-olds to nag their parents to buy McDonald’s on the elderly and the fitness industry.

Figuring out where you want to start requires two things from you:

  1. You need to self-reflect until you’re certain you know what you want to do. No, it’s not seriously difficult to alter your path once you start, but it’s much easier to start down the right one to begin with. Backtracking only helps those who have lost something, not those who want to discover something new.
  2. Never settle with where you start. It’s easy to take what you can get when you’re first starting out, but I urge you to keep going after the position you want.

This isn’t just for those looking to go into advertising, it applies to anyone that wants to start something.

 

Stay Positive & Now, Seriously, Go Start Something

Garth E. Beyer

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Where To Start

Garth Beyer

That’s the question isn’t it?

You want to work for Twitter, you want to start a business, you want to kickstart your freelance career, or – in my case – you want to get into public relations.

Sure, you can read some books, bookmark some websites, favorite a few blogs and justifiably consume, but that won’t get you started. There’s no action to that; it’s passive learning and passive learning is preparation, not actual movement.***

The most solid way to start any journey is

with a conversation.

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An email, a tweet, a message is all that it takes to start. After connecting with @E_Humphrey, we conversed about the PR industry, we began interacting with each others tweets, and we even found out that we have a lot of the same connections in town.

And how did both her and I make those connections? It all starts with a conversation.

 

Stay Positive & Go Find A Mentor, A Friend, A Teacher

Garth E. Beyer

*** the exception is if you start a blog where you share what you learn (my pr box)