Success

Death Of Spectating In Sports

Garth Beyer

Quickly, don’t be confused. I didn’t say death of “spectator sports.”

1010648_10201588067809783_1465580148_nLast night at Miller Park I watched the Brewers shut out the Cubs. Victory for the Brewers meant that the Cubs are officially the worst team in the league right now. Given that they were tied with the Brewers for that title before the game, victory was not as great to the Brewers as, say, it was to the Chicago Blackhawks.

What I realized though, was that the sport itself didn’t make the game. My great experience was not fueled by the talent and flare of the players. Heck, I could have watched a little league baseball game and been more impressed. That aside, place me in any stadium, field, or rink and what makes it remarkable is everyone in the stands.

Previously called “spectators,” that’s a dying phrase in sports.

A spectator is someone who looks on or watches. Simple as that. But when I scan the stands, I don’t see any spectators. (Worth noting, to be a spectator also implies being silent, taking it all in. It’s difficult to be a spectator when you are texting someone the score, high-fiving those behind you, making noise, and shouting “Let’s Go Brewers.”)

What I see is people connecting, relaxing, cheering, and making the most of their ballgame experience, not just the ballgame. “This spectator sport” and “that spectator sport” are simply categories for people to meet up with like-minded people, not to watch players pitch a ball or hit a puck.

The reason for this post is to note that it is easy to turn a business into a baseball game. The part oft forgotten is that you still need to build a stadium that certain types of people go to. This may mean that there’s a seating limit, certain concessions, and a place for people to purchase matching clothes.

The players/clients don’t make the game/business,                                                                          the game/business makes the players/clients.

BallParkFood for thought: Maybe we don’t go to sporting events to watch them play. Maybe they play sports to get us (the audience/fans/families/superfans) to go crazy, interact with each other, and connect on what I consider a personal level.

 

Stay Positive & Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Garth E. Beyer

Through All Of The Crap

Garth Beyer

It’s worth sharing Richard St. John’s three-minute talk of which I learned that to succeed, we must persist through crap.

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Here are some favorite articles I have written on criticism, rejection, assholes, and pressure.

 

Stay Positive & Here’s Some On Persistence Too

Garth E. Beyer

 

The End To Unproductive Weekends

Garth Beyer

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Every weekend there are people who have open schedules to work on their art, but never use the time to their advantage. (Heck, I am even guilty of it from time to time.)

The single greatest tip I can give to have a successful weekend, whether your schedule is packed or not, is to get dressed.

Even more specifically, put shoes on.

Don’t trust me? Try it just once. Next Sunday, when you have zero plans, wake up and instead of staying in your pj’s, get dressed, put your shoes on, and the rest will take care of itself. And at the end of the day, you will have made accomplishments.

Sure, we have had a weekend that we got work done barefoot, but I know there’s not one weekend that we were wearing shoes and no work was completed.

Life is weird, but the moments you discover to be weird, you can also leverage.

 

Stay Positive & In What Other Ways Do You Leverage Your Weekend?

Garth E. Beyer

The Sweat Of Perfection

Garth Beyer

No. This isn’t about working hard. It has nothing to do with perfect practice making perfect. It actually has nothing to do with quality. It does, however, have everything to do with fear, effort, and vulnerability.

Edward R. Murrow called stage fright ‘the sweat of perfection.’

What Murrow was implying is that getting yourself up there, just doing it, trying, testing, shipping, making yourself vulnerable, opening yourself to criticism, sharing what you have created is what makes perfection.

You can build a myriad of matryoshka dolls but they will never be perfect unless you share them, because that’s what creating is really about.

Perfection is a state of completeness and nothing is complete until it’s given away.

 

Stay Positive & Perspire Perfection

Garth E. Beyer

3 Steps To Get Better At Anything

Garth Beyer

1. Consume: Read and read often. Find idols, heroes, and infamous artists. Study them. Research what they researched. You’ll quickly discover that while tracking their footsteps, you’re leaving your own.

2. Produce: Try. Create. Make. Experiment. Fail. Produce something as often as possible. Choose not to have a choice if you construct something each day, just do it. Your goal is 10,000 hours or 10,000 lightbulbs, whichever comes first.

3. Share: Ship with style, deliver relentlessly. To share is equal amounts act of giving and feeling vulnerable. Don’t think about waiting. Tell yourself the best time to ship is now, and it will be. Whether you think you have something that matters doesn’t really matter. Someone, somewhere believes it matters. Will they find you?

 

Stay Positive & Consume Feedback Then Repeat

Garth E. Beyer

Encore

Garth Beyer

Is it at the back of your mind? When you’re selling a book? Playing on stage? Speaking in front of 15 or 1,500 people? Or just finishing your menial tasks faster than the rest?

Too often I have seen people judge their work by whether they get an encore.

What about the regular applause? Is that not good enough?

No. It’s not.

Because no one makes themselves vulnerable for applause, they make themselves vulnerable because they want to do it again. And since sooner is better, the best is when they get an encore.

 

Stay Positive & Truly, Every Moment Is Your Encore

Garth E. Beyer

Repairing Motorcycles

Garth Beyer

You’re faced with a huge project. Or you’re trying to face one. Fear is eating at your gut. The saying now goes: No gut. Nothing to follow. But you try your hardest to not let it.

Gumption isn’t so much about putting up a fight with fear and pressing forward; actions and emotions are only half of it. The first half is having a project for fear to work on.

For me, I’m putting together a team to make ideas happen, for Robert Pirsig, it’s repairing a motorcycle, for you it may be starting a blog, showcasing your art, deploying a new business strategy, deploying a new business, talking to people who are different from you, or simply tackling the list of to-do’s you’ve put off.

Gumption isn’t associated with the tough decisions you hear CEO’s having to make, nor is it connected to those wearing hooverflags. No. Gumption doesn’t follow guidelines, restrictions, or limits. It doesn’t care how you were raised, what school you went to, or whether you skipped breakfast or not.

L. M. Montgomery said, “Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.”

I suppose Maud never tried repairing a motorcycle. But now, everyone has to repair a motorcycle at some point during their life… or at least something similar to repairing a motorcycle.

Puzzling to acknowledge is that there are a lot more meaningful predicaments similar to repairing a motorcycle than not. Pirsig would agree with me that, yes, repairing a motorcycle takes courage, spunk, guts, initiative, aggressiveness, and a high altitude of resourcefulness.

It also takes fear and dances with it. When you go to repair a motorcycle, you know you’re going to have one hell of a time. Bolts won’t fit, parts will be stripped, dents will be accidentally made, you’ll have to repeat tasks, and – my favorite part – you will deviate from instructions.

If you ask me, Maud was partially right. Gumption can’t be defined.

However, it can be felt.

 

“I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.”

― Robert M. Pirsig

Stay Positive & Go Find Your Motorcycle

Garth E. Beyer