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In The Box Podcast

Episode 35: Real Time Marketing, Trying Something New, Perception And More (Podcast)

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about the effectiveness of every brand getting into real-time marketing given how much of an uphill battle it is. We also heard from Michael one thing he suggests you try. Additionally, we chatted about if it matters how others perceive us, if experiences are earned, and getting angry at people for abusing your time.

This was a pretty fun podcast (yea, well, they all are). Enjoy.

Real Time Marketing – Should brands be trying to publish content in real-time?

Something new – What is one thing you suggest our 11 listeners to try?

Earned – Are experiences someone has earned / unearned?

Perceived – Does it matter how others perceive you?

Bonus – Do you have a right to be mad at someone for taking advantage of your time?

 

Stay Positive & Sometimes It Is More Questions Than Answers

In The Box Podcast

Episode 20: Not Knowing, New Info, Focus vs Multitasking And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we chatted about effectively managing time, how one comes to terms with their own mortality, if we operate better while multitasking, how to come to terms with not knowing and how to shed old worldviews.

Episode 20: Not Knowing, New Info, Focus vs Multitasking And More

Time – How do you effectively manage your time? (One tool/tip)

Mortality – What is one way you come to terms with your own mortality?

Focus vs Multitasking – Is our power/intellect at its prime when we focus on one thing or does multitasking require more skill?

Not knowing – How can we come to terms with not knowing? ex: not knowing if it will work, not knowing if we should try, etc.

New Info – How do you critically engage new info that is different from a previously held strong belief?

 

Stay Positive & What’s One Way You Mange Your Time?

The End Of “I Didn’t Know”

Garth Beyer

A few hours of research can save a few dozen hours of repair, of attention, of credibility.

Very few businesses are ran on the premise of providing information to people who didn’t know they needed or wanted it.

Nearly every business is providing information for you to consume so you don’t make the mistake of going in blind.

There’s no reason for you to pitch a strategy to a client without reading up on some case studies and seeing what other competitor brands are doing.

There’s no reason for you to buy tickets to Germany without knowing your passport needs to have at minimum 10 months before its expiration to get in the country. (Sorry, Nick.)

There’s no reason for you to not start a podcast because you don’t know how.

I always say, “you don’t know until you know,” and it’s so easy to know now. Why would you ever not?

 

Stay Positive & Do Your Research Before You Waste Time, Money, Respect, Attention…

Invested Time

Garth Beyer

I don’t tell people “thank you for your time.”

Instead I say, “thank you for investing the time in me/with me.”

Are you using people’s time to get off the hook? To make your life easier? Or are you using their time to learn, to give back 10-fold, to help you do the work in a new way?

It’s not just wording something differently, it’s thinking about things differently.

When you acknowledge someone is investing in you, you’re bound to do work that matters.

 

Stay Positive & It Also Makes Them Feel Good About How They Spent Their Time

Unlocking Potential #13: Q&A With Ryan Paugh

Garth Beyer

Ryan Paugh

When researching for a story centered on entrepreneurs under 30, a friend connected me with Ryan Paugh. At the time, Ryan was at Brazen Careerist writing, speaking and preaching about career-management. He was big into entrepreneurship… still is.

Like all the others on the unlocking potential series, Ryan is a linchpin. He is the source, the center of many entrepreneurial circles, providing resources and connecting people just as my friend connected me with him.

Without further ado… welcome, Ryan.

Q: You’re known for building epic communities. What does an epic community look like to you?

Ryan: An epic community is one that can help you unlock any door in your industry or trade. For communities like YEC and FounderSociety, we aspire to help our members gain access to everything they need to grow successful businesses.

Q: How did you get to where you’re at now? What’s your story?

Ryan: This is very geeky, but blogging changed my life. After I graduated college I started a blog with one of my best friends about Gen Y entering the workforce. Through the blog came my first business, Brazen Careerist, which was a free community for Gen Y professionals seeking career happiness.

Q: What’s the best and worst parts of being an entrepreneur?

Ryan: The best part about being an entrepreneur is having control over your own destiny. The worst part about being an entrepreneur is the toll it takes on your personal life and the lack of stability.

Q: What gets you filled up with passion and ready to take on the world, to go the distance, to be in it for the long haul?

Ryan: My family. Now that I’m a father especially, I find that I’m more motivated to be successful than I have ever been. I want my family to live the best life possible. I want them to see me as their hero.

Q: What do you see people regularly failing to do while starting a business? What would you suggest they do differently?

Ryan: Spending too much time on one idea is a common startup killer. Most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that they didn’t get it right on the first try. They had to iterate on their existing idea to make it work.

Q: What are four hacks you can share? They can be about life, relationships, getting a job, starting a business, whatever you would like.

Hack #1. Invest in a virtual assistant and outsource work that takes away from building your business. Challenge yourself to delegate at least one new thing per week to your assistant.

Hack #2. Perfect is stupid. Come up with an idea for a business. Build the minimum viable product (MVP) as quickly as you can and get it to market. Iterate based on feedback from your early customers to get better.

Hack #3. Become an early riser or a night owl and you will get more accomplished than 99 percent of the population.

Hack #4. Take care of yourself. You physical and mental health are strongly linked to your success.

Q: Here’s an open-ended question for you: What are your thoughts on waiting?

Ryan: Don’t.

Q: What about failure?

Ryan: Embrace it.

Q: Would you tell us about a truly challenging time and how you got through it (or didn’t!)?

Ryan: Without going into too much detail, I had a health scare a couple months ago that left me feeling mentally paralyzed. It took weeks for me to feel better and get back to my business. The reason I was able to take the time off that I needed to recover was my amazing team. At some point in the future, you’re going to need to take some time off too and it will go a lot smoother if your company can operate with you missing. Being a great leader means learning how to delegate to your team and trust that they can get the job done. You should spend time early on in your career getting comfortable with this. You’ll thank yourself later.

Q: What are three lessons people should know about building a community?

  • Community businesses are are some of the most difficult businesses to run. I love what I do, but it’s not an easy road to riches. There are plenty of other avenues you could take to get rich quick
  • Great customer service can keep a paying customer loyal even when the product still needs work.
  • People will pay a premium for a concierge-level community experience.

Q: What makes an idea or a business or a person remarkable?

Ryan: Vulnerability. I’m drawn to people, ideas, and businesses that are not afraid to be what they are even if that might lead to them being criticized.

Q: Any last advice you want to give someone in marketing or someone who is thinking of starting a business?

Ryan: Share your ideas with as many people as possible.

Q: Lastly, where can people find you and the remarkable work you do? (Shamelessly self-promote here.)

Ryan: The communities I’m currently building are YEC and FounderSociety. We also run a great startup advice website for early-stage entrepreneurs. Follow me on Twitter. I try to blog semi frequently at ryanpaugh.com.

 

Stay Positive & Go Share Your Ideas, Be A Hero, Start Something

10 Principles For Creating Remarkable Work

10 Principles For Creating Remarkable Work

Garth Beyer

Creating Remarkable Work

 

1) You’ve got to give yourself time. For some that means working a job they don’t love because it affords them a few hours at night they can work and not worry about paying the bills. For others this may mean living in an area that is cheap, quiet, far from distractions. It may mean a hiatus from family and friends or it might just mean waking up an extra hour earlier. Without time, you won’t be able to do work that matters.

2) Get funded in odd ways. You’re fortunate enough to be creating in an age where crowdfunding is a popular method of supporting your art, your project. But don’t neglect the opportunities that don’t require a healthy network of supporters. A simple grant here, a one-day-a-week job there can do the trick. And remember, you don’t need a mass of supporters, you only need a few people who already value your work, who are your core tribe.

3) Write out your story. If you have to force it to be interesting, then change your story. Go restart your pursuit in a way that is whole-heatedly interesting. You can own a motto and a personal statement, but keep it to yourself. Let it inspire you and only you. People want to hear your interesting story, not the four word motto that only breaths life for you or the promise you made yourself at the start of the new year.

4) Declutter. Destroy. Decrease your inventory. Purge your inbox, your Evernote, your journals. When going through your collections, either find a way to use what you’ve planned, written, drawn immediately or toss it. Don’t think of incomplete projects and musings you see as failures to launch, see them as ideas that never had life in them to begin with. It’s okay. Let them go. It will be weight off your shoulders now and save you time later.

5) You don’t need regular input and feedback when you’re in the creating phase. Create in privacy. Fail in privacy. Closing your door means you shut out criticism that cripples your momentum, it means shunning the naysayers that drain your motivation, it means giving nothing for others to judge you by.

6) This tip and what prompted me to write this list comes from Teresita Fernandez’s commencement address: when someone compliments your work, don’t believe them unless they can convince you why they believe it’s good. “If they can’t convince you (and most people can’t) dismiss it as superficial and recognize that most bad consensus is made by people simply repeating that they ‘like’ something.”

7) Other than bad habits, you don’t have to give up anything you love or want to do in life in order to create remarkable work. You can travel to all the countries you want, have as many babies as you want or go to school for five more degrees. You can create remarkable work all the while. You don’t have to forfeit your dreams to do work that matters.

8) Don’t believe you need a mass following to fuel your work. A few people who support you, who care about you, who believe in you is all you need. Don’t tell yourself otherwise.

9) Be nice to everyone. Be gracious. Be thankful. Be sincere. Be personal. Be human. Be likable rather than interesting.

10) When you face fear, troubles, setbacks in life–be it with your fitness, family, finances, faith, friends–fall back on your work, your art to hold you up, not drugs, not alcohol, not other miserable people. Remember that the work you create to help others, can also help you.

 

Stay Positive & Any Other Principles You Think Are Essential? Tweet at me: @thegarthbox

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The Follower Outbreak

The Follower Outbreak

Garth Beyer

The Follower Outbreak

If your goal is to get to the phase where you have 100 new followers a day or that moment when you finally go viral, you may be missing the point of why you do the work you’re doing.

The remarkable writer, lawyer or any artist for that matter doesn’t need 20k followers to make a living off their art. They don’t need an outbreak of followers to be successful. What they need is a tribe.

A tribe is a group of people like you. That’s why it’s great to make your “about me” page more of a “people like me…” page, as in, people like me are fearless or people like me live to debate or people like me just can’t help but write. It lets people who come across you know you’re just like them, that they have found the right tribe.

There is no specific cap on the number of tribe members you can have. There is, however, always a breaking point when you can’t turn the strangers that follow you into friends because you’ve exceeded your capacity of engagement.

Imagine you are getting 50 new strangers following you a day starting tomorrow. How will you make them feel part of your tribe?

Difficult, huh? And time consuming.

If the follower outbreak is what you’re going for, reflect on how much experience you’re giving up. By aiming for the mass, you miss making the smaller connections with people who really care about your work, and who you may even learn from.

And if you’re looking for monetary success, the number of followers you have rarely indicates how much you will make. If you were to divide your followers up by friends and strangers, it is the friends who you can rely on to download your ebook, to share your starter kit, to call on your for consultation services. These friends make up your tribe. Treat them well.

Building a tribe is a slow process, but far more rewarding than an outbreak of followers.

 

Stay Positive & They Are Only Strangers Until You Turn Them Into Friends

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