Writing

IN THE BOX PODCAST

Episode 48: WOM Advertising, Asking For Funding, Writing Things Down And More (Podcast)

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast we talked about how businesses success without advertising, if money really does talk to everyone, whether or not you should write things down, how to ask for funding and controlling the rumors about you.

Episode 48: WOM Advertising, Asking For Funding, Writing Things Down And More

Word Of Mouth Advertising – How do businesses still succeed without advertising? Is it a smart move to be purely run on word of mouth?

Sellouts – Does everybody truly have a price?

The Ask – One top on how to make the “Ask” while fundraising?

Write Down – How do you personally handle the question “Should I write this down?”

Bonus – How important is it to control the narrative around your life?

 

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In The Box Podcast

Episode 22: Stealing Ideas, Working With Narcissists, Making Art For Yourself And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we took a stab at answer questions about making art for others or for yourself, one way to gain clarity when faced with a decision between two options, why people fear their ideas getting stolen, one way to handle a heavier workload (likely due to a promotion) and what to do when engaging with a narcissist. Enjoy.

Episode 22: Stealing Ideas, Working With Narcissists, Making Art For Yourself And More

Art – Make art for self or others?

Decisions – One way to gain clarity when confused about making a decision?

Stolen – Should people fear their ideas being stolen?

Responsibility load – What is one way to handle being given more responsibility (think like getting a promotion)?

Bonus – One way to deal with interacting with a narcissist?

 

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You Can Always Come Back And Do More

Garth Beyer

When it comes to quality versus quantity, you can always come back and do more.

If your form sucks while working out, you’ll either be exhausted or injured before you think of upping the quantity of reps.

If your writing has to go through four rounds of edits before it’s good enough to put out there, your editor will be done with you before you get through half the chapters in your book.

If your deck presentation is putting your audience to sleep in the first few slides, what are the chances of them caring what you have to say by the time you get to slide 35?

It’s reassuring to me that nothing is stopping me from coming back and presenting a few more lifts, a few more words, a few more slides. In fact, people want you to when they see you’ve put quality first.

 

Stay Positive & Quality Not Over Quantity, Just Before It

The Voices In Our Heads

Garth Beyer

Are not the ones we want to let do the handwork, the grunt work, the creative work for us.

Caring a lot about doing good work doesn’t mean you need to listen to the voices in your head critiquing your work, constantly whispering that it could be better, that you might as well give up because you won’t get it perfect, and it should be perfect.

Real creative work – the valuable stuff – comes from shunning the voices in your head and speaking as a human, just putting yourself out there.

You may not create something remarkable on your first shot, but it gives you a better place to work from than if you think too much about it (and people who think too much are really saying they’re talking with the voices in their end, trying to reason with them, and there simply is no reasoning with the lizard brain).

We have 60 seconds before the lizard brain speaks up when we’re faced with a decision to purchase a product or not. I’ve noticed the same time frame when pitching on the phone and writing creative posts for clients.

60 seconds before we begin to lose our human touch and the lizard brain takes over.

Follow your heart when purchasing. Don’t think about all the scenarios that can happen once you dial the phone, just pick it up and go. And most importantly, write right away. You can always return the product, give someone else a call, and revise your writing.

The point is to start and speak from the heart, not the head.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Let The Voices In Your Head Stop You

Bottled Up

Garth Beyer

You can’t be moved by a presentation a week after as passionately as you could be moved the evening of. Inspiration can’t be bottled and saved up for later. Motivation is also addictive for this reason.

We love the feeling of creative potential, of assertive ambition, of being fueled with passion, but the moment the creative spark ignites, so does the lizard brain tricking us to wait until a better moment, to use our knowledge on our next project, not the one we’re currently working on.

Since we don’t recognize it’s the lizard brain speaking up, we feel bad a week later when we’re reminded about the seminar we went to and how we haven’t put to action anything we learned from it. I recall myself saying how ready and stoked I was to write my next novel after a 2-day writing conference. I never did. So what’s the best solution?

Go to another conference, watch another Ted talk, listen to another podcast episode because the energy makes us happy again, which leads to an addictive mentality, a downhill spiral of bottled up and wasted inspiration.

What has helped me prevent wasting creative energy is to remind myself I don’t need to create something huge or wait for something big to release the passion. Immediately after attending a second writing conference, I wrote an incomplete story. I spent about 20 minutes writing while I ate lunch.

Two things happened.

One, I learned inspiration is quickly spent. The creative juice waned after 15 minutes of writing, but when I first put pen to paper, I thought I was pumped up enough to write for hours.

Two, I was proud of myself later in the day and even a week later when I thought back to the conference and how I used the inspiration. Even though it was a short incomplete story about an irish boxer who had a fascination with things colored orange, I had conquered my lizard brain.

Don’t bottle up your inspiration. Don’t hang on to motivation. Put it to use, make something, write something, do something differently, and remember, it doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be.

 

Stay Positive & You’ll Often Come Out Even More Inspired (by yourself!)

Writing That Matters

Garth Beyer

Keep Moving, Keep Writing

– writing that requires you to emotionally place yourself in the shoes of another

– writing that makes you feel vulnerable

– writing that not everyone will agree with

– writing that’s essentially a brain dump

– writing that someone will provide feedback on

Here are five forms of writing to check off daily. Managing to check off just one a day will make you a better writer, will make a difference for those who read it, and will add to your confidence not only as a writer, but as a thought-leader as well.

 

Stay Positive & Go Write Something

Glamorous, Gumptive, And Getting To The Point

Glamorous, Gumptive, And Getting To The Point

Garth Beyer

It’s easy to turn short writing into fanciful long form. A lot of books can be written in 100 fewer pages. A lot of speeches can be cut by 5, 10, 20 minutes. A lot of podcasts can say what they are saying in a five-minute personal video than a 50 minute scripted podcast.

That being said, it’s still easy to turn short writing into pretty, short writing. I call it glamorous writing, but what it needs to be is gumptive writing; writing that’s honest, transparent, and human. It gets the point of the emotional labor needing to be done and shows that you’re in whatever you’re writing about for the long run.

Glamorous long form: Through innovate endeavors we can seek and conquer the path of least resistance that winds us into a less competitive market allowing us to facilitate well-thought-out marketing strategies that will rope in the plurality of the masses and satisfy our unwavering desire for a consistently increasing profit, which in turn we can build bigger facilities and add to our paid advertising budget.

Glamorous short form: We’ll market to a niche group, increase profits and grow our company.

The long form is pretty, isn’t it? Full of buzz words, passive voice, and a lot of empty promises. As for the short form, it’s quick and to the point, almost like a bullet point on a slide with too many other bullet points. But what about the Gumptive form?

Gumptive form: We’ve found the people seeking the solution we offer and know they have friends sharing the same problem. By adding some design and marketing to this tribe, we can leverage the power of word-of-mouth because we’ve shown we care and we know the tribe is full of influencers. With profits, we can hire additional designers to increase the remarkability of our solution thus always giving people something new to talk to others about.

It’s a bit longer than the glamorous long form, but it’s more honest, transparent, and full of care. You can tell they meant every word they wrote and would be happy to talk about any part of it in depth. As for the glamorous writing, ask the writer of it any question regarding what they wrote and they’ll, well, either choke or give you another glamorous non-answer.

The reality is we don’t need to find artful ways to say very little or artful ways to say a lot. We don’t need to thesaurus every second word and overuse the rule of three. We need to be definitive about our passions and how they can benefit others on an emotional level, on a human level.

By being real we become trusted and by becoming trusted we can do work that matters for people who care about doing work that matters. And in the end, it’s really about the forwardness of intentions for all parties. As ol’ Zig said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

 

Stay Positive & Are You Sure You’re Helping?