Tag Archives: Creativity

How to Develop an Endless Source of Ideas that Sell

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Your bottom line is bottoming out. Your customers are looking elsewhere. Your well of new ideas has run dry. What can you do? You could turn to your accountant for money-saving schemes, or hire a lawyer to re-structure your business. You could bring in a salesperson to drum up customers. I’ll bet you wouldn’t think a technique used by designers could help you out of a bad spot. The technique I’ll outline here is the secret to creating products and services your customers will buy. It’s a powerful way to keep your well of ideas overflowing. It’s a three-step process anyone can do. And when it’s done right, you can expect impressive results. The fountain of youth for your business When your well of new ideas runs dry, design thinking will get it bubbling up again. Design thinking is a technique that turns your business challenges on their heads, allowing you to see them from a different angle. It helps you discover new products and service that meet the needs of your market. And when your ideas meet a need, they sell. The secret to creating stuff your customers will buy Tim Brown of IDEO gave a lecture on design thinking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and explained design thinking with a great analogy. Brown said that most new business ideas come in through one of three doors: The technical door , which is led by research and development thinking. The business door , which is led by standard value-oriented thinking like return on investment. The people door , which is led by design thinking. Design thinking is a human-centered process. If you focus on your customers when you’re developing new ideas, you’ll create products and services catered to them, and dramatically increase your chances of success. Inspiration: Design thinking starts here The first phase of the design thinking process is inspiration , and that comes from your customers. Find out what their struggles are, and discover what their daily lives are like. You can gather inspiration through: Observation: What can you see your customers struggling with? What do they complain about on Twitter and Facebook? What questions do you hear again and again? Interviews: Whether face-to-face or on the phone, speaking directly to your customers and asking for candid information about their challenges is invaluable. Speak to users on either extreme: power users and beginners. Your most valuable observations will come from the far ends of the spectrum. Role Play: Ask a friend to “mystery shop” your business, going through every interaction as a customer would. What’s their first contact like? How do they perceive the process? What would improve their experience? Surveys: Online surveys are easy and fast. Your goal in this phase is to understand the cognitive, emotional, and physical world your customers live in. Gather this information, and use it in the next step. Ideation: Brainstorming gone wild In this phase, Brainstorming Rule Number One applies: no idea is too outlandish to consider. Use a white board, large paper, or a computer file to field ideas. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, gather colleagues for this process. Feed them the initial data you gathered in the inspiration phase, and set them loose. Narrow down your ideas and pick the strongest one by prototyping. I know what you’re thinking: prototyping doesn’t sound like something a small business can afford to do, right? Prototyping your best ideas can be as simple as: Videotaping someone going through the motions of using your idea for a new product or service. Building quick models of physical products using cardboard boxes and tape. Create your product to size and see how it might feel in use. Build a mini-product that gives a taste of the benefits of the full thing. If you’re thinking of creating a membership site, build out a tiny sliver into a teleseminar or a $7 ebook to test the waters. Writing down stories about the journey your customer takes from the moment they realize they have a need, to the moment they discover your new product or service, to their interaction with it, and their post-purchase experience. Prototyping allows you to visualize what your idea would be like in use. It makes it “real,” and will give you strong clues about whether or not an idea is viable. Implementation: Make it so You’ve been inspired by your customers, and you’ve developed a new idea they will love. The last phase of the design thinking process is about implementation . This is where you will nail down your costs, determine your production needs, and figure out how to execute your best idea. As you set up a system to deliver your idea, think back on those customer stories you gathered, and the prototyping exercises you did. Use these experiences to develop a marketing story around your product or service that will tap into your customer’s needs. And of course, always focus your marketing around the benefits your customer will experience after purchasing. A three-part technique that helps businesses soar Gaining inspiration from your customers, developing ideas based on their needs, and making those ideas a reality are the three phases of design thinking that every business can implement. Harnessing this creative force will keep your well of ideas overflowing with products and services that connect with your customers needs, and help your business grow. About the author: Pamela Wilson helps small businesses grow with great design and marketing tips. Learn the basics with her free Design 101 e-course at Big Brand System.

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How to Have a Great Life and a Great Business

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Check out this free 31-page PDF report called How to Have a Great Life and a Great Business (Especially if You’re Not the “Business” Type). It not only ties together the themes we’ve touched on so far in the Lateral Action Entrepreneur series, but also delivers practical ideas on starting a business that leads to more than just money. Here’s what you’ll discover: Why I quit my cushy law firm job and turned to online publishing. How I failed miserably. How I then succeeded miserably. How I learned my lesson the hard way. The allure of the global microbrand. The rise of the “feeder” business. Why small is beautiful (and powerful). The 37signals approach to market research. Real-life examples of “smartly small” entrepreneurs. Plus, you’ll get an examination of the 6 critical components of smart entrepreneurship: Create (Don’t Compete) Lead (Don’t Manage) Communicate (Don’t be Shy) Automate (Don’t Duplicate) Accelerate (Don’t Stand Still) Succeed (Don’t Stress) The report is available here . You’ll also get full optimized transcripts of our recent seminars with Steven Pressfield and Jason Fried. About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of Lateral Action . Get more from Brian on Twitter .

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8 Reasons Rich People Hate Their Lives

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A young woman discovers in college that she is driven by a burning desire to succeed. She starts a business, struggles, goes through some lean years. Eventually her hard work begins to pay off. She has a good year. Then, a great year. The year after that blows the doors off. She gets everything she’s worked so hard for. The prestigious client list. The Armani wardrobe. The BMW. The gorgeous house in the most expensive part of town. The money pours in, almost effortlessly. More money than she ever dreamed she could have. How do you fill in the end of this story? Most of us end this one with: But the more she succeeded, the less fulfilled she became. She shortchanged all of her personal relationships. The harder she worked, the less happy she became. Finally, she realized that her success was hollow. But by now she was addicted to the high income, and it was too late to turn back. But what if we could write a better ending? Early on, she refused to become a captive of her business. Even in the tough times, she took six weeks of vacation a year, knowing that when she made time for herself, she became an ever-sharper businessperson. As the business became more successful, she traveled the world with her family and friends. She was profoundly grateful never to have had a “normal” job, which would have made it hard to spend serious time with her family. The harder she worked, the happier she became. She launched a foundation to help kids from poor backgrounds create businesses of their own. She became a serious painter. She went back to school and earned a master’s in philosophy. Everything she did to nurture her life seemed to strengthen her business. She was terribly grateful to have caught that initial spark early, and to have acted on it. The first story makes a better made-for-TV movie It feeds our stereotypes. It reinforces our fear of success . It reassures us that we were right never to act on those dreams we had. The second story is a lot more enjoyable to live. Both stories are realistic. If you choose to create a business, large or small, you get to write the story. You decide where you’ll put your focus, what you’ll spend your time and attention on. I’d love to help you write a better story These two stories fascinate me. I’ve known both of these women. I’ve watched them work, watched what they struggle with and what seems to come easily to them. I’ve made an obsessive study of what makes some successful people love their lives, and what makes some utterly miserable. This obsession, like most of my obsessions, ended up as an extended piece of writing, which I’d like to share with you. It’s called The 8 Reasons Rich People Hate Their Lives (PDF) . The report explores some questions that fascinate me: Why taking ethical shortcuts won’t just make you hate yourself, it can also tank your business. Why improving your weaknesses is a loser’s game. How being driven by your ideals can wreck your life, and what to focus on instead. Why some multi-millionaires are still poor, and how you can become wealthy no matter what your income. The reason so many smart and talented people are miserable, and the simple mindset shift that would make them happy again. How to deal with the loneliness that success can bring. Why a wise entrepreneur puts family and friends first. The self-destructive behavior that’s as dangerous as driving drunk, and why it can destroy your business and your life. The report could just as easily be called The 8 Reasons (Some) Rich People Love Their Lives . Because that’s the part that really interests me. How to play the whole game to win — not just the financial part, but the living part as well. If this is a topic that interests you, I hope you’ll check out the report. It’s totally free, you don’t even have to leave your email address. And if you find the report valuable, please share it with people you care about. Rather than writing your business story as a sappy melodrama, let’s write something for you that’s a lot more satisfying, a lot more appealing, and a lot more fun. Download The 8 Reasons Rich People Hate Their Lives. About the Author : Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe .

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Is F.E.A.R. Holding You Back?

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I’ve written in the past about the nasty effects of fear – how it can lead to procrastination , creative blocks , and unremarkable content . It’s our sense of fear that derails success more often than actual failed attempts at success. Looking deeper into the topic, however, I’ve discovered that often it’s not actual fear we’re dealing with. It’s something much more ridiculous. It’s not fear that holds you back. It’s F.E.A.R. Fear is a Good Thing Fear is an emotional response to an actual threat, and it’s a fundamental survival mechanism that’s served us well throughout human history. When you’re in immediate danger, fear tells you to get yourself to someplace safer. Once our ancestors saw a few friends and relatives devoured by lions, fearing lions became a smart move. Nowadays we react in a similarly legitimate fashion when faced with an AK-47, a car veering toward us, or a film starring Jessica Simpson. Fear is also a true emotional response when we’re about to lose someone or something that’s important to us. So it’s not just about our personal safety – we can fear the loss of a loved one to illness, or our home to foreclosure due to unemployment. Here’s the problem. The sensation people experience in the face of taking action to achieve their dreams – business, personal, spiritual, whatever – is usually not true fear. It’s F.E.A.R. What is F.E.A.R? F.E.A.R. is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real . There’s no true threat of immediate physical danger, no threat of a loss of someone or something dear to us, actually nothing there at all. F.E.A.R. is an illusion. Something we fabricate in our own minds and pretend is real. It’s a fairy tale we tell ourselves that keeps us from doing what we really want. False evidence appearing real . The common label for F.E.A.R is anxiety, a less fundamental emotion that arises purely from our own thoughts, not external reality. And 50 years of cognitive psychology research demonstrates that while we can’t always control how we feel, we do have the power to choose how we think and act . How to Conquer F.E.A.R. “Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. What a waste.” ~Seth Godin Are past failures real evidence that justifies fear of future failure? Nope, because unless you keep doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting different results (one definition of insanity), you have no real evidence that your next approach will fail. Past failures generate false evidence appearing real . To the contrary, it’s likely you learned things from your past failures that instead provide evidence that your odds are now better than ever. The worst-case scenario, of course, involves those who’ve never failed, because they’ve never tried. These people have zero real evidence of anything, and are living in the purest imaginary prison of the mind. Guess what? Healthy, well-adjusted people take risks, without all this deep dread over specific outcomes. The journey is what you’ll relish, and it just might take you somewhere better than you initially hoped. No matter what, each journey teaches you what you need to know to take the next one. So, the formula for conquering F.E.A.R. is simple: Try + Learn + Adapt + Try = Success Or who knows . . . it might just be: Try = Success One thing’s for certain, though . . . you won’t have any real evidence of anything until you do that try thing. And guess what? Since we’re not publishing on Monday due to Memorial Day, we’ve got another article for you today. This next one gives you specific advice on how to get writing done even when you’re feeling the F.E.A.R. Stay tuned . . . . About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter .

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Beyond Motivation: Getting to What Really Drives You

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What drives you to write? To earn some green-backs and keep the wolves from the door? To earn praise? Create a community? Or maybe you’re convinced your story will help someone else? Or that you can help other people find important information? Are you compelled to write because you’ll settle for nothing less than changing the world ? You know how to get to Carnegie Hall, right? Motivation, man, motivation. Okay, so I mangled the old joke, but the point remains — you won’t get far unless you’re motivated. Just any old motivation won’t do either – it has to be the right motivation and you have to be honest about what it is. If you’re writing to build a business, but your real motivation is attention and validation from peers , you’re going to go off the rails. Dan Pink, author of the terrific new book Drive , says that real, self-directed motivation is based on three things — autonomy, mastery, and purpose. When we’re motivated, we achieve all of these things. So why do we think it’s so normal to be unmotivated? Lack of motivation isn’t normal Notice when you’re not motivated. Don’t get used to it and teach yourself that it’s normal. It isn’t. When your motivation starts to slip, you need to address it immediately. It’s telling you something is wrong with the way you’re thinking about your work. Maybe you don’t feel like you have autonomy any more. Or that you’re not growing as a writer. Or that your work no longer has purpose. Let it slide and your declining motivation will strip your confidence until you forget why you ever wanted to write in the first place. How do you fix motivation that’s starting to slip? If you’re unmotivated, start by looking back to Pink’s three factors: 1. Give yourself more autonomy When you’re able to have a say over what you write, how you write it, and when you write it, your work becomes a task you can tackle with creativity and a greater sense of ease. That may mean you need to make room to work on your own projects , rather than spending all of your time on other people’s deadlines. Or it may just mean that you need to be more conscious of what kind of clients you’re working to attract. 2. Increase your sense of mastery If you’re able to increase your skills and capability as a result of your writing, then you’re really onto a winner. You get something done and you get better in the process. Work on your craft. Get passionate about the fine points of whatever kind of writing you do. Push yourself to get better every day. 3. Expand your sense of purpose If your work means something to you, it feels right, like you’re making a real contribution. Know that what you do is important. Know how it benefits your clients. Work on projects that support your values, rather than conflicting with them. But . . . motivation isn’t everything It’s nice to read about drive and passion. That message is everywhere. And while it might end up making you feel lovely inside, it doesn’t offer you any insight as to why passion and motivation aren’t enough . See, what Dan Pink didn’t mention is that while congruent motivation and the ability to course-correct are essential parts of success, no amount of motivation can be enough without a supporting belief. As Bruce Lee once said, water adapts to any container. In other words, your life shapes itself and adapts to the barriers you’ve set. It doesn’t matter if you pour 20,000 gallons or a glass of water into an empty swimming pool, the water is constrained by the dimensions of the pool. How big is your swimming pool? You could have all the motivation in the world to build your business, but if you have a belief that says you “can’t” or that you’re “not good enough,” then guess what? You’ve just built a wall that stops that motivation in its tracks, or at the very least turns it into one hell of a struggle. Your beliefs about your writing and your ability to build a meaningful business act like the circuit-breaker in your home, shutting down the power when there’s a perceived risk. But here’s the thing — you don’t need protecting. Those beliefs that limit you and keep you “safe” in your comfort zone aren’t necessary. If you were a house, you’d be one that can grow and move. You’d be a house that can add, remove, and re-order rooms as it needs to. You’d be a house that can rewire itself on the fly. You’d be a house that can repair itself and strengthen itself. You’d be a sentient house with arms and legs and hair and . . . okay, the house metaphor’s gone too far. Here’s what it boils down to: You’re more than a match for any challenge Your capability is bigger than any problem your business can throw at you. You are designed to take on meaningful challenges and learn what’s necessary to succeed. You’re great at stuff. Really, you are. But you won’t be able to do any of it until you reset the boundaries of your beliefs so that they allow your motivation to flow where it needs. Build a pool with no boundaries and what you’ve got is an ocean for your motivation to swim in. About the Author: As a leading confidence coach with clients around the world, Steve Errey has a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Get more from him at The Confidence Guy .

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