Category: business tips

Two Limiting Beliefs Killing Your Creativity

As artists, we may have limiting beliefs that sabotage our success.

The challenge: we don’t always know we’ve adopted limiting beliefs unless we allow ourselves to be influenced by a creative community.

Limiting Belief One: Perfection

Have you ever said:

  • “Someone else always does it better.”
  • “I tried before and it wasn’t right.”
  • “I can’t.”

Perfectionists don’t often believe they’re perfectionists.

The belief that we (or our work) must be perfect always holds our creativity captive. Continue reading “Two Limiting Beliefs Killing Your Creativity”

One Word for Focus and Purpose

Siri Can't Help

People who live without asking this question fulfill other people’s dreams.

Their own dreams die, never realized.

 

Companies who exist without asking this question function solely as money-making machines, destined to crumble after 10-15 years of success.

They never aspired to a greater focus and purpose.

  Continue reading “One Word for Focus and Purpose”

5 Steps to Creating a Memorable and Effective Company Video

Corporate video.

Those two words might as well be substituted by other equally exciting pairings such as root canal, boring lecture, or chalkboard nails.

Most companies just need a creative, like yourself, to take some initiative. I currently hold the title of ‘corporate sales trainer’ at my organization, yet part of my job description now includes making monthly video productions for trainings, meetings, and even company parties. It’s a great way to express my creativity, get paid to do it, and create a corporate culture of honor, respect, and professionalism.

Continue reading “5 Steps to Creating a Memorable and Effective Company Video”

Fuel for Creatives: Ideation (Part 1 of 3)

My wife got me thinking. It’s one of her gifts.We chat about her skin care line, Sugared Beauty, and sire some some ideas for the fall season.

I come alive.

Last week, an executive of a multi-million dollar company asked me for some ideas for his business. A new plan emerges from the brainstorming session.

I come alive.

I sit down to a blank computer screen to write a silly little story using a kit called The Writer’s Toolbox.

I come alive.

Are you the same way? Do you love coming up with new ideas, fresh perspectives, and that movie-plot twist on a hum-drum, same-story approach to life and business that put’s you on a thrill ride at Six Flags?

If you’re reading this you are. There’s a word for idea generation: ideation. (Spell check just told me that word doesn’t exist. You’re behind the times Mr. Spell Check.)

As creatives, ideation is the starting point, the spring board, the appetizer to sharing ourselves, via our creative expressions, with the world.

A bit of boldness: that unbirthed idea, the one that you have that just needs to be unearthed, may change the your home. Your community. Heck, it may change the entire world. That is why it is so imperative to get your idea out.

It must be shared.

What if…

  • Your idea saves a business and thousands of jobs.
  • Your painting changes the way people see the world.
  • Your parable resonates with people, metamorphosing them into believers.

It all starts with that idea. We’ll chat about part two and part three of this creative fuel process later this week. Hint: part two doesn’t involve fear. Just sayin’.

What change can you bring today with your gift of creativity? To your kids, your business, your spouse?

***

Two Sides of the Communication Coin

 “After all is said and done, more is said than done.” Well said Mr. Aesop Fables.

OK, so here’s the big secret. . .

I do not enjoy talking.

If you’re with me, stand up and say . . . nothing! Yeah, you know who you are. You’re the person at a party who does a lot of listening. How do they know us? By ‘they’ I mean the people who see us as walking ears.

Problem #1: I majored in speech communications and vocal music.

Problem #2: Virtually everything I have done in the ‘make a buck’ compartment of my life has had something to do with speaking.

Although I don’t love talking, I love communicating. Big difference between mere chatter and actual communication.

I love seeing that moment of connection when mutual understanding, energy, and clarity takes preeminence over just the sound of rambling words. Communicators, like myself, may not love to talk, but we do love to convey ideas, plant seeds, and foster freedom that brings a change in someone else. We also love sharing mutually in a gentle tennis match of ideation, synergy, and positive consequence.

True communication. True connection.

Lady Gaga + Warren Buffett = Tips for Business Artists

She is hanging from a chandelier, covered in stage blood, dressed in. . . what is that?Welcome to my brain when I first saw Lady Gaga perform on an awards show several years ago. I looked over at my wife, who’s also a business artist like myself, and noticed her jaw in a similarly dropped state.Warren Buffett. Ever heard of him? Well, apparently he’s a big-wig businessman, although he doesn’t consider himself one. “I am not a businessman. I am an artist,” Buffett once confessed. A wealthy artist at that: he’s worth over $47 billion according to Forbes. Some say his net worth is over $60 billion. That’s a lot or ‘illions’ either way.

We may not all be aiming to net illions with an ‘m’ or a ‘b,’ but I think we can all agree that creativity must thrive and breathe in everything we do. That said, here’s some tips brought about by inspirations of Gaga and Buffett, the unlikely dynamic duo.

Tips for Business Artists:

  • Be passionate and sell what you’re selling unapologeticly. Whether products, services, or consultative information.
  • Be confident and convey your love for what you do. Your prospect will only buy it if you do first.
  • Grab attention and don’t let up.
  • No limits. Pandora’s box what? There is no box. Let ‘er fly kiddo.
  • Keep creating, reinventing, and work. I could rant on this, but I already did: creativity might be painful work. That’s why it’s called ‘work.’ Get to work, and then don’t stop. Ever.
  • Don’t be afraid of what people think of your beliefs.

Now go. Do. Create. Enjoy. Share.