Creativity at WomanTalkLive
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The Spark Factory: 10 Move-You-Forward Questions for Endings and Beginnings
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Susan BishopThis week I was inspired by an article titled, When to Quit Your Job and Become an Entrepreneur. It took me back eight years – to the time when I made the leap from working at an ad agency to launching my own business.
Making the initial decision to leave advertising wasn’t easy and, even after I committed, I stayed stuck for almost three months.
What it took to get me going toward my dream was NOT a big dose of courage (because I was definitely scared). It was NOT making a plan (because I didn’t make one). And it was NOT the loving support of my family and friends (even though it sure was nice to have that).
It was one simple question asked by my coach:
If not now, when?
Deciding to stop doing what you’ve been doing for a long time and move on to something new is no easy task – and all the pros and cons lists in the world do little to move most of us forward.
What does seem to make a difference, though, are the simple, but powerful questions we ask ourselves, or are asked by others, that allow for quick and deep gut checks, monumental perspective shifts and swift saboteur management.
Here are 10 Move-You-Forward Questions for Endings and Beginnings (starting with my coach’s) that have helped me and my clients get inspired and in motion when it was time to close one door and open another:
If not now, when?
What do I know – FOR SURE?
Where am I selling myself short?
What do I need to stop believing in order to move forward?
What part of myself will I get to honor in this new venture?
What part of myself do I choose to back burner – even if it’s just for now?
What am I celebrating about the now-ending phase of my life?
What will I be celebrating one year from now?
What’s NOT important?
What’s the first step?
AND ONE FINAL SIMPLE YES OR NO QUESTION:
Am I willing to give up the life I have to get the life that’s waiting for me?
Susan B.
Unlocked Box – coaching for risk-takers, box-breakers and wannabe’s. Sign up for the eZine Guts at UnlockedBox.com and get the 10 Un-Rules of Creativity.
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The Spark Factory: The One Time When Being Clear Makes Your Marketing Bomb
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Susan BishopWhether you’re developing your personal brand or your business brand, there is likely one marketing must-have that you’ve thought about a TON, created multiple versions of and, quite possibly, haven’t yet nailed.
It’s the Elevator Speech.
And if you have written one – or tried to – you already know it’s one of the most difficult marketing pieces to do well.
To understand why, take a look at the definition of an elevator speech in conjunction with its context (when it’s most commonly used):
Definition of an Elevator Speech: A very short statement that explains what your business is and what you do. It’s all about clarity, right?
Context of an Elevator Speech: When meeting someone for the first time. Here, it’s all about creating interest.
While it’s nice to think that simply spewing out a short statement that explains your business and what you do, works in the context of meeting a potential prospect for the first time, it doesn’t.
The definition of an elevator speech misses the whole point of the context.
To write a great elevator speech, don’t focus on what an elevator speech technically is, but on what it’s for:
Purpose of an Elevator Speech: To intrigue; to interest someone you are meeting for the first time in talking to you further.
So, if you veiw your elevator speech as a statement that’s supposed to explain everything in one fell swoop, you’ll likely write an elevator speech that does little to further the conversation.
Instead, view your elevator speech through the eyes of its purpose. Doing this will make you far more likely to write an elevator speech that sparks curiosity, creates interest and generally engages the person you are meeting.
In other words, thinking first and foremost about the real purpose of an elevator speech helps you write one that encourages further conversation.
So, how do you write an elevator speech that accomplishes its true purpose, rather than fulfills its standard definition? After all, explaining what you do in a way that fills in all the blanks is a heck of a lot easier than writing one that sparks curiosity.
One of the best ways to begin is by exploring metaphors, similes and symbols that represent what you do:
- “I wake up sleeping geniuses.” (a coach)
- “I’m like super glue for teams.” (a team builder)
- “I help CEOs see through fog.” (a consultant)
- “I help companies look into the future.” (a technology specialist)
Literally, an elevator speech can be (and really should be) as short as that.
It’s far better to have someone ask, “What does that mean?” or even, “Huh?” than to have them say, “Oh, okay.” leaving you scrambling for how to keep the conversation going – a situation that typically leads to a mundane next step, “So … do you work with a technology specialist currently?
BLAH. BORING. DEAD END.
You can see the power of metaphor-ish elevator speeches that are designed to accomplish the true purpose of an elevator speech even more clearly if you look at one in comparison to an elevator speech written per the definition:
“I wake up sleeping geniuses.” vs. “I’m a business coach who helps people reach their full potential.”
If you were the prospect, which would excite you more? (The waking up sleeping geniuses idea belongs to someone publicly known – I just can’t remember who!)
My coaching clients have been able to come up with super intriguing elevators speeches, even though they are not writers by trade, using the metaphor exercise. Here are some real examples (again, not all are metaphors per se, but you’ll be able to see how starting with the metaphor exercises helped shape the result):
- I teach people how to live upside down.
- I help people live with the lights on.
- We’re Sherpas to the mountain of success.
- I’m the mastermind behind the relationship revolution.
- We’re the missing link in the org chart.
This type of curiosity-sparking elevator speech can come quite easily once you’ve looked at your business as a metaphor (maybe generating a page of possibilities) – and also after digging deep to understand your personal or business brand inside out.
To get started, simply ask yourself:
What is my business like?
OR: My business is the WHAT for my target audiences?
If you’re creating a personal brand, ask:
What am I like?
OR: I’m the WHAT in/for the world?
It does take a bit of exploration, but it’s so worth the work to have an elevator speech that actually has a chance of making something interesting happen.
To breaking through on elevators,
Susan B.
Unlocked Box – coaching for risk-takers, box-breakers and wannabe’s. Sign up for the eZine Guts at UnlockedBox.com and get the 10 Un-Rules of Creativity.
P.S. How do you pull off a metaphor-inspired elevator speech without sounding like a goofball? The answer is really about having confidence and faith in your brand. When you develop an elevator speech that captures the essence of what you do and what your business is about, it’s going to resonate strongly with you and it’s going to feel VERY RIGHT, too. It may take saying it a few times, for sure, before you feel totally agile using it. But you might also be surprised by how easily it comes because it does resonate so deeply. The examples listed for real clients were very easily embraced by them, because they are truly based on the bigger brand story the client developed and loves – a story that has real substance for target audiences and which doesn’t end with the elevator speech. JUST REMEMBER: This type of elevator speech is designed to start a conversation. It’s not supposed to wrap things up neatly and make everyone feel comfortable. It’s supposed to spark something. Sure, straightforward feels “safer,” but when you think about all the potentially profitable conversations you’ll end short, rather than start up, you’ll begin to see that, really, being perfectly clear is a heck of a lot riskier.
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The Spark Factory: Your Personal Culture of Creativity – The Attitude of Attraction
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Susan BishopOf all the things you can consciously design into your Personal Culture of Creativity, attitude is probably the most important.
Not only for supporting and exploding your own creative potential, but also for encouraging greater creativity from those around you, as well as for increasing the snynergy that can occur when two or more people create together.
Who you are being at any given moment determines:
- Your openess or receptivity
- Your curiosity
- Your awareness
- Your ability to make connections
- Your willingness to keep playing (in other words, your chances of taking an idea further vs. shutting it down)
Who you are being also impacts:
- Other people’s openess to you generally, and to what’s around all of you (openess to the creative space)
- Other people’s willingness to explore with you; to play with everyone’s ideas
- Other people’s willingness to be vulnerable with you; to share their own ideas in the first place
Think about it. Would you rather share an idea with someone whose arms are open, head is nodding yes and who has interest written all over their face, or someone who has arms crossed, lips tights and a blank stare?
Despite the fact that most of us would choose the former, it’s the latter that many, many, MANY people choose to adopt when hearing another person’s idea.
From the sounds we make (the hmmm that sounds suspciously like a “but” vs. the hmmm that has that edge of “yes, go on, this is sounding good”) to the body language we inhabit or how relaxed or impatient we seem when someone is talking to us – ALL OF IT sends a message.
Not only to the people around us, but it sends a message to ourselves.
If we choose the closed off stance, how open are we to recognizing a good idea? And, how likely are we to draw out the best thinking from those around us?
I gave a presentation to a class of college seniors last week and everytime I looked at the professor and the majority of the students, they were smiling and nodding – except for one person. She looked pissed, was turning slightly away from me in her chair and had her arms crossed.
Even though I want the best for her, too, she is not the person I’d choose to spend time with – and definitely not to brainstorm with if we were in another situation that required that. She is sending a message to those around her – to people who might have interesting ideas to share with her – that she simply does not want to hear it.
Granted, I might have been boring her to death. But the point is, how you choose to respond to other people is actually what helps them want to go further – to be more creative, to be more interesting.
We owe that to each other.
But being supportive doesn’t mean agreeing with ideas we don’t like. It simply means actively demonstrating that we believe that all ideas have value. When we do deliver criticism or build on someone else’s idea from that supportive place, we allow for ideas to grow. If we deliver criticism from a closed place, we shut down the process.
It sounds simple enough, but remembering to let the Personal Culture of Creativity that we’ve designed for ourselves shine through in our attidute takes conscious effort.
The next time you are hearing another person’s idea, remember the Personal Culture of Creativity that you want to foster and the attitude that is part of that. The next time you are sharing your own ideas, remember it, too.
When you intentionally adopt a supportive attitude around the creativity of others and around your own creativity, you are far more likely to attract bigger, better ideas. If you decide to be closed, you won’t even have a shot.
To recognizing the power of our attitude,
Susan B.
Unlocked Box – coaching for risk-takers, box-breakers and wannabe’s. Sign up for the eZine Guts at UnlockedBox.com and get the 10 Un-Rules of Creativity.
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The Spark Factory: Attracting Creativity to You
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Susan BishopCreating a culture that supports creativity and innovation isn’t just for large organizations. It’s imperative for us – individuals, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs – for anyone who wants better, bigger, bolder ideas in their lives and their work. It’s for anyone who wants to make stuff happen.
The reason why a culture of creativity is so important is pretty simple:
We’re always either inviting new thinking and new creations or we’re blocking them – and the culture we exist in does the same.
But how exactly does a culture of creativity apply to a person? After all, all the thinking happens right in your head, right?
Just as in organizations, creativity and the quantity and quality of ideas is influenced by many factors. The environment you create within, the people you surround yourself with and get inspiration from (not to mention, give inspiration to) and the processes you use to create and invite others to participate in with you, MATTER. Which means, the more conscious you can be about developing a creative culture for yourself the better.
In the next article, I’m going to cover who we need to be as individuals as part of our cultures of creativity, and also how we can better relate to those around us so that they can better help us build on our ideas (and vice versa) and, today, we’re going to focus on everything else.
So, what do we need to think about when designing our personal culture of creativity?
Here are six factors to consider:
Your Daily Routine (especially your morning routine): For most people, morning is a high-creative time when ideas tend to flow. It’s also a time that’s fairly easy to keep sacred. Especially, if you get up very early. But whether or not this is true for you, what is certain is that there are certain times of the day that likely work better for you when in comes to getting in the flow. Design an ideal daily routine that supports a higher level of creativity and make revisiting that routine a regular part of your personal creativity culture.
Your Surroundings (especially the space you work in most often): Your immediate environment influences creativity more than you might imagine. Even though I personally love a clean, sparse, white room for sparking ideas, studies show that clutter and background noise (a low constant buzz) can be more supportive of creative flow. The point is, design your environment with an eye toward the personal creative culture you want to foster. If messiness is a desired part of your culture, keep materials out in the open, use post its and whiteboards, generally make a mess. If background noise helps you, turn on a TV in another room. Also consider that your work office, home office or other room may not even be the best environment for you. Period. If they’re not, determine the environment that does support you best and create it.
Your Clothes: Just as organizations have dress codes (codes that are often different for “creative” job titles), your personal culture of creativity is also represented and supported (or not) by what you wear while you’re creating. Think about what makes you feel comfortable and what makes you feel restrained. For some of us, wearing a suit might be just the thing and for others it might be sweats and no shoes. When I was first designing my own personal culture of creativity, I had a vision of myself with my hair in a pony tail, wearing shorts, a button-down white shirt, thick socks (very important) and coffee at my side. This is the dress code at Unlocked Box during creation time and getting into this outfit really does get my mind going. If you think about it, culture is very much comprised of rituals and how you dress can become a ritual that truly supports your genius.
Your Process: We all have a creative process – whether we know what it is or not – and identifying it in detail is an important part of any culture of creativity – even our personal ones. Knowing “the” creative process and designing your own creative process from that creates confidence and can be a huge factor in ensuring your ideas are actualized. Those without a creative process (or without knowledge of creative process generally) often end up more frustrated than creative. For example, the person who’s not in the know might sit around waiting for lightening to strike, without taking the time to collect creative fodder. For those who are familiar with the creative process, what’s important in terms of creative culture is designing structures for your process. Personally, I use iPhone’s Notes app for preparation, lined paper and driving my car during incubation and my white board for illumination (part of my personal creative culture is celebrating ideas out loud and the white board is perfect for this. When I include a larger creative team on a project, the big ideas always go up on the board).
Your Tools (especially if you use the same ones over and over): I used to avoid creativity tools like the plague. I felt that if I didn’t think it up in my head, myself, without outside triggers,my creation wasn’t going to be as good. Today, though, I highly value creativity tools and use improv, perspective shifting, a set series of questions and other tools as part of idea development regularly. The eye-opening moment was experiencing how the tool of improv exploded my creativity – knocking down certain barriers I didn’t even know were there. If creative tools are part of your process, great. Just consciously make them part of your personal culture of creativity. If not, do a little exploration and find a few tools you would like to try. Some of these will eventually become part of your “how-to”/how you do it – part of your creative culture.
Your Attitude: All cultures are driven by the attitudes of those in charge, and your attitude is probably the most important factor in designing your personal culture of creativity. This is the aspect we’ll talk more about next week. But in the meantime, ask yourself: Do I “but” my own ideas to death? Do I give myself permission to risk? To even create? How do I treat myself when I have an idea that is not working? Getting curious and intentional about your attitude toward creativity, in general, and your creativity, in particular, is especially critical when you consider that it’s often our unconscious thoughts and beliefs that block us from being our most creative selves – and which keep us from a creative culture that truly inspires us.
Next time: Us and the people around us as part of designing a personal culture of creativity.
Susan B.
Unlocked Box – coaching for risk-takers, box-breakers and wannabe’s. Sign up for the eZine Guts at UnlockedBox.com and get the 10 Un-Rules of Creativity.
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The Spark Factory: Aliens for Innovation
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Susan BishopEarlier this year, I shared a few questions you can ask yourself or your team to spark innovation. These questions are great because they immediately help you find real problems to solve – to pinpoint where innovation is needed.
But they are only one place to start. And possibly not even the best place.
The problem is that some questions take you straight to logic and the real real world, when what’s often needed more is real imagining.
After all, if standing in uncertaintly, in the uncomfortable place of not-knowing, is imperative for creativity, then certainty and knowing (highly related to logic and the real world) kinda get in the way.
Sometimes, it can be best to start by letting go of everything you know and looking at your business, products, services and/or creations from a total blank – with no real-world references or logic holding you back.
So, how do you get to that blank, fresh, new eyes place?
Easy. Get in your spaceship, set a course for planet earth, land smack dab in the middle of society and take a look around.
In other words, look at the world from the perspective of an alien from outer space.
An alien from out space knows nothing about earth, and is curious and questioning. He or she draws conclusions only from observation – and with no experience on planet earth, and everything is open to multiple interpretations.For example:
You might set your spaceship on warp drive and head to San Francisco. Upon landing, you get out and immediately notice something interesting:
Almost every being on this planet seems to be host to some kind of parasite, and is caring for that parasite continually and intimately.
Most of the time, the parasite is visible, but when it’s not, you can see that the beings are feeling for it a of the time – and if not’s in the first place they feel, they feel around in other places with a panicked energy.
From your observations, you wonder if the parasites are in some way essential for keeping the beings alive or are controlling the hosts. But you also notice that the parasites beep and buzz to get the being’s attention, seamingly for the purpose of interacting with them, and that the interaction draws out a whole range of reactions from the host – from laughing to intense focus to yelling.
You go on making all kinds of observations and interpreting them from your fresh alien eyes – and if you have a team of aliens, you each see things differently.
In the above example, you might be in the communications or mobile device industries, and you certainly can choose to put your alien attention on any sector, audience or thing you want to observe and be very focused in your exploration.
Or, you can simply go about your day and fall into the alien perspective at various times, making observations and drawing conclusions about a bunch of things and, later, applying your observations to the space in which you want to innovate.
The above example triggered me to imagine how great it would be if I could set my phone to sense when I’m interacting with other humans and hold all the beeps and buzzes until I’m through.
Good idea? Who knows. But I wouldn’t have even thought of that if I hadn’t seen the situation through my inner alien.
The bottom line is that asking, What would an alien from outer space see here? What interpretations might that alien draw given that he has no former knowledge and no context? is a direct path to the place of not knowing and can be a much more comfortable way to start getting comfortable with uncertainty, too.
No information, no preconceived ideas – nothing but your out-of-this-world imagination.
To getting blank in service of getting the big idea,
Susan B.
Unlocked Box – coaching for risk-takers, box-breakers and wannabe’s. Sign up for the eZine Guts at UnlockedBox.com and get the 10 Un-Rules of Creativity.