creative maverick

What would have happened if a young Paul McCartney had stayed in his job as a factory coil-winder back in 1961? He almost did:
I started working at a coil-winding factory called Massey and Coggins. My dad had told me to go out and get a job. I’d said, ‘I’ve got a job, I’m in a band.’ [...]

Derek Sivers has been a circus clown, professional musician and a very successful entrepreneur. Last year, he sold his company CD Baby for $22 million, the majority of which will go to The Independent Musician’s Charitable Trust, an organization that he created to fund and support music education for future generations.
Derek is a fascinating guy as [...]

I run a monthly London event called Scanners Night for creative people, entrepreneurs, and of course Scanners. Scanners are people who have lots of different interests and want to be able to pursue all of them.
Attendees at Scanners Night often ask how to connect with all the people in the room after the event. Scanners also [...]

I see a pattern in people who are yet to create the life they want - people trapped in jobs for instance.
They spend a lot of time asking and exploring whether they can do something. Is it possible for them have a career in X? Is it crazy to start a business in Y? Could [...]

I had a great day on Friday, a real Freestyle Moment - one that felt like I was in flow, doing what I enjoy, getting great results and feeling a wonderful sense of freedom.
I kicked off with a meeting with a major publisher about writing a book on the themes of this blog. (More news [...]

Here’s a very good description from Richard Branson of why I consider entrepreneurship a creative art:
“Business is creative. It’s like painting. You start with a blank canvas. You can paint anything - anything - and there, right there, is your first problem. For every good painting you might turn out, there are a zillion bad [...]

I started another blog (a very bad habit of Scanners and Creative Mavericks like myself) a few weeks back. It was driven by the idea that much as I love the self-improvement business I work in, some elements of it make me laugh out loud. Whether it’s the American gurus who increasingly look like shop [...]

My London Scanners Night event was on Wednesday and some attendees told me it was the best one yet. Joanne Mallon showed us how to get publicity for our projects and businesses and we then did a little bit of Scanner-style networking to help everyone get contacts and ideas for their current projects.
A Scanner if [...]

Is the economic doom & gloom in the media wearing you down?
If so, there is a way to get a lot more business (or visitors to your web site, or people at your gig, or eyeballs on your art project) which costs next to nowt.
Think about this. What proportion of people in in the UK [...]