creative maverick

Quit being a worker and become a player.
A player is someone who:

• Puts creativity, fun and fulfillment first
• Goes where they feel drawn, rather than purely pursuing money
• Plays with the environment around them and in relationship with others
• Is in a life-long state of learning and organismic personal growth
• Knows what interrupts their creativity and plays around it
• Recognises what is happening inside of them, accepts it, acknowledges it and uses it - long before others are even aware of it in themselves.
• Plays with capitalism, notices what their market wants and sees making money as part of the game
• Is ignored or even ridiculed for pursuing their very individual and seemingly whimsical interests - and later emerges with genre-smashing creative works and rule-breaking businesses.
• Indulges all their interests no matter how disparate they may seem
• Becomes a thought leader
• Surfs the big waves that others are drowned by
• Is most likely to survive or thrive in a global recession and a shift of economic power to the East
• Changes the game for everyone else
• Changes the world

Are you ready to stop working and start playing?

Following on from yesterday’s post “How you do anything is how you do everything“, I thought I’d share something from the world of psychotherapy on the same topic which will really press the point home.

I have been on a Professional Development course in Psychotherapy at Spectrum Therapy for 6 years now. In the 2nd year, the group was led by one of the founders of Spectrum, Terry Cooper. On one of the training days he used a phrase that shocked us all. He was referring to someone’s behaviour in the group and calmly drawled

“Once is a pattern.”

My interpretation of this was that even if you do something that you have never done before - storm out of a room, punch someone, have a nervous breakdown - it is still representative of the way you live the whole of your life.

Psychotherapists say that you can tell everything you need to know about how the therapeutic relationship is going to go by how the client walks into the therapy room the first time.

As an example from my own experience when I see coaching clients face to face, there is a moment when they enter the building and one of us has to walk up the stairs first. Some clients wait to be shown the way and follow me. Others start marching up the stairs even though they don’t know which direction they’re going in when they get to the top!

Can you guess which ones might be more passive or more active in the sessions? Which ones might struggle to assert what they really want from me and which ones may struggle to relinquish control enough to let themselves be helped by me?

Neither way is right or wrong. But each style of being in the world will bring its own benefits and its own challenges.

This is why when we tune into our intuition we can pick up a lot about people before they even open their mouths. Many years ago, a girlfriend was surprised that I was so clear I wanted to go out with her when, as she put it, “You don’t even know me yet”. I said “Sure I do; your personality is written through you like a stick of rock. It’s in how you sit, how you walk, how you laugh, how you dress and how you choose to style your hair”.

We give ourselves away in every moment. It’s there to see in others if we’ll only pay attention to our intuition.

Try being sensitive to your instinctual impressions of people as you meet them today.

I took T. Harv Eker’s Millionaire Mind Intensive last weekend. Intensive was the word as we endured three 13 hour days in a hall in Excel Exhibition Centre in East London.

Harv has a mantra which is

How you do anything is how you do everything

He pointed out that how we approach the workshop is how we approach life. If we are sceptical, we are probably sceptical elsewhere in our lives. If we are enthusiastic and committed that is probably our experience elsewhere too. Whichever attitude you have has become a habit. And the attitude you choose will strongly influence the results you get.

I’ve said previously that it’s not achieving your goals that will make you happy. You need to create the experience you want to have right now. If you want more excitement in your life, how can you create some excitement for yourself today? Excitement is something you do, not something that happens to you.

If you can’t create it today, how will you ever create it?

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 they ever write a book?

Entrepreneurs and Creative Mavericks don’t ask “Can I do this?”. They ask “How can I do this?”.

And that doesn’t mean spending 4 hours searching for an answer online, because it’s followed quickly by the next question “Who can tell me how?” Someone will have done something similar to what you want to do. Go ask them how they did it.

Stop asking for permission from others to do what you want to do - whether it’s starting a business, writing a book or creating an event. Decide that you will have it in some form even if the exact shape of it changes and evolves as you pursue it.

Decide now to make something happen - and do whatever it takes to do so. Then you’ve become a real Creative Maverick.

Listen to free recording of 4 Creative Mavericks speaking at April Scanners Night here

As I work on my proposal for a book on the themes of this blog, I’m starting to realise how important play is. To play all day and get paid sounds like the ultimate hedonism and while it should be fun, there is something more to this.

Why play?

When children play, they are learning about themselves and the world around them. There is usually no fixed destination in mind, they are simply going where they are drawn in the moment. It is an organic process of growth. Tomorrow’s play will never be exactly the same as today. The play maps the growing edge of their organism.

And then we reach adulthood and we stop.

We learn new skills for the job we are doing but the majority of us never enter that organic process again of following our growing edge wherever it leads us.

But not all of us. A small number of us remain ever curious and are hungry to learn new things. We are still willing to experiment and follow the drive in us to expand.

Barbara Sher said that Scanners are simply people who have grown up without losing that curiosity children have for everything new. In a similar way, people who want to play all day - Players? - have continued that process of learning and experimenting and growing.

That means we continue to evolve throughout our lives.

I have a suspicion (and a hope) we will be the last to succumb to old age and senility!

Thoughts? Comments?

Ever had a great idea for a website, book, product or business come to you in the bath or while you’re doing the washing up? What did you do with it?

Did you put it on the back burner, thinking something like…

“I’m sure someone else has already thought of it”

“Someone else is better placed than me to do that”

“I wish I could do something with that idea but I haven’t got the money / skill /
staff / premises / time / energy to do it”

I know I have.

Once or twice I’ve then seen other people a couple of years later go ahead with the same idea and create a hit record or a best selling book or a thriving business. That stings!

We all have good ideas from time to time. But it’s too easy to allow the myths of creativity stop us following through.

“What you actually do within 24 hours of having a creative idea
will spell the difference between success and failure”
— Buckminster Fuller

Bring your idea to my idea “hotshop” on Wednesday

Discover how you can start to make something of your good ideas - join me at 7pm on Wednesday 1st April

I’m running an Idea Hotshop over the phone and I’ll be telling you the top ten myths of follow through and how to break through them.

And I’ll show you how to get started right now with…

• no money
• no staff
• no premises
• no time
• no energy
• no flippin’ business plan
• …and how you don’t even need your own original idea to go do something interesting

I’ll show you how to tell if an idea is worth pursuing and if there’s a way to make money out of it if that’s what you want. And if you have more ideas than you know what to do with, I’ll show you how to choose which one to do first.

Whether you want to create a business, an income stream on the side, an event, an art project or a global movement, many of the principles are the same. I’ll tell you what they are and how I used them to make my own ideas a reality including:

• escaping full-time work to become an independent consultant who only worked 3 months of the year
• getting my own extended-length article published in the Guardian newspaper with no previous writing experience
• getting my experimental sound-art played on radio stations around the world
• becoming recognised as the UK expert on Scanners with a packed event every month in Central London

But this isn’t a lecture, it’s a “Hotshop”

It’s an interactive workshop where you have a chance for us to work on your idea if you are willing to share it. There’ll be a group of no more than 20 of us on a telephone conference line together.

Once you’ve booked, if you tell me in advance what your sticking point is on making your idea a reality, I’ll address it during the course of the call.

Please note I will be recording the Idea Hotshop call for others to listen to.

Date: Wednesday 1st April
Time: 7pm (finishing by 8pm)
Price: Tickets are just £10

Book a ticket now to be sure of a place. You’ll receive full details of how to take part once you book.

Please note that I can’t give refunds once you’ve booked but you will be to listen to the recording if you have to miss the call.

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 on that as it progresses.)

Then I went to Martin Avis’ Internet Marketing networking lunch full of interesting people at different stages of their Internet Marketing careers from beginner to millionaire.

I stepped out of the lunch to give a talk to Jacq Burns and Kirsty McLachlan’s Publish a Bestseller workshop group learning how to publish their own books. I gave the 10 minute overview on how to turn a book into a complete Internet business.

If you’re an established or beginning writer in London, come along to Jacq & Kirsty’s London Writer’s Club on April 2nd - I’ll see you there.

I hang out with Scanners a lot. A Scanner is someone who has a lot of interests, is fascinated by new ideas and gets bored doing just one job or one thing with their life. I’ve got to know the Scanner mindset pretty well from running Scanners Night and advising Scanners on how to find work that will tie all their interests together and make money.

I love Scanners because they are the most interesting people in the world, they’re usually kind and intelligent, and because I am one.

But I notice that a lot of Scanners never really get very successful. And they rarely ever get rich.

Why is this?

Well success gurus continually talk about how important it is to focus. Given that focus is like Kryptonite to Scanners, what can we do?

I think there is a way to achieve a kind of focus that suits Scanners. The key is to find the common thread between all your interests. Bet you think there isn’t one? I reckon there is. But you need to think in a different way about it.

My Scanner passions have included quantum physics, making sound-art, performing Stand Up comedy, helping creative people become happy and wealthy, marketing and internet marketing, and a lot of other seemingly unrelated stuff.

To find the connection I think you need to know what it is you’re exploring. Your current passions will represent the growing edge of your own personality. You are, whether you know it or not, on a mission. And the mission is to complete yourself. If I try and explain exactly what I mean by this right now, I’ll never publish this post. I’ll come back to this topic but I run a programme to help you find your mission and create a business or portfolio career around it.

In the meantime, here’s the key. With all your diverse interests and activities, can you be known for one theme within it? So people can refer to you as “the [something] guy”. So Seth Godin is that “Marketing” bloke, Judith Morgan is “that Money expert”, and hopefully I’m “the Creative Maverick guy”.

So then people start to talk about you, saying “You should go speak to that [something] person, whatsername, they could probably help you”.

Have a think where the common theme is for you. Is it the people you most like to work with? Is there a common message that you are expressing in all your activities? The clearer you are, the easier it is for you to be known for it - and attract opportunities.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think your common theme might be.

My Creative Entrepreneurs Club business partner, Judith Morgan of the Money Gym, is running a day-long event in Central London 21st March 2009 in aid of the Big Issue. It’s a day about property investing and so Judith thought it only appropriate that ticket monies should help the homeless. Will you help her raise £4,500?

Even if you have never thought about property, there’s something here for you. The audience will be 200 people keen to better their financial situation at a time when their savings, investments and pensions may be under-performing and then some. You may know in your bones that this is the right time to be finding a way to put your foot on the property ladder or on the next step up, or you may be looking for innovative ways to do that which do not require, time, money or expertise. (Ask Judith about her way of buying a house for £1).

I’ve never really got into property but have watched friends slowly build a portfolio that makes my projected pension look paltry. So this time I am going along. Besides, knowing Judith, it will also be a cracking day out! If you mention my name when booking, you’ll qualify for 90 days’ free Silver membership of The Money Gym.

Apart from anything else, it’s good every so often to be surrounded by upbeat entrepreneurial types who are not going on about how bad things are!

Let’s go viral on this one to help Judith raise the roof and fund roofs for the Big Issue vendors. Please use the “Share and Enjoy” links below to email, twitter, blog or facebook this post.

Money Gym Property Day 21 March ‘09

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 paintings just aching to drip off your brush. Scared? You should be. You start. You pick a colour. The next colour you choose has to work with the first colour. The third colour has to work with the first colour and the second. The fourth colour . . . You get the idea. You’re committed now. You absolutely cannot stop. You’ve invested. There is no reverse gear on this thing.

People who bad-mouth businessmen and women in general are missing the point. People in business who succeed have swallowed their fear and have set out to create something special, something to make a difference to people’s lives. Are the colours just right? Are the planes polished? Do the crew look good? Are they comfortable? Are the seats OK? What’s the food like? It costs how much . . .?”

Richard Branson, Business Stripped Bare