That’s because you have a GREAT IDEA for a business.

Not just in a creative way, but about creativity and its place in business generally.

Now, most professional service providers don’t think a lot about creativity, unless their business demands it (in advertising, for example). They tend to think “creatives” are so busy being creative, they don’t get anything done.

But it seems to me that creative thinking is needed by every professional. This holds doubly true for independent professionals, who are usually logical thinkers and prefer what they believe are tried and true processes.

Think (ahem) about it: If you’re an independent professional, no matter what your speciality, you have a host of problems that must be solved daily. Not the least of these is how to compete with much larger professional service firms in terms of business model, marketing and sales, processes for completing work, and pricing your services.

In each of these cases, creative thinking (or Creative Thinkering as Michalko calls it), can help you solve these problems.

• Maybe you can devise a better way to market your service than copying what the big firms do.
• Maybe you can create processes that will allow you to produce more work in less time, and therefore increase your billings.
• Maybe you can find new ways to deliver your services to cut down on your hours spent on tasks.
• Maybe you can come up with some clever pricing solutions that will make you stand out from other providers, yet allow you to make a living at the same time.

Every business operator today has problems, or as I prefer, challenges. Sometimes they seem insoluble so we just buy a canned solution, or we just do what we did before when we worked at a big firm.

But what worked for others may not necessarily work for you. Sure, you may limp along, and survive on former clients or referrals, or by concentrating on a specific niche. But that’s not going to be enough to grow your business.

That’s where “thinkering” come in. According to Michalko, creative thinkers like to tinker with concepts. They create by forming novel combinations. They routinely conceptually blend objects, concepts and ideas from two different context or categories that logical thinkers conventionally consider separate.

For example, Gutenberg invented the printing press by observing a wine press in action — which had nothing to do with printing, but gave him an idea regarding how printing could be made less laborious.

We can’t get into creative techniques too much here (Michalko’s previous book, Thinkertoys, provides a good compendium of these), but suffice to say, they can help you business overcome those vexing problems that get in the way of growth.

If your service business is stuck in a rut, perhaps some creative thinkering can pull you out of it.

I spent many years in the newspaper industry, and a few years out of it as an advisor to entrepreneurs on how to get  articles in traditional media.  Now I do much new media consulting, but the questions remain the same: How do I get  some ink?

Today, the media’s need for information is insatiable, and as a result it’s never been easier for small businesses to  achieve that Holy Grail of marketing – a mention in the media.  However, with media proliferation also come higher  speed and an avalanche of competition for attention.

But the bottom line is that you can get noticed by the media today if you know how to issue a press release that creates a compelling story.

To that end, here are some general tips to what used to be called “getting ink”.

• The “Why Should I Care” factor. Never “announce” anything in the old corporate press release style because, frankly, nobody cares.  Apple may be able to “announce” something and be noticed because of its sheer weight and heft. But Acme won’t.  Announcements are pompous and instant death for small, unknown, businesses. In this high-speed culture, you’re just not that important.
• The job of the people who receive press releases is to find interesting information that will arrest their readers or viewers for a few moments and draw them into reading on or continuing to view.  They are your first and only target, so provide them with what they need to do their jobs. Don’t make it about you, but about the media outlet’s readers or viewers.
• Get to the point. You’ll have about 3–5 seconds to attract attention before receivers move on to the next release. So make your headline, subhead and lead-sentence show-stoppers that draw them into the next sentence or two and thus gain you a few more seconds. Borrow from blog writing methodology and make strong declarative benefit statements, or problem-solution equations, i.e. “How xxxxx can prevent yyyy,” or “Six ways to do xxxxx”.
• Write press releases like blogs. The Internet has trained everybody to read differently. Provide very useful and also somewhat entertaining information, and use a lot of boldfaced subheads so the media reader can get a sense of the story by skimming. One way to do this is not to write the press release in linear style, but initially concentrate on the story the subheads tell. Then you can infill with regular writing.
• Target, target, target the end media consumer. Most press releases try to speak to “everybody”, which doesn’t work today. The mass has been shattered into thousands of different subject matter shards. You have to hit the right emotional points of ONE group of people you purport to serve. Study your ideal customer profile and determine the problem points that will stir up emotions. The media receiver will also recognize them.
• Tell one story. Most amateur (and some professional) press release writers take a shotgun, or smorgasbord approach, trying to combine several storylines into one press release, i.e. “we’re doing this, AND we’re doing that, and we’re thinking of doing something else too. ” First of all, nobody cares what you’re doing. Second, telling two (or three or four) stories muddies up the waters and makes the media person work too hard to find a story. Unless you’re very important – and you’re not (See Point 1, Apple) – stick to one storyline.
• Think film and radio. Increasingly, media is visual and aural, as in television, YouTube and rip-and-read radio (that’s online and offline radio people who simply grab a press release, read out the juicy bits, and sometimes make a comment on it).  See how you can make your story more visual with film or audio, and let the media outlet know that. If you don’t have great film, no television outlet will touch you. Increasingly, blogs and online media prize stories that also have some video attached, because they attract readers (and are tweetable or sharable on sites like Facebook).

A version of this post was previously posted on PR In Your Pajamas

This is a message — and future program — for creatives, dreamers, and dissidents everywhere.  Its  message? It’s okay to have lots — and lots — of ideas. But they need to be developed.

I like to  tell everyone I meet that I’ve Never Met An Idea I Didn’t Like. It’s my mantra, my self– identity, my raison d’etre.

It’s also often been my downfall.

Yes, at times I have been an idea slut.

I have gone along with ideas I should not have; I have lavished love on ideas — my own, and those of others — that went nowhere. Sometimes people have taken advantage of me because they knew that if they dangled an interesting idea in front of me, I would follow it like a dog sniffing the wind and chasing a scent.

I did this because I love ideas and have devoted my life to them. I was always happiest when I’m generating ideas, or shaping them, or advancing them.

I’m also often miserable after I’ve been in idea mode, when my right brain was almost feverishly  putting random thoughts together and forming something new from it.

Why? Because, like anyone else who can’t help but follow something they love, this didn’t  always make me successful or bring in any business.

Instead, it made me a dreamer, a dissident, a deviant.

A Creative (roll eyes here)

Artists are allowed — often expected — to be dreamers. But people in business aren’t. They’re expected to make things happen, to be on point, to drive toward a goal. It’s nice if they generate ideas, but if they don’t do anything with those ideas, they’re seen as weak and expendable.

And that perception is right in some ways. Idea sluts are often like hamsters on a wheel, always apparently running, running, running to nowhere. They are brilliant at coming up with ideas.

But they don’t execute well.

Go ahead, rail, and scream, and gnash yourr teeth about all those boring linears who constantly thwart idea generators and other creatives.

But here’s the truth: Those linears have a point.

Ideas have to be assessed, caressed, addressed. Sometimes, they must be abandoned because they’re impractical or have too many impediments.

If you fall in love with every idea that comes your way, you’re in for a world of hurt. You’ll never be happy because that love will turn on you unless its continually nurtured and developed. It will disappear rapidly, and you’ll be left with nothing but an urgent desire to fall in love again — with a new idea

This is called addiction. Idea generation, or creativity, releases the chemical dopamine into the brain, and it’s that chemical that makes you feel good. But, quickly, it can become dope, and you’ll be living the junkie life — needy, desperate, and miserable.

I’ve been through the pain that comes with being an ideaslut. I’ve revelled in the highs that come with ideas, and wallowed in the misery of the lows that come when they disappear or don’t work.

Eventually, I reformed.

Now, I’m a management consultant concentrating on innovation and reinvention, and I’m able to ally the dreamer and the executor in myself, to link the right and the left brains so they work together instead of against each other.
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And I’m starting a service for others who are still hurting. Together we’ll look at your ideas and determine where and how they can be developed into something that works.

Maybe that’s a new business thrust, maybe it’s an alliance with someone else who’s operating in the same space, maybe it’s an entirely new direction.

So here’s my proposition to all you creatives and dreamers out there who love ideas, but hate how you feel when your love is unrequited, when your ideas vaporize in a swirl of impediments and abandonment.

I’ll help you assess them, shape them and develop them. I’ll show you how to keep the right brain alive and working, but temper it with some left-brain thinking so your ideas can become useful.

I’ll show you how to stop being an ideaslut.

One of the tenets of innovation, which begins with ideation, is to test your concept to see if there is enough interest in it out there.

So, this is, in a sense, a beta for a new business arm. I’m testing this concept by putting it out there and actively soliciting feedback on it.

If you think I’m on the right track, then please let me know, and maybe we can shape this service idea together.

A version of this post was previously published in the Financial Post

At a conference in California organized by the Management Lab, scholars and thinkers from all over the United States chewed over what was required of today’s managers.

Over several days, the crowd put together a list of 25 “moon shots for management” — big goals for managers. While primarily aimed at large and complex organizations, the results were surprising in that they said, essentially, that large companies attempting to adapt to today’s new business landscape should try harder to act like smaller businesses.

For the most part, this means they must be continually adaptive and creative, as small businesses are more likely to be. The main point to emerge was that organizations should create “communities of passion” within their ranks — an elemental requirement of all small businesses today.

Most small businesses start with such a community. A few people who share a passion for something, whether as grand as stopping climate change or as humble as selling a simple product or service, form a basic organization to make it happen.

In the organization’s early days, passion is usually the blood that provides oxygen needed to move the business vision toward reality. It is — or should be — the belief construct that underlies most business and strategic planning.

But too often, once the business is up and running, that passion cools under the onslaught of day-to-day imperatives such as sales, operational efficiency and financial management. Where once passion and the set of values that usually accompany it governed all decision-making, multiple and smaller demands and tradeoffs take on more importance.

So the lesson for small organizations from these stretch goals is similar to those of complex businesses. If employees, partners and business operators are to remain engaged and enthusiastic, they must continually belong to a community of passion.

In other words, continually make everything a moon shot. Without that passion, it’s simply too difficult to keep going.

Other management moon shots also apply in a small business setting. For example:

Redefine the work of leadership

The “heroic decision maker” is disappearing. Leaders now must be social-systems architects who enable innovation and collaboration. This holds true whether you have four employees or 4,000.

Empower the renegades

Renegades provide diverse thinking that helps a business keep its eye on tomorrow. Renegades, or rebels, are usually more tolerated in small businesses.

Manage for an open world

A business can no longer be a closed-off ecosystem competing against everyone. To magnify its power, it must embrace partnership and collaboration. This is especially true for a small business, which has less resources.

Unleash human imagination

It’s not a bromide: your best assets really are your people. Or at least their brains. No one person has all the answers to today’s complex problems.

After all, that’s what service business operation is. Except for the odd — and sometimes exciting — request, most clients are hiring you to do something that you have done before in some form or other.

• If you’re a marketer or work in the creative industries, you have probably done tasks such as research, design, planning, and creation many times before.
• If you’re an accountant, you do taxes, performed financial analysis in your sector, and made recommendations, regularly.
• If you’re a consultant or coach, you routinely question, analyse, provide recommendations and monitor actions to ensure performance.

But have you formally written out these processes?

Recently I was working with an entrepreneur on a way to start a new business. Quickly, it became apparent that he was pretty fuzzy on what he wanted to do.

You see, he’d closed his former business, and had started poking around in another area in which he was interested.

He had a rough idea of what he wanted to do there, but was vague on how to do it and who to do it for.

So we did a one-hour reinvention plan together.

This is a large conceptual, yet practical, plan that’s bit like a startup business plan, or strategic plan. But it’s less — uh — business plan-y, and more operational.

Essentially, it’s a road map to the business’ services, markets, methodologies and 1st year requirements.

Because all he really had was an idea and a few concepts and details all mixed up in one big stew, our first job was to create some clarity through organization and relevant questioning. Our tools were a mind map and focused questioning.

1. We first determined the three main (related) niches in which he would work. Most startups work in several areas at once, and after they get going, might focus on one or two, although some continue to serve three, which seems to be the best number in terms of ability to operate.
2. Then for each, we listed who he could serve in that niche, ie the market he had to access. This wasn’t specific in that we put in Company X, but it was focused enough to describe the kind of companies he wanted to work with.
3. Next we listed the services he would offer (with a side note to research to see if that was indeed what was wanted) .
4. Following the path, we next listed his three main marketing methods. These would let his target customers know about his services.
5. Lastly, we listed the requirements needed to achieve all the notations listed above, breaking them into three-month segments. In essence, this was a four-part to-do plan for the first year.

But that wasn’t all of it. By creating an operational path, and identifying target markets and customers, we also had material we could use for large, overriding strategic requirements.

For example, we could now put at the top of the map, his basic service — written broadly. This led to his positioning in the market.

It also created three primary areas of focus regarding tasks, such as competitive analysis, niche identification, and where the plan would be tweaked based on the results of that research.

Afterwards, he noted that after working only one hour on the plan, he had enough in front of him to keep him busy for a year. But it would be far more efficient because he now knew clearly what he had to do.

It would have to be revisited quarterly to accommodate new information, but, generally it was a road map to his business reinvention.

I’m currently refining this planning tool and service and will soon begin offering it to others who want to change their businesses.

I’d be curious what you think of it.

A version of this post was previously published in the Financial Post

Entrepreneurs who make the transition from corporate worker to independent business operator invariably face one major hurdle that hobbles their business in the early years. They don’t know how to sell appropriately.

This isn’t because of a lack of information: There’s enough information on selling out there to keep researchers busy for years. Instead, the selling gap exists primarily because of attitude.

Most new consultants, coaches, agents and other services providers deliver some service or product based on a skill or special knowledge don’t see themselves as salespeople, but rather as experts in some particular pursuit.

But while selling may be unusual in a corporate setting, it’s the essence of being an entrepreneur, especially in a new economy in which you’re just as likely to be selling ideas as you are hard goods.

Entrepreneurs must sell clients on buying their services or products, investors (or donors) on backing their ideas with hard cash, and employees on executing their plans enthusiastically and vigorously.

At first, most new consultants or other entrepreneurs operating in the knowledge sphere usually buy into the traditional sales advice encompassed in the ABC mantra — “Always Be Closing.”

But, because they’re not professional sales people, that very often feels uncomfortable. Also, it rarely works because their services or products are too complicated and/or create sticker shock among prospective clients.

A sales process called layering, and more recently funnelling, will probably feel much more comfortable and produce better results. It’s a longer procedure with several smaller wins instead of the One Big Sale that either works or doesn’t.

In layering, the entrepreneur gives information and services in small chunks that are easily digestible. In that sense it is best suited for selling complicated or expensive items or services, especially knowledge products.

Rather than overwhelm–and probably scare off — potential customers with every detail in the big all-encompassing whopper of a sale, the entrepreneur who is using layering offers clients just what they need at a particular moment.

Layering can also be described as giving people increasing tastes of the final product in progressive steps. At first simple items are offered. Then, in a step-up process, more information and continuing sales are added later when the entrepreneur and the client are more involved.

If you think in terms of layering information, you will be building longer-term relationships with customers or clients instead of forcing them to decide whether to go for broke or not right at the beginning. Also, layering allows you to analyze and gain more perspective on people’s reactions.

Of course, you can’t keep adding steps and never reach a destination (or close, to use the old parlance). But by segmenting buyers into various need stages, you will eventually close the largest sale to those who specifically want it.

Another term for layering is the sales funnel, which is much used by online marketers. With the funnel, general sales leads are moved along a path that features ever more complex (and hence expensive) products or services.

Perhaps only one in ten leads will make it to the bottom of the funnel, but by then that lead will be convinced of the value of the final product or service. And you will also have sold something of value to the other nine who have dropped out of the process.