Bubbly Advice

1. Bubbly Advice for the Creative Business Person in 2006

2. Tell Them Where to Go…. • If someone tells you that you’re not creative, tell them to go to hell. • Everyone in business is creative.

3. Who’s Most Creative? • Some of most creative people I’ve ever met are in manufacturing. • They actually CREATE products that change the world.

4. Who’s Least Creative? • Some of the least creative people I’ve ever met are in advertising. • They spend most of their creative energy telling manufacturers that they…aren’t creative!

5. Salespeople Are Creative. Natural Born Story Tellers.

6. Accountants are Creative. • Tax Loop-de-Loopholes.

7. Best Creative Exercise Ever • Write down your ideas. • You have a ton every day. • But most of the time, you can’t remember them by the day’s end.

8. Yes, You CAN Write. • Don’t let spelling & grammar issues or relentless self-editing stop you. • Get your ideas on paper. • (Let someone else edit it.)

9. How Do You Noodle? • Blackberries and PDAs may look cool, but they stink when you want to noodle with ideas. • Go retro: carry a notebook, pen, and calendar into your meetings.

10. Go Retro! • Where the great ideas are: • The back of a cocktail napkin. • The back of a coaster. • This is still true in 2006.

11. Eyes up here, Buster! • Blackberries and PDAs eliminate eye contact. • Look up at people.

12. Story First. Technology Last. • Don’t invest in a presentation class called “How to Use PowerPoint”…. • …until you’ve take a class called “How to Tell Stories and Connect with Your Audience”.

13. A Simple Creative Exercise… • Simplify everything. Your life, your home, your office, your desk, your processes, vision, policy, procedures. Everything.

14. Fixing Problems is Creative • Your job is to fix problems, not complain.

15. Me-too trendy hip… • Wearing designer duds is NOT a sign of creative flair. • It is playing it safe. • Get your own sense of style.

16. Brainstorming 101 • Don’t tell people that their ideas are bad, especially if you don’t have a better one.

17. It’s only your life’s work. • Never say, • “It’s not my job to be creative.”

18. How to Lose an Audience… • Show your audience slides with columns of numbers. • Refuse to tell them a story about the meaning of the numbers.

19. Eyes on the Audience, Buster! • Do not read your speech or presentation. • Instead, read your audience.

20. How about a puppet show? • Try “giving a performance” instead of merely “giving a presentation.”

21. Everyone in Sales Knows… • Tell stories. • Don’t just provide data.

22. Avoid Meetings. • Do not attend more than two meetings a day, or else you will never get any real creative work done.

23. Get Fresh Ideas. • Leave the office building at least once a day.

24. Stay Sane. • The idea that creative people are always[emotionally unstable – drunk - crazy – dangerous – high – bad at math] • is a myth.

25. The Insanity Clause…. • It’s a bad idea to hire a drunk on the outside chance that he/she might turn out to be creative. • It’s just as silly to assume that you can’t hire a creative person because he or she is bound to be unbalanced.

26. Drinking is a bad excuse. • I know a designer who says he only drinks so that people will think he’s a genius. • (He’s a crappy, unhappy designer.) • He’s also an alcoholic.

27. Get off the pot. • Doing drugs doesn’t make you creative, either. • Nothing clouds creativity and productivity as much as dope.

28. Another Lame Excuse… • I wish designers would put more of their passion into designing great work, instead of endless (boring) discussions about the superiority of the Macintosh over the PC!

29. The Lame Excuse Factory… • “I can’t [write/design/create] because I don’t have the latest [software/hardware/ upgrade]….”

30. Stop Whining Already! • You don’t need a Macintosh to be creative. • It’s just a machine. • You’re the one with the creativity.

31. MAC v. PC • You can’t let a machine take credit for your creativity. • And you can’t blame a machine for your creative failures, either.

32. Don’t Blame the Tool! • The more you become a master of your particular creative form…. • ….the fewer tools you will use.

33. Go Gadget Free! • Master carpenters use fewer tools than novices. • So do cooks. • Use what works.

34. Creativity: Use it or Lose it. • Don’t just have a nice day. • Create one. • Create something every day.

35. Creativity is Interesting. • The most interesting people I know are creative.

36. Creativity is your life’s work. • Creativity takes place every day, not once in a while. • It’s not rare. It’s just been mystified.

37. Who Mystified Creativity? • It doesn’t matter. • Own your creativity.

38. Like I said in the beginning…. • If someone tells you that you’re not creative, tell them to go to hell. • Everyone in business is creative.

39. Don’t Have a Happy New Year… • Create one.

40. About the Speaker. . . Writer. Speaker. Podcaster. Internet Marketing Coach. You just watched the break screen from an January address on creativity in business. These were my index cards! Get Perspective. Contact Laura Bergells. phone: 616-241-5195 email: laura@bergells.comwww.bergells.com