Creative people running their own business are always looking for useful advice and ideas about getting from where they are now to some elevated place where they want to be. Many know what they want, yet the “how to do it” part remains elusive.

Accomplishment has no silver bullets. Getting things done and making things happen isn’t magic, it’s work–actually it’s great work! I’m sure you’ll agree nothing is more satisfying and fulfilling than turning possibilities into achievement.  The questions I get asked often are “how do I make it happen?” and “where do I start?”

What they really want to know is “how can I start at the top and work up from there?” Few are willing to start something at the bottom. Everybody wants a shortcut to the top.

Don’t get me wrong, if you find a shortcut–a faster, better, cheaper way to accomplishing your goal, by all means go for it. There are many shortcuts on the road to your success.  The important thing one must understand about shortcuts (better ways to get things done) is they are only made available to you AFTER you start at the bottom.

Every great accomplishment starts at the bottom. The bottom being the place where you have no prior skill, knowledge or experience. Every accomplishment begins with your willingness and acceptance of being at the bottom–unaccomplished!

Having to face being at the bottom is one reason why many people won’t make it to the top. They never gave themselves a fair shot because they don’t want to risk failure and they don’t like feeling unaccomplished. It’s more comfortable to stay where they are even if that means staying stuck wondering what to do next.

There is no formula for moving forward toward an accomplishment you desire.  You just begin at the bottom and don’t worry too much about the “how”.

Every accomplishment begins in the mind.

I’ve written many times and it’s worth repeating–everything that ever was, is now or will ever be begins as a formless thought in the mind.  I’m confident you have been thinking about lots of ideas to move yourself forward particularly in your business.  Regardless of the amount of ideas you are thinking about, follow one that has lots of creative juice for you, then forgot about the others (for now).

Accomplishment is really nothing more than the art of sacrifice. You make a decision to go “all in” on one idea at the exclusion of all other alternatives. This level of mental focus builds energy and energy is motion–motion is progress.

Start small, really small.

Once you’ve made a decision to focus on accomplishing a single idea, it can be tempting to take big swings at making things happen at the beginning. In my own experience, I’ve found it more useful to take really small incremental moves toward something I’d like to accomplish. It’s easier to “digest” a small task rather than attempt a big stretch early in game. Allow yourself to get your “legs” first, build your confidence bit by bit.  You’ll be amazed at how much gets accomplished in small bits over time. And when it feels right to you, go ahead and stretch yourself.

You will suck at first.

When I made the decision to become a writer and teacher, I sucked at it. I was at the bottom with no clear idea of who my writing would serve and if anyone cared that much about what I had to say. But I cared!  I cared enough to start this blog and play around with the “writer idea” in little pieces. Slowly, very slowly over time, my writing helped me focus on what mattered to me and who I could serve through my writing.  My writing improved and now I have a bit more confidence. Every time I receive another blog subscriber notice in my email, my confidence grows stronger and I keep learning to be better.  Go ahead and suck!

Ideas take their own sweet time to come into form.

Unlike predictable gestation periods for living organisms, ideas take their own sweet time coming into form. There’s simply no way to know with certainty how long accomplishing anything will take.  There are three attributes inherent in any accomplishment: patience, persistence, and time. The first requires unbending faith, the second repeated action, and finally the last element takes what it takes. The good news is you’re in control of two out of three of those attributes. Not bad odds.

Think of the bottom as the foundation of the bigger future.

Anything worth accomplishing is worth placing on a strong foundation. Think of starting at the bottom as your foundation for a bigger future. At the bottom, you will discover the value of focused energy, faith, action and trust in yourself. Build your accomplishments on those foundational elements and you’ll be absolutely astonished at your progress.

Our culture is obsessed with improvement. Throughout your life, you’ve been programmed to overcome weakness and master something you’re really not good at nor care that much about.  Don’t waste creative energy getting good at something you suck at!

Recently I was invited to speak to a couple hundred graduating graphic design students at Ferris University Kendall College of Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Of course most of these students were pre-occupied with finding a job, any job, and getting their professional careers in the advertising and marketing business off the ground.

In my talk, I shared some ideas on what it takes to build a foundation for a professional career that can be sustained for three or four decades without burning out ten years down the road.  In the question and answer session that followed, one theme stood out:

These young professionals wanted more than a job, they wanted to do work that mattered to them.

They craved deeper insight and ideas on what activity or niche they were best suited to pursue in developing their careers. The intuitive sense that they could only be happy and satisfied if they engage in unique, specific and meaningful work was palpable.

What seemed to be most compelling was my suggestion to build the foundation of professional life from one’s inherent talents and strengths. I advised them don’t spend too much time laboring to master something you have no talent for or interest in.

I call inherent talent the “genius zone”– a zone of activity that represents unending joy, passion, desire, continuous improvement, and opportunity to make your greatest contributions and achievements. In a culture (and educational system) obsessed with improving weakness and getting better at navigating the path of MOST resistance, the idea of playing to natural talents resonated deeply with these young people.

Play to your strengths, forget about improving your weakness.

Micheal Jordan was considered by many people to be the greatest basketball player the game has ever known. He was a genius at playing basketball. He never stopped growing and improving his capabilities to play great basketball. However, as hard as he tried, as long as he practiced, he could never be the “Micheal Jordan” of golf or baseball.  He didn’t have the same level of inherent talent for those activities.

It’s a myth in our culture that you can become anything you desire and work hard at achieving. It can be done, but at a high cost for low returns. The lesson here is simple–you have greater potential for sustainable success when you build on who you already are. You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be far more of who you already are!

The Genius Zone.

Not surprisingly, it’s difficult for many people to describe their natural talent–their genius zone. Many have spent years mastering other activities to a level of mere competence. This can be very frustrating and not a useful and productive expenditure of time and life energy.  This has important implication for anything you are working on– career, business, or a fulfilling life.

The genius zone is where all your natural inherent talent resides, and only there will your talent be accessible. Talent is nothing more than a natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving. It’s so natural (like breathing) you hardly give it a second thought. Your talent has always been with you. And regardless of what activities you pursue over time, your talent stays with you.

Natural talent however is not enough. You also need to invest time and energy into building knowledge and developing the necessary skills to be an expert. When you multiply your natural talent with the investment in building skill or knowledge, the sum will be your “core strength” – the ability for continuous growth and contribution in activities that matter to you and serve others.

The genius zone is all about leveraging your core strengths to make quantum leaps in your progress toward the realization of your desires.

In business and in life, focus your vision, your desires, and all your actions on your genius. Your genius is your unique point of difference– the very thing that sets you apart from everyone else in the marketplace. Build strong relationships by partnering with others whose genius is in an area of your weakness. When you do, this will form a powerful combination for creating exponential life success in an easy and relaxed way.

Many creative entrepreneurs take comfort in their gradual progress. When it comes to growing your creative business, wouldn’t you rather speed things up? Maybe even skip a few levels altogether?

Bit by bit, slow moving progress and incremental gains toward achieving your goals would seem logical and acceptable. Trouble is it just takes so much longer. Don’t you think it would be far more interesting and exciting to whiz past all your current circumstances at light speed? Of course you would, who wouldn’t?  If your interested in breaking a few physical laws, then making quantum leaps in your business growth will require multiplying your effectiveness by a power of ten, or hundred, or even a thousand.

But how?

Quantum leaps are not the result of impatience but massive personal effectiveness. You can’t have any effect on the physical reality that exists now. You can’t make the outside world you find yourself in now amend itself to your schedule.  You can’t make the right clients show up when you desperately need business now.  You have no power whatsoever to change the current reality. Your current reality is a natural result of your past thinking.

Quantum leaps require a quantum leap mindset–a radically new way of thinking and behaving. It begins by knowing what you want, deciding to pursue it, and expecting it will be delivered to you–all at light speed!

It’s no fun clawing your way to the freaking middle!  I’m suggesting a formula for achievement that involves multiplying rather than adding– a geometric progression in your personal and professional effectiveness.

Rather than being satisfied with gradual progress and conventional growth, you can move several steps higher directly in a quantum leap towards your bigger, better future! This is a move that implies you place yourself far beyond the next logical step. Quantum leaps violate common sense, are often counter-intuitive, even paradoxical. As a result many entrepreneurs believe these moves are far-fetched, outrageous, even dangerous.

Change your personal rules for the game of success.

In 500 BC, Heraclitus wrote “ if you do not expect it, you will not find the unexpected”. It’s difficult to reframe a lifetime of limiting beliefs and unproductive behaviors. But that’s what a quantum leap requires–a change in your current point of view about how things work. As humans, we’re naturally predisposed to going with what we know works.  The game you played to get to your current level can’t be played by the same rules in the higher levels.

To accelerate your rate of achievement rapidly, you must employ new ideas and behaviors that change the rules of the game in ways that moves you forward by an order of magnitude. You’ll need to seek the unexpected result. Here are a few principals and prerequisites that may help you think about changing the rules of your success game by making a quantum leap toward your desires in life and business:

Quit trying harder.
You’ll wear yourself out then you won’t be any good to anybody. Sooner or later you won’t be able to try harder. When you are stressed and stretched to your limits you will be blocked from insight, inspiration, creativity and innovative thinking–all necessary for a quantum leap.

Ignore conventional approaches.
Ordinarily, you might be tempted to go along with the tried and true. Ignore that temptation!  Quantum leaps are not governed by familiarlty, logic, common sense, or what is working now. If you’re trying to climb a wall, look for the doorway and walk through. If you are resisting and pushing, reverse your course and go with the flow.

Focus on possibilities rather than obstacles.
One of my teachers has a simple but powerful expression “where you look is where you go”.  Stop looking at obstacles start believing in possibilities. When you focus your creative mind on possibilities, chances are you’ll be drawn to them with light speed.

Suspend all your disbelief.
If you absolutely must doubt something, doubt your limits. Your doubt is a boat anchor on your progress. Quantum leaps and quantified proof cannot reside in the same space and time. Believe in your success, make the leap of faith, then act as if your success is guaranteed.

Focus on the end not the means.
You don’t need to know “how”  but you sure as hell need to know where you’re going. You must have razor sharp conviction, and a crystal clear mental image of what you want to accomplish. Forget about methodology and doing the right things. Think of it this way- you’re not concerned with what happens in the middle of a jump–put your focus on where you’re going to land.

Take different risks.
Quantum leaps are not about taking big chances, this is about giving yourself a big chance. If you try to minimize, hedge your vulnerability by being safe in the status quo, you’ll kill your chances for a quantum leap. You don’t have to be reckless or impulsive to follow an opportunity you have been ignoring.

Trust the unseen forces.
There are invisible forces and resources ready to make a profound difference in your progress. An absence of evidence is not evidence of their absence. You are at all times surrounded by possibility and opportunity. Like a fish, you don’t know you’re wet. Allow the unseen forces to do their good works in association with you.

Stop wishing and wanting.
The marketplace rewards those who earn and desire, never because they desire or need.  Don’t confuse wishing and wanting with pursuing. You must take action. It’s nice and safe to wish for something. Pursuit, on the other hand, is essential for a quantum leaps. Move your ass!

Go looking for failure, then use it.
Perhaps you’re familiar with the expression ”perfection is the enemy of progress”? Nothing is perfect. Everything in the universe is constantly shifting and changing. So are you. Forget about the right time, the right resources, the perfect opportunity. There is only right now! Be willing to test the limits of what you are capable of by accepting failure. Failure is a necessary resource for sharpening the edge off your capabilities and making a quantum leap.

Don’t get comfortable.
Comfort will put you sound asleep. Are you uncomfortable right now? If you are, that’s a good sign. Uneasiness is required when a quantum leap is underway. Let lose and ride the big wave of your quantum leap by playing out on the edges!

Be open to your genius.
Everyone has unique gifts, talents and capabilities. High achievers are always open to their genius. The part of their being that accomplishes things in an easy and relaxed way. Open up to your genius, find your wings.

Do what matters to you.
You can’t make a quantum leap toward a lukewarm idea of the future. You must do what truly matters to you, something remarkable, special and precious enough to light a fire in your heart and under your ass. What is your “magnificent obsession”?

Move before your ready.
You’ll discover, once underway, that you know more than you know you know. Stop getting ready to get ready. There is no preparation required for a quantum leap. The time to move is now with what you have and from where you stand.

Look inside for opportunity.
Everything that is needed right now for a quantum leap comes from within you. Everything. The opportunity, the timing, the power to perform–all these are within you, not in the circumstance outside you.

White Hot Center Presents
The Quantum Leap
Business Development Workshop
Creating Competitive
Advantage in your Creative Business
June 15, 2012
Ojai, California

Facilitated by Thomson Dawson
Business Development Consultant to Creative Entrepreneuers

A one-day intensive strategic business development workshop designed to help early stage creative entrepreneurs and solo professionals build a solid foundation for marketing and sales success that will enable them to achieve a quantum leap in the growth of their creative business.

Without sales there is no business.

If you’re a self-employed creative professional, whether flying solo or leading your small creative firm, you know the importance of having a steady stream of clients and projects coming your way. The truth is many creative professionals struggle finding a steady stream of higher value clients. Many more resist the sales process altogether opting to rely on referrals for the growth of their business.

Referrals are critically important, but they’re unpredictable– not enough to grow your business with sustainable, profitable results. To succeed in the hyper-competitive creative business today, you must embrace business development and sales as the essential skill for business success. And you need a plan to guide your actions, if you are to turn greater possibilities into achievement.

Clients have abundant choice. There is no shortage of creative talent in the marketplace.

Let’s face it, when clients have abundant choice, competition is always fierce. How do you, a creative entrepreneur, gain radical advantage over would-be competitors in an ultra-competitive marketplace?

How do you find the right clients who are a perfect fit for you? How do you differentiate your business from alternatives to your firm in ways that matter to your clients? How do you command premium prices and greater profit margins when everyone else is discounting their fees just to get the gig?

How do you create more opportunity than you have capacity so you can be choosy about who you work with, and what you type of projects you’ll work on?

If you’re serious about the growth and success of your creative business you will not want to miss this opportunity to build a business development foundation and plan for growing your creative business to the next level!

Take a quantum leap in your business development success. Spend one important day working on your creative business rather than in it. Spend one day building a solid framework and foundation for your business development and sales success. Spend one day innovating your bigger, better future.

Who should attend?

We’ve developed this foundational business development workshop for all early-stage self-employed creative professionals including: designers in all discipines, web /apps developers, content creators, writers, social media professionals, illustrators, animators, photographers, producers and composers–just about anyone in the business of creative output for hire.

What you’ll learn:

Participants will explore fundamental strategies and proven tactics that will enable them to enhance and elevate the effectiveness of their marketing and sales skills by a quantum leap. Here’s what we’ll cover during the workshop day:

• develop and refine your vision for your business growth that enables you to express your passion and enhance your value to clients who are the right fit.

• how to develop a value proposition and positioning your busiess to set you apart from competitors and positions you as the expert in the minds of higher value clients who gladly pay a premium to work with you and your team.

• understanding the complete sales process and how to effectively generate early-stage leads and nurture clients-to-be though the entire sales process to closing the deal.

• how to be a value creator rather than an order taker in the sales conversation, leading your clients in the sales process and retaining your power in the buying process.

• how to write proposals that win more business.

• explore your “genius zone” the set of activities that enable you to experience the most joy and satisfaction, greater energy and productivity working with your team serving higher value clients.

• how to increase your referrals and turn your clients into a non-paid sales force.

The Investment:
$600.00 USD per person
Special discount of $100 off for early registration prior to April 30, 2012
Additional discount of $50 off for each additional person in your firm prior to April 30, 2012.

Tuition must be paid 30 days in advance of the Workshop. No refunds or credits within 14 days of the workshop.

Tuition includes Workshop Materials, Continental Breakfast, Luncheon and Snacks served throughout the day at the venue.

This workshop is limited to 24 participants.

Early Registration

Send an email and we’ll get right back to you with full information on the venue location, accomodations, and how to confirm your spot in early registration prior to April 30, 2012. This workshop has limited capacity and will fill up quickly.

Register Now and Save!

Be mindful–is it the love or the money that drives you? If money weren’t an issue in your business, would you still be in the business you’re in?

If your answer to the above question is yes, than you don’t need to read on any further.  You already know, money aside, you’d still be doing exactly what you’re doing and loving it. You’re in your element, chances are you’re also experiencing an abundance of both love and money. My congratulations to you indeed!

On the other hand, if you’re currently stuck and don’t know if it’s the love or the money keeping you in the routine of your business, then this post might be useful for you to gain more clarity about your answer to the question.

If you take the money out of it, would you still be doing what you’re doing in your business? Or would you be doing something else? Perhaps something you love and value more than money?

Before we begin the discussion, let me make one thing clear–I emphatically believe doing what you love creates the energy necessary for money to follow. They’re not mutually exclusive. But money, by itself, has a way of getting one very comfortable and resistant to growth and new opportunity. After awhile, you can find yourself making important decisions about your life and business based on dough rather than love. Trust me when I suggest to you–money isn’t enough to keep the love alive. As John Lennon teaches, “money can’t buy me love”.

By now, you’re probably thinking, “hey I’m in my business for both love and money!” Of course you are!  I’m just suggesting that as you begin to experience greater levels of financial success doing what you love, you’re going to discover a couple of things about the dynamic tension of being in business for love or money.

Money makes you comfortable and risk averse.

As a creative entrepreneur, you’re business is based in your love of creating, being creative, creating your art, and solving problems for your clients. At the early stages of your business growth it’s all about the love of doing! You’re in the business of doing what matters to you – and creates value for your clients. As your business grows, the pursuit of money naturally becomes more necessary and central to all your daily activities.

As you become more financially successful, you’ll experience the paradox of success. Slowly underneath your awareness, your assessment of opportunity can be more weighted by its potential financial reward rather than if the opportunity aligns with your purpose, vision, talents and capabilities. After all you have a business to run, and business is about making money!

Over time, the quality of your clients, and the work you’re doing for them starts to be predictable and routine. As your business grows around your “output”, making more and more money, more of your energy will be focused on developing the systems to handle the project management and transactional complexities of serving clients. Before you know it, you’ve created a machine– and no matter how well oiled and efficient, the “machine” needs money to stay alive.

To keep the machine alive, you realize you’ve become a slave to the machine you’ve created out of your success doing what you love.

You start playing it safe. All your important decisions– the type work you want to do, the quality of clients you attract and take on, the people you surround yourself with, and the overhead you lock yourself into– become driven by the transactional (money) side of your business. Sometimes your original “love of doing” takes a backseat. Once you’re comfortable and accomplished, recognized by your peers and clients as successful, you’re ego is heavily invested in the status quo of your own success story.

A funny thing can happen on the road to your success– you get comfortable! And when you’re comfortable, that’s when the momentum of your growth and expansion loses steam and your slide towards dissatisfaction, boredom and burnout begins.

Be mindful on your road to success and accomplishment. Keep the love of doing for its own sake very much alive and at the center of your business growth.

In the quest for achievement and getting your business to the next level, it’s easy to obsess about if you’re doing the right things. Sometimes doing nothing at all can create new opportunity.

The conventional viewpoint is the path to accomplishment and achievement is the result of consistently doing many things right. True enough, success is the result of productive actions–eventually. However, getting there (where ever that is for you) is not always a nice straight line. The road to any accomplishment can have many detours and side trips. After a period of time, and experiencing no results, it gets more palpable to believe you might be wasting your time and resources barking up the wrong tree or digging holes for gold in the wrong places.

How do you know what activities are on course or off course toward your goal of accomplishment? You don’t know and you can’t know. And that’s where your intuition comes into play–the part of you that knows the unknowable yet trusts the process anyway. Maybe no action at all is the effective thing to do.

Let’s put this idea of “no action” into a business context by sharing a story with you that illustrates what we’re talking about here. Recently, a management consultant colleague of mine was sharing with me the severe downturn in his business when he really wasn’t sure where his next client was coming from. Here’s the story:

“In the fall of 2008 everything on my calendar cancelled as the world went into financial panic. After about 15 minutes of, “Oh shit…!!” and thinking I needed to hustle up some work, I realized that I really wasn’t enthused about that and didn’t find the energy to do that day to day. So, I centered myself and asked, “What if this is for me?”

Somewhere in the panic of not having control over his future by not knowing where his next gig was coming from, he stopped and listened to his inner voice asking the question:

“What if this is for me?”

He went on to share that because he had the available time, why not get into a few projects that were an important part of his future but not directly related to finding a new client. One of those projects was writing a book (no small under-taking)!  He continues his story:

“The process of writing my book has lead to all kinds of opportunities I would have never thought of. And the biggest amount of work with a client company I’ve had to date showed up. I just successfully negotiated by far the largest contract of my career. I believe that happened because I let go of any need to hustle up work. I let go of any need to push to make some money (at least for a while). I didn’t really set out to let go of working for money, it just sort of happened as I put my full energy into the book”.

Think about that for a minute. Here’s a person who needs clients and cash flow. By any measure the “right” thing to do was put more energy into selling a new client. Instead, following his intuition (which had other plans), led him to put the focus on something completely unrelated to selling in new business.

As a result of stepping back and taking no action on the reasonable course– my colleague secured the largest contract of his consulting career!

Note to self: chill, relax, be open, think bigger! Here’s the “aha moment” and take away experience my colleague shared with me:

“Once again I was reminded, and validated, that this is a benevolent universe designed to work. What I need to do is show up, recognize what shows up, cooperate and participate with that, let it go when it’s time and repeat the process.

The timing hasn’t necessarily been mine. But time and again I’ve seen (usually in hindsight) that the timing and outcome was much better than had it gone “my way”. This process has required huge amounts of trust and faith, but after a number of outcomes that justified the trust and faith, I can now say that I moved into a knowing (beyond trust and faith). I may not always be in the knowing but I will never forget that there is such a place and I’ve experienced it”

Next time you’re thinking about making the right moves doing things “your way” to solve a particular business challenge, step back, do nothing, listen to your intuition ask you the all important question:

“What if this (circumstance) is for me?”