 When we say “V-8,” we’re not talking about an engine. We’re talking about juice.
Huh? What does this have to do with developing creative concepts on a tight deadline? A lot, actually. In this article, we’re going to review some basic tenets of brainstorming, in order to help you crack that next assignment effectively. And we’ll be taking an eighth-grade science approach in order to inspire you. You may be familiar with some of the basic rules of brainstorming: Don’t pre-judge. This is also known as the “there are no dumb ideas” rule. Note that you can brainstorm in a group, or on your own. The goals are the same. And so are the rules. If you’re flying solo, don’t pre-judge your own ideas. Just write them down. “Dumb ideas,” by the way, often lead to brilliant ones. That’s another rule of brainstorming: Build upon what you get. Just because Idea A may not excite you, it may still inspire you to stretch in a new direction. Go crazy. Try crazy things. It’s a corollary of “don’t pre-judge.” And when you have lots of people in the room, there’s that much more to build upon. In fact, it can be like drinking from a fire hose. Which leads to yet another brainstorming technique: Write it all down. Don’t ever trust your memory. Write it down. Everything. Every idea. If you’re working alone and you’re a lousy typist, talk aloud and record it. If you’re in a big group and you’ve got the resources, assign someone to be the transcriber. Here’s another you won’t find when you search online for creative brainstorming techniques, but this one sure works for us: Lubricate the process. Ideas, more often than not, are expressed in words. So gather up a bunch and let them liberate you. If you’re, say, working on a campaign about ice cream, write down a list of every freaking ice-cream-related word or phrase you can think of, and riff on them as you go. It’s a good warm-up exercise. But it’s much more than that. The more you work at it, and the harder you try to make that list long, the more you’ll inevitably end up surprising yourself with stuff you can use. Let’s see: Ice cream, ice, frozen, pop, stick, cone, sundae, Sunday, never on a Sunday, sprinkles, whipped cream, whipped, whip it, fudge, sauce, hit the sauce, caramel, cherry on top, spoon, brain freeze, scoop, what’s the scoop, get the scoop, quart, half gallon, packed, pack it in, freezer, waffle cone, waffle, à la mode, milkshake, malted, triple malt, scotch, butterscotch, hot fudge, popsicle, cream pop, creamsicle, Good Humor, sense of humor, rocky road… That was about one minute’s worth of free associating. And we never cracked open an online dictionary or thesaurus or went to a site like rhymezone. You can see how much bigger and better this could get if you really work it. And it’s just great fodder for everything else you do. Finally, here’s the “V-8 trick.” It’s a physical/literal interpretation of one of our all-time-favorite creative brainstorming rules, which is: Go for volume. You would be amazed at how much more you have in you, whenever you think you’re totally tapped out. That ice cream list above? Heck, we should be able to double it. Triple it. Quadruple it. This is all about willpower. It’s not about creativity. It really does validate that famous Thomas Edison quip that genius is “two percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration.” You are never done. Imagine your own personal drill sergeant, whipping you to get more when you think you’re spent. Because there is more in you. Even when you think you’re totally empty. Enter the bottle of V-8 Juice. This is a trick we like to do for kids. If you’ve got one of those two-liter bottles of V-8 Juice (tomato juice will work, too), you can try this: When you pour out the last drop, don’t toss the bottle. Point out to your audience how it’s totally empty. You can shake it, open, upside-down, and not get another drop out of it. But then, cap the bottle tightly. For added dramatic effect, set it on a table or counter where it can catch some strong sunlight. Wait about five or ten minutes. And then watch what happens. When you open the cap, you’ll be able to pour out, easily, another ounce of V-8 juice. It’s amazing. It’s economical. Yet how did it work? It’s actually quite simple. When the bottle first appeared to be empty, its inside surface was actually coated with a thin film of the juice. Wait long enough, however, and gravity will take over, and the film will eventually run down the sides and pool at the bottom. Simple as that. It looks like you’re getting more V-8 juice, when you’ve actually had that, inside, all along. Inspiring, eh? Why, then, park the bottle in strong sunlight? Well, assuming you’d taken the nearly-empty bottle from the fridge (as in “Refrigerate after opening”), the air inside the capped bottle is colder, and thus denser, than the air in the room around it. Let the bottle warm up in the sunlight, and that cold air heats and expands. So when you finally crack open that cap, you’re rewarded with a satisfying whoosh! of air rushing out. It’s like a flourish to your creative efforts. Lack the time to do your own brainstorming for that next creative assignment? Call us in. We do this kind of work all the time, and would love to help.
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 There are lots of ways to expand your consulting business. We’ve helped numerous consultancies do just that, so we’ve compiled, in this article, some of the leading tips and best practices for growing your business as quickly and effectively as possible.
How to grow your business 1: The basics You want people to find you. So make it easy for them. Let’s start with your website. You want to have a big, prominent, un-missable “Contact Us” link or button that’s always available. If someone happens to “parachute into” some deep page of your site via a Google search, you don’t want to lose them, do you? So make it easy for them to contact you. The same applies when they click that link. It’s popular these days to have form-fields for the prospect to complete in order to reach you, and then hit the “Submit” button. But not everyone likes those things (especially when they’re purposely intrusive [“What’s Your Net Worth?** **Required”]). So include an e-mail link, too. Why cut off one source of potential leads? Your “Contact Us” page should also include, obviously, your phone number, as well as links to all your social-media presences, which we’ll get to in a minute. What about your fax number? We hate faxes, and fax numbers. In fact, we’d suggest that you don’t even include the fax number on the “Contact Us” page, because it’s merely an invitation for someone who wants to call you to accidentally dial the wrong number and get frustrated. What prospect ever faxes you, anyway? An existing client can ask you for your fax number. ‘Nuff said. How to grow your business 2: The CTA Speaking of your website, make sure that every page includes a call to action, or CTA. This is what you want the viewer to do after they’ve looked at your site and are interested in doing business with you. Here’s a tip: Make it as specific as you can. “Call us” is fine, but if, say, your business offers a no-obligation productivity audit, say so. Tell them what they can expect to get, eliminate any concerns they may have about contacting you (“There’s no obligation, and the initial call will take no more than 30 minutes of your time”), and by all means, make it inviting. Don’t write it like some tax form (“Submit your information below in order to receive a response”); do make it warm and personal (“One of our friendly professionals will be in touch within 24 hours”). How to grow your business 3: Social Media 101 This is an admittedly huge topic, but we can still give you some basic boxes to check. First, you need a social-media presence. Second, you don’t need that presence to be everywhere. And third, you need to keep your “curated presence” current. Let’s explore each of those topics:
How to grow your business 4: Be a thought leader Increase your odds of business growth by taking a leadership role. We won’t tell you how to develop ground-breaking IP (intellectual property); that’s your business. But we can tell you how to make your breakthroughs known, and thus grow your influence among your peers and prospects. Here’s an entire article we wrote on the subject, which we think you’ll find interesting; it’s garnered lots of positive feedback: How to be a thought leader in your field. How to grow your business 5: Take advantage of free info Speaking of articles that you can put to use quickly, we’ll use Point 5 to shamelessly link to some of our most popular articles to help you grow your business. Here are some topics you might find especially useful for jumpstarting your business development: One last thought… No one ever said that you have to do all of these things yourself. We know. Because we help others do them all the time. That said, and following the best practice we espoused above, here’s the call-to-action: Contact us. Drop us an email, and let’s set up a time to chat. Zero obligation. In just a few minutes, we can answer (and ask) lots of important questions, and help you grow your business, just as we’ve helped so many others. |