Imagine that you’re lying on a sun drenched beach in your favourite spot, sipping pina coladas. While watching the surf and local talent in a lazy daze, every little bit of disproportionate body fat you have starts dissolving away as if by magic.

If you’re a guy, your six-pack and calves magically become super clearly defined (move over Atlas!); if you’re a woman, you rise (sand still clinging to your butt) as the breathtaking goddess pictured in the well-worn story book you had as a child. You now suddenly have a build and looks that will cause dislocated necks, lead to car accidents, inspire Hollywood contracts and birth countless biographies.

Apart from this, you just know your IQ suddenly got catapulted right into the god class, you now also have a singing voice that might make Madonna quit and artistic flair enough to decommission the Picasso’s of this world (and although you haven’t tried out that one yet, you just know it to be so).

You simply can’t believe it. Maybe the one who said that if something’s too good to be true then it probably is, got it all wrong. Maybe this is all due to some fairy godmother or weird enchantment or whatever. Who knows. You just don’t care. Floating off the sand, a Cadillac with a fully stocked bar awaits you as you exit the beach and ride off into fame and fortune.

Yeah right.

Except only, it never happens this way.

Funny how desperately we wish something like this to be true but somehow know it will never be. (Damn…)

Because nothing ever happens in a vacuum.

Just as no fairy is going to miraculously spirit our present away and leave us suspended on a golden cloud of only fluff and happiness, just so the ability to create won’t magically appear over night or descend out of thin blue air, especially if your creative muscle has not been used for some time. You have to work at it.

Relax! Please don’t back button! The word “work” here, does not mean sweat!

Okay, say now that you have been trying your hand at free writing and some of the other ideas mentioned in the previous post to try and get your muse back if it has gone AWOL. If you’re lucky, it’s back already. Say for argument’s sake, it is. How do you keep it right there with you, more so, how do you remain creative for the rest of your life?

This last question is especially important if something like the ability to be creative has a direct bearing on your income and business (if you have one). Not even talking about your happiness here!

Whereas the previous post touched on creativity gone AWOL and how to get it back once it’s gone, this post will highlight the need for exercise in always keeping your creative gift healthy, happy and thriving.

This post will highlight exercise? But, doesn’t the very word “exercise” imply effort, exertion, work… practise (ugghh?).

Wait!

To prevent you from immediately hitting the back button in disgust and trotting off to do some real reading and missing out on what could end up as the greatest, most liberating and exhilarating trip of your life, let me hasten to add: exercise like this is fun! And you don’t need a gym! Or fancy shmancy equipment. Or complex machinery or gadgets.

So stay around…

Creativity is big these days. On the web and off. And it is increasingly understood by everybody who is somebody as the single most have to have item on the shopping list of success. Especially in business.

According to the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study, which says that creativity is the most crucial factor for future success, CEO’s believe that ”more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision – successfully navigating an increasingly complex world will require creativity.”*

Now, there are literally zillions of creativity exercises on the web. Gazillions of links, and even more exercises. To even suggest that I could distil a few of them here and dare to call that a “Guide” would be sheer lunacy, at best arrogance.

No, what I hope at the most to accomplish through this post, is to drive home the absolute non-negotiable nature and importance of exercising your creativity if you have any hope of wanting to keep it functioning and thriving. Take the scene on the beach. Ain’t never gonna happen in a vacuum.

Likewise, you’ll never grow your gift when you don’t nurture it with the right environment and feed it the proper food. That’s where these exercises come in. They’re mostly fun to do and relax both body and mind. Maybe that’s where the whole secret to creativity capture lies.

So consider this post as an intro to Writing your Own Creativity Nurturing Exercise Guide by visiting some of the links to exercises at the bottom and then take it from there. Write your own guide. Follow the unmarked trail. Let your nose guide you. Click. Exercise. Enjoy. Click. Exercise. Enjoy.

Start off by listening to Johann Sebastian Bach. Jeffrey Baumgartner says if Bach doesn’t make you more creative, then “you should probably see your doctor”.^#

Your creativity can only benefit. Do it for you and your business or craft. And everybody else’s as well.

Nobody but nobody, can replace you or your gift. Ever. So get on with the business of being the best you there can be. You’ll do everybody a favour. You, most of all.

And as the well-known quote goes: Just do it!

Until next time,

© Elmarie Bouwer

Some links to creativity exercises:

# The Wonderful world of Jeffrey Baumgartner. 10 Steps for boosting creativity. http://www.jpb.com/creative/creative.php

Kaarina Dillabough Decide2do. 10 Steps to Boost your Creativity to Benefit your Business and Your Life.     http://www.kaarinadillabough.com/steps-boost-your-creativity-benefit-your-business/

Psychology Today. Try Fun, Quick Exercises to Boost Your Creativity. Gretchen Rubin.  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-project/200911/try-fun-quick-exercises-boost-your-creativity

Entrepreneur. Lisa Girard.  Five creativity exercises to find your passion. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219709

Source:

* Creativity Australia. Creativity is the Most Crucial Factor for Future Success. November 3, 2010. Accessed 1 March 2012.http://creativityaustralia.blogspot.com/

There are a few successful tips that can help one make a success of business according to Brad Sugars, the author of 14 business books, and posted on the entrepreneur.com website.

First and foremost, he says, offer what people want to buy, not just what you want to sell. Too often, people jump into a business built around a product or service they think will be successful rather than one that is already proven to have a market.

The next important step is to get cash flowing as soon as possible. Cash flow is the lifeblood of business, and is absolutely essential to feed bottom-line profits. So you need to find ways to jump start cash flow immediately.

Importantly, he advises, always find new ways to keep costs low. All the cash flow in the world is worthless if it’s not positive cash flow, which means you have to bring in more cash than you pay out.

To do this, you need to keep your costs and expenses low.

Another good tip is that, when planning, always overestimate expenses and underestimate revenues.

Being conservative in your numbers doesn’t mean you are willing to accept those numbers, it just means you are arming yourself with information you can work with and work over: It means you can gauge the kinds of efforts and activities you will need to put into sales and marketing.

Then he advises that one should focus on sales and marketing as such as is humanly possible. In business, nothing happens until a sale is made. From the start, you’ll need to find a good way to get leads, convert leads into sales, and make sure you keep getting repeat sales from your customers.

Another good tip is to find ways to exponentially increase profits. In business, there are five drivers that impact profits. If you can master them while keeping your costs in check, you will run a successful business.

It’s as simple as getting more leads, converting more leads into customers, increasing the number of times those customers buy from you, increasing the average price point of your sales and increasing your profit margins.

Do any of those, while also keeping costs down, you will see more profits. Do all of them and you will see your business really take off?

Then, test and measure everything. You can’t change what you don’t measure, and you can’t tell if a program or strategy is working if you are not faithfully testing, measuring and tracking your results.

Accept that learning more equals earning more. If you’ve never run a major business, you don’t know how to run one simple as that.

However, you need to accept that learning always comes before “earning”. You’ll need to be committed to learning as much as you can about sales and marketing and operations if you want to have a truly success business.

Once you do that, however, the sky is the limit. Knowing and applying those simple fundamentals in a highly leveraged way is one of the reasons many top executives and entrepreneurs earn so much.

Identify those areas and you then decide to learn it yourself or hire an expert and learn as much as you can from that person – because you never know when you can run across a distinction in thinking or a strategy that can really take you and your business to a new level of success.

Finally, don’t discount, add value. Whenever you discount, you are taking money directly out of your pocket and directly from your bottom-line profit. So don’t do it. Instead, create added value propositions all the way up and down you product or service line.

Article by Futurist Clem Sunter. (Cape Times 28 September 2010)

Set up a venture capital fund of R100bn funded by big business and invest it in small enterprises with proven business experience and we will create wealth and jobs for the people, says futurist Clem Sunter in his latest scenario to help South Africa take the high road to success.

Funded by a once-off turnover tax on big business, this is one way to get ordinary people to do extraordinary things, and get people back to work, he adds.

In terms of his plan, Sunter says that the finance raised would then be spread between the provinces and administered by venture capitalists with proven small business experience. The large companies would each have a shareholding in the fund commensurate with their contribution.

Sunter, famous for his High Road, Low Road scenario while at Anglo American in the 90s, believes that the trade off for big business could be getting credit in terms of BEE points.

For example, the scorecard for banks would be amended to include points for setting up a small loan division and points on the volume of business executed. The same would apply to the JSE in terms of the number of small businesses listed.

The scorecard for big business would include percentage targets in their procurement programmes in terms of contracts with businesses below a certain size.

As for accounting firms, their scorecards would be revised to allow for a certain amount of auditing and accounting services for small businesses – coupled with lower charge rates and less stringent standards.

The scorecard for business schools, says Sunter, would reflect the amount of training and mentorship that they would do for entrepreneurs.

Rural communities would be allowed to set up local energy transfer systems whereby local citizens could barter goods and services between one another without having to pay VAT.

As an additional incentive to small businesses, they would be exempt from tax (except for VAT) up to an annual profit of R1m.

This, says Sunter, would immediately legitimize virtually all entrepreneurs as well as provide them with compensation for the risks they take – including the fact that they have to put their own money aside for a pension in old age.

The shortfall in tax would be met by introducing a graduated system of company tax similar to the one that operates for income tax.

And to make it easier for small business to create employment (and one arguably that would cause major problems with organized labour), Sunter suggest that laws should be simplified to allow small business owners to hire and discharge employees with more flexibility. This would not apply to households employing domestic workers.

Large agricultural enterprises would be encouraged to transform themselves into networks of small farms which could still achieve the economies of scale and efficiencies of the larger units, he reckons. Land distribution implemented in this way would not harm food security.

Campaigns to celebrate South Africa’s individual pockets of excellence would then be undertaken to create a bandwagon effect with the message that “if this person can do it, so can you.”

Looking back at the “High Road, Low road” scenario, Sunter points out that in the end South Africa put its faith in the common sense approach of whatever leadership emerged from a truly democratic evolution to a new South Africa.

Our faith, he believes, was not misplaced. “Despite all the faults we know about such as corruption, lack of service delivery, crime and an underperforming education system, the country took the political “high road”.

“Our economic growth has improved though it is still below the stated goal of 7 percent per annum. We are the largest economic player on a continent whose prospects have undergone a dramatic re-evaluation for the better with currency remaining strong, the stock market having performed better that most others internationally and government finances have been handled well.

“Our national debt to GDP ratio at 28 percent compares favourably with that of the US, Brittain, Italy, Greece and Japan – all of whom are now well above the recommended ceiling of 60 percent,” he points out.

But South Africa has failed in lowering the unemployment rate. Looking at the road ahead, Sunter believes that “if we take the wrong turn, all the good work done in the interim would come undone on account of a failure of economic growth.

“We would enter a phase of alternating dictatorial and populist regimes with the chance of being spun off towards a waste land placing us again at the crossroads.”