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Whether it applies to life, business, cooking dinner, figuring out how to pay rent, or how to continue paying tuition for school. If you can’t be creative in your thinking, your decisions, your work, you’re at an astounding loss.

By the way, today’s post really is about creativity. I’m forewarning you before I go off on a slight tangent explaining how I came to these thoughts.

I’m one of those guys that’s absolutely addicted to flash games - can’t get enough of them. But recently there haven’t been hardly any good ones. Today, I found the amazing one. This is literally the best freaking game I’ve played in months.

99 Bricks is a mix of Jenga and Tetris, with a bit of the physics that is all the “rage” in flash games recently. This has got to be one of the most creative games I’ve ever come across. Yes it’s just a simple conglomeration of two different games but it’s become something completely different. Something that simply hasn’t been done before.

I applaud creativity because without it we would not have any of our present day innovations. Creativity drives business and product creation. When you are creative, you can look at a market like golf and find a different perspective that is completely unique and someone needs to see. You can show them that perspective!

It takes creativity to fix problems. Americans have been doing it for decades and now we’ve become so creative that we’re able to spend $1.22 for every $1 we earn. We don’t have that money but by a stroke of creativity someone has figured out how to spend it.

Granted, that’s a bad example because that’s creativity used inappropriately. Figure out, creatively, how to spend $.70 on each $1 you make while getting $1.50 of value for it. Now that’d be creative.

It takes creativity to make something out of nothing, a lot out of a little. That’s why art and design is often given the name of “creatives”. It’s that work that not everyone thinks they can do, but they CAN. You can! It’s only creative because they have the right tools and know the right questions.

After that, you just make up the answer. Because there are a million answers as long as you know what question to start with.

The guys that make millions are creative. They know how to make their own answers and find their own conclusions. Whereas “Joe the Plumber” (haha, it had to come eventually!), knows how to follow directions. He was trained and knows how to plumb pipes. He doesn’t know how to sell his services, manage his business, or handle all the necessary legalities. He’s a cog in a machine.

He’s a damn excellent cog but that’s all he’s allowed himself to be. Society says that being a cog is safe, it’s secure, and by being one, you can hold a steady roof over your family. But what happens when the axle turning that cog stops?

That cog, (you?), is dead in the water. So please, be creative today! Wait, put that creativity on hold for 2 minutes, and post a comment first. A creative comment! But be my cog and post one!

If you think about it, we’ve become fairly reliant on a relatively unproven means of communication and wealth called the Internet. I’ll explain…

Humans have been around for a long time. This isn’t a post discussing exactly when, but regardless of who you talk to it’s been at least thousands of years. In that time technologies have come and gone with their times. Long ago, Egyptian times, we used papyrus for writing, for messages to be written on, delivered by a court courier and often saved in the database of all Egyptian databases, a pyramid.

Then people discovered different ways to make papers and inks. They were more cost effective and easier to produce. Enter the growth of literature, the Bible, organized religion, and government.

Fast forward to 2008 and 90% of the US population has broadband in their home. Which is absolutely mind-boggling! I remember logging on my first time when I lived in Colorado. I was all of 10 years old and we had a 56k connection with PeoplePC. You know who I’m talking about. Like AOL they built their business off of subsidized agreements. AOL’s agreement gave you free email, chat and browser as part of your internet connection. People PC on the other hand gave you the same plus a subsidized desktop computer.

It made computing cheaper for the masses.

Oh but that first time with the dial tone and the computers talking through whatever little speaker is on the motherboard.

That was the beginning of the Internet Age. It’s been all of 12 years and I like many of the people I know base our entire livelihoods around it.

But the Internet is not your only means of communication and business. It’s not your livelihood nor is it a lifeline. It’s a tool. Your network is your business. I’ll say that again for clarity: your NETWORK is your BUSINESS.

If I lost all my possessions, was living on the street, and had to start completely over, I could get back on my feet in a few weeks. I would begin calling my contacts, making new business plans, seeking work and putting the pieces back together.

Only recently have I truly began understanding this principle but it’s gotta be one of the best I’ve ever learned or can ever teach.

I’ve built a network of people that I truly love. These are the people, friends, that I’ve met through business, school, and in coffee shops that I love, and we mutually want to see each other to succeed. The networks of today are the tribes of thousands of years ago. It’s that group mentality that drives each of us. We group with like-minded people in order to accomplish goals.

The hunter tribes and nomads of humanity’s early life worked together. They hunted in groups, lived together and helped everyone inside the group survive. It seems to be something that a majority of people have forgotten in our time.

More people now than ever, live on their own in single room apartments, which is absolutely insane. We live in a different society now but those social groups, those networks, those connections operate in exactly the same way.

Working together is easier than working alone. Your business will grow as will each of those in your network. Great things grow out of groups because of the combined resources of many. The more people you know and can work with, the better off you’ll be.

So I want you in my network. I want to see you succeed, to be able to love you, and work with you in my business. Drop a comment and let me know what you’ve done to grow your network.

I was on Digg yesterday while for some reason my Adblock was turned off. In the top right of my page there popped up an ad for WorldVision. WorldVision is great, seriously, they do amazing work in this world. But maybe, just maybe, they aren’t spending their advertising dollars as effective as they could be.

I navigated away from that page unfortunately (dang XKCD got me distracted!) Because upon returning my ad was gone! Now, it was very important for this discussion that I had that ad as a reference. I refreshed that page again and again. I’m pretty sure I spent enough refreshes yesterday for 10 or 20 people.

The initial frame said “Every 7 seconds a child dies from hunger or malnutrition.” That is such a striking statement. Aowh! I love it. But I have two problems with this ad.

1. The stopwatch clicks down from 7 seconds and then stops. The ad doesn’t restart; it isn’t a digital stopwatch that starts counting the number of dead kids. It just stops and waits for your response. A good ad has a great message and waits for you to answer it. A GREAT ad has an amazing message, grabs you by the arm, and begs for you to answer it’s call.
2. Digg is probably the wrong target audience for WorldVision. With the kind of traffic Digg has they’ll definitely get tons of click throughs simply because they buying from such a huge traffic source. Although little to none of those clicks will be targeted. There is a large group of progressive individuals on Digg, I’m not disputing that. But no one goes to Digg to find information about adopting an African child. It’s simply the wrong target and they’re most likely getting the wrong response.

How Could They Be Spending Better?

The concepts for WorldVision’s ads are amazing. They do a great job of tacking a difficult concept to grasp in only the few seconds you are viewing them. But they don’t grab you and shake you until you respond.

And ofcourse, the text needs to update every 7 seconds to add another child to the “dead list”. Now that may be a little morbid but it WILL force a response. Don’t you think you’ll get a bigger and better emotional response from telling someone how many people have died while they were screwing off on the internet instead of telling them how much of a difference they can make by burdening themselves with a new child?

Please comment below! What ads do you think could be done better? Tell me about your advertising that you need help with.

It’s been a while since my last post, but in that time I’ve been extremely productive! On a short tangent, I find it extremely frustrating when I ask how someone’s been and they tell me they’ve “been busy”. That is not a real response! If I’ve taken the time to engage in conversation with you, I want you to be able to put forth a real effort and talk with me rather than metaphorically throwing me aside like a dirty rag.

All this comes back to say that when I’m speaking to someone, be it you reading my blog, or a friend face-to-face, I make a point of not saying that I’ve been busy. Rather I say I’ve been productive or I’ve been working on a lot of exciting things. Something to that effect.

There’s so much more depth to the statement and it simply begs for a question in response. I absolutely love conversation so I will jump at any chance to further one. And over the past week or so I started realizing I was missing out on too many possibilities for good conversation by not posting to my blog of late!

I’m not going to post a screenshot of my last design. It just doesn’t need one. I went from one very simplistic, clean and stylish blog to another! But a ton has changed in those intervening months that necessitated a new blog design.

I’ve also combined by work portfolio with my blog. That makes it a LOT simpler for me to manage and likewise just as simple for people to access each then.

I’ve switched my hosting to (mt) MediaTemple! Woooh! I’m probably one of the last people to get on the bandwagon but I’ve finally done it and I can say enough good things about these guys.

I went to Illuminate Conference in October; it was amazing. Although if I were going to go into a full review of it at this point, a full month AFTER the conference I might not be the last person writing about it. I think I’ll wait until March or so until I give my full review.

I’m working on some very exciting projects though with some really cool people so the rest of the year is looking stellar and I’ll be able to close out 2008 as my best year yet.

I’ll be posting at least every other day if not daily from now on so get ready to hear some great ideas. (I want to hear yours too!)

That’s some solid advice. Although it’s very contradictory to what I’ve been told most of my life.

Our parents tell us to think things through before we act, which in many respects is a very valuable skill. Pausing to think for a second can help us to avoid many mistakes. If I had stopped to think about what I was going to write for this post and actually thought it out, I’m sure it would have been a hell of a lot more grammatically correct and none of my words would be misspelled.

But had I stopped, planned a little bit and then started piecing together my work, I wouldn’t have finished writing.

I was an editor for my highschool newspaper and during that time I can’t think of once where I planned out a story ahead of time, or stopped to think about what I would ask my interviewees, or even thought about what my page would like before I placed all the stories and photos.

Planning and thinking takes time. Time I do not have.

If Bill Gates had thought and planned, we wouldn’t have the Microsoft empire that exists today. He would still be tinkering with his Altair running BASIC.

Microsoft thought may be the biggest example I can give. They act before they think. Ofcourse they make mistakes, often. More mistakes than many of us would like. Were they to plan out every detail of Vista before they actually started working on it, we’d still be running Windows 98.

Action is what moves us forward, advances us in our pursuits. You can only do so much thinking about action before you’ve thought all that you can.

There’s only so much thought that can be put into planning a project for a client. If too much thought is put into it, that client may pass you by. The world runs on a clock and if you can’t match the speed at which the world operates it does pass you by.

If you’re going to think and muse you might as well sit on the sidelines and let someone else do the hard work. The action. Movement.

But I want you out in the battlefield. Fight for what you want. Don’t think about the fighting. Don’t think about how you’re going to increase your income.

Find ways to accomplish what you want and don’t think, do.

Let’s be honest: you are a freelancer to make money. This is your income. The goal of your work should be to make a living using the skills you own and love. But what are your client’s needs? Do those needs and interests match your own?

I was reading Freakonomics this past week. One chapter struck home in a business sense. The chapter talked about realtors and how, even though they may seem to be looking out for your best interests, that’s often not the case.

Realtors are just like any other hard working business man: they want to maximize profit over time. They want to sell your house as quickly as possible for as little as possible. Eventhough you hired them to sell your home, their job isn’t to get your to most bang for your buck, but rather to get your home sold fast so that they can get their commission as quickly as possible.

That’s often why when selling your home realtors will suggest that you start marking down the price on your home. The home is of no value to them unsold.

Likewise as a freelancer, a design, or project is of no value to us unsold. But even when it is sold, it’s of less and less value if more and more time has to be put into making changes. In that case, we freelancers can be very much like the realtor that was looked at previously.

How then can we align our interests with our clients?

As a freelancer, I strive to offer quality service, amazing designs, and usually at a reasonable price. Although what if I am charging too little for my services? It’s possible that I could increase my rates (which I have several times over the years) to allow a greater budget for myself, while continuing to provide the excellent service and design that I strive for.

But thinking about it like that doesn’t suit most clients. As a business, a website or design is only as useful as the value it provides them. Whether that value is in the form of increased sales or greater brand identification.

If I can create a design or user interface that effectively increases sales of a business by $50,000 annually, wouldn’t that work be worth 50%, 25%, or even 10% of that amount?

My job then is not to simply choreograph a pretty website, but to design a website that increases sales. Because if my client makes money, I make money.

And my interests, are then the same as my clients interests, which makes this whole business easier for the both of us.

Does anyone really know what Web 2.0 is? Honestly and down to earth has a good idea of exactly how all of “this” fits together? Sure, there are a lot of ideas, but they all seem to deviate from a deeper core.

“It’s about allowing the people greater control…”

“Web 2.0 is the freedom of information…”

“It’s flashy graphics and pretty interfaces…”

The French Revolution was about giving control to the people. The constitution was built on freedom of information, specifically, freedom of the press - to be able to spread information. And I’m pretty sure I saw enough flashy graphics in the 1990s and early 2000s where we had poorly designed websites and myspace “glitterz”.

None of these things are Web 2.0 and I describe us, the people of Web 2.0 itself, as an awkwardly-pubescent girl because that’s exactly how we’re thinking. We (Web 2.0) want to be so much with so little that we fracture ourselves and split off in too many directions.

I had a few friends in highschool that fit this bill exactly. They wanted so much out of those four years, that they sought to join practically every club and publication, as well as taking as many advanced courses as possible. They were part of Literary Magazine, Newspaper, Yearbook, Theatre, FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America), Honor Society. The list goes on…

But they didn’t really know what they wanted to do, because they tried to be too many different things.

I propose one thing that Web 2.0 is:

Quality over quantity!

Take social networks for example (Facebook, Bebo, etc.) They’ve succeeded for the most part, in deriving quality from your networks over quantity. No longer do we have to live with the likes of Hot or Not, Match.com, or True.com. We can network freely knowing that if we want a good, quality hookup, all we have to do is turn to our network and announce our available and seeking status.

Gmail has brought forth the same concept in email. Although you may be mistaken, it’s not about Gmail’s 6GB of email storage that you can get. They’re all about providing you with the best, user friendly features to increase your productive use of email. Better spam filters, threaded email conversations and more should only be the beginning.

What to do about this Web 2.0?

Don’t get me wrong, the web is amazing. But it’s not all about the web! More likely, I would say it’s a playground for experimentation in business on a larger scale.

Recently I’ve seen a large transformation in the food industry. America as a whole, has become very unhealthy. We’ve sought quantity over quality for ourselves for the past century as a result of the industrial revolution.

These last few years though when I go into Safeway, I’m seeing more organic foods on the shelves. Foods made with quality ingredients that are good for your body. I’m not suggesting that Web 2.0 caused this change, but rather it’s the same change that we see so vividly on the internet.

People want better food. They want quality food. They’re now willing to give up their Big Macs and 64oz Cokes for a good-for-you meal that also tastes good.

The automobile industry is making similar changes. People want a better driving experience. They want to be able to control their ipod using voice recognition. It’s much safer to drive and alot easier for the driver. Enter Microsoft SYNC.

SYNC is a good product, but not good enough. I call that when I’m in my car and I roll down the windows, SYNC should automatically turn up the volume to balance out the ambient noise of the wind rushing past my head. If an ambulance is in the area, SYNC should be able to hear and recognize where it is and tell me to pay attention for where it’s coming from.

It’s about quality people. Stop touting the amazing features your business has and start catering to the consumer’s needs. They want to be pampered, not overwhelmed.

There’s a reason that guy came to you (or you went and got him, but they still picked you!) It wasn’t because you blew them away with your coding knowledge or reasonable prices. It wasn’t even because of that cool logo you had designed by your sister-in-law.

Businesses will hire you because you’re human. They want that perfect combination between what they perceive to be the nerdy geek needed to complete the job and the cool mac dude that knows how to befriend everyone.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…

My mother works for a construction lien company. Their “computer guy”, I’ll call him John Doe for argument’s sake, created and operates the company website. I couldn’t tell you how he was hired other than assuming it went like this: the owner’s friend highly recommended his sister-in-law’s husband without really knowing how good he was or if he would be a good match for the company.

Needless to say, I have a fairly low opinion of John Doe as he’s performed well for the work, not the business. Yes, they have a functional website and it’s also fairly attractive. He could have done much better for them though. The work is average and I’d hope that they’re not paying more than an “average” pay for it.

It’s not because of the average work that I have a low opinion of this man. He’s just an example of the average good worker. Which means that he’s perfectly acceptable to the “average” business. But when we’re looking to achieve excellence, and trust me, most businesses you work with are attempting the feat, you have to perform as an excellent individual - not a good, hard worker.

Businesses are made of people. In a lot of situations the person is the business. Take a look at a lot of the professionals in any field and you’ll see names as brands rather than brands as names. It’s the difference between Louis Vuitton and CARP (China’s Average Retail Product). If you’ve ever tasted carp, trust me, it ain’t pretty. It’s grainy and full of garbage that you don’t want to eat. There are much better fish in the sea.

All this comes back to say that businesses prefer working with people. If they wanted robot with no personality, they could just as easily outsource their work to India and pay half as much for the same result. And to be honest, a lot of those Indians have better personalities than many of your “average” workers.

John Doe is that robot. He works from home, by himself, and most likely has no social life. He has odd mannerisms that tell you he is socially inept and doesn’t know how to deal with people. He definitely knows how to deal with computers. Businesses are a “tiny bit” more than just a computer.

Your client doesn’t want a John Doe, or a Chinese knock-off. They want the Louis Vuitton and Swarovski of the web world. It honestly probably makes little difference if the actual work is done by you or an Indian outfit as long as it is done well.

The client won’t see all the work that is done behind the scenes. What they see and want to know are good and kind are you. They want to be able to put a friendly name and face to the business they are working with. A face is something identifiable, a personality, a thought or idea, a kind smile.

Show them that face and personality. Become more than simply a service that they’re using. Make them your friend and associate with them. Businesses want to feel like they know you and have developed a relationship with you. That’s exactly the same thing as you want because that means trust in your brand (and continued work!)

Be friendly and compassionate and show them that you’re someone to be had as a friend rather than an acquaintance.

I made a guest post at Joyful Jubilant Learning yesterday that was very fun to write. If y’all would like to take a few minutes to head over there and read it that would be awesome!

For anyone finding this site from JJL, welcome! I’m glad to have you here. This is a fairly new blog so you can probably whip through my content pretty quickly although please comment and start a conversation with me or send me an email. I’d love to talk!

Nearly four years ago I swore off any and all future work for myself online because of a client. We’d figuratively played a game of chicken and I lost. For about a year after that I stuck to that decission and didn’t take any more freelance work.

I wasn’t prepared to lose. In the game, whether that be life, love, work, or taxes, you win sometimes and you lose others. To win in the long run, you have to be prepared to lose.

Quick thought: don’t play the taxes game. The banker knows when you cheat!

In October 2003, I started a short lived relationship with a client. I was developing what amounted to an AJAX powered website slightly before the AJAX revolution began. I started this project off on the wrong foot by quoting myself short on both time and cost.

These type of losses are only short term and can often be corrected through appropriate communication. If the budget that was planned turned out not to be enough, tell the client and attempt to work out a solution that is satisfactory for both sides.

That doesn’t mean you lost in the game though, you simply fell behind. I fell behind.

I continued to fall behind with missed deadlines and procrastinated work cycles. We worked out a satisfactory solution where the project was completed on a longer timescale with the same budget.

This way I was able to focus on other work besides this project as well.

The project concluded in March. What was originally a two week project turned into a 3 and a half month long marathon.

I’d already been paid half of my budget in the beginning of the project and at the half-way point. I lost the game after handing over my work and my opponent chose not to pay me the second half of my budget.

I felt degraded, cast out, and pretty much like shit for a few months following. That was worse than not being paid what I was due.

Prepare Yourself for Failure

Playing chess, you usually don’t throw out a piece undefended. Your queen might be attacking but your bishop is right there backing her up.

Don’t leave your work defenseless. Prepare a good contract that will back you up when your opponent decides to play against the rules. Verbal or email contracts aren’t accepted as valid in all countries/states so make sure it’s in writing.

Even though you may have safeguards in place like an all-binding contract, you still have to prepare yourself to lose.

Your next project shouldn’t be an end-all be-all. What I mean is, if this project were to fall out from under your feet, you need to still be standing. Like wage earners who work from paycheck to paycheck, we freelancers often can fall into the mistake of living from project to project.

But placing ourselves in that position gives the client power over us. It’s unnecessary and only limits your potential as a freelancer. it doesn’t prepare yourself to lose but simply places hope, often false, in a win.

But hope, even if it’s not false, is not good. You can’t hope that you’ll be still working from day to day. Measures have to be taken to ensure that you still have your line of work tomorrow.

Work on multiple projects at once. Client often like to “own” you while they’ve hired you for work although if you let them then you have nothing to fall back onto if they decide to force a loss upon you.

Not Being Prepared

My brother is 13. He made a flippant bet with a friend the other day. It turned out that he lost and was forced to wear fingernail polish for the rest of the week. He wasn’t prepared to lose. He hadn’t expected to lose. His friend had only won by a slight margin which made it even worse.

At the dinner table when we noticed as he was trying to hide his fingernails by pawing the serving spoon is when he lost. He lost all scrap of manhood we had left for him. Admittedly, it was a pretty ballsy bet to make on his behalf.

What he was afraid of was losing the one piece of manhood he had attached to our other brother. He simply adores him and tries to be like him. He told me, he’s going to make sure he does not find out.

Thinking about what he said, I realized how prepared he really was. He knew what he needed to protect and where it was ok to cut his losses.

I learned how to lose from my younger brother.