Thursday, February 18, 2010

Creativity in Business...


When I first began this adventure just over 6 months ago, I had visions of setting out a clear pattern to each day, imposing my Creativity on the world around me.  Instead of being the teacher, I became the student.  Creativity gently and persistently reminded me that I learned best when I kept myself open to possibilities, looked for opportunities instead of answers and just kept walking this journey to see where it would lead me.

Right after my last post, I received a call from an ad agency here in town who wanted to meet with me to look over my portfolio and quote on a job for a possible colouring book for one of their clients.  I stayed up printing things out, reorganizing my portfolio and booked the day off from supply teaching so that I could meet with them first thing in the morning.

Once I arrived at the agency, I discovered that most of the staff was French, so I just switched languages and did the rest of the interview “en français”.  To my slight disappointment, they’d received permission to use the Nova Scotia version of the colouring book and just needed me to redraw some items that were different between our two provinces on 4 inner pages and the cover.  It would have been easy to match the existing style of the book, but it wouldn’t have been something I would have wanted to show off.

Then the little voice of Creativity whispered in my ear as the person interviewing me went off to make me photocopies.  When she returned, I told her that I would be happy to quote on the 5 pages needed, but that for $200, I would also offer to redraw all of the pages and make it something unique to our province.  

I returned home and quickly spent the next hour redrawing one of the sample pages in my own style, scanned it in and sent it off to the agency so that she could submit it to their client along with the quote.

Today, I found out that I not only got the job, but they will get me to draw the whole book and I meet with them on Monday.

It pays to listen to that little whisper and not ignore it. It may have taken me half a year into this adventure, but I am learning.  Oh Boy... am I learning!  They’ve also asked me to quote on 2 other jobs...

INHALE:  Life has cycles and opportunities.  This past week has been a reminder of how much we need to respect that cycle instead of just expecting to impose our will on the world around us so that every day proceeds according to some inner plan.  The unexpected Snow Day yesterday was another reminder that plans sometimes have to change.  Substitute teaching at a new school today where I ended up jumping in to help a student teacher with her lesson instead of just sitting back and twiddling my thumbs was a reminder that there can be Creativity in unexpected opportunities.  The students were learning about travel vocabulary in French at a very basic level, so I drew a huge suitcase on the white board and asked them what they would take on a trip.  If they didn’t know the word in French, they had to look it up in the dictionary before I would draw it in.

EXHALE:  What possibilities and opportunities might have you overlooked in the past few days because they didn’t fit in to the little plan or template that you were carrying around in your head?  When our lives become too scheduled, then we miss out on unexpected moments and Creative opportunities.  So many business experts proclaim that when you find your passion, it can also become a business or a way to bring income into your life.  While I know that when a hobby become a source of income, it does take on a more businesslike edge to it and lose some of the fun, there is also something very powerful about loving what you do.

Never lose sight of opportunities to be Creative at play and at work.

2 comments:

  1. I'm sure they loved the novelty of a good artist drawing for them. A friend of ours is a math teacher. He is also a good singer. So occasionally takes his guitar with him to work and sings something as a reward for various things. His students love it.

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  2. I sear that you are writing just to me!! I love reading your blog.....

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