Becoming a More Creative Entrepreneur – How to Think Differently

The old granddaddy French words that went into making our English word entrepreneur have meanings like undertaker (as in, one who undertakes something) or adventurer. For the average entrepreneur busy minding their business, you live that meaning — you definitely have undertaken something and most days, it for sure feels like an adventure.  This adventure, though, demands constant innovation basically requiring you to become more and more creative.

Since creativity is a state of mind, then becoming more creative demands that we learn to think differently.  Here are a few key ways to accomplish this shift in mindset.
 
Go to Your Other Brain – the Heart
Science has now confirmed that the brain is not the only mind we possess.  There’s a brain, an actual center of intelligence, in the heart, as well.  And when the two work together, often called heart-brain communication or coherence, well, look out!

Without getting too woo-woo on you (we’ll save that for a follow-up article), one main way to think from the heart is to explore passions and interests – yours, your team’s, and even your customers’ or clients’.  Inquiring about what got you passionate about your business venture and what keeps you passionate about it, and likewise, surveying your long-term customers about what they love about your products or service is a good way to stir up those old passions. Try to answer honestly from the heart and ask others you engage to do the same. Do this regularly and you’ll keep peeling back the layers of your thinking. A surefire way to continually discover something new about your enterprise (and maybe even about yourself).

It’s a Mindset Thing
Thinking differently whether that’s differently than every other business like yours or just differently than you did over the last five years, it’s still a mindset thing.  To cultivate a mindset fertile enough for new and out-of-the-box ideas, here’s what we suggest as a start:

Forget Challenge. Think Opportunity.
Take any problem you have currently in your business, really, ANY issue, headache, bugaboo, pain-in-the-you-know-what and turn it around. Imagine it as a golden opportunity for your business (and you and your team) to grow.  Imagine that 20 years from now, you looked back and could say, “well yes, you know, it’s a good thing that X happened after all. Look how it made us stronger/smarter/faster or how it made us pivot from XYZ to ABC.”

Finally, allow yourself to be inspired by the unusual. More on this in a following article.  In the meantime, here’s a likkle sumthing to hold you on the adventure: 

• 4 Mindset Shifts Creative Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Richard Branson
• 6 Ways to Become A More Creative Entrepreneur   
• Why You Need a Creative Hobby, even if you think you’re too busy