072: Uncover Your Inner Genius and Unlock Your Creativity (On Demand)

Published: Jan. 23, 2016, 6:45 p.m.

Maybe you're bored in your internet business right now because there's no real risk, challenge, or excitement in your business? This especially happens if you fall into the trap of "lying" because nothing is real. Let's get you creative so you can think your way out of your current predicament (even if that problem is boredom)...\n\nCreativity doesn't only mean "get a bunch of\xa0ideas." Notice how the word "create" is in it? Creativity = to create. Make something new and valuable. Idea or invention.\n\n \tWhy slow down? If you're on a roll, keep going, so during slow times when you're tired, your past self (on a timer) is like an extra employee you don't have to pay.\n \tFour minute mile: 100 article days, book in an afternoon, class in an afternoon, airport product. $2k product twice a week. Hack a 100k income, how many products to sell to achieve that goal. $1000 per hour income (webinars). 1 hour per week full time income (Amazon). 1 hour per day income (Fiverr). Think your way out of a situation.\n \tAlbert Einstein made creative breakthroughs by asking interesting questions, such as: what would it be like to ride a wave of light?\n\nDistill the noise down: do you take 20 pages of notes at a seminar/webinar or 5 bullet points / key takeaways?\n\nSeparate the forest from the trees! Getting so bogged down by the details you don't see the big picture, end goal, reason why, do's and dont's. Presentation on 187 types of content? A mile wide and an inch deep. Solve some problems instead. Good for pitching/presenting, bad for a product.\nOur Marketer of the week is Ken Evoy from "Make Your Price Sell." He was the\xa0first marketer I've seen with a dynamic price. For example, you sell a product where the price increases by 1 penny every minute.\nLet's break the stages of you unlocking your creativity and solving any problem into four steps: WHY (reframe), WHAT (mindmap), HOW (insight), and WHAT-IF (creative flow):\nStep\xa0A: WHY Reframe (change the interpretation)\nHit the problem from multiple angles with probing questions. Questions must be answered! Here's what you need to ask from yourself:\n\nA1: What's the big problem? What happens without this solution? (common enemy)\nA2: What am I solving? (specific goal)\nA3: What's the current way to solve it?\nA4: Why is my solution better?\n\n \tWho am I solving it for?\n \tWhy does this even matter?\n \tWhat can I learn from this?\n \tWhat's funny about this?\n \tHow do I start this?\n \tWhat do I do after this?\n\nDuring this stage, our goal is childlike curiosity (kids ask lots of questions but adults are set in their ways). We want to limit\xa0perfectionism and take up exercise such as free-writing.\xa0Apply random words to your situation. Think of as many "C" words as possible, for instance.\xa0Criticizing in this stage is only good if you ask: how could I have done better? You need to think up good possibilities and ideas to shoot down later.\nStep B: WHAT Mindmap (branch out)\nGet the structure, outline, manipulation, trimming, and the sequence.\n\nB1: Brain dump sub-problems.\nB2: Get it dialed in: Diverge (go big, seek out) vs. Converge (decide, connect, guidelines, reduce). Combine, split, add, remove, edit\nB3: Professor Elliot Eisner: boundary pushing (rules are constraining, let's bend them), inventing (useful combinations), boundary breaking (least common: opposite thinking, gap filling, the rules themselves are the problem), aesthetic organizing (order from chaos: most common)\n\n \tBoundary pushing: can we shave one second off this plugin? Remove one step from the process\n \tBoundary breaking: we host this software for them.\n \tAesthetic organizing: for example, in every 10-episode chunk of my podcast, I'll plan on having one episode about\xa0WordPress, a case study episode, a product pitch, mindset episode, marketing, writing, and so on.\n \tInventing: A or B eye doctor test: does it work better as "A" or work better as "B"?\n\nStep C: HOW Insight (Professor Arne Dietrich Creativity Matrix)