Pro-creative, not procreative

Not surprisingly, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately wondering how we’re going to survive all the things that are wrong with the world. I suspect that the economy’s flaming tailspin, the heavily damaged environment, the endless horror of terrorism and war and the obscene failure to care of so many leaders has many of you pondering the same thing.

Human affairs have become intricately, monstrously, maybe fatally messed up. How do we even start sorting through this steaming heap of wreckage we’ve produced?

I haven’t entirely abandoned hope that we can think and invent our way out of trouble - I’ve always had a lot of faith in humanity’s creativity. But I’m beginning to think our creativity is no match for our procreativity.

There are way too many of us. Period.

 In my James Michener-like search for the absolute beginning of our tale of woe, for the root cause of the disaster that is mankind’s reign on earth, I can get no more fundamental than that. We have reproduced ourselves to the brink of planetary collapse and nature is going to do what it has always done when populations exceed their resources and their welcome: Restore balance by wiping out the excess.

I don’t mean to sound Old Testament here. I am not a religious person and, in my opinion, the issue has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. It’s just simple math.

Here, you do it: Earth’s finite land, water and materials divided by billions of people increasing geometrically every year equals … what? The increasing destruction of wilderness as people spread out; overdevelopment; the wearing out and desertification of land; climate change; the disappearance of fresh water; the overwhelming of our entire environment by waste and poisons; fighting; pandemics; starvation; and, eventually, mass deaths. A lot of this is already happening.

An exaggeration? Try the lab work. Start with a male and female rabbit and no predators in an enclosed acre of lush land the rabbits can’t dig out of. You’ll see. 

Even people who don’t pay much attention to the big picture must be noticing that there’s less and less undeveloped land where they live, that competition for jobs, housing, money, recognition, doctor’s appointments, even parking spaces has become absurd and that the complexity of human systems from health to government to schooling to business has become so stressful and time-consuming that, if nature doesn’t kill us off, we’ll probably commit suicide.   

This is what it comes down to: Like it or not, humans are going to have to get serious about limiting the number of children we have.  And we’re going to have to start now.

If this discussion seems a long way from the concerns of a small-time entrepreneur who’s supposed to be writing about creativity and innovation, remember two things: Entrepreneurs spend the majority of their waking hours being terrifiedly aware of how limited resources have gotten; and they’re also among the first to see opportunity in a problem.

We Earthlings have a problem that’s likely to be terminal. We’re going to have to start birthing ideas instead of babies immediately or kiss ourselves goodbye. 

Good social networking = your past + your future

I’m beginning to think that the best part of outreach tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn is not their potential for helping you develop relationships with new people, but the nearly miraculous ability they give you to find the old ones.

Over the last few months, I’ve been friended by all kinds of people I haven’t seen, talked to or heard anything about in nearly 30 years. I’ve found out what they do now and who they married; we’ve apologized for old hurts and/or reaffirmed our affection, traded ideas and hard-earned wisdom.

College friends, long-ago office pals - whatever our original connections were, these people feel like the best possible contacts I could have, because we share history and caring that came about through spending time face to face and experiencing life together.

That kind of bond really can’t be created virtually with strangers, no matter how many people we know in common. Yes, it will probably be handy for me to collect a large number of online nominal acquaintances  who could serve as information resources and be part of a broader market for what I sell. But frankly, I’d rather seek advice from people I actually know and trust.

What matters most to me about rediscovering old friends has to do with business only indirectly, anyway. I’ve found that it’s satisfying and somehow reassuring to reconnect with them now that I know a lot more about the world and people than I did at 20, 25 or 30 - time has somehow allowed us to understand each other better, to see why we were as we were then, to forgive or appreciate or sympathize more deeply than we could have earlier.

When we message each other from hundreds of miles away, we don’t just add another business card to the Rolodex. We join hands. 

I feel safer and more confident, richer, with them back in my life. If that helps my business, it will be because it helps me.

Creatively adapt or die

For 30 years now, I’ve written about different art forms in hopes of persuading readers to think about and discuss artistic creativity and so develop an appreciation for it and the incalculable good it offers us. It’s always appalled me that so many people believe the arts have nothing to do with them - people who watch television shows and movies, who enjoy photographs, music or even just a beautifully decorated cake or a handsome tie.

Many of these same people recognize the value of scientific invention - the creation of vaccines, the designing of better can openers, the devising of suspension bridges and cell phones - because science so often results in practical solutions to everyday problems. But they fail to see that science and art are merely slightly varying ways of applying human ingenuity to human life and experience of the world.

They need to wake up to the fact that we can’t survive without that ability to apply ingenuity. And here’s a word that may help them: adaptability.

We human creatures have taken over the world because we are able to change our ways to suit the climate, times and situations we find ourselves in.

The Smithsonian Institution Human Origins Program defines it this way:

The definition adaptability contains the definition of creativity. Both are essential survival skills.

Many normal Americans would laugh themselves off their convertible couches at the idea that, say, interpretive dance might enhance their survival skills. But they should look at their own lives and notice the ways that they themselves have adapted to change in order to get through their days sanely.

The way they’ve learned to weave a path around the kids’ scattered toys in the den? Dance. The enthusiasm they pretend at boring staff meetings and the cheery hellos they summon for their hated bosses? Theater. The little hum they use to calm the baby or themselves? Music. Their cleverly planted climbing roses and hollyhocks that hide the neighbors’ ugly fence? Art. 

Don’t these skills make their lives safer, pleasanter, better? You bet they do.

The word adaptability first came to me last night while I was contemplating the adjustments I’ve had to invent to survive running a start-up venture from my home - a home I share with a husband, a rabbit and two teenagers whose school schedules, social lives and computer demands frequently conflict with what I need to do to stay in business. 

Changing my own schedule so that I do a lot of my work late at night when everyone else is in bed was just the beginning. I’ve devised hiding places for the paper clips and Post-it notes that used to disappear from my (shared) desk; figured out how to get the electrical cords off the floor by rubber-banding them to the window locks, so the bunny can have a romp in the kitchen in the morning without chewing his way to a flash-fried demise before I exile myself to the office/guest room for the day; learned to live off handfuls of almonds for lunch so I can make meetings and be back for school pick-up at 3; acted positive and sung loud, therapeutic White Stripes songs when orthodontist appointments, school open-houses, music lessons, emergency shopping trips and forgotten gym clothes have totally and utterly blown up my goals for the day. 

And I haven’t bitten off all my hair yet or tried to smother myself with my little lumbar cushion. (Though I’ve come close.) So creativity really works. How do all those Americans think their convertible couches got designed in the first place?

Let’s make a hire

Well, the next few days ought to be interesting. Like every week since about last April, when I finally picked a launch date for my business and immediately acquired a to-do list the size of the national debt, this one has begun its life already crammed with obligations of every sort.

But among the more usual chores, such as seeking out new creative work for The Geniocity Shop and new bloggers for the Geniocity webzine and dealing with administrative stuff, I’ll also be conducting my first-ever interviews with official job candidates.

I’d like these to go well, naturally. So in the hope of not coming off as a complete nincowpoop, I’m working up some good questions and a comprehensive explanation of what the job and its goals involve. It’s not too different from preparing for an interview of a news source - you want to draw the person out, discover not only what he or she has done and experienced, but also what thought processes, perspectives, values, skills and creative ideas have shaped the individual’s character and work. 

But with a job candidate, you also have to be able to figure out if that person’s character and work will fit with the tasks and company culture the job brings with it. That’s what’s going to make the process an adventure for me.  I’m not much worried - more than anything, I’m elated at the prospect of getting some capable help with an important function that I have neither the time nor expertise to handle well myself. 

If I choose right, this hire could make an enormous difference to my company and to my peace of mind. If not … well, It may not be as funny as “Let’s Make a Deal,” but it won’t be ”The Lady, or the Tiger?” either. And at least I can be pretty sure my decision-making process won’t be interrupted by someone promising me $100 if I have a hard-boiled egg in my pocket.

Guerrilla girl

Hot and sweet! I guerrilla-marketed today and already have some response to show for it. Does anything  satisfy like instant gratification?

What I did was post free notices on a local Northeast Ohio subscriber list announcing Geniocity.com’s search for artists and ad salespeople and got replies from promising people almost immediately. This was a relief, as I’ve been pricing paid advertising in area publications and finding it well beyond my means.

The next thing I need to learn how to do (among dozens, alas) is to use Facebook and LinkedIn effectively to reach resource people and markets. For the last 18 months, I’ve been going through what amounts to a self-directed crash course in Internet use, trying to educate myself at odd moments about a system and culture that other people have been immersed in for 20 years. I’d say I’m still at the “Have you seen the pen of my uncle?” stage in mastering the language, but fluency may be mine one day.

In the meantime, I’m also trying to attract press interest by making direct appeals to individual media people I know and trust. That effort seems to be off to a good start, too.

And so, happily, is the weekend. Let’s celebrate with a tune! Bombs away ….

Setting a new insecurity standard

There are far too many days in the course of entrepreneurship when you feel marooned on a one-palm desert isle with chaos surging all around your tiny powdered doughnut of a beach.

Over the 24 hours from Tuesday night to Wednesday night, though, the chaos around my particular isle rose and swamped my last dry patch of sand and I have been clinging ever since, metaphorically speaking, to the slender, swaying, slippery stalk of my sanity.

It started - doesn’t it figure? - with a technology problem. I was informed by letter from one of my online service providers that my site needed to be in full compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and that I needed to arrange for certification. They recommended I sign up with a particular service that would scan (or scam? I was worried) my site and determine if its data security measured up.

Never mind that my tech advisor said these requirements are impossible to meet in a shared-server environment - I was evidently going to have to get this site scan or risk being fined for (scary, scofflaw, resisting-arrest kind of word) noncompliance.

So I signed up for the scan. Or tried to. With my tech experts unavailable, I had to fill out a questionnaire about all the servers and domains and waiters and city-states (or whatever) that my site uses and I tried hard to look up all the correct names, but after I submitted it, I realized I had put in one name that was probably wrong. The questionnaire wouldn’t let me go back and change it.

Then, after it got me to pick a scan time and lock it in irreversibly, then it told me I needed to get my server to agree to the scan in advance. Great - I had signed up on Sunday night for a 1 a.m. Monday scan.  

So by then I was pretty sure my site was going to go into convulsions and disappear after the scan, which reported to me the next morning that my site (but possibly the wrong part of it, thanks to my incorrect data entry) had FAILED - really failed, we’re talking an F-minus here - to meet the PCI DSS standards, even though we had just bought our own SSL and the store no longer got slapped with those ”you are moving to an insecure site” pop-ups when people tried to order things.

I was suffering from a cold and was not in a happy frame of mind, anyway. Being menaced with the prospect of an insulted server, underachieving site security and the PCI DSS police arriving to demand the deed to my house did not improve my disposition. I was bewildered, unnerved and not a little angry. My efforts to concentrate on my blog and my consulting work resulted mostly in a lot of empty coffee cups. 

But the computer world was not done with me. Tuesday morning, I tried to put up my daily blog post and found that I could not get into my own blog page. Now all my “1984,” persecution-complex paranoia churned into overdrive - everything was conspiring to undermine the cracked foundations of my confidence. The scan had melted my blog access (!?) I urgently needed to get to the bank … but the bank was closed for Veteran’s Day! I needed to advertise and social-network and call artists and interview bloggers and hire a salesperson and set up online bookkeeping and start a consulting project, but the antihistamines resisted. I especially needed to POST TO MY BLOG, but I still couldn’t get into it. Not all day.

Creative and innovative? I was barely lucid. 

By 11 Tuesday night, I had every tech whiz I knew (meaning pretty much anybody but me) trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my computer system or my waiter, er, server, or any other thing that might be to blame. Nothing could be done.

I went to bed feeling as if the world were doing a slow, disintegrating topple into ruin. First, our national security, then the environment, next the economy, and now our telecommunications system, my bank account and my business … all, all into the dark pit of cosmic dust.

I woke up with only a very loose grip on that palm trunk, I can tell you. Without even eating breakfast (a truly shocking departure, for those who know my routines), I sped to the bank and deposited money, sped back home again and - after eating, couldn’t stand it anymore - logged on to discover that my blog page would now LET ME IN. The tide of chaos seemed to ebb a bit.

In a burst of manic energy, I put up my post, answered my e-mail, did the household chores, sent out want ads and press releases, showered, dressed, had lunch (I’m incorrigible), called media people and artists, made appointments, began the consulting work, fetched home the children and cooked dinner.

And I’ve nearly completed my Thursday post. So I guess I’m recovering. Probably I’ll be OK as long as I don’t see the letters PCI DSS again.

Oh. Shoot …..

It must be bug season

I’ve been staggering around with a cold the last couple of days. My computer’s been hit with something, too, though I have no idea what it is yet.

I’m hoping we haven’t reached a stage of technological evolution where computers and their owners can come down with the same germs.

But whatever we have, my digital system and I, it’s affecting us in different ways. My computer has taken to its virtual bed and refuses to access certain addresses, as if it were some Victorian lady of refined society who suspects she has been slighted by some of her acquaintance and will no longer go calling to those homes where she is not sincerely welcomed. Her software consequently has the vapors.
I, on the other hand, being merely a laborer in her mansard-roofed house of microchips, may not lie abed genteelly flattened by my ailment, but must carry out my duties regardless of my weakened state and stuffy nose.

I had dismally resigned myself to operating in something like third gear yesterday morning and was succumbing to a last few moments of anguished immobility before flogging myself out of the sack, when I was suddenly struck by such a profound fed-uppedness at the stagnation of everything – the economy, my finances, the things in my house I can’t afford to fix, my business plans, me – that I arose from my mattress as if a spring had popped right under me, inexplicably determined to change some things I’ve been putting off out of sheer inertia and cowardice.

I had not realized before now that Disgust was one of the Muses.

But even though what it moved me to perform was not exactly creativity and innovation, what I finally got around to today – the first steps of reorganizing and redirecting some vital parts of my business – will allow me to be creative more effectively in future, if for no other reason than I won’t be fretting about the reorganization chores instead of thinking up ideas.

I may, however, still be debugging the computer. And sneezing.

Radio bedhead

Hey, there. Sorry I’m late. I had a bit of an adventure this morning.

A number of weeks ago, Cleveland’s Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE) sent out an e-mail message inviting member businesses to apply to be on the COSE Spotlight segment of the Lanigan & Malone Morning Show on WMJI/105.7 FM. The station takes five minutes every Monday morning to put a representative of a COSE company on the air so the drive-time hosts can try to guess the nature of the business and then give the visitor a chance to talk about the company’s products or services. 

I responded to the e-mail promptly and was lucky enough to be chosen - really lucky, considering that COSE has about 17,000 members. 

The only drawback was having to get up at 5 this morning in order to get clean, dressed, fed and more or less conscious and still make it through I-480 traffic in time to arrive at the station by 8. I am, shall we say, not a morning person.

But I so overcompensated for delays and my own native sluggishness that I got to station-owner Clear Channel’s office in Independence at least 15 minutes early. Not even the receptionist was there yet, so I sat around fighting the seductive gravity of sleep until two COSE staff members showed up to oversee the event and keep me awake with genial chitchat.

The actual Spotlight is truly brief. First, John Lanigan and Jimmy Malone ask you to state your name and give them a clue about your business. Then they make a good-natured stab at guessing what it is. But mostly they let you describe it, chiming in with a comment or two and making sure that, before you leave, you’ve told listeners the company name a couple of times and explained how to reach it by phone or internet. 

It’s a nice service for local small businesses. I mean, free advertising - it’s like getting an early Christmas present, especially in a year when there are going to be fewer presents than usual. With luck, a lot of people in WMJI’s listening area have now at least heard of Geniocity.com and a few may even visit the site.

And all it cost me was the admitted agony of getting out of bed in the dark. I lived. And maybe I’ll prosper, too.  Thanks, COSE and WMJI.

When take-out is better than homemade

So much of what we need and want has become available in stores, ready-made, that Americans have developed a reverse snobbery about anything made from scratch.

This didn’t used to be the case - only a century ago, people oohed enviously over decorated bakery cakes and department-store clothes, while putting up their own canned goods and knitting their own lumpy sweaters because they had to. Only the rich could afford the fancy stuff made by professionals.

Now, however, we get such a staggering percentage of our goods and services from specialists in the business of providing them that the rare loaf of home-baked bread or the even rarer hand-crocheted baby blanket is greeted as if it were a Faberge egg. It’s become normal for people to have less time than money; consequently, made-it-myself stuff - from kindergartners’ Halloween costumes to crown molding - has become special, chic, the best.

Except in business. I’m not talking about the products, I’m talking about the business: Who in the world thinks keeping the books herself and writing the press releases herself and managing the inventory herself and teaching herself e-marketing late at night has any cachet?

I sure don’t. My artist contracts are not more glorious because I fill them in and print them out myself. I wish like hell I had all kinds of money to rent a big office away from my home and pay experts to speed brilliantly through the jobs I’m still struggling to figure out.  I dream of advertising and sales managers and a real staffed newsroom the way the Cratchit children dreamed of gleaming toy-shop presents and a 30-lb. roast goose.

No, a homemade business operation is not something to point out with shy pride to your dinner party guests as if it were a mahogany breakfront you’d just built or a beer you microbrewed in the basement. A homemade business operation is something you stay abashed and quiet about until you finally get capitalized and can bring in the best, most effective, already assembled, solid-thunk-when-you-slam-the-door type support your cold hard cash and good credit can buy.

Quiet, that is, unless you’re a blogger.

Have yourself a locally made little Christmas

“I don’t want an orphan’s tree,” said Tootie Smith.

The littlest character in Sally Benson’s sweet novella, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” was dismayed at her grandpa’s mock-serious warning that Christmas might not be much that year, just some fruit in their stockings and an evergreen trimmed with berries and nuts. The prospect made Tootie start to cry.

The holiday turned out better than that for the Smiths, in spite of money always being tight in their family of five children. But the rest of us may not be that lucky: The economy is so bad, a story in yesterday’s New York Times said, that Wal-Mart will probably be the only retailer in the nation to wake up to a big, glittering package of profits on Christmas morning.

I don’t want an orphan’s tree, either, though it’s logical for people with little to spend on presents to buy only what’s practical, cheap or both. Still, who wants to find nothing but econopacks of tube socks and bargain DVDS in her brightly wrapped gift boxes? 

The truth is, shopping at a giant factory depot like Wal-Mart may be smart if necessities and mass-produced stuff are what will make your loved ones’ holidays brighter. But it’s also simply unimaginative. Dull. Not to mention destructive to local economies, which depend largely on the jobs, goods and services generated by local entrepreneurs and small businesses.

And the truth is that everyone wants to give and get something a little special on a special occasion - not something you can find 100 billion cheap, identical, factory-made versions of.

So how do you get special and affordable? Get creative: Make things yourself, or buy locally made creative goods. There are so many kinds, no matter where you live - art, crafts, foods, clothes, toys, books, tickets to live performances, useful things and purely enjoyable ones, all unique and all devised by talented people who make your community a more interesting and economically healthy place to live. Just look around and you’ll start discovering endless gifts that could turn the holiday into a standout instead of an assembly-line copy. 

I admit I have something to gain from urging you to be more inventive with your small budget. The Geniocity Shop sells original glass, jewelry, films, pictures and more, many of them costing between $10 and $50, and nearly all of them by artists local to my company’s Northeast Ohio community. The artists are the ones who benefit most from Geniocity Shop sales. But if my shop doesn’t have something you want, dozens of other locally-owned and -stocked shops in your area will, whatever area that is.

So go ahead and buy your cost-effective, mass-made utility presents from the big-box stores, if they save you money. But for the special little gifts that will thrill, delight and turn into lifetime treasures and memories for the people you value, step into the stores owned by your neighborhood entrepreneurs.

Tootie will be happy you did.