Go ahead, have bad idea or two. It’s on me!

Sometimes you gotta look at a bunch of bad ideas, just to stumble upon one stroke of genius. Maybe not everybody, some people just have strokes of genius everyday. But for most people I’ve found that strokes of genius are few and far between. But they don’t have to be.

If you want some new ideas to move your business forward, you gotta start having bad ideas – and lots of them! It’s sort of like having to kiss a bunch a frogs just to get to a prince. Thinking outside of the box means you have to be willing to kiss those frogs and not be ashamed of it. That means that sometimes you’ll do a lot of things that don’t work, but that sure beats doing nothing at all.

Let me emphasize that you have to have a LOT of bad ideas. If you just have one bad idea, or try one thing that doesn’t work – you’ve kissed a frog. Nothing more. You may have a great story to tell, but all you’ve done is kiss a frog. Remember you have to kiss LOTS of frogs to get to the prince. Brainstorming, new ideas, creativity and innovation work that way, too.

In my younger days, I had a not-so-attractive buddy who always managed to snag the pretty girls when we went out. Why? His theory… “If you walk right up to ten good-looking women in a bar and ask if they want to have sex with you, one of them will say, ‘Yes!’” Not a tactic I’d recommend, but he walked into the club willing to kiss nine frogs to get his prince – and he knew it would work for him!

When I was a magazine editor my favorite monthly team meeting was the titles and headlines meeting. Here, once the stories were written and the photos taken, our editorial and design staff would get together and brainstorm the article titles and magazine headlines. The goal was to get the BEST ideas that would capture the reader’s attention and make them read further. My goal, as the team leader, was often to throw out the most ridiculous suggestions I could think of! Most of the time it got everybody laughing, loosened up and coming up with some really good stuff, once they realized it was okay to have some really bad ideas. Once I got everybody kissing frogs, the princes started showing up!

So here’s a shout out to my former running partner and my former staff members (shout back if you’d like!). I use you as examples to make my point that this ain’t rocket science… you just gotta start kissin’ frogs.

PEACE.

Just Brainstormin’… “Making the most of common sense and creativity.”

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