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The DIY Entrepreneur's Motivational Poster

I saw this photo (minus the caption) at Cute Overload and thought it would make a great motivational poster illustrating entrepreneurism.

But how do I make one of those motivational poster thingys?

No problem! Here's something cool that I found out about from Kristin Gorski--there is a DIY motivational poster generator called AutoMotivator. You can use one of their photos and insert your own caption, or you can upload a photo and use that (that's what I did here).

Pretty cool, huh?

So, do you think this poster will be a big seller for me? :-)

I'm taking pre-orders now! (kidding)

BONUS Question: How does this photo illustrate the entrepreneurial spirit?

Sidenote:

Psst! BTW, you may have noticed that this post has been sitting at the top here for a while now--I am on a little break from eSoup, but will be back soon. My writing plate is full--you know how that is! :-)

Learning New Habits Stretches Your Mind--Literally!

  Stretch Your Mind 
  Originally uploaded by abv

I used to work in administration for a hospital, and one of my duties was to supervise the volunteers.

My favorite volunteer was Mrs. P, who was 80 years old, full of life and enthusiasm and always had a full schedule of activities going on. I'm telling you--this tiny silver haired lady had a work and social life that was more full than most people half her age!

If she wasn't volunteering at the hospital, she was organizing fund raisers for her favorite causes, taking computer classes, going to the gym 3 times a week to lift weights, playing pinochle or bridge with her friends, and sitting on various boards for the museum or the hospital or whatever.

I was just amazed at her passion and her energy, and when I asked her what her secret was she said, "I always keep trying new things. I deliberately set out to learn new activities and skills, and that's what keeps my mind sharp."

Her words have always stuck with me and made sense--by learning new things we stretch our minds, and stretching our minds increases our ability to think in creative and problem solving ways.

Recently I saw an article in the New York Times that supports this idea. Actually the New York Times article said that basically any type of new habit that we initiate has the ability to positively impact our mental dexterity and creativity:

How Artists Do The Web Differently

I know that most of us are on the web because this is where our work is, but for a lot of us there is an artistic element to our online aspirations that gets stifled when we follow the herd who tells us all the stuff we should be doing and worrying about technology-wise.

This is why Robert Bruce turned me upside down (in a good way) with his guest post on Problogger called 27 Thoughts On Blogging For The Artist.

He doesn't pull any punches, and his points just made me think and acknowledge--are my activities/ways of approaching the internet leading me closer to or away from what it means to be an artist?

My faves of Robert's thoughts on Art and the Web:

6. If you’re spending more time on Twitter than on your novel/painting/film/poem/play/sculpture, you’re dead.

7. The creation of great art has nothing to do with Community.

9. If you’re the real thing, you’ll be around in 30 years, still working. Most of these services and sites you now admire will not.

13. Aim for Greatness, not the front page of Digg.

15. Though tempting, you’ll never crush your own mediocrity working only four hours a week.

Getting Ready For TV Turnoff Week!

  TV-Turnoff 
  Originally uploaded by TijmenK

The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely. -T.S. Eliot

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. -Charles W. Eliot  

I really didn't like TV-Turnoff Week except I did notice that my grades went up and I was in a good mood all week. -Drew Henderson, 2nd grade

It is that time of year again, folks--TV Turnoff week is next week April 21-27, and I challenge all of us to turn off the boob tube and find some other way to occupy our minds. I'm telling you--if you are used to watching TV every day, then this will be a healthy challenge for ya!

A few years ago I participated in my first TV Turnoff week, and found it so much harder than I was expecting. Apparently I was much more dependent on TV than I thought! But I knew that I was adding value to my life by spending less time watching TV, and I came up with a way to completely ween myself off TV for an entire year!

Here are some resources that will help you take on this challenge and ween yourself off of TV:

The saga of how I gave up TV for an entire year

10 ways to cope with going TV free

How To Get Started Reading More Books & What To Read When You Do

Everyone, let's get ready for next week. Is anyone else gonna do this? I'm telling you it may change your life--it changed mine!

I'd like my crayons back, please

  Box-o-Crayons for Tricia [83/365] 
  Originally uploaded by turbojoe

Everyone is born creative. Everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I'd like my crayons back, please."

So you've got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don't know where the itch came from, it's almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person...

Until now.

~Gaping Void

How napping can stimulate creativity

  poetry boat 
  Originally uploaded by bbmarie

Creative ideas are the bread and butter of any entrepreneur. A great problem solving idea can become a large part of your livelihood, and the continuing growth of your business is depended on your ability to create more groundbreaking ideas.

It's not always easy though. Some ideas seem to come out of thin air, some are spurred by our own experiences (necessity is the mother of invention), and still other ideas come about more mystically. Since we're so dependent on new ideas, wouldn't it be nice if we could take some specific steps to increase our chances of coming up with an earth shattering idea?

I'm thinking of two particular creative thinkers whose greatest ideas resulted during or immediately after a time of sleep:

No Mere Mortals

One ordinary looking, mild mannered man who worked in an everyday boring job finally garners the confidence to come out of his everyday quiet life to show his gift. First, everyone looks at him like, "Please, do I have to endure this boring man's attempts at singing?".

He doubts if he is good enough. He has serious issues with confidence. He is used to people making fun of him for being different. But one day he finally gets up the courage to be himself and to risk the mockery of a panel of judges and a live audience.

This is what happened on that day:

Internet killed the resume star

  internet killed the record store 
  Originally uploaded by adoresubtract_photo

Remember back in the day when job seekers used to labor over their resumes, trying valiantly to impress their prospective employers within the narrow boundaries of a pristine, personality-free, humor-less, vanilla piece of letterhead paper?

Thank goodness those days have come to an end. Seth Godin asks the question-- Why bother having a resume when there are so many more creative and potent ways of showing someone you want to work with what you're made of, who you are, and what brilliance you're capable of?

After all, don't we want to know/show more than just dates of employment and job descriptions? Yawn!

The resume is dead. If you want to truly get that client, that job, that project, you need to step out of the box and market yourself and your abilities in a more creative way.

Torch your resume or anything you have on your website that looks like a resume. Stop being ordinary and get to work on these drop dead impressive personal marketing tactics:

The top 5 classic problogger myths: EXPOSED!

  Is that a unicorn on your shoulder ...
   Originally uploaded by tartx

You've probably heard mythical tales about folks building sites from scratch, earning enough off the site to quit their day job, and later selling the site for a gazillion dollars or more.

We love those stories, because it sounds like every office renegade's fantasy--work in your pajamas, write from your heart, play around for most the day, rake in embarrassing amounts of cash. Ahhh, that's the life!

The truth is that there is as much myth as fact mixed in with that fantasy.

I've studied problogging, worked with some of the biggest blog rockstars in the business, and have even tried my own hand at it, and one thing I've learned is that behind the myth, behind the fantasies, behind the growing amount of media attention this hot new internet career is garnering, there is a solid, legitimate, long term business opportunity for those willing to invest the significant time, resources, and energy needed to start with nothing and grow a site into a cash cow.

If you've ever had the inkling that you might be able to turn your blog into a business but just aren't sure, you might wanna confront these classic problogging myths first:

How To Schedule Your Blogging Time Like A Professional Writer

Whether you think of yourself as a professional writer or not, if you have a blog (or two, or three, or four, or more!), it's a sure thing that you'll find yourself writing pretty much every day, and after a while you'll start to wonder:

How could I be organizing my time in such a way as to get the most creativity and productivity out of my blogging time?

I found myself in that situation last year, and I discovered that the difference between being able to post 3 times a week (or less) on one blog and being able to post twice a day on multiple blogs was all determined in how I scheduled my writing time.