Yesterday was a powerful day for me. Thursday is my networking day and I met over 100 people starting at 6:00 AM all the way to 8:00 PM. A long day.

But I was energized when I got home.

Here’s a quick synopsis:

5-6 AM – Commute (beat the traffic!)
6-7 AM – Blog at Starbucks, meet new people.
7-9 AM – BNI Networking Meeting – My Sales Force.
9-11 AM - Catchup Meeting with an influential force in Finance.
11-2 PM – Lunch and Brainstorming meeting with a future partner.
2-4 PM – Meeting with a new colleague – helping with his job situation.
4-6 PM – Mastermind/Networking Group – a great time was had by all.
6-8 PM – Client’s Grand Re-Opening Celebration – lots of networking.
8-9 PM – Commute home (listen to motivational audiobooks).

I made a lot of new friends and deepened relationships with many current ones.

Bottom line — this is the life-blood of my business and career.

An esteemed colleague quoted Michael Gerber last night, “Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.” He couldn’t be more correct.

I came home last night with a pile of new business cards, a bunch of referral slips, and a small list of to-do’s to get out by the end of the day today. 

I made new friends. I deepened relationships with current friends. And I hope I helped a few people along the way.

That’s the profession I’ve chosen — and I love it every single day.

What do you do to make new friends during the work-week?

The High Line, an old elevated rail-bed turned world-class park, has generated $2 billion in private investment and 12,000 new jobs in the area, including 8,000 new construction jobs.

Who would have thought?

A simple idea, mixed with enthusiastic support equals powerful change.

So how do you think creatively? Here’s how I do it:

Step One – Eliminate Distractions

Turn off your email. Set your phone to voicemail. Go to an area where there are no home or work distractions. Sit in a comfortable chair with a clean table (a dining room table works best – dining rooms are BORING). Tell everyone to leave you alone for one hour.

Step Two – Get A Clean Piece Of Paper

If you can get an 11″ x 17″ sheet, great! Or regular size is fine too. Just make it white and clean. Get your favorite pen, pencil, or marker – we are going for broad-brush ideas. No erasers  - allowed mistakes and changed directions are encouraged!

Step Three – Don’t Second Guess . . . Brainstorm

Now start laying out your idea. What are the basic elements? Don’t write sentences . . . keep it to bold words or short phrases. Circle them. Cross stuff out (don’t worry about making a mess). Fill the page with all the disparate ideas, tasks, activities, people, things, etc. you can think of.

Step Four – Step Back . . . Look For Connections

Now step back and look for ways to connect ideas together. Connect the What to the When to the Who to the Where. Forget about Why and How for now. Just focus on connecting, building, modifying, editing, and forming your creative vision.

Step Five – Build An Idea . . . Develop Activities . . . Set Dates

Now take a clean sheet and begin to move over the salient elements to coalesce your vision. Start to priortize each step, which one should come first, then second, then third. Start assigning how long each will take (ballpark) and who needs to be involved. Then align them all and develop a schedule.

Try it. This is how I develop new ideas for my business. It’s worked for me for over 30 years. 

Now it’s your turn.

If you’re interested in The High Line, click here.

Commuting sucks. Anywhere you go, if you are on a parkway, highway, or thruway between 7-9 AM, you’re probably swearing. You can blame it on anything — accidents, volume, weather — there will always be traffic congestion. You want to go 55, 65, 75 — but you’re currently going 5. And the radio is just making it worse by intermixing the 15 minutes of commercials with a traffic helicopter telling you that there is traffic on YOUR route.

My average commute (one-way, without traffic) is one hour — so I feel that I have a good handle on what the typical commuter endures every day. By the way, I totally understand about public transportation (I use it too) — but this post focuses solely on car commuting.

Why not work from home? Not every day. You need a few good ideas to help your commute become a bit more bearable. So here goes:

1. Listen to really good music. Most people I know don’t plan their ride effectively when it comes to the enjoyment of music. They either just turn the radio on, grin and bear it through the bad music choices/commercials OR they drive around with the same six CD’s in their car for the past year. One strategy is to pre-plan your music the night before — either on CD, Smartphone, or iPod — to ensure that you get a freshness and variety to make your ride fun. In addition, try using the shuffle or genius mode on your player to keep the mix of the songs fresh. Finally, if you aren’t acquainted with the app Pandora, check it out — it changed my listening habits forever.
2. Read a book. Whoops . . . I meant LISTEN to a book. I find that I ‘read’ more than I did in college by using downloadable books. Why downloadable? It’s soooo much cheaper. Instead of trying to manage 6-10 CD’s, the entire book is neatly stored on my Smartphone or iPod. In addition to keeping the exact place where I left off, it allows me to carry it anywhere. And here’s the best part — most audiobooks today aren’t read by stuffy, upper-crust, gentry — they are now read by the author who adds so much more energy and information to the original book. Check this one out — you’ll be surprised.
3. Listen to a podcast. This is my hidden secret of iPods that most users don’t know about. There are millions of people and organizations who regularly post incredible podcasts (extended talkshows) on iTunes. They range from music reviews to UFO’s, comedy to history — and they’re unbelievable.
4. Brainstorm in the car. Go buy a digital tape recorder or use your Smartphone/iPod and begin talking. I find that I do my best brainstorming, strategizing, and thinking in the shower and in the car. Just turn it on and start talking — you’ll be surprised what great ideas come out of your rambling. In addition, you can think up to-do lists, or dictate emails that can be electronically transfered once you hit the office.
5. Leave earlier. I know — some of you probably are swearing at this one. You might not be a morning person or your boss wants you to work late. But this is the one that usually cures all ills when it comes to your commute. I leave at 5:30 AM and get to work (95% of the time) at 6:30 AM. If I leave a bit early or on time, I get in 9.5 to 10.5 hours of work each day (I work through lunches). That’s between 47-53 hours of work every week — a healthy amount if the boss starts to complain. I might hit a bit of traffic on my way home, but I can deal with it. And if your boss begins to complain about you leaving early, you need to talk to me, I can help you overcome this ridiculous behavior.

Let me know what ways you use to make your commute more bearable!

I’ve been running my executive advisory and coaching practice for the past 10 years. I’ve never had a meeting like I had yesterday.

Working with the marketing arm of the Rich Gee Group, called Nurenu Brand Marketing — BJ, Trevor and the crew took me through key thinking and planning that will help me move my business to the next ten levels!

I’m at the ‘Critical Mass’ stage right now – I have the foundational elements – I have the knowledge and experience — “we have the technology, we can rebuild him. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man.”

Over the next few months, you are going to see the Rich Gee Group hit new heights — all because of a single afternoon conversation. Now don’t get me wrong, there will be a lot of action planning, activities, tasks, sweat and tears — but it all started with a Conversation. Thank you Nurenu!

Who can YOU talk to? Who do YOU bounce ideas off of? As I say: “One conversation can change your life!”

If you show a client a highly polished computer layout, they will probably reject it.

By Paul Arden in It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be (an incredible book!)

There is either too much to worry about or not enough to worry about. They are equally bad. It is a fait accompli.

There is nothing the them to do. It’s not their work, it’s your work. They don’t feel involved.

If they don’t like the face of the girl in your rendering, or the style of the trousers worn by the man on the right., or your choice of the car he’s driving, they will reject it.

They won’t see the big idea. They will look at the girl’s face and think, ‘I don’t like her, this doesn’t feel right.’ It is very difficult for them to imagine anything else if what you show them has such detail.

Show the client a scribble.

Explain it to them, talk them through it, let them use their imagination. Get them involved.

Because you haven shown the exact way it’s going to be, there’s scope to interpret it and develop and change it as you progress.

Work with them rather than confronting them with your idea.

Advertising guru Paul Arden is a creative genius whose extraordinary drive and energy is allied to a kind of common sense that just isn’t, well, common. In 1993 he set up the London-based production company Arden Sutherland-Dodd where he is now a commercials director for clients such as BT, BMW, Ford, Nestle and Levis.

It encourages team interaction and performance rather than stroking egos at brainstorming meetings.

Early in the 1980s Dr. de Bono invented the Six Thinking Hats method. The method is a framework for thinking and can incorporate lateral thinking.

Organizations such as Prudential Insurance, IBM, Federal Express, British Airways, Polaroid, Pepsico, DuPont, and Nippon Telephone and Telegraph use the Six Thinking Hats methodology. The six hats represent six modes of thinking and are directions to think rather than labels for thinking. That is, the hats are used proactively rather than reactively.

The method promotes fuller input from more people. In de Bono’s words it “separates ego from performance”. Everyone is able to contribute to the exploration without denting egos as they are just using the yellow hat or whatever hat. The six hats system encourages performance rather than ego defense. People can contribute under any hat even though they initially support the opposite view.

The key point is that a hat is a direction to think rather than a label for thinking. The key theoretical reasons to use the Six Thinking Hats are to:

• encourage Parallel Thinking
• encourage full-spectrum thinking
• separate ego from performance

The published book Six Thinking Hats (de Bono, 1985) explains the system, although there have been some additions and changes to the execution of the method. The following is an excerpt from John Culvenor:

There are six metaphorical hats and the thinker can put on or take off one of these hats to indicate the type of thinking being used. This putting on and taking off is essential. The hats must never be used to categorize individuals, even though their behavior may seem to invite this. When done in group, everybody wear the same hat at the same time.

White Hat thinking

This covers facts, figures, information needs and gaps. “I think we need some white hat thinking at this point…” means Let’s drop the arguments and proposals, and look at the data base.”

Red Hat thinking

This covers intuition, feelings and emotions. The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an intuition without any ned to justify it. “Putting on my red hat, I think this is a terrible proposal.” Ususally feelings and intuition can only be introduced into a discussion if they are supported by logic. Usually the feeling is genuine but the logic is spurious.The red hat gives full permission to a thinker to put forward his or her feelings on the subject at the moment.

Black Hat thinking

This is the hat of judgment and caution. It is a most valuable hat. It is not in any sense an inferior or negative hat. The rior or negative hat. The black hat is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit the facts, the available experience, the system in use, or the policy that is being followed. The black hat must always be logical.

Yellow Hat thinking

This is the logical positive. Why something will work and why it will offer benefits. It can be used in looking forward to the results of some proposed action, but can also be used to find something of value in what has already happened.

Green Hat thinking

This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, what is interesting, provocations and changes.

Blue Hat thinking

This is the overview or process control hat. It looks not at the subject itself but at the ‘thinking’ about the subject. “Putting on my blue hat, I feel we should do some more green hat thinking at this point.” In technical terms, the blue hat is concerned with meta-cognition.