Every story has a back story. And every back story has a back story -- the mysterious plot without which the story about to be told would not be a story. And so, in the spirit of full disclosure, here's the back story of The Year of Living Creatively -- a bold, new online service of mine with the potential to make a profound difference in your life.

In 1987, along with my best friend, Steven McHugh, I started Idea Champions, a training and consulting company whose mission it was to spark creativity and innovation in organizations around the world.

In the beginning of our start-up efforts, we had no money. Zippo. Nada. Zilch. But we had something way more valuable. An idea. An inspired idea. A big idea. An idea SO big and so inspiring that we could not stop thinking about it. It kept us up at night. We thought about it in the shower. While we slept. And though it would be fair to say we had a monumental idea, the real truth was that the monumental idea had us.

Our first client made $600,000 with a single idea they generated in the first brainstorming session we ran for them. Our third client, AT&T, licensed our Get Out of the Box creative thinking training -- the first creative training AT&T had ever purchased. Then came GE, Merck, General Mills, Pfizer, MTV, Lucent, Allianz, Goodyear, and 100 other companies in 11 different countries -- all wanting to unlock and unleash the creative brainpower of their workforce.

For two counter-culture guys in their late 30's, this was quite an adventure, especially since we had always considered corporations to be "the bad guys."

Not everything we did worked. Like most entrepreneurs, we had plenty of false starts, flops, and failures. But no matter what happened -- or didn't happen -- we kept on adapting, inventing, and learning. What, specifically, were we learning? How to catalyze creativity and innovation in others. How to help all kinds of people navigate their way through the long and often winding road of their own creative process.

Fast forward to 2020.

When Covid-19 hit the fan, I was in Australia, working with an Islamic school. Overnight, I had to transform everything I did into an online experience. Oof! Ouch! Ugh! The resistance lasted for a week. Then I started noodling on a very provocative question: "How can I distill down everything I've learned in the past 33 years and make it available -- online -- to as many people as possible around the world?"

Badaboom! Badabing! That's when the idea for The Year of Living Creatively hit me upside the head -- a simple, inexpensive, user-friendly way for people to get the support they need to increase their odds of manifesting their most inspired ideas, dreams, and ventures.

You want the elevator speech? The Year of Living Creatively is a chiropractic adjustment for your creative process -- an engaging way to unlock and unleash your brilliance -- an intentional, time-efficient approach to help you go over, under, around, and through whatever obstacles are preventing you from manifesting your heart's desire. Bottom line, it's a cool way to neutralize the Big Bad Wolf on your way to grandma's house.

And while it's not a magic pill, it CAN work magic.

It's not a class. It's not a workshop. And it's not a training. It's an ongoing, catalytic process to awaken your innate creativity, insight, wisdom, and commitment.

HOW IT WORKS: There are five, interconnected elements to The Year of Living Creatively.

1. SELF-ASSESSMENT: To make sure YOLC is a good fit for you, all you need to do is click this link and respond to the "Are You Ready for The Year of Living Creatively" self-inquiry page. In ten minutes, you'll know if this program is worth your time.

2. SELF-INQUIRY: Once a week, you'll receive a link to an online self-inquiry page (like this one) that will help you reflect on a specific aspect of your creative process. If you're stuck, the page will help you get unstuck. If you're already unstuck, the page will spark a quantum leap of thought, insight, and action. Each page will require 15-30 minutes of your time.

3. CREATIVE COMMUNITY: Once a month, you'll be invited to participate in a 90-minute ZOOM session -- a virtual campfire around which all Year of Living Creatively subscribers will gather. This will be an opportunity to pause, dive deeper into your creative process, and get the support you need from other members of the community. PS: Even though the creative process requires lots of solitude, it also requires connection, community, and collaboration.

4. CREATIVE PROCESS PARTNERSHIP: Each member of the Year of Living Creatively community will be paired up with another member -- someone to connect with, periodically, for support, feedback, fresh perspectives, and accountability. Two heads are better than one.

5. PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: All subscribers will be invited to join the Year of Living Creatively FB group -- an asynchronous way to stay in touch with each other, share progress, ask questions, share resources, get inspired, and otherwise keep your creative fires burning.

YOU HAVE CHOICES! Choose from four different subscription options: 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, or 12 months. The cost? Less than a cappuccino per week (but the buzz will last a lot longer.) The launch date? Sometime in April. Want to be on our mailing list? Let us hear from you: office@ideachampions.com

RELATED IDEA CHAMPIONS SERVICES:

Free the Genie
Microlearning for Innovators
Wisdom Circles
Client testimonials

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

Recently, I had the great good fortune of being a guest on Gil Hanson's Be Your Best podcast. Gil, who is a world-class personal branding expert and masterful graphic designer, is extremely knowledgeable in the art of bringing out the best in people -- not just his clients, but his podcast guests, as well. Gil asked me a series of great questions on innovation, creativity, and storytelling that sparked quite an animated conversation.

If you're curious about the roots of Idea Champions, what it takes to create something out of nothing, and how my fledgling start-up scored a huge contract from AT&T by teaching their Director of Learning and Development how to juggle in just five minutes, you've come to the right place. Click here to listen. Episode #22.

Gil's Design Personal Brand website
The Year of Living Creatively
Free the Genie: Online Creative Thinking
MitchDitkoff.com
Idea Champions

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

Good, sound advice from Thinkific on figuring out what to charge for your online course.

Idea Champions

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

Covid-19 hasn't just disrupted businesses around the world, it has also disrupted their ability to innovate. And one of the biggest reasons WHY can be traced to one simple factor: isolation.

With most people working from home and scrambling to survive, the opportunities for "thought partners" to connect with each other in meaningful ways have radically declined -- and along with it opportunities to ideate, problem solve, and think out of the box.

Pre-Covid, this was the main thrust of Idea Champions' work. We designed and facilitated a wide range of creative thinking sessions for our clients -- opportunities for them to unleash their collective brilliance and make significant progress on a specific goal, initiative, or opportunity.

Those days, at least for now, are over. Everything is virtual. Zoomified. And that is precisely why we have reinvented HOW we deliver services to our clients.

Enter Free the Genie -- the distillation of 33 years of sparking innovation for organizations in 11 different countries.

Free the Genie, quite simply, is a facilitated online brainstorming session -- a way for our clients to get a fresh look at what they do and how they do it -- a way to generate the kind of game changing ideas, mindset, and commitment required to make a quantum leap.

TAKEAWAYS:

- One new approach to framing out a problem in a bold, new way
- A much clearer vision of what you want to create
- Deeper access to your own untapped brilliance
- A dependable way to enter into a creative mindset
- A wide variety of actionable ideas
- At least one breakthrough insight or AHA
- Tons of positive momentum
- New tactics to use in brainstorming sessions
- Techniques to "free the genie" on your team
- At least one good laugh and two eye rolls

Sessions are 60 minutes long, preceded by 15 minutes of pre-work. Maximum number of participants: four. No contracts required. You can sign up for one "jump start" session or a series. $175 per session. Includes a free deck of Free the Genie cards.

To schedule a Free the Genie session: office@ideachampions.com

What our clients say
Idea Champions
Brainstorm Champions

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)