At the back end of 2009, I set one of my goals to collaborate more - one area where I hadn’t anticipated collaboration though, was writing. Having already written a couple of books I was confident in my writing style and didn’t feel I needed anyone else. But then I started a collaboration with David Sloly, when our ideas collided to create Unplan Your Business in 2010. That led to our first co-written book ‘Zoom!’ in 2011; and yesterday we just submitted our manuscript for a new book ‘Mash-Up!’ that is out later in the year.

One of the benefits of collaborating on a book is that you can blend your respective ideas together to create a more powerful and valuable end product, incorporating thinking and themes that you just wouldn’t have included without the other’s input. But to be honest, the key benefit for me is simpler than all that: it’s more fun writing with someone else. After all writing is a solitary experience so it’s great to have someone to share the journey with. Collaborating has also forced me to be more structured in how I write. Although I am naturally ‘anti-process’, working with someone else has required a system - however agile - that is critical where we have just three months to transform an idea into a manuscript.

Below is a little film shot in my kitchen where David and I reflect on what it’s like writing together: on the three-stage writing process we have pioneered; on dealing with pressure; and how we turn a bunch of thoughts and words into - hopefully - an awesome book.

Consultant. Expert. Entrepreneur. Strategist. Author. Writer. I’ve been called many things in my self-employed career but at the end of the day, like everyone else who doesn’t take a pay cheque - essentially I’m a freelancer. That’s important to remember, to stay focused on how and why I work. I go from project to project, creating opportunities, getting paid for results. After twelve years working for myself, I’ve put this two page PDF together: ‘12 Things I’ve Learnt in 12 Freelance Years’. You can also check it out below:

So my third book ‘Zoom!’ is now well and truly published; it’s on the bookshelves in UK stores and the first international orders are now being fulfilled. At the same time, I’m already working on book four, ‘Mash-Up’ (my second collaboration with David Sloly). So it’s that part of the journey where post-it notes are being stuck on the wall, interviews and research conducted, and evenings invested in editing and writing.

Of course, in this world you can’t *just* be an author anymore, you have to be a content creator (as well as a promoter of course). Content creation doesn’t stop with the manuscript, you have to think about the guest posts you’ll write for other sites, the video interviews you’ll grab so you have extra content, the stories you’ll reversion into manifestos and so on.

That multi-platform landscape is now where all marketing is played out and it’s something I evangelise to my business clients, ensuring that their message and content sweats, that they tell their story simultaneously across different platforms.

One of my own goals is to to become platform-agnostic in my business storytelling; to not stop at books, columns, blog posts or videos. So I’ve just started contributing to Monocle magazine’s new online radio channel Monocle 24, interviewing business pioneers for their show ‘The Entrepreneurs’. I’ve loved the quality of Monocle content since they launched the print title; now having contributed to the magazine it’s great to tell entrepreneurial stories for Monocle 24. Sure - this is not going to replace core business as the dominant activity, but it’s a natural by-product, another string to my bow. And on a personal note, conducting interviews takes me back twenty five years to when I started out, working on BBC local radio. One of my first interviews, back in November 1986 when I’d just left school, was with Billy Bragg (I’ve put it on YouTube here). The current series of interviews for Monocle includes Guy Kawasaki, Founder of Moo.com Richard Moross and French Radio London CEO Pascal Grierson. They’ll be featuring on ‘The Entrepreneurs’ show over the coming weeks, check the website here or follow me on Twitter for details on when they go live.

So have a think how the shifting content landscape can enable you to add another string to your bow. What additional talents or products can you offer the market? Have a think about those natural by-products. Can multiple platform opportunities act as a catalyst for your skills going ‘multi-media’ in 2012?

Stop thinking singular; start acting plural!

A couple of themes converged for me recently: one) the potential of a side project: what you can do in your spare time if you put your mind to it; two) the importance of making an idea happen fast, rather than leave it gathering dust on a shelf.

So first, the side project. When I talk to some people about opportunities they can explore outside of their day job, they tell me they have no time. No time? Yep, they’re too busy watching TV or whatever. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want to develop your talents in a new area or try stuff out, you might need to make some sacrifices. Doing it ‘on the side’ is a perfect way of prototyping ideas or even shaping your next career move (as Shane Mac remind us in this great little video). So when my wife and I said let’s create a manifesto of thoughts in words and doodles, we gave up TV for a week and created it on the side.

The result is ‘Little Twenty’, a seven page ebook that you can check out by clicking below. We could have sat on that idea for weeks or months but instead we decided to roll our sleeves up and just get on with it, creating it.  The results aren’t perfect; our manifesto is hardly going to deliver a new book deal or change the world but it’s a nudge in the right direction. And we think it’s better doing *something* with an idea than nothing at all. I showed it to a publisher friend who made some smart suggestions about target audiences, niches and giving it more focus. And he’s right - it’s very much a work in progress, there are improvements to be made. But as I advocate in my new book ‘Zoom!’, it’s often more important to make your ideas happen fast, launch in beta, as a prototype. So, that’s what we’ve done with ‘Little Twenty’. We've just put it out there, made it happen. So it may not change the world but it was fun to invest a few evenings creating something. And if it has two views or two thousand, the important part was that we did it. So it’s not how amazing your idea is, it’s doing something with it that counts.

My new book 'Zoom! The Faster Way To Make Your Business Idea Happen' is out on November 1st and here are a few resources I have created around it:

1. There's a free sample chapter you can read, download and share here
2. I have written a Change This manifesto 'How Unplanning Your Business Can Make It Happen Faster' that is available to read, download and share here
3. There's a Zoom Guys website with more about the book here
4. You can buy it on Amazon.co.uk here, Amazon.com and from all your usual online retailers. And in the UK you'll find it in your local book shop.
5. There are a couple of videos up (with more to come) featuring interview extracts from the book. Here's links to: Guy Kawasaki and Leon restaurants' John Vincent with their tips to faster ways to make your business idea happen. And there's a video trailer below.

Thanks for checking it out!

Like many connections I’ve made over the last few years I can’t pinpoint exactly how or when I became aware of ‘Marketoonist’ Tom Fishburne and his distinctive cartoons. I think we met briefly at a drinks party Todd Sattersten hosted at SXSW 2010; Tom also came along to my Unplan Your Business ‘core conversation’ I co-hosted with David Sloly in Austin that year. Then later that year Google Alerts told me about a Neil Perkin blogpost on Unplanning that referenced Tom and a cartoon he’d created called ‘Waterfall Planning’ off the back of my SXSW talk (that incidentally Neil had stumbled upon serendipitously). So yes, it was all pretty random.

Starting out doodling at Harvard Business School, today Tom sets his stall out simply: to “create cartoon campaigns that help businesses communicate”. I’ve always liked Tom’s work - just as Seth Godin’s blog posts consistently resonate; Tom’s pictures always seem to nail it. He is based in San Francisco but is in the UK this week because he’s just been speaking at The Do Lectures (whose founder David Hieatt, we happen to feature in the Unplan Your Business booklet).

We met up in London yesterday and grabbed a quick chat on video on the power of visual communication to break through the content clutter. In the video below Tom also has some interesting thoughts on ideas generation: rather than thinking of your capacity to come up with ideas as a well that will one day run dry; think of it as a muscle, that so long as you’ll exercise it - ideas will keep flowing.

I was sitting in a green room at the Hilton Hotel in Austin, Texas. It was March 2010 and I was at the South By South West festival - a place where people come to both make their ideas famous and also to discover new ones. Alongside the film premieres and the music showcases, two guys from England who no-one had heard of: my friend David Sloly and I were about to unveil our ‘How To Unplan A Business’ idea to a small audience. We were passionate about a striking but simple idea: that anyone looking to start a business should forget a business plan and unplan it instead.

And ‘unplanning’ is exactly how my latest book happened.

A couple of days after our SXSW talk, David and I were in a Starbucks on Austin’s Congress Avenue, with large hangovers. The festival hosts a lot of parties and all that drinking on rooftop bars had taken its toll. We sat there, tongues out, our espressos dwarfed by the huge cups of iced water we were gulping down our throats. Amidst the fog of that morning-after hangover, we thought it would be cool to write a book. Really, it was just a pipe dream. So how was it that David returned to that same Starbucks 12 months later, with a manuscript in his bag for our publishers, a division of Pearson Books? How the heck did that happen: how did our random idea get picked up?

Our journey from that hazy, hangover-induced thought to reality involved a music icon, a volcanic ash cloud, a sprinkling of serendipity, Twitter and of course - no damn plan in sight.

Six weeks after SXSW I was back in London, and for an unrelated project, I was trying to meet polymath, musician and all-round creative dude Dave Stewart. I’d tried to meet up with him for nearly a year, but he was always too busy. Then one morning in May I was walking up Wardour Street in London’s Soho when I thought the bearded guy in shades who just passed me looked familiar. I tweeted that I thought I just saw Dave Stewart. “That was me, stuck here because of volcano” he tweeted back, in reference to the erupting Icelandic volcano whose ash cloud had shut down European airspace. That ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment - for that’s what it was - kickstarted my attempts to meet Dave. And a few emails and ‘phone calls later, we met one Sunday afternoon at The Soho Hotel where we chatted about life as CEO of his own ideas factory, Weapons Of Mass Entertainment.

After our meeting we connected on LinkedIn; and then, in another blink and you’ll miss it moment, I happened to notice on my screen that Dave Stewart had a new contact - a woman named Liz Gooster. That surname ‘Gooster’ made me inquisitive, so I clicked on her. She was editor of Dave’s new book ‘Business Playground’ and I started following her on Twitter.

At this point my friend David and I still hadn’t got our act together developing the book idea. With him in Bristol and me on the other side of the UK, we hadn’t seen each other for a while and had got busy. And then I went on holiday to Cornwall with my family. While I was there, I got an email from Liz Gooster. She’d seen I was following her on Twitter, checked me out and discovered our Unplan Your Business idea. Did we want to write a book? If so she was interested.

Four months after that email, David and I were sitting on a Eurostar train en route to Paris on an inspiration trip to start the book, a writing journey that finished back in that Austin Starbucks.  This time without the hangover. And now we’re about to launch that book - ‘Zoom!’; the book that happened without a plan.

Without Dave Stewart I’d not have connected with our editor Liz; without the ash cloud, I’d never have seen Dave; and without Twitter this story wouldn’t even have got off the ground. Forget strategic planning - if you’re looking to make your idea happen all you actually need is a music icon, a volcanic ash cloud, Twitter and a liberal dose of serendipity. Hangovers optional.

“Zoom! The Faster Way To Make Your Business Idea Happen” by Ian Sanders and David Sloly is published by Financial Times Prentice Hall, November 1st

Okay, I admit it. I have no clue where ‘work’ starts and stops for me.
It’s all just a blur.

A familiar story for many of us, weekends, evening and holidays are not what they used to be. A week away in Suffolk last week was a holiday in that it remained free of work calls or meetings, but - hands up - I chose to check my iPhone to stay in touch. I had a choice to activate an ‘out of office’ response, but I took the decision to stay in touch. I checked emails, Twitter, scribbled ideas and did some writing.
Staying in a house with no wifi or TV, and the London riots in full swing, our evenings saw a bottle of wine in the kitchen with news via BBC 5 Live and Twitter. So okay, that wasn’t work but it was all part of the blur, staying connected.

I use Twitter for different purposes: banter with friends, following my business network, tracking my client activity and their peer companies, following writers, journalists, news organisations and a bunch of people I just find interesting. So that mirrors the blur: there’s no work Twitter and non-work (sure, I have separate columns in Tweetdeck but I consume it in the same experience). Sharing tips on Suffolk with friends, riffing with a politician about the riots, tweeting out a link from the NYT, emailing myself something to check out for a client when I’m back: it’s all seamless.

I reiterate, I could have switched off. But I chose not to. That doesn’t make me a digital addict or a bore (hopefully), but it’s how I like to keep in touch. As I explored in ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’, this experience is sometimes work, sometimes play, I don’t know how to segment it or label it - it’s all just me

And this blur used to freak me out; but now - I have to admit - I kinda like it this way.

It’s inevitable we get so locked within the fixed roles we fulfill, the places we work, the cliques we inhabit and the industries in which we operate that we rarely think about going out of our comfort zone to new experiences. But if you’re looking for ideas, inspiration or stimulation it’s those non-obvious places that can fuel the eureka idea or break you out of project gridlock. So you have to venture out.

As someone who’s fought against being professionally pigeon-holed most of my working life, I like to roam around, crossing borders to other industries, cultures and experiences to soak up inspiration.The business education world realised the value of this some years ago: it’s why leadership keynotes are now given by athletes, chefs and Antarctic explorers - we can learn lessons from outside. There’s an excellent day in the life/ profile of Conan O’Brien in this month’s Fast Company. On the face of it, it might be about how a daily comedy show gets to air but there’s great parallels for anyone in the creative industries or just involved in launching an idea.

Crossing borders is a great route to discovering new ways of doing things because that is where the interesting ideas tend to  lie.

So how do you break across the border? Often it can be as simple as choosing a different magazine at the news stand or attending a conference session on something you know little about. One morning at SXSW last year my hangover-fuelled curiosity took me to a film industry session where I found some real value. I don’t work in film, so I ‘should’ have been at the Interactive part of the festival. I can’t rationalise my decision to go to the film session beyond ‘well it sounded kinda interesting’, I couldn’t have known whether it would be valuable or a waste of time. Sometimes you just have to trust your instinct.

So it was in that spirit that I attended FireStarters at Google last week. Firestarters is a quarterly event aimed at the advertising planning community curated by Neil Perkin but I soon discovered there were lessons here for anyone seeking to make their ideas happen. The subject of the evening was even more apt since it explored the lessons the planning community can learn from design thinking (again, crossing borders). Tom Hulme, Design Director at IDEO and John Willshire, Chief Innovation Officer at PHD gave presentations; you can find a great summary of proceedings on Neil’s blog here.

So go take a peek at another industry or discipline. Check out a blog in an unrelated field, see what lessons you can learn from the barista in your local coffee shop. Have a licence to be curious. Who knows where it will take you...it could be the start of something big.

Brands trading on their attitude is nothing new. Consumer brands like Apple and Harley-Davidson became successful because of their personality; it was their ideas as much as their products that consumers wanted to engage with.

But now more than ever, and especially in B2B as well as consumer markets, businesses should be competing on ‘what they’re thinking’. Whether you’re a business selling bolts or a freelancer in a crowded market you need to be communicating your attitude as well as your products and services.  

My advice* to clients is that they should leverage the pulling power of their culture, DNA and ideas. Yes, you need a point of difference, but that differentiator can be what you’re thinking.

In abundant marketplaces where similar companies offer similar services or products, Thought Leadership - aka ‘what you’re thinking’ - is the way to stand out from the crowd. Thought leadership marketing can be that magnet to attract - and retain - customers. That applies to every business. Choosing a freelance designer from a shortlist of equally capable candidates? Who’s got the interesting ideas on their blog? Choosing a coffee shop from a bunch of places that all serve similar priced, similar quality coffee? Which one is communicating the right kind of ideas you look for in a brand?

Jeff Ernst wrote an excellent post on thought leadership marketing that’s worth checking out. He says: “Your products aren’t as unique as you think... Buyers want to do business with firms that share their outlook on the world and have philosophies on solving key problems that align with their own. Yet so many marketers only talk about their features and benefits.”

So rethink your marketing strategy accordingly and make sure you’re not hiding your ideas or personality away. Put them out there. Start a blog, tweet your ideas, create some videos, write a manifesto, start a book, curate an event or a meet-up.

You don’t have to be the biggest or the best to be effective at thought leadership, you just need to have something interesting to say.

* and if you want to talk to me about how I can help you or your business get in touch hello (at) iansanders (dot) com

Question. What's the most precious commodity in your professional life, job or business?
 
I used to answer this question with ‘time’. We all have 24 hours of it and it’s up to us how we choose to spend our waking hours.

But then I realised - it’s not time, it’s energy.

Time is quantitative; energy is qualitative.

You need the right injection of energy to inspire you, to enable you to do your job, to get stuff done, to change the world, whatever. Get the balance in time and energy wrong and productivity/ results will suffer.

Because of course, 12 hours at 30% energy level will see low results;  4 hours at 100% energy level will be better.

I’m amidst a very busy couple of months and finding throwing hours at my to-do list is not enough. A 12 hour working day does not automatically mean you’ll get everything done.

So how do you maximise your energy? Here are some tips that work for me:

1. Conserve it. Don’t waste time on stuff you don’t need to know or things that can wait til tomorrow or next month.
2. Channel your energy at the right tasks. It’s about staying focused on what you need to do and not getting sidetracked.
3. Delete negativity. You know all that hassle that comes with difficult relationships. A supplier who hasn’t called you back, a toxic relationship with a customer? This will sap your energy so you need to learn when to walk away and press delete.
4. Take fuel stops. It’s about harnessing those stimulants that work for you: a workout, a walk, coffee, that Chemical Brothers track that will fire you up.
5. Be accountable. It’s about making sure that your efforts in all you do are focused on outcomes, on implementation, on getting results
6. Passion. Try to stay passionate about what you do because that will drive you too.

Optimise your energy and you’ll find you're better able to meet your goals, make an impact and boost your productivity.

As Steve Rubel, EVP of Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman pointed out in his presentation at Mashable Connect 2011, “The reality is, there’s too much content and not enough time”. And that’s no surprise to any of us.

Being good at ideas and staying at the top of your game requires constant topping up of your knowledge. There’s lots of reading and consuming to be done. As Austin Kleon observed on his blog recently ‘garbage in’ equals ‘garbage out’ so you have to make sure you’re consuming the right stuff and not suffering information overload. I remember how different it was back in the mid 90s, pre- Internet when it felt easy being across knowledge in your field. You knew which magazines to read, what days the ‘papers had their specialist sections or relevant columnists and word of mouth took care of the rest. Now, WTF, where do you start?

One, I’m an ideas junkie. Two, I write books. Three, I like to read for pleasure. Four, I’m interested in business, politics, travel, the arts and other stuff. Five, I like checking out the creative/ digital industries. Six, I need to keep across the industry verticals of my clients, consume blog posts, check out what their competitors are up to. And that’s just the start. Sound familiar? I could have an army of readers and researchers working all day every day on this. But I don’t (and you probably don’t either).

Avoiding information overload is about employing the right tactics to be able to filter stuff, rapidly, to make decisions whether to read something or not read it. But at the same time, you also need to embrace serendipity in randomly checking out that blog post you nearly missed, , or that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tweet that might possibly change your business.

But most importantly, you need to know when to say ‘no’, when to switch off, to recognise when you’ve soaked up enough content, stories and ideas. Returning into London from a meeting last week I was due to head to the Internet World event. There were a couple of interesting speakers I wanted to check out, they could be valuable for my client assignments. But then I realised something – or to be honest, my wife reminded me of it – I’ve been soaking up so much stuff recently, that you have to know where to draw the line. So I changed my mind. Instead of heading to a conference hall, I took an hour out and went for a stroll up Portobello Road, stopping for coffee, browsing in a bookshop, kind of doing nothing. Consider it a refuel - it felt good.

On reflection that hour of ‘pressing pause’ was actually more valuable than trying to take in any more content that day, so if you want to combat information overload, know when to switch off.

When did you last ‘nail it’?

Perhaps it was devising that idea to solve a client’s problem. Or that job application letter that perfectly articulated your offering. Or a workshop you moderated for a client that really gelled.

These are all ‘Nail It’ moments. Another was my five year old mastering riding his bike last weekend. “You nailed it!” I shouted into the wind as he sped past me for the first time.

Nailing it is about delivering, implementing, hitting the target. And these moments should be worthy of celebration. Because often a goal can seem daunting: writing your routine for a stand-up tour, reinventing your ad agency, turning your hobby into a full time business. When the task ahead seems so monumental it’s crucial to celebrate milestones along the way.

With my co-writer David, we’re still six months away from seeing our new book ‘Zoom!’ published, but we’ve acknowledged our own ‘Nail it’ moments along the way. Above is a photograph from the start of our writing journey in Paris where generated the ideas and content for the book. After a day walking the streets, sipping coffee, posing questions and thinking aloud we returned to our apartment. Then we realised we were on to something. All those random ideas and loose thoughts suddenly came together, and fuelled by some decent red wine we started plotting out the book contents on a strip of paper on the floor, placing post it notes next to headings. We had it. We may not have even started writing the manuscript but we’d nailed the ideas for the content. It felt good. And we celebrated.

So recognise your own ‘nail it’ moments - celebrate those punch-the-air moments when you’ve made headway, turned a corner, hit the target. With those achievements you can put the foundation stones in place for future success, fuelling you for the rest of your journey.

You might already know I’m not a fan of long term business planning. If you’re Google sure, but if you’re a three person start-up how can you know where you’ll be in five years time? Goals, yes; but detailed linear routes for how to reach them, no. Agility and flexibility surely win over trying to predict the future? You can find more of my thoughts on business planning in my free e-book that I produced with David Sloly “Unplan Your Business”.

Most of us are in search of that elusive ingredient that will make a difference to our business: one that will make us distinctive, instantly attractive to customers and give us an edge over the competition. Last week I met a guy who reckons he has the answer. That ‘guy’ is Guy Kawasaki and his ingredient is ‘enchantment’. Guy was one of the first employees at Apple, responsible for marketing the Macintosh back in 1984. He’s now a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author and blogger.

In Guy’s new book ‘Enchantment: The Art Of Changing Hearts, Minds And Actions’ he explains that if you’re a business that needs to change hearts, minds and actions you need to be trustworthy and you need to have a great product. He suggests you aspire to the product quality of Apple and the likability of Richard Branson; but you don’t need to be a big brand to leverage the power of enchantment. He gives the example of a plumber who could make their business enchanting by showing up on time; by coming in at or below the estimate; by finishing on time.

Here’s Part 1 of a little video interview I did with him: