Lessons from different sources

Over the weekend - a bank holiday weekend in the UK - I was, amongst many other things, reading a new blog by musician Imogen Heap (W.I.P The Book of Heap). As could be expected of a creative person, she writes fluidly and well about her hopes both for her blog-come-book but also about her life.

At one point, she writes a list of things she is planning to get a grip of, and I copy a section of her list here:

- more inspired conversation.
- Collaborate creatively often.
- Plan less, do more,
- Find my dream team and delegate.
- Fold my days around one form of exercise. So could be a walk, a swim, rock climbing. Who knows.
- find sustainable love. To share all these nice times I’m going to have with.
- READ more and learn to read quicker and better.
- Find another word for more.
- Other stuff I haven’t thought of yet.

It struck me that her list - and I have cut down the some of the points to be a little more succinct here (the full list is, of course, in her original posting) - is not a bad "to do" list for businesses, whether starting up or not.

How many of your conversations last week were "inspired"? Perhaps I was lucky and a couple of mine were. I'm sure that we could all benefit from looking for inspired conversations. "Find my dream team and delegate" - there may be a whole book in there. I think that may be the essence of business for the entrepreneur."Creative collaboration" - absolutely. Look for people to work with not only from your field. Look for exciting people who may have a new perspective on your business. "Read more" can only be a good thing - and don't restrict yourself to reading business material. "Find another word for..." can be a good way of looking at anything anew. As for "plan less, do more" - I am guilty of this and will follow the example of doing more often than planning (particularly with regard to marketing and networking).

Do not ignore "find sustainable love.." thinking that it has nothing to do with business. We would all be worse of without the support of the people we love and who love us.

So there you have it - lessons for business, care of Imogen Heap. If nothing else, she has a good plan in place.

p.s. if you'd like to know more about Imogen (and I recommend it since she is a wonderful musician), then here and here are good places to start (and, no, I don't work either for or with her).