I'm telling you where to shop

Here's a few businesses you can feel good about purchasing from. If you don't need what they sell it may at least brighten your day to know what they do. Enjoy!

Verymeri.com - T-Shirts that are designed by kids. You can buy these for your kids, and 3% of the sale price goes to the kid that designed it and another 3% goes to a charity of that kid's choice.

M&E Painting - This painting company is in Colorado so it may not be practical for you to use them, but at least we aware of them. They were supposed to paint an old woman's house but she had to cancel the job because her husband died. The returned her deposit and felt bad for her. So they then decided to paint her house for free, to the suprise of the owners all of their employees were willing to donate their time to do the job. Now they seek out people in need of a free paint job and try to do more free jobs each year. Here's a link to the story in Entrepreneur Magazine.

HivesforLives - At ages 10 and 12 these two girls started a business harvesting their own honey and selling it to raise money for cancer research. When their grandfather died of throat cancer they wanted to do something significant to help find a cure, 6 years later they find their honey being sold in a wide variety of retail outlets including Whole Foods. Check out their website for more of their story or if you would like to buy honey, lip balm or candles.

As I find more cool businesses I'll be sure to post about them.

More Creativity

Here's a couple creative people and what they did:

Matt Moman works in the plastic flower business. At a trade show he saw a bunch of lemons and limes that looked very real. A few days later he is sipping a beer and an idea hits him so he went for it. He used the fake limes to create a bottle opener with a magnet inside so it sticks to the fridge. Once the product is ready to go he then pitches it to Grupo Modelo (the company behind Corona beer) and they loved it. This cool little bottle opener is now going to make millions for him and the beer company, all from a simple idea that he decided to go for.

Mary Zeiff was a 1st grade teacher. She was frustrated by all the negative T-shirts she would see her students wearing ("Spoiled Brat" or "I'm with stupid"). She was sure these were not the kind of things happy kids are thinking. So she created her own shirts. She asked her students what they would put on a shirt and they came up with things like "First grade rocks!" and "I love mommy!". Well the shirts have taken off and the concept has grown. Through her website kids can submit their shirt designs and customers vote on their favorites. Winners get their shirt added to the inventory and they get 3% of the profits from the shirt, another 3% then goes to a charity of the designer's choice. Very cool idea and what an awesome thing for young kids to participate in. You can check out the website here.

I got these two stories from Entrepreneur magazine.

Have you heard anything creative lately?

More Creative

I think we stifle our creativity. We develop routines, avoid change, and try our best to never mess up or look stupid. The result is lackluster. Then we wonder why we don't get amazing results at work or feel energized by our free time.

The other aspect of this is that I believe we discourage each other's creativity. When people throw out ideas we critique them rather than encourage. One of the things I've read about an idea is that no one is likely to feel its great when they first hear it because it's not their idea. Yet the immediate negative feedback we get is often enough for us not to follow through or to become secretive about our creativity.

All this rambling is to say that I think we need to be creative. We should regularly brainstorm by ourselves and with others to see what we can come up with. We should practice giving some one fair consideration when they have an idea, or even make it a point to encourage and support even if we think its stupid. Think of all the things that started out as a crazy idea that some one was willing to pursue even though people around him/her thought it was stupid. Who knows what you're capable of?

Homework: Come up with something creative, share it with others and no matter what they say you have to respond with "I'm doing it, and I'll let you know how it goes."

Have fun!

Last thought: Try to figure out when you are the most creative, time of day, where, what beverage you need to be drinking...etc.

What happened to creative?

When was the last time you were creative?

Creative in your job, your free time, your relationships, your daydreams?

When you are creative how creative are you?

Is there anything that discourages you from creativity? Why? and do you discourage others from being creative?

What do you and the people around you think of creative people?

I have some thoughts on these questions but I'm gonna wait a couple days before I post them. I wanna hear what you have to say first.