Outside Your Comfort Zone

Fast Company released its 100 Most Creative People in Business this month. Just a few notables on the list were Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight; Lara Setrakian, founder of Syria Deeply; Carl June, professor from University of Pennsylvania; and Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records. There is little industry crossover with these 100 people and their businesses; the companies or projects they have founded run the gamut from I.T. and medicine to retail and nonprofit.

The people themselves are equally different too. What has driven each of them to succeed is unique to them and their lives. However, they do have a couple of things in common. Creativity, yes, that one is a given on this list. But what really pushed them to their high level of success was confidence and courage. It is not enough to be creative, the key is to risk a little by putting all of that creative energy out there to the world and then being unafraid to see what the world does with it.

At a recent Power Meeting event for our sister publication, Promo Marketing, I spoke at length with a distributor about how his business has changed over the years. He had been at the promo game for nearly 40 years and was planning on keeping on for 40 more. He noted at one time his business was really only about pens. Then, his promotional product line grew to include many different items—he added print services, and most recently a full range of marketing services from video production, to online web and social media management. He was nervous when he decided to open up his business to these new revenue streams, but he pushed through. He eliminated the fear and dove into new waters. Now these services are a large slice of his company’s business.