Solo Practice University®

It was a bold two-page concept ad for MEGABLOKS in the front signature of the New York Times magazine years ago.

Once upon a time, there lived a creature named Creativity.

When Creativity was young, he was allowed to explore the farthest reaches of his imagination. No one told him what noise his train was supposed to make.  So he made it sound like a cockatoo.

And nobody told him that his dragon was scary.  So he had it over for pizza.

Then once day, when Creativity was all grown up, people throughout the land turned to him for inspiration in good times and bad.

All the world rallied around Creativity to solve their most confounding problems. And that’s how creativity saved the world.

So often we are trapped in what others tell us we can and cannot do in relationship to how we work, how we promote our work. We get caught up in other people’s images of us and it restrains our creativity.  Our natural inquisitiveness is quashed.  Occasionally, I have to remind my husband not to tell my son ‘how to do it’ because my son sees through fresh, untainted, and, for the most part, unsocialized eyes and I want to learn from him how he chooses to do something.  I want him always to say, ‘I want to do it’ even though I think I know better.  As long as he isn’t going to injure himself or others he should be free to say, I’ll do it and then go do it.  (My mother told me at 10 months old I grabbed the fork from her hand and said, ‘me do’ in an attempt to feed myself.  I still have the holes in my forehead…only kidding!)

It’s no different in building and marketing a solo practice.  Just tell me definitively what is a violation of the rules which will threaten my license.  Otherwise, let me be free to construct my universe, my marketing world.  Let me have my legal megablocks and create.  It’s my right and privilege as long as no client is harmed and I’m comfortable doing it.  It’s my sandbox. And this is the attitude you should have, too.  Pick your mentors carefully who let you say ‘me do’ and make sure you don’t hurt yourself or others.  But outside of that, start inviting dragons over for pizza.  And if the train you build sounds like a cockatoo, that’s okay in my book.  If it gets you the clients you want, allows you to pay the bills, makes you sing when you go to work, who’s better than you.  Start creatively building in 2013.

Happy New Year.

About the Author

It was a bold two-page concept ad for MEGABLOKS in the front signature of the New York Times magazine years ago. Once upon a time, there lived a creature named Creativity. When Creativity was young, he was allowed to explore the farthest reaches of his imagination. No one told him what noise his train was [...]