How Babies Are Made

I get asked all the time if I have kids, and I always answer the same way. "I have been traveling 100 thousand miles a year for work for a decade and often relied on the kindness of strangers to save me from boredom, so I am sure I have at least a few" (if you are an HR professional, please note that this is just a joke) but the truth is I do have babies all over North America and even a few in scattered around the UK, Brazil, and Australia.

The babies I am talking about are my ideas and my work.

I did a keynote not too long ago about how I come up with ideas. I never shared it cause a funny thing happened about an hour before the talk. My kidney went into failure, and I was in distress during this talk. By the end, I had sweat through my shirt and was a mess, but like a trooper, I finished and shared where babies come from but my ego didn't want to let the video out.

In short, Babies come from research and inspiration. Research is knowing the target customer, what they like, what they want, and what they will let you get away with (PAGING BUD LIGHT, BUD LIGHT?). Inspiration comes from the consumption of everything (and I mean everything - I always have the TV on when I am working with things in the background, I read four books a month and a pile of magazines), and one thing that some people miss is that the best ideas come from starting from the end first. Before you start, you have to know what the dream outcome is. Do you want revenue, you do want media, do you want awareness? The difference between a good idea and a great one is that they hit the goals.

I am going to talk more about where ideas come from in this blog and how to cultivate them, but for now, please know that if I ever ask you if we can make a baby together, I may just be asking to work together.