“Inspiration is very polite,” says Mary Pipher. “She knocks softly and goes away if you don’t answer.”Sometimes she tiptoes in when we least expect her to. If we’re paying attention, she brings a gift.

I didn’t expect her to come dressed as a handyman.

As the new decade was arriving, I moved into a wonderful apartment in Minneapolis which was my home for almost six years. From time to time,  I would see Lee, the resident handyman, in the halls and noticed that he always seemed to be smiling.

One day, I had a testy dishwasher and Lee showed up to fix it. As he was setting things up, I asked him if he worked exclusively for our property manager.

He spun around and said, “No! I have my own business.” He opened his jacket and showed me his t-shirt which bore the name and logo of his company.

“So how long have you worked for yourself?” I asked. For the next several minutes, I was captivated as he told my his story. 

Lee had been studying veterinary medicine when his wife died tragically in a boating accident. Since he had two young children, he found it too difficult to be a full-time student and care for them so he quit school, not sure about what he would do next.

A friend , who owned a small apartment building, offered to give them a place to live in exchange for doing handyman work. “That was the last apartment I lived in,” Lee recalled.

Before long, he bought a rundown house, moved in, fixed it up and sold it for a nice profit. Then he did it again. And again.

Along the way, he decided to learn about investing and put some of his profits into the stock market. He discovered he was good at that, too. As all of this was happening, he continued to grow his plumbing/handyman business.

“Until two years ago,I didn’t even have a listed telephone number,” he laughed. “I guess I could retire, but why should I? I just love driving around in my truck with all my tools.

“And I get to learn new things all the time. That thing I just did to your dishwasher? I’ve never done that before.” He was beaming as he made this confession.

That little conversation with someone who was so obviously joyful about being self-employed kept me going all day. And I’m willing to bet that my genuine curiosity about Lee’s life made his day better, too.

Come to think of it, that conversation happened eight years ago and I’ve never forgotten it. 

Are you living a story that will inspire a stranger who bothers to ask?

When I ask seminar participants what inspires their creativity, oceans and nature often top the list. While inspiration triggers are highly unique to each of us, beautiful spots in nature certainly make a big contribution.

For many of us, such encounters are infrequent or irregular. If we want to keep generating a flow of good ideas—and bringing them to life—there’s another big resource that needs our attention.

That’s been on my mind ever since I read about a survey that Edward Glassman recently conducted. His study was done with employees, not entrepreneurs, but there’s no reason to think it doesn’t apply to us as well. 

Here’s what he found. Overall, the majority of people perceive that the biggest boost to their creativity comes from interacting with other people. 

What else stimulates on-the-job creativity? In addition to other people, factors cited by survey respondents included:

• More time
• More freedom
• Less red tape, paperwork and routine jobs
• Better resources
• An atmosphere that encourages originality
• Fewer meetings
• Better teamwork
• Fewer penalties for failure
• Fewer interruptions
• A more supportive atmosphere.

What strikes me about the list is that it includes the sorts of things the Joyfully Jobless seem to naturally incorporate into their enterprises.

On the other hand, solo startups frequently suffer from a lack of the kind of interaction that stimulates ideas. If we want to create the life of our dreams, we need to be proactive in connecting with other self-bossers who share our enthusiasm for the power of ideas.

There are some obvious ways to bring more of those encounters into our lives, of course. Consider one of the messages I got after last week’s Inspired Livelihood seminar in Sedona:

“I wanted to touch base with you and tell you how important the Inspired Livelihood Workshop was to me.  The timing couldn’t have been better.  Being in the same room with others of a similar mindset was amazing for me.  I left there totally inspired.  This morning when I got to my desk in my home office, I felt like I left the training wheels off of my bicycle and will be able to ride confidently knowing that I have lots of tools to help me and a tribe who will support me if I start weaving.”

We’re going to take a look at some ways you can close that people gap this week.

In the meantime, think about this advice from the wise Jim Rohn: “My suggestion is to walk away from the 90% who don’t and join the 10% who do.”

Yesterday someone posted on Twitter that she felt lucky to have her job, although it didn’t allow her to use any of her gifts. It made me sad to read that.

Here in Las Vegas, there’s buzz around rumors that the creative dynamo called Steve  Wynn may be moving his hotel empire to Macau. Since Wynn is credited with changing the face of this flashy city and his influence remains strong, his possible departure is cause for concern.

I’ve been fascinated by Wynn’s story for a long time, but it wasn’t until I read Winner Takes All by Christina Binkley that I discovered he also had fallen into a common trap—not unlike the one mentioned on Twitter.

Here’s what happened to Wynn. After masterminding the design and building of his Treasure Island, Mirage and Bellagio hotels, Wynn found himself managing thousands of people every day instead of spending time coming up with the Next Big Thing.

Innovation and management are certainly different activities and it’s hard to imagine that someone who loved to create gigantic surprises would be thriving in an office handling management problems all day.

I suspect it’s a role that crept up on him. I also know that millionaires don’t get much sympathy if they’re out of sync with their right livelihood, but that’s just another manifestation of the thinking that insists that money is valid exchange for personal compromise.

Remember The Peter Principle, the popular book from the seventies that suggested employees in a hierarchy tend to rise to their highest level of incompetence? It’s not just employees that need to be cautious. It appears that even the wildly successful can take a detour from doing the things they love.

Steve Wynn got back on track but it took a hostile takeover by the MGM who acquired his landmark hotels. After the bloodless coup,  Wynn went away for a brief period. When he returned, he announced, “Now I get to do what I really love–build things.”

He wasn’t kidding. Not so long ago, Steve Wynn told a reporter, “I just wanted to build places that made people go ‘Wow.’ I thought that would be a fun way to spend my life.” 

We know how easy it is as employees to find ourselves in an unsuitable position. What’s less obvious is that entrepreneurs can also end up in the wrong place. As Oprah once lamented, “You can get so busy running your business that you forget why you started your business in the first place.”

Even the smallest businesses, of course, require management. The tricky part is to balance it with the creative side of things.

So what do you want to manage? People? Huge sums of money? Manufacturing? Your creativity? Since you’re going to be managing something, it’s important to know what that is. 

The only definition of management that I’ve ever found appealing came from Charles Handy who said, “Managers of our own talents is what more and more of us are becoming.”  

Seems to me that good stewardship is the only way to prevent making bad trade-offs—or thinking that we’re lucky when actually we’re lost.

There’s something about spring that urges us to get things in shape. Whether or not your own version of spring cleaning has begun, there are benefits and opportunities that can make it a more pleasant experience.

For our grandmothers (and their grandmothers) spring cleaning was an annual ritual involving rug beaters, mattress turning, fresh air and deep cleaning. It went on for days until every nook and cranny was spotless. 

One thing that sets us apart from our tidy ancestors is the amount of stuff we have in our houses. Mindless Accumulation has been a favorite pastime of too many of us, cheered on by marketing mad men who have been sadly successful in selling us on the notion that happiness lies in The Next Thing.

It’s a practice which was scorned by Frank Lloyd Wright who designed his houses without attics or basements in an attempt to convince people to stop using their homes as storehouses for things they neither wanted nor needed.

Spring is a fine time to commit to Mindful Acquisition. That can’t happen until we unburden ourselves from things that no longer suit the 2010 version of ourselves.

Depending on the amount of things you wish to dispose of, you may find that the chore can be accomplished with more enthusiasm if you turn it into a profit center. Here are a few not-so-original ways to do just that.

* List things on Craigslist. Bargain hunters haunt these online listings and someone may be looking for that old bookcase or playpen that’s just taking up space. 

* Consign. If your community has clothing or furniture consignment shops, let them do the marketing for you and share the profits.

* Donate. Many charities offer home pickups or have drop boxes scattered around the community. Goodwill has pickup areas with attendants throughout my hometown making it easy to leave unwanted items and get a receipt so you can take the appropriate deduction on your taxes next year.

* Organize a garage sale. Yes, it can be a lot of work, but it can also be a source of cash. Different cities have their own policies about what you can and can’t do if you decide to become a temporary merchant.

My friend John Schroeder, the author of a terrific handbook, Garage Sale Fever, has tips and great advice on his blog for making the most of selling (or buying). 

*Join forces. Last year, Alice Barry organized a mini-flea market in her front yard. She contacted friends and entrepreneurs who had items to sell (both used and handmade) and had a weekend extravaganza. Like a regular market, Alice provided the space and advertising and took a percentage of every vendor’s sales. It was a huge undertaking, but a nice idea that helped other sellers as well.

If you need a bit of inspiration, check out It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh, who does a brilliant job of helping folks disconnect with possessions that have outlived their usefulness.

Or simply remind yourself of Alexandra Stoddard’s observation: “Life is too short to spend it being the caretaker of the wrong things.”

A new survey claims that the majority of Americans no longer trust their elected officials. We’re certainly not the first citizens to feel that way, but, then, we haven’t seen much creative thinking going on in our governing body. 

Imagine what could happen if we did. Can’t imagine such a thing? Read on. 

Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for another big challenge and found it:  to be in charge of, as he describes it, “a 6.5 million person classroom.” 

 Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá. With an educator’s inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos. 

People were desperate for a change, for a moral leader of some sort. The eccentric Mockus, who communicates through symbols, humor, and metaphors, filled the role. 

 When many hated the disordered and disorderly city of Bogotá, he wore a Superman costume and acted as a superhero called Supercitizen. People laughed at Mockus’ antics, but the laughter began to break the ice and get people involved in fixing things.

The fact that he was seen as an unusual leader gave the new mayor the opportunity to try extraordinary things, such as hiring 420 mimes to control traffic in Bogotá’s chaotic and dangerous streets.

He launched a Night for Women and asked the city’s men to stay home in the evening and care for the children.  700,000 women went out on the first of three nights that Mockus dedicated to them. 

Another Mockus inspiration was to ask people to call his office if they found a kind and honest taxi driver. 150 people called and the mayor organized a meeting with all those good taxi drivers, who advised him about how to improve the behavior of mean taxi drivers. The good taxi drivers were named Knights of the Zebra, a club supported by the mayor’s office. 

 “Knowledge,’” said Mockus, “empowers people. If people know the rules, and are sensitized by art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change.”

When Napoleon accused England of being a “nation of shopkeepers”, he didn’t, presumably, intend it as a compliment. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurial spirit has a long and colorful history in this delightful country. 

Back in the seventies, Dr. E.F.Schumacher challenged the trend toward big business growth in his book Small is Beautiful. Schumacher pointed out eloquently the advantages of keeping business small and human-scaled. 

Largely ignored by the corporate culture in the US, Schumacher’s ideas influenced a wide range of new entrepreneurs. One of those who took smallness seriously was a young upstart named Richard Branson.

For many years, he ran his Virgin empire from his little houseboat, although his employees were housed in more ordinary buildings. Even as Virgin began to grow into numerous enterprises, he insisted on keeping divisions and departments small enough so all coworkers knew each other in their part of the business.

Early on, Branson discovered the power of free publicity. He said that they realized that newspapers and television needed interesting photos so Virgin took every opportunity they could to dream up newsworthy events which would attract the media.

That sort of resourcefulness in action has continued even as Virgin grew into a globally recognized brand.

Almost as flamboyant was the late Dame Anita Roddick. When she opened her first tiny Body Shop in Brighton, she couldn’t afford High Street rents so took a retail space on a side street with far less traffic. 

Roddick got the idea to regularly spray a trail of scent from the main thoroughfare back to her shop, an unusual approach that noticeably increased traffic to her fledgling business.

A passionate environmentalist, Roddick made reduce, reuse, recycle the operating philosophy at Body Shop.

Like Branson, she constantly received media attention for her activism, personal philosophy and entrepreneurial success.

I don’t know if the legacy of Branson and Roddick has filtered down, but I don’t recall ever enjoying the exploits of a business more than the smoothie maker Innocent Drinks.

The story of the beginning of Innocent really was a preview of coming attractions. Founded by three Cambridge graduates, friend Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright  were working in consulting and advertising when the idea for their business was born.

In 1998, after spending six months working on smoothie recipes and £500 on fruit, the trio sold their drinks from a stall at a music festival in London. People were asked to put their empty bottles in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ bin depending on whether they thought the three should quit their jobs to make smoothies. 

At the end of the festival the ‘YES’ bin was full, with only three cups in the ‘NO’ bin, so they went to their work the next day and resigned. 

The company’s headquarters, Fruit Towers, is based in Shepherds Bush where they welcome visitors with open arms. Everything about the company suggests that playfulness has a high priority. So does resourcefulness.

Last year when Innocent was sponsoring a festival, they created a poster for the event and invited their loyal fans to print it out on their own computers and post it around their neighborhoods. Thousands of posters began to appear all over the area compliments of happy Innocent customers.

Another favorite Innocent project happened last summer when one of their employees went on a long bicycle tour to Cornwall and videotaped interviews with artists scattered around southwestern UK.

Currently, Innocent Drinks is running a project called Buy One Get One Bee to raise funds to bring millions of bees into the UK. 

You can get a glimpse of the Innocent approach to growing a business by looking at their weekly newsletter.  

Equally wonderful is founder Richard Reed’s short talk at the British Library last year.

People who have stopped reading base their future decisions on what they used to know. If you don’t read much, you really don’t know much. You’re dangerous.

The other evening, I decided to run an errand after dinner and happened to be in the car when The Story, one of my favorite NPR programs was on.

The second guest was Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook. Although I knew about the book, I didn’t know the story behind this multi-million seller. It’s a story of passion aided by patience.

Because Jim Trelease was read to as a kid, he made a point to recreate that same thing for his own kids. Then he began volunteering in his kids’ school and noticed that the children who read the most on their own were those who were also read to by parents and teachers.

He decided to fill a gap he’d uncovered and write a book for parents about how important reading aloud is. His family gave up their summer vacation and he self-published the first edition of  The Read-Aloud Handbook in 1979.

“I self-published because I never thought any of the major publishers would be interested in it, ” he recalls. “At that point, ‘reading aloud’ was too simple and not painful enough to do the child any good.” He managed to sell 20,000 copies of his little book.

Eventually, his book was discovered by a fledgling literary agent who convinced him to expand it. Six publishers turned it down before it was picked up by Penguin. Trelease did a book tour and a respectable 50,000 copies were sold.

It wasn’t long before sales began to plunge and he thought it was over.

Then a stranger intervened. A librarian had written a letter to Dear Abby complaining about children’s lack of interest  in reading. A young mother saw the letter and wrote an unsolicited book report of The Read-Aloud Handbook and sent it to Dear Abby.

Dear Abby tracked down a copy of the book, shared the woman’s letter in her column and sales skyrocketed almost immediately to 120,000 copies. (Incidentally, Trelease continues to send this woman flowers every year on the anniversary of that column.)

He also paid for both of his kids’ college educations.

The first Penguin edition of the Handbook was followed by five more U.S. editions, along with British, Australian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese versions.

It was the inspiration for PBS’s Storytime series, and is now the all-time bestselling guide to children’s literature for parents and teachers—nearly 2 million copies sold to date worldwide.

The Handbook is now used as a text for future teachers at more than 60 colleges and universities. In addition, the Japanese edition introduced the concept of Sustained Silent Reading  to public schools there and it became the basis for more than 3,000 elementary and secondary schools adopting SSR as a regular part of the academic day.

The book’s success also created a platform for Trelease and he became a popular speaker on the value of reading aloud to children.

Trelease’s story inspires me because it’s such a fine example of acting on an idea with no guarantee of outcome.

But what  I can’t stop thnking about is how the kindness of a stranger opened the door to success and opportunities Trelease had never imagined.

Don’t you wonder we might accomplish if we made public appreciation a regular activity?

In my neighborhood, a messy yard can earn a citation (and the scorn of neighbors). So when I returned from a trip to Europe a year ago, I was horrified to see that my western landscape (rock and cactus) was green with weeds. 

Unfortunately, I had returned home with a nasty virus that had me spending my days on the sofa. In my waking hours, I fretted about the yard.

As I lay dozing one afternoon, there was a knock at my front door. I looked out to see a handsome man standing on my porch. When I greeted him, he pointed to my front yard and simply said, “I am a gardener.”

He might have said, “I am an angel.”

And so Octavio came into my life. We discussed what needed to be done and set a time for him to tackle the mess. He said he’d come by again once he finished his work at the nearby golf course. 

Not only did my yard look amazing when he finished, Octavio returned the following day to move the heavy bags of clippings to my curb for trash pickup. There was no doubt that I was going to hire him whenever needed.

That time came last weekend when Octavio came for the spring weed removal and pruning. When he finished, we had a little chat. “How long have you lived here?” I asked.

He said it had been two years, although he had come to Las Vegas prior to that time and stayed for six months, returned to Mexico for six months, then came back. “I decided I wanted to start my business here,” he told me.

“Did you speak English when you came?”

 “A little bit,” he said. He told me he’d attended a university in Mexico, studied business and knew he wanted to have his own. He pointed out several neighborhood yards who used his services.

“So how’s Las Vegas treating you?” I asked.

Octavio smiled. “Good,” he said. Then he smiled even more. “Really good.”

I wondered how many doors he had knocked on before he came to mine.

I’ve long admired the many immigrant entrepreneurs who bravely arrive in a strange land and set up shop. They’re a striking contrast to the many messages I receive from natives who have thousands of advantages the newcomers lack.

A case in point is a woman who recently wrote to explain her situation and tell me she was paralyzed with fear about leaving her job to build a business she’d already started as a sideline.

I was flabbergasted. As I pointed out, here’s what she had going for her:

1. She’d tested her idea

2. She loved doing it

3. Her job is making her crazy

4. Her husband is totally cheering her on

Looked like a no-brainer to me. Everything was working in her favor. Could it be that having too much is a bigger impediment when it comes to starting a business?

That’s what the evidence suggests.

Visionary entrepreneur Paul Hawken knows why Octavio has launched and successful enterprise and will keep it growing. In Growing a Business, he points out, “With low overhead, frugal means and fragile budgets, you can’t buy your way out of problems. You have to learn your way out. The creativity and tenacity you have to develop will make it hard for you to be put out of business.”

Of course it makes sense to put all your resources to work for you, but if you don’t add a willingness to learn, they’re not worth much.

 *****************

If you want to build your business the way Octavio is building his, join me on Monday, April 12 for How To Be a Thrifty Entrepreneur Without Being a Cheapskate. Can’t attend the teleclass in person? You can still register and receive the audio download the next day.