There are so many selves in everybody and to explore and exploit just one is wrong,
dead wrong, for the creative process.
~ James Dickey

Steven Kalas is a family counselor with a lively practice. He also plays in a band that’s been busy promoting their new CD, but I know Kalas for a different reason: he writes Human Matters, my favorite column in the Las Vegas Review Journal. Like many people with multiple interests, he’s found ways to incorporate his diverse interests into satisfying ways of making a living.

Of all the ideas in Making a Living Without a Job, none has ever gotten a stronger response than the notion of incorporating eclectic interests into a unique livelihood. Many people have felt stalled in their lives trying to fit themselves into the Single Occupation mold. There’s often a visible sense of relief when I suggest that it’s possible to create a business from diverse passions.

Whether you have diverse interests or a strong singular passion that you’re building around, the key to a solid business is what I call Multiple Profit Centers (MPCs). Quite simply, a profit center is any activity that generates cash flow. Whenever you add another product or service to your enterprise, you’re creating another profit center. It’s also important to realize that profit centers come in all different sizes. Some will provide the largest percentage of income for you, while others will be fillers.

There’s a practical side to the MPC notion, as well: multiple income sources can level out cash flow. No business, no matter how large or small, is immune from the ups and downs of income. To everything there is a season, including cash flow. Having a variety of sources is one way to even things out a bit, since each profit center will have its own cycle.

Here are a few more things to keep in mind when planning your profit centers.

  • They don’t have to all be the same size in order to be valid. Some profit centers will be occasional, some will peak and then decline, some will be major income sources. Keep in mind the Mall Model where you find anchor stores on the corners with smaller shops in between. Your business will be a small scale version of that.
  • Under one umbrella or separate identities? If your profit centers are completely unrelated (eclectic rather than clustered), you will probably need to have individual identities for them. It’s up to you whether or not you want to have one bank account for various things or a different one for each. Whatever makes things easier for you, is probably the best choice. At the same time, you don’t want to confuse your market by clustering things that don’t go together.
  • If it matters to you, it belongs in your portfolio. If your interests are diverse, you may decide that some ideas aren’t serious enough to turn into a profit center. More likely, your apprehension comes from the old belief that if it’s fun and pleasurable, it should remain a hobby.

    Nobody tackles this issue better than Steven Pressfield who writes in The War of Art about turning pro. He says, “The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his ‘real’ vocation.”

  • Differing activities can boost creativity. In the name of efficiency, we’ve turned many of the workers of this world into robot-like machines who show up in the same place at the same time to do the same things day in and day out. The capacity to think creatively is the first casualty of that system.

    Creativity thrives on variety and setting up your profit centers to give you a wide range of experiences is ultimately as good for your imagination as it is for your bank account.

  • Take inventory on a regular basis. Many profit centers require a lot of time and attention at their launch, but become somewhat self-sufficient after that. It makes sense to review the various projects you’re working on and align your attention with what each one needs.

    Sometimes a profit center becomes a noisy child and takes you away from the others. At other times, you’ll find you’ve grown bored with an idea and it’s time to consider a different future for it. Every 90 days or so, do a review and make changes where necessary.

  • Be wary of multitasking. Time magazine did a story about Suze Orman, a woman who clearly understands MPCs. She is not an advocate of multitasking, however. “I think it’s the absolute ruination of the perfection of a project,” she says. “The people who multitask do everything to mediocrity at best. While they are getting a lot done, they are getting it done in such an inefficient way that they usually have to do it again.”

    One way to stay focused, is to assign different days of the week to different projects. When you’re throwing pots, you aren’t writing your pottery seminar, for instance.

  • It’s evolution, not instant creation. Profit centers evolve over a long period of time. Ideas morph, new ones show up, old ones have served their time. The important thing is to create a business that engages your talents and imagination, and pays you to do what you love doing most. As Paul Hawken reminds us, “The business you can succeed with is distinctly and utterly you and yours. It is unlike any other business in the world.” You have your MPCs to thank for that.

One day, a friend called to say she was upset to learn that she needed an expensive car repair. I suggested that we go mall walking that evening. “Let’s see if we can walk ourselves into an answer,” I said. For the first twenty minutes, we walked and she talked. By that time, her stress was considerably lower.

Then an amazing thing happened. As we turned a corner, she said, “I have an idea. I’ve got those Disney World passes that I could sell on eBay.” We walked a little farther and she thought of something else she could add to her online marketing. A few days later, she’d made her sales and fixed her car.

When you feel stuck or bereft of an idea, putting yourself in motion can do wonders. Walking, driving on a familiar road, or doing household chores involves motion, but doesn’t require much mental energy. Our minds become receptive.  (This is not true of playing sports where our mind is also engaged in the action.) 

Soren Kierkegaard said, “I have walked myself into some of my best thoughts.” You can, too.

$100 Hour: Finish things. How about a follow-through service to complete unfinished projects? If you’re handy at repairs or household jobs, you could complete things that do-it-yourselfers never got done. Needlework is another area where enthusiasm sometimes diminishes before the work is done. Busy people frequently start more than they can finish. You could find a gold mine here—and relieve a bit of guilt.

Explore More: In her book The Creative Habit, choreographer Twyla Tharp writes, “I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.”

Sometimes I think creativity is magic. It’s not a matter of  finding an idea but allowing that idea to find you. ~ Maya Lin

 

Three of my four siblings are coming to visit early next week so that was the impetus for me to go through a stack of magazines and move some to the recycling bin. My decluttering project slowed down, however, when I came across some articles I hadn’t yet read. Three of them were worth passing along to you. Happily, you can find them all online.

The October 13 issue of Newsweek had a special feature on women leaders. My favorite article was movie director Kimberly Peirce’s piece To Make It Big in Hollywood, You Start With a Good Story. What caught my attention is what she says about fear being part of the creative process. Pierce says, “Fear is part of creativity, whatever your job is. It’s part of believing in something and wanting it to happen. So I let it in and I say to myself, ‘OK, you’re scared.’ And then when something works out, I say, ‘Wow! You were scared!'” I’m going to remember that.

The big article goldmine I uncovered is in the September issue of Ode magazine, which always has thought-provoking articles. This issue is especially rich. For starters, there’s retired teach John Taylor Gatto’s piece called Childhood’s End which eloquently discusses why our schools are failing us. I think it’s important for anyone who has come through the school system in the last fifty years or so to understand the philosophy that has driven education. 

Gatto ends the article by issuing a call to arms to parents. He says, “School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers…Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so they’ll never be bored.” 

I also love Gatto’s observation that “genius is as common as dirt.” I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the piece since I read it and am going to track down his book Weapons of Mass Instruction.

I urge you to read–immediately–Ode’s cover story, In Praise of Failure. It includes wonderful quotes from J.K. Rowling’s commencement address at Harvard. While we’ve all heard stories about people who ultimately succeeded after years of failure, this article points out, in the clearest possible way, why success is impossible if we resist failure. In fact, it reminds us that if our energy is devoted to NOT FAILING, we end up in mediocrity. 

Every entrepreneur should have this article at their fingertips to read again and again.

Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. ~ J.K. Rowling