The Creative Personality – A User’s Guide

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John Williams

At February Scanners Night, Marianne Cantwell gave us the user’s guide to the creative personality, and in particular, that of the scanner.

Listen now and find out:

  • what particular creative personality type you are,
  • what your strengths are (so you can maximise them),
  • what your weaknesses are (so you can manage them or work around them),
  • the ways of operating that really work for us,
  • how to communicate with the non scanners in your life to gain their understanding – or enlist their help on your projects

Here’s a quick video clip of the Scanners doing the Intravert vs Extravert exercise:

Want to discover even deeper personality insights?

Marianne is offering a package to provide even deeper personality insights for your career change – understand who you are, your strengths, and where you can shine. Includes full 15FQ+ personality assessment with personal written report, MBTI assessment, and a Scanner career-change 1-on-1 coaching session.

Marianne is making a special offer to Scanners for this package if you book by the end of February 2010. Read full details of the Scanner Offer here

How to have your best Scanner year yet

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John Williams

Listen to the founder of Scanners Night, John Williams and discover how to have your best year yet as a scanner or multi-faceted creative person.

Have a brilliant year as a Scanner without New Year resolutions, career plans, or SMART goals – and make more money than you have before!

Listen to the whole talk and you’ll go away with your own Back Of An Envelope Plan for the year that’s simple, exciting, effective, and doesn’t box you in.

Is this the year you make your own business work?

Do your plans for the year include finally making good money from work you enjoy?

Whether you’re self-employed and want to boost your business, or you’re in a job and looking to launch your own thing, don’t miss the chance to discover John’s Blueprint to do what you love and get paid for it.

Read about this month’s Scanners Night event here

Why we sabotage our projects

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Bestselling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin outlines a common creative affliction: sabotaging our projects just before we show them to the world.

Godin targets our “lizard brain” as the source of these primal doubts, and implores us to “thrash at the beginning” of projects so that we can ship on time and on budget.

Make this the year you start turning your ideas into real world projects. Find out how at January Scanners Night

So what’s Scanners Night like?

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If you’ve never been to Scanners Night before, this photo collage of last year’s events should give you a feel for what goes on.

Don’t miss January Scanners Night: How to have your best Scanner year yet

Think Plural!

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A Guest Blog Post by Ian Sanders, author of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’

The question ‘what do you do?’ is something many of us struggle with. An increasing number of us lack a simple one word answer to that question; we find it difficult summing up our role because we do more than one thing.

Many of us are carving out plural work lives where we juggle more than one role. Whether you work for yourself, for an employer or you’re seeking a career change, jugglers are busting the old myth that specialism rules!

Throughout our education we were always encouraged to do just one thing, to specialise in a narrow range of subjects and choose a singular trade or profession. I never liked that. So when I left school, I relished the ability to mix things up, working at a radio station, for a music business and taking a class in photography all at the same time. That gap year before I went to university was when I learnt to juggle and throughout my life, both working for organisations and for myself I have continued thinking and acting plural, juggling writing books with running a business. Advising a fashion brand one day, a rock band the next.

If you carve out a work life that reflects your multi-dimensional talents you can be more fulfilled and also more enterprising. My book Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life advocates that we bust those myths about what you should or shouldn’t do so that we can go beyond a fixed job title to create a role juggling our talents and passions.

Kevin Roberts features in my book. Kevin is CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s largest creative organisations, but he also blogs, writes, sits on the boards of other companies and guest lectures at business schools – there are no limits to what he does. He’s carved out a unique role driven by his passions where the ‘Work Kevin’ is the ‘Real Kevin’:

‘It all starts with knowing when you are at your best and playing there all the time.   I focus on those things I’m good at and try to get world class at them. The stuff I can’t do I ask others to handle and choose people who are brilliant at it, significantly better than me at least”.

But juggling is not just for successful CEOs. Rachel is a Commercial Director at a media company 3 days a week and makes handmade jewellery the rest of the week. Dave juggles being a photographer with working in a camera shop. Sam is a sales executive, but has a web-based hobby business he runs in his spare time. In a recession, juggling can prove to be a good survival strategy; if you have more skills to offer the job market or an employer, you can be more of an asset.

So if you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, try juggling; start by reframing your role to take on a new responsibility or task. Or if you have a desire to start your own business, a recession might not be the best time to make rash decisions and quit your job but why not start your business idea in your spare time to start?

Here are 5 tips to creating a Juggle-based career:

  1. Be Flexible: Forget a rigid career plan, be flexible to embrace opportunities that fit with your talents and desires. Change your mindset and start thinking plural.
  2. Stay Focused: being a good juggler is not about being a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’. It’s about being committed and dedicated in all you do. Manage time well to deliver on all fronts.
  3. Shout about your talents: develop a personal brand and use social media to communicate your talents to clients, recruiters and employers.
  4. Be Passionate: put passion at the heart of all you do. If you love what you do, work is less of a chore.
  5. Go beyond a job title: carve out a unique you-role. Do it your way, be authentic. Let the Work You be The Real You.

Happy Juggling….

Ian Sanders is ‘Chief-Juggler’. He’s a writer, ideas-producer and business & marketing consultant. Ian is author of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’ and ‘Leap! Ditch Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free’.

Follow him on Twitter @iansanders

Videos, blog and more information at iansanders.com

Video of Ian talking about Juggle

Change This ‘Juggle’ Manifesto

If you’d like to meet 30-40 other Jugglers in central London,
come to the monthly Scanners Night

Laurence Shorter – The search for the good life

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At November Scanners Night, Laurence Shorter shared his fascinating and funny journey around the world to find the secrets of optimism for his book The Optimist: One Man’s Search for the Brighter Side of Life.

You can listen to his talk now – just click the play button below.

Want to write a story as compelling as Laurence’s that might win you a book deal?

There are just 2 places left for tomorrow’s “Find your story” – read more here

Searching for the brighter side of life

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Watch standup comic, entrepreneur and author Laurence Shorter in a fascinating and funny interview on Canadian TV talking about his mission to discover the secrets to the brighter side of life for his book “The Optimist”.

(Love the story of how he flew all the way to South Africa to interview Desmond Tutu and then got into an argument with him!)

Laurence will be talking at Scanners Night this month about what he learned on his quest to meet some of the world’s greatest optimists from Richard Branson to Mick Jagger to the surfing Rabbi.

He will also share what he has learned as a Scanner in his search for the perfect career and his own version of the good life.

Book your ticket now

The power of a great story

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Ever tried to communicate your excitement about something to other people and been met by blank stares? This is bad news if what you’re talking about is the business, project, or book idea you’re trying to launch.

Being able to tell a great story about your current project is a powerful thing.

Here’s a very dramatic (and funny) one minute video that I think will show just how powerful a great story can be – particularly when you find yourself in a spot of bother:

In November, we are running a special one day workshop called “Find your story” with professional bard Sarah de Nordwall. If you’d like to find the killer story in your project, business, or book, click the link below.

Limited spaces available on “Find Your Story” workshop – read more

Effortless focus with Nina Grunfeld

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We Scanners hate to focus on one thing for too long yet if we don’t focus at all, how can we ever bring all our great ideas to fruition?

At October Scanners Night Nina Grunfeld showed us the secret to “Effortless Focus”; how to find your natural way to focus without making yourself crazy with boredom! Nina Grunfeld is a Scanner and yet has created a business, Life Clubs, running weekly workshops in 12 locations around the UK and has still found time to write 3 great books.

Nina is a also an enthusiast of the Enneagram and explains why Scanners are “Epicures” and what that means.

Do have a listen – just click the play button below.

Nina runs an exercise in this recording with the balance chart. You can get your copy to fill on the LifeClubs website here.

Read more about Life clubs and find your nearest one here

NEWSFLASH: Scanners Night is running its first ever one day workshop called “Find your story” – read more here

Meet the Bard

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At September Scanners Night, we met the superb Sarah de Nordwall, Professional Bard.

Sarah de NordwallSarah runs the UK’s only Bard School, was poet in residence at BBC Worldwide, and writes poems on commission. Sarah has performed as bard in locations from prisons to the House of Lords – and now Scanners Night.

Sarah captivated the audience with her ideas, stories and poems and she showed us the importance of story. Do have a listen to her – just click the play button below.

NEWSFLASH: Sarah is running a special one day workshop called “Find your story” – read more here

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