Episode 288: Your inspiration go-tos
Are you struggling to find inspiration for your small business or marketing efforts? In this episode, Fiona dives into the importance of seeking inspiration from various sources, both in real life and online. Tune in now to discover the power of inspiration and its impact on small business growth.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
On finding new and different inspiration
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
“Think about the things that you do to find inspiration, the places that you might visit, whether it's in real life or online, to drive that inspiration in yourself. I'm working with incredibly creative people and they give and give. Their creativity output is massive. And they are constantly coming up with amazing creative ideas, whether it's through brand partnerships or an execution inside their store, or something else that they're doing on their e-commerce platform or their email newsletters. They are giving out this huge amount of inspiration and creativity to other people, to their audience, to their brand partners, to their clients, and customers. And sometimes what we forget is to fill up that cup for one of a better phrase. Where are we getting inspiration from?”
Welcome to episode 288 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today you're reading a coaching episode and this is a great one. It's going to help you get your mojo back if it's been lacking or help you just feel a bit more excited about being in business. Before we get stuck into that, I wanted to remind people, we have had a few people reach out about Marketing For Your Small Business. The course and coaching program are currently on the moment. However, if you have missed out on that, you can buy the Marketing For Your Small Business online course at any time. You can find all the information at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. And if you would like to upgrade later in the year when we run the nine-week live coaching program, you can do so. You can get on that, you can go through the course and then do a refresher later in the year when we open it up again. And all the information is at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com.
The other thing is I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land on which I record this podcast. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
I want to start by telling you a story. This is a real story. This happened. It's part of my career to date. Back in 2004, I know that were people reading this thinking, "Oh my gosh, that's when I was born." Hello, young people. But I started my career in 2004, well I started in 2001, but I was doing these temp and part-time jobs. And then I started my proper first full-time job in a place called First Media, which produced different magazines. They produced Fashion Journal, I was the editor of that after the amazing Joe Barry stepped away and gave me that position, thank you Joe forever for that. I was also editing a magazine called STU. It was a creatives magazine, it used to be in Yen. And we took it over and I also was the editor behind Joe again of the first magazine that David Jones, which is a major department store here put out, which was called Precinct.
I was editing those magazines and I decided to change careers and go into book publishing. But in that time that I was at Fashion Journal, I was obsessed with finding things that were new and different, and interesting. Now, this is 2004, this is before social media. What would happen is we would have fashion designers, up-and-coming fashion designers knock on the door of our office and be like, "Hi, I want to show you my t-shirts and could you take photos of them and put them in a magazine." It was the glory days of magazines where everyone would send you everything and PR agencies would send so much stuff because there weren't social media, they needed to get them into magazines.
I was working there and I was going to lots of events and lots of stuff, but I also say that sounds all glamorous. I was also working my off. I worked, I would get in usually anytime between, let's say, sometimes I'd come in late, not late, but like 8:30 other times I'd be in there at seven o'clock in the morning. I would often stay until 9:30. I think they gave you free pizza after 9:30. I think I would stay because I wasn't getting paid very much, so free dinner. But I would stay, it's where I met one of my best friends, Paul Darragh, who is an incredible artist living in New Zealand, he was the first person that I ever employed. We interviewed him for the art director graphic design role. And he was amazing.
I met a bunch of friends that I'm still friends with there. But during that time I was young, I was ambitious and I would constantly be looking around for interesting things, whether it was fashion designers, whether it was something amazing happening in tech. Again, people who have grown up with the internet don't necessarily understand that a lot of the time in those early two thousand you weren't using it that much. You were using it for emails, you were using it for some stuff. But a lot of the research was being done in real life, like going down a little laneway and discovering a little shop or reading about something in the newspaper or meeting somebody at a party or meeting somebody at a club at 4:00 AM and they're like, "I have this earring company."
It's like, Please send me some, babe. That was the days, the early two thousand. But during that time I found this company called Cool Hunting. They have just celebrated 20 years for people who don't know, it was started by the incredible Josh Rubin and Evan Orensten who are a couple, they are married, but before this, they were living together, they were a couple and they would tell each other interesting things that they found and then they thought, “Let's just put this on a blog and our friends can find it and they'll find it useful.” They were both working at super cool jobs. I think Evan was involved with finding all the cool stuff for Oprah's shows where she was giving away things. And then Josh was working I think at Sony Ericsson.
They are both in the tech space, in the cool stuff happening space. They wrote about it and then the blog became Cool Hunting, which has grown to become one of the go-to resources for interesting things in the place of lifestyle, design, travel, fashion, you name it. I came across this site probably a year or so after they had launched and I contacted them and was like, "Hey, I'm in Australia, and I'd like to write for you. What you're doing is super cool." I became their Australian contributor and later when I moved to London, I became their London contributor. And the reason that I'm saying this is because during that time I was constantly looking for interesting things. I would meet people, I would chat with everyone.
I would be like, that would be awesome for Cool Hunting, I'm going to write an article about it. I would go to different shows. It was such a great time. And what happens is I changed career, I went overseas and I was still looking at stuff, but to a lesser degree I was still writing for a lot of magazines, but I wasn't on that hunt. You get older and older and older and you have kids and all of that and you end up maybe not utilizing that want to find interesting things all the time. And the reason I'm saying all of this, you're like, what is the point of today's coaching episode is to think about the things that you do to find inspiration, the things that you do, the places that you might visit, whether it's in real life or online, to drive that inspiration in yourself.
I'm working with incredibly creative people and they give and give and their creative output is massive. And they are constantly coming up with amazing creative ideas, whether it's through brand partnerships or an execution inside their store or something else that they're doing on their e-commerce platform or their email newsletters or whatever. And they are giving out this huge amount of inspiration and creativity to other people, to their audience, to their brand partners, to their clients, customers, you name it. And sometimes what we forget is to fill up that cup for one of a better phrase, where are we getting inspiration from? I've talked before about going to art galleries or taking that time for yourself. Today I thought I'd go through some of the inspirational go-tos online that I love. Actually no, I would say a couple of them are offline too.
But think about your inspiration, go-to list, and if you don't have one, maybe create an inspiration, go-to list. That is a list and you can put it on a Post-it note on your computer. You can put it somewhere in your phone like a note or pin your note on your app to remind yourself of where you find inspiration from. These places that I'm about to tell you, each have a story. I fell into them at different times in my life, but they each always deliver inspiration. And it can be an inspiration that ignites something for my business. It can be an inspiration that ignites something in my personal life, but often it is just opening my mind up to different ideas and that innovation and that inspiration that I used to seek out as part of my job for places like Cool Hunting.
These aren't in any particular order. Also, this is not an exhaustive list, this is just a couple of them. And I guess I hope you find these interesting and inspiring. But also I hope that this triggers you to create your inspiration list because we all have it. We all have places or people even that we talk to that are always inspiring, and who always remind us to be curious and creative in the world. And it's so important, especially as a creative small business owner, to feed that part of yourself. And especially as you get more demands on you, it's almost even more, more important. Whether you are a parent or maybe you're looking after an elderly parent or maybe you have a partner who might be unwell or have major health challenges or maybe you have major health challenges.
Sometimes we can get more and more insular rather than looking outside for inspiration and motivation and education. In no particular order, here are some of the places that I find inspiring when I need a bit of an injection or a heavy dose of that. These are in no particular order. Number one is Cool Hunting. I am biased. I wrote to them for a long time. I think Josh and Evan are amazing. Josh was my very first guest on this podcast. If you're interested in that, you can go back to Episode 2 where he talked about how he started Cool Hunting and what's it like to run a business alongside your partner. And can you ever actually switch off from talking about business? So many tips and ideas in that, we will link to them in the show notes.
But Cool Hunting has been around, like I said, for 20 years and they adjust just the loveliest guys and their team. They are always looking at what is interesting. Now the brands that they cover are not always brand-new brands, but they always cover them from a different angle. Something that you haven't heard about before or seen before. I have had such moments where I have been reading it and suddenly I've gone down this rabbit hole and suddenly I'm like, "That brand in Sweden, they are incredible." And it gives me all these ideas for my own business, but also those of my clients. Cool Hunting is number one. These aren't in any particular order, but Cool Hunting is always one of my go-to's. It has been for two decades, if you haven't checked it out, it's just over at coolhunting.com. You can find them all over social media. The social media at Cool Hunting.
The second one and I guess I have described how I came to Cool Hunting, maybe I'll describe how I came to this. For those that don't know, Fast Company is a company. But it started as a magazine and I think it started in the late nineties. I went to their 20th birthday event in New York in 2015 and that was 20 years. They must have started in 1995. Fast Company is a publication that is hugely around business, but business in terms of what is happening that's interesting and innovative in the tech world, in fashion, in society, and culture. It is an American magazine, however, they do feature people from all over the world. But I would say it still has a hugely American lens on it.
But Fast Company has always been a publication that I could turn to. And for years I had a subscription to the physical publication that I could turn to and I would find something fascinating, whether it was Fast Company is how I found about, about Tristan Walker, who is an incredible entrepreneur and the founder of Walker and Co. check them out if you need to look at a brand that has done incredible amazing things. I utilize Walker and Co in so many of the talks that I do, especially around brands and branding. Tick every single box for Walker and Co. But I also have uncovered incredibly interesting retailers in Japan or somebody in the United Arab Emirates doing this awesome thing in the restaurant world. Fast Company is one of those magazines and online sites now where you can always find something of interest.
In 2015, I went to the very first Fast Company innovation festival. I found out about that and I thought this is exactly what I want to go to. I went to New York for seven days and I covered like, I don't know how many events they had. I think they had like 120 events over seven days. And they had just fascinating events. They had events with say Nike and the head of Nike and Serena Williams talking about brand partnerships. They had events with the guys from Warby Parker where again, an incredible brand, love them. You could go into the Warby Parker headquarters and you could get a tour of that. Also a conversation with the founders about why they started it, what they're doing differently, and how they have built that. One of the best things that they did in that event in 2015 was they had a collaboration between L'Oreal and I think it was like Stanford University or this scientific lab.
You had to sign these massive NDAs when you went in there. But the stuff that was coming out of L'Oreal and with this science lab, it was incredible what they're able to do in the world with technology and in terms of not necessarily makeup and stuff, but looking at health and how they could create things between a huge brand and a huge university that could better the health of everyone. Also went into the headquarters of, I think it was Pepsi or Pepsi Co. And they talked about incredible things about saliva testing and sports people and on the field and Gatorade. And it was just fascinating. It blew my mind, all of the stuff that was being done. And in 2020 I'd booked to go to that festival again and then we all know what happened, no one could travel.
It's definitely on my list to go to. Again, Fast Company runs various events throughout the year and if you can get to one, I think they're incredible for just igniting your ideas and inspiration, but your imagination as well of what is possible and what some of the biggest thought leaders in various verticals and spaces are doing. Fast Company again is whether I look at the magazine or whether I look online or whether I go to one of their events, it is just a wealth of information and I always find something inspiring in there. If you want to check that out, it's just at fastcompany.com. And of course, we'll link to all of these in the show notes.
The next one that I like to look at, and again, I have to be very transparent in saying that I used to work for this company, I used to write some of these reports is LSN Global, which is part of the Future Laboratory, but in particular, and I think it used to be called Seed, but when I checked it out for this particular podcast, I don't think it's called Seed anymore. Seed used to be the news part of it. It is if you go to LSN, lsnglobal.com, and then look at their news. They've got LS:N Global, it's a subscription model, you can buy a subscription to it and you get all sorts of data and reports and everything else, but they do have a bunch of free information. That is what I'm talking about when I talk about inspiration. I don't have a subscription to LSN, I'm not a member of LS:N. I used to go to some of their events and as I said, I did work for the company when I was living and working in London. But the news part of this, it's always interesting news, particularly if you work in the luxury space or retail or fashion, lifestyle.
Because there's always information about what's happening in those categories. The other thing that you'll find if you go to the lsnglobal.com site is behaviours. Things that are happening, trends that are happening, you can search by sectors. You can search by let's say, you're interested in hospitality trends or you're interested in retail or fashion trends. You can have a look that way. They have a bunch of opinion articles and expert articles and so much more. And then they have a bunch of reports and reports is what I used to write for them years ago. I think the reports though are something you have to pay for or you need to be part of a member, but a lot of the content on there you don't need to pay for and you can just go in and have a look around.
For example, looking today, it was tween skincare brands. That's becoming a thing, which is interesting cause this past weekend I was talking to one of my clients who's in the tween market about tween skincare and how that's a bit of a gap. But I'm seeing here that there are already these incredible tween skincare brands, maybe they're not incredible, but who knows? But you can go in and see that. You can also subscribe to LS:N Global and get their newsletters and you can, in your newsletter subscription literally dictate, I only want to know about beauty or fashion or whatever it is. Again, a great place to go when you are seeking inspiration or ideas or a little bit of motivation like, “What are people doing?” And you don't want to be searching for that on social media.
Again, the website for that is just lsnglobal.com. I should also point out I'm not sponsored by any of these places, these are just places that I enjoy going to and learning from. The fourth place that is on my inspiration go-to list, and again, transparency I have written for them, I have been a paid writer for them in the past is Monocle and in particular Monocle Radio. Monocle Radio is a 24/7 live radio station that you can listen to that has all sorts of different shows and presenters and stories on, and the Monocle people may well know Monocle from the magazine, the publication that's been around for maybe 20 years. Again, I'm not sure I should have checked that out before I went on here. I just checked it out in 2007, not quite 20 years, but getting there.
It's a global briefing that is covering international affairs, business culture, and design. I have written for them on travel, and I've written on them for different things that are happening in architectural spaces, but Monocle covers everything. I have talked often about the Forecast, which is a Monocle magazine that comes out at the start of each year. I get that every year. I recently did my first TikTok and I mentioned it there. I also did it on a reel recently because the Forecast, it's like a mini book and it goes through all the different trends and things that are happening for the year ahead. It's out now if you want to get it for the 2023 year. And it has everything from all over the world. Things that are happening in Asia, Africa, and all the continents. Monocle Radio is a round-the-clock, Monocle Radio station, a global radio station that has live shows and podcasts, and the podcasts are so diverse.
You've got the news, you've got podcasts about design, you've got podcasts about culture, whatever it is that you feel like listening to, you can listen and you can know that it's quality information and that they're quality people giving you that information. I love it. I listen to that. I also read their magazine, you can shop through Monocle and find interesting things if you're so inclined. But I love the magazine again, I used to have a subscription to that. It's always got loads of things happening. In my book, Passion Purpose Profit, when I pulled together the Pinterest board, the mood board for that, I talked about Monocle and Andy Warren, who was the designer behind Passion Purpose Profit is an incredible designer. @andywarrendesign is his account on Instagram if you want to go and follow him.
He pulled in elements from the idea, he didn't take the elements from Monocle, but the concept of Monocle and certain rules and lines that they have in the magazine and brought that into my publication, Passion Purpose Profit. But Monocle is another key place that I will check out, whether it's the forecast, their radio station, whether it is a magazine or their online store for inspiration. You can find all the information about Monocle, including how to access their radio station at monocle.com. If you want to check out the radio station, it's monocle.com/radio. And the last one that I often check out, and I would've to say I usually check out this on Instagram rather than their website is Upworthy. Upworthy is good news stories, and we need a bit of a dose of that.
It could be good news stories around parenting, it could be around education, it could be around things that are happening. It's an American site, things that are happening in America, also happening globally. And it just reminds you that we are humans and we need each other to connect. And it's just some beautiful stories. And I think so often, particularly if you are on social media or maybe you're working by yourself and then you're looking at the news channels, it can be doom and gloom that's out there. And I'm not saying that we all should get into toxic positivity or anything like that, but I feel like Upworthy has a good mix of sad stories, beautiful stories and then happy stories, and then things that make you laugh.
They're just lovely. And there is a reminder that most people are great people. My dad used to always say that most people are good people, they're just trying to live their lives. It's an important reminder. I think monocle and other places might give me this, like, that's so fascinating what that brand is doing. But I think Upworthy gives me the very much like, humanity is amazing and I love them. Upworthy, another one like that is Tank Good News. And there's another one, I forget the name of it. The other one on Instagram who's also quite inspiring to look at is MD Motivator. I think he's got a couple of million followers and you can donate to him and then he goes around giving people money, but in like a nice way.
I know that's become a trend, but he does it in such a beautiful way. You can find Upworthy at upworthy.com or you can follow them @Upworthy on all the socials. It can just be a source of inspiration. It can be a source of uplifting your mood if you not having the greatest day. I follow them. I follow a few of those and I find it an inspiring thing to look at. I have talked many times about social media and the negative impacts of social media, but I also think social media can be incredible. And if you choose to follow and see content that is inspiring and uplifting or just more real, then it can also be a fabulous addition to your life as a small business owner.
Just to recap, and as I said, there are so many more, but on my inspiration, go to list alongside many others Cool Hunting and you can find that at coolhunting.com. The second one that I mentioned is Fast Company, and you can find that at fastcompany.com. LS:N Global, which is part of the Future Lab. And you can find that at lsnglobal.com. Monocle has 24-hour radio and podcasts, plus magazines, events, and all sorts of things. You can find that at monocle.com. And then lastly, I talked about Upworthy, which you can find online on socials or you can find it at upworthy.com. And of course, we'll link to that in the show notes.
But just a reminder that so often, as I said at the start of this, we give and give and it's nice to fill that cup up yourself and think about where am I getting my inspiration from. It can be 10 minutes of looking at these things or five minutes. It doesn't have to be this huge thing that is another huge part of your to-do list and feels like a burden. It's just having those places to go and maybe getting newsletters from them or, oh, which also reminds me of another one that I should have mentioned. I'll just mention it quickly and I have to do a shout-out to my husband Jerome, who put me on this, which is the Center for Humane Technology. They send a good newsletter about all sorts of things that they're doing. And that could be stuff that they're doing with Google or stuff that they are, they're covering about science or how technology is being used for good. I think so often, again, like social media, we can just hear the negatives. You can find out more about that and sign up for their newsletter, which again, I find quite inspiring over at Humane Tech. That's humanetech.com.
You can find out a bunch of information about them. They also have resources, things to watch, movies to watch, watch insights, and all sorts of things. But as I said, I enjoy that they're all about aligning technology with humanity's best interests. Who doesn't want that? All right, so that is it for today's coaching episode. I hope that's given you some fuel for thought giving you maybe some new places to check out. I would love to know where you go, where, and what is on your inspiration. Go to the list. Please don't be a stranger. You can email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com, or you can find us on social media @MyDailyBusinessCoach. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
