Creative Experiences Feed Inspiration

Everyone seeks to be inspired but just like everything else that is worth something, being inspired can be difficult. In addition, finding new creative ways to be inspired is a never-ending process.

As I have progressed through my career, I have been able to draw from many experiences which feeds into my passion for helping others. Recently, I have found some new inspiration through some creative experiences which are detailed below.

Last year, I started to notice a new spark of creativity when I began helping my oldest son, age 15, start selling LEGO and Star Wars based items on eBay and most recently with a blog site at www.summerfieldstoys.com. We spent lots of time discussing marketing, pricing, profitability, customer service, inventory, and logistics. After a few iterations of finding what product to sell, we started to build up inventory and the orders started to flow (including 2 orders this morning).

This year, my middle son, age 14, who has a creative eye for nature photography, applied and was accepted to participate in a large local art fair. The entire family chipped in and within a few short weeks his photography business was up and running. In three months, we have sold product, set up a website, https://michaelwfiore.wixsite.com/touchofnature marketed his product on Etsy, and created an Instagram account. Both boys have created a sustainable, profitable business that they are enjoying. I found the experience of helping my kids set up a small business very rewarding.

Lately, I have had the pleasure of learning through others as they find creative ways to solve problems. As my son started following photographers on his Instagram page, one that stands out is a local Boston based photographer, Angela Messmer-Blust (Instagram @wanderblustphoto and https://www.wanderblustphotography.com), I came across her photos when she took a beautiful photo of the Boston skyline from Cambridge with a reflection of the water on the Charles River. This picture was especially interesting as it was taken when the Red Sox were in the World Series and the Prudential Center had the words “Go Sox” on the side that reflected over the water. I wanted to see more photos from this great photographer and clicked on her profile which led me to her website bio. The bio shared that taking pictures is only a recent activity for her as she is an accomplished scientist by day. However, after experiencing a personal tragedy, she found inspiration in the creativity of taking photographs as a way of solving her own personal challenge and I found that story inspirational.

Another example that that comes to mind is based on a recent vacation my family and I took to Hawaii. During our visit at the Big Island, we took a tour of a vanilla bean farm in the Kona area called The Vanillerie, www.thevanillerie.com. With our tour, we were expecting the normal experiences such as learn a few facts, understand the process of how the beans are grown, and maybe get to taste the vanilla. We successfully accomplished all of these capped off by some great vanilla ice cream. However, the highlight came in the first few minutes of the tour as he described how he solved his biggest problem, self-pollinating the flowers.

Instead of using birds, the owner quickly taught himself how to self-pollinate the flowers, which can be accomplished in just a few seconds per flower. All was going smoothly until the vines started to grow and more specifically, grow up. This caused a problem for the just over 5 feet tall owner. He tried a few different options including a step ladder but that was too much time getting up and down when he only has a few hours one time per year. If he misses a flower, he must wait an entire year to get the chance again. To solve his problem, he built stilts. Yes, stilts. He found that using stilts was the most time efficient and easiest way to solve his problem. He did admit that he is a bit nervous when he is on the stilts, but it wasn’t a completely foreign concept to him as he had built stilts in his childhood out of bamboo.

With these examples, here is the impact to my creativity. My wife and I have found new ways to connect with two teenage boys although she admits she gravitates more to the photography than the LEGO and Star Wars business. While not mentioned above, my daughter, who is not quite a teenager, has a unique personality, uses multiple voices, and expresses herself in ways that are very different from my wife and me. My daughter has been asking us for years now to create a Vlog on YouTube, but we just haven't come to grips with putting our entire life on the Internet. All three experiences have given our family lots of different topics to talk about at the dinner table, all of which help me draw inspiration from creativity.

The creativity has a direct impact at work as well. I work for Teradata, www.teradata.com, a company whose mission is to transform how businesses work and people live through the power of data. Every day, I am speaking with customers finding creative solutions to help them make a significant impact on their business. For example, I have been involved with one customer to determine the cost and automated payout of an insurance claim by using before and after photos without any human intervention. By solving this problem, my customer will improve their customer service and at the same time, reduce the cost of paying a claim.

Being inspired with creative examples can be fun, challenging, and never ending. I would love to hear your experiences in the comments section below as to how creativity feeds your inspiration.