The Business Allotment, Epping (2026)

24/03/2023

5 SECRET THINGS THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT WILL MAKE YOU A SQUILLIONAIRE IN A WEEK.

Blimey, sorry, I don’t know what happened there. I think I’ve been reading too many LinkedIn carousels about how writing an epic hook is the way to get a 6 figure business before lunchtime. (And you notice they never tell you where the decimal point is in that 6 figures, do they?).
Anyway, back to reality.

I don’t have 5 secrets. I have one fact. Getting better business ideas takes practise.
And now I have one solution. Get cracking on the 20 Days 100 Ideas Challenge, get 5 to 10 minutes of practise in every day for 20 days and in the process, get 100 new ideas for a business challenge you have.

Oh, and they also say ask your audience a question. I’m tempted to ask for a secret, but I’m not sure what unholy hell might be unleashed, so let’s leave the oversharing to the Ferrero Rocher ambassador, shall we?

Sign up here and get those creative muscles flexing: https://buff.ly/3jz4Jvh

23/03/2023

What’s the most powerful combination of body parts to help you get better business ideas?
If I had a pound for every time I get asked this question… well, I’d have a pound, and that’s only because I just got my son to read it out loud. He’s now annoyed, and a pound down, but he’ll learn.

So, before I go and spend my new-found wealth on a Sherbet Dip Dab and a small bag of flying saucers, let me furnish you with the answer.

It’s your subconscious brain and your feet.

If you have a business challenge to solve, or you are stuck on something, utilise your brain / feet combo to get ideas.

First, write your challenge on a small piece of paper. Start with the words ‘How to…’ and make it around 10 words. And make it sound as exciting as you can, you need to get your brain interested. So writing ‘how to uplift our conversion rate by 6.5%’ isn’t going to cut it. Your brain will take one look and go straight back to ruminating on whether it would be better to have one hand made of broccoli or ten asparagus fingers.

Then (and this is important) put this bit of paper away. Hide it in your desk drawer, pop in between the pages of a book, roll it up and stick it in the hole of a nearby Polo (the mint, not the car).

Finally, use your feet and allow them to take you for a walk. DO NOT think about the challenge. This is when your subconscious brain does all the creative heavy lifting, whilst you peregrinate (apparently this does not mean to turn into a bird of prey, it means to wander and is my word of the week).

By the time you return and consciously address your challenge, you will have better, richer and more plentiful ideas.

Right, I’m off to the newsagents, but not before I write ‘How to cunningly hide my tast-bud-tingling sweets from my kids’ on a Post It.

22/03/2023

It’s the question on everyone’s lips… no, not about how AI is the best thing since sliced bread / the worst things since I found half a slug in my cheese salad sandwich, but…

What’s been dangling off the Tool Rack recently?

Let’s face it, you’ve probably asked yourself this at least twice already today. On the last few Racks, we’ve had brain food ideas, how to create a statement of intent for your business, the benefit of NoDesk time, creative offboarding ideas, creative habits to get into, creative customer engagement actions… I mean, I could go on, but I’m still hunting for the other half of that slug.

So if that sounds useful, that it could spark some new ideas for your business and give you some fresh perspectives, then you could subscribe to the Tool Rack. You’ll get this sort of content in your inbox every month, and as a bonus for VIP subscribers (yes, that’s you) you get two bonus Creative Hooks to help you get better business ideas.

Sign up here [insert a witty quip here about signing up and getting hooked] to the Tool Rack. You never know when it will come in handy.

https://buff.ly/3AWTZ06

21/03/2023

Toot toot.

It’s Toot your Trumpet Tuesday, people!

Okay, I made that up about two minutes ago, but don’t worry. It’s nearly Wet Your Whistle Wednesday, shortly before we reach Thrust your Thingymabob Thursday and Fling Your Fishfinger Friday, at which point we’ll all be wishing for the relative calm of Toot Your Trumpet Tuesday, so just go with it.

I worked with a client last week in a Brand Name Cultivator session. This business owner is on a growth path, and wanted to create a brand name that would be fit for purpose as she scaled her business, as well as resonate more with the story she now wants to tell.

Sometimes, naming sessions are the most creative time I spend with clients, and this one was great fun (an essential component of a creative mindset). The client got her new name (which is hers to share, not mine) and I got a good arm muscle work out by using my Etymology dictionary, amongst other things, to spark ideas.

What do you want to toot about today? Go on, pucker up and give it a blow.

17/03/2023

What if sending a newsletter was illegal?

[insert joke here about some being criminally boring]

Talk in the Business Shed this month has been about creating great customer communication.

Like most business activity, there is an assumed way of doing ‘comms’ that can often be adopted without ever questioning if it is right for your business.

So making stuff illegal is a great way to stop doing stuff the way everyone else does it.

Fictious business person 1: We need to communicate with our clients more often.
FBP2: Let’s do a newsletter!
FBP1: Great ideas, let’s do it.
FBP3: But newsletters are illegal.
FBP1: Since when?
FBP3: Since that unfortunate incident with the inbox and the cucu… never mind, we’re going off topic and these posts have a maximum word count. What other more interesting ways can we communicate with our clients?

Once you’re at this point, you can start getting creative and explore other options to achieve what you want and before you know it, you’ve created something different that engages your clients, your comms arrested for interesticide and no one ever mentions CucumberInboxGate ever again.

16/03/2023

Socks in the laundry basket. A slightly too-tight jumper after you have wrestled yourself out of it. The way you look at your business.

What have all these things got in common? They are often inside out.

As business owners, we see our business from the inside out. It’s fantastic, this view. We can see everything in detail, we know how everything works, inside out. It helps us run our businesses efficiently.

What it can sometimes stop us doing is getting fresh perspectives about our business and the challenges therein, because we are too close to it. Ideas come easiest when we shift perspective, stand in someone else’s shoes or change position.

Three ways to do this:

💡 Ask someone outside of your business for an idea about your business challenge. A business ally or associate, whose background and current industry is different to yours.

💡 Step away from your business. Sure, a month’s cruise would definitely give you a fresh perspective, but even an hour spent in an art gallery, cinema or climbing up a hill works.

💡 Use a perspective-shifting creative tool. How would Homer Simpson solve it? I mean, probably doughnuts. So how does ‘doughnuts’ help you solve the challenge? Go with it, it works. Either that or you’ll find yourself outside Greggs and wonder how you got there.

15/03/2023

What’s in your back pocket?

A crumpled receipt? A button that you think belongs to something you own but you’re not sure quite what? A nagging sense you’ve forgotten to feed the cat?

What you should be carrying our in your back pocket is a whole load of creative tools. They’ll have a much bigger impact on your business growth than a bit of paper reminding you that you spent the best part of a tenner on a rubber duck that sings Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.

So why not subscribe to the Tool Rack, and each month you’ll get two Creative Hooks landing in your inbox, with a creative thinking tool, warm up or insight. What difference does it make? The tools are designed to help you think more creatively about business. You’ll also get our monthly Tool Rack, where lots of other interesting stuff hangs.

Don’t panic, the next creative hook doesn’t land until this Friday, so plenty of time to subscribe:
https://buff.ly/3AWTZ06

14/03/2023

See that bush over there, business owner?

I’m not going to beat around it. Who has time for that?

I want you to come to a thing I’m doing.

It’s a visitor day for the Business Shed, the online business growth club. One hour online, where you get to work in a creative way to get new ideas for your business, explore ways to stand out from your competitors and spend time taking the temperature of your business.

That’s it. Bush unbeaten, sales pitch pitched.

Seats are free, the session is Wednesday 29th March at 12pm, fresh ideas guaranteed, and you can reserve one here:

https://buff.ly/3CyrPJ0
https://www.thebusinessallotment.co.uk/shop/p/the-business-shed-visitor-ticket
(No bushes were harmed in the making of this post).

13/03/2023

Answer: Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Question: how do you warm your brain up on a Monday morning so you approach your day with a creative mind set?

Get juicing those creative brain cells with this creative warm up. Draw 5 lemons. And I’ll not be having any of that ‘I can’t draw’ nonsense, it’s a wonky oval with two bibbly bits. (Best not google that last phrase, just in case).

Now squeeze out an idea for each lemon – what can you turn it into? A leaf with a nibbly caterpillar, a curiously inflated dinosaur-type thing, a lemonmobile (you wait until Tesla see that, boy did they miss a trick, it runs on lemon juice), a hot air balloon…

This is also a great warm up to kick off a meeting, getting everyone to draw one lemon. And if you want to start an argument, award points for the best, and anyone who has drawn the same as anyone else gets to make the tea and buy the biscuits.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? Come on, show me your lemons in the comments (that came out slightly more weird than intended).

10/03/2023

Planning. Scheduling. Prioritising. Focusing on what actually matters.

Some people eat this sort of daily and weekly organisation for breakfast. For others, they wouldn’t even nibble at it if it was the last morsel left in the end-of-days buffet.

I have lots of conversations with people in the Allotment about how to be organised and get those really important actions around growth and business momentum done. Some swear by colour-coded to-do lists, others by electronic reminders… some just swear.

So I thought I would mention that I have designed a desk planner to help you get organised and to keep you focused on those growth actions that actually make a difference to your business.

Plus, its got doodle circles, so good times.

Plus plus, it deploys the latest PERF2000 technology*.

Get it in the shop, get planned, get focused and get growing. Or, buy it for a friend and bear witness to the ‘wait, I wanted a delicious bottle of wine and you bought me a desk planner’ face. It’s quite a thing to behold.

https://buff.ly/3J0xARi

*It’s just a perf, I cannot lie.

09/03/2023

What is usually left over after a birthday?

Some scraps of wrapping paper that didn’t quite make it as far as the recycling bin? A slice of cake with a half-burned candle speared into its top? A partially nibbled Jammy Dodger?

Well, not in the Allotment. The only thing left after the 20th business birthday celebrations is a couple of Business Barometer online courses, part of 20 that I offered for free as a birthday gift.
So, if you want a creative way to work on business growth and tools to create a practical strategy, why not nab one before it goes from free to very not-free?

https://buff.ly/3SrPmln

You have until Monday morning. But don’t rush. I SAID NO RUNNING IN THE CORRIDOR!

08/03/2023

Rubber duck.

What does that make you think of?

Right, you at the back with the weird grin on your face, you can keep that thought to yourself and leave immediately. Absolute filth. For the rest of you, hands up who has used a rubber duck to get more creative?

I was running a quick ideas blitz with a networking group last week, and introduced a rubber duck to proceedings as the group were coming up with ideas for their business challenge.
It changed the thinking in the room almost immediately, because when you force what I call a Random Spark into your thought process, ask yourself how this Spark helps you solve your problem, your brain can’t help but mash up (technical term) these two unrelated things and create a new thing (an idea, also a technical term).

Give it a go.

Oh, and if you want a 10 minute ideas blitz for your network meeting, give me a shout. (Just don’t shout ‘DUCK’, I’m likely to bang my forehead on the desk).

The Business Allotment

24/03/2023

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