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Last month I invested in a trip to Chicago and spent four days with peak performance coach Tony Robbins.

If you don’t know Tony or his work, he is worth knowing. He grew up in a household with very little money, often experiencing holidays with no food and a rotating door of four absent fathers.

His career took shape in the early 1980s as he walked on the beach, 40 pounds overweight, listening to the rock tune “Barracuda,” and feeling a big change was needed.

At the age of 19, after working with other legendary speakers like Jim Rohn, Tony’s path of success included conducting seminars, radio shows, writing books, and coaching.

Wikipedia reports Tony earned more than 30 million dollars in 2007, and that he has coached Serena Williams, Donna Karin, and Greg Norman, just to name a few. If that’s not enough, this spring NBC picked up eight episodes of “Breakthrough with Tony Robbins,” a reality show that follows Tony and participants as they battle personal challenges.

I’ve been a fan of Tony’s for years. I’ve read a few of his books and seeing him live was an item on my wish list. This year I decided I was going to do it.

A while back, I saw Tony on NBC’s “Today” show. The segment touted his web site so I checked it out and signed up for his emails.

I receive them often enough, but not on an obnoxious schedule. They’ve always been inspirational and have a deliberate business purpose. Most include a video of him, which I’ve found to be a great way to disseminate information and sell product. I’m definitely going to start using video when Oddpodz relaunches.

TR sold me. The last email video message mentioned his upcoming Unleash the Power Within™ event to be held in Chicago.

I signed up. And not just as an attendee. I purchased a Diamond class ticket for an additional $1000. Why spend the extra bucks? Because, 1) I deserve it (which I know sounds like a Saturday Night Live segment with Jack Handy) and 2) If you are going meet other high achievers, it shouldn’t be in the nosebleed section. The extra fee was well worth it. Not only did I meet a ton of very cool, got-it-going-on people; the choice seating and no-wait entry zone is the only way to go.

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Whoever said “No pain, no gain,” obviously had a few start-ups and small businesses under his or her belt.

The past few months for Oddpodz have been a period of growth and transformation. We are happy to report, we are still moving forward, however, we’ve also had a good share of “OUCHES!”

We have struggled through a frozen economy.

We have danced with investors and fund raising gurus in “not-much-action-for-pre-revenue-deals” funding market.

We have squeezed 18 hours of productivity out of 8-hour work days with a limited team.

And we have kept smiles on our faces, when inside we were often scared and freaked out.

If being an entrepreneur—starting and leading a small business—is in your life path, put your thick skin on and embrace the ability to let challenges not defeat you, but drive you forward.

Progress and change are essential for business success. But when you are a young and small enterprise they also bring several suitcases of uncomfortable side effects.

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Last week I earned many of your eyeballs by sharing how I scored a 6-figure gig while using Twitter.

Twitter is definitely a viable method for communicating to prospects, clients, and business fans but, like many new social platforms, it can be overwhelming. Not just how it works, but also how to utilize all the handy applications that are available to enhance your experience and value gained with it.

Twitter is a microblog that enables real-time messaging to the world via your computer or mobile device. The only rule—your message must be under 140 characters.

Start slow and simple. Add apps as you get comfortable with it.

Here’s a rundown on some of my favorite Twitter tools and how I use them. If you have discovered a Twitter tool that really rocks, please share it in a comment on the Oddpodz blog, so others can learn about it.

1) Grade your Twitter profile. Try Twitter grader learn to see if your tweet power, authority, and reach are working for you. This grader not only gives you a score, but tells you how to amp things up.

2) Organize and manage your tweets Better. Check out TweetDeck. This cool tool is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now; connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organized and up to date.

3) Analyze your tweets. Twitter analyzer is amazing. This is a great tool to see what type of professionals are following you, how many people you are reaching beyond your followers, who is tweeting about you, and lots more.

4) Track the Twitter addicts by location. Twitterholic lets you find people in a geographic area and also ranks you in the world of Twitterers. For example, since I live in Tampa, I searched with http://Twitterholic.com/top100/followers/bylocation/Tampa/ and learned how often Tampa folks were tweeting and who they were. I also learned that I am #52 in active Tampa tweeters.

5) How does your profile compare to others (like your competitors) and how do subjects compare. Twittervolume provides a great snapshot. Type in your handle along with competitors; Tweetvolume shows you the volume tweets. Want to find the best key word? Type in several like I did: sales, marketing, branding, and women business. Guess which ranked highest? I won’t tell—you’ll have to check it out.

A blog post on Twitter tools could go on for days. Every day, new and improved Twitter tools are hatched. If you need more good ideas, check out my pal Chris Brogan’s blog, he has a great post called “50 ideas for using Twitter for Biz”
Also see my other super-smart marketing friend John Jantsch of “Duct Tape Marketing,” at ducttapemarketing. John’s blog is filled with sound insight.

Have an awesome week! And don’t forget to check out Oddpodz Free Biz Findz. This week we are adding 20 new super, cool, and FREE items.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers¹ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com.

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The past few days I’ve suffered from a less than productive head. I absolutely could not get anything finished or even put a dent in a project. The more I tried, the less I achieved. It was like my brain was at a stop sign and then I ran out of gas. I could not think, create or solve any problems. After a couple hours of useless work, I started feeling very stressed and then I couldn’t even focus on what I was doing. Why does this happen? What can you do, when your brain feel less than productive?

This theory is not scientific. But for me, I think your brain gets clogged up and too many “ta does” and stress can actually immobilize your brain’s function. I noticed that when I stare at my computer screen for long periods of time, this brain freeze happens the most.

Get away from your computer and move around.

My good pal Doug Stevenson explains in his CD series on “How to Deliver a Dynamite Speech” that too much typing on your computer will keep your brain and your thoughts in the left sided, logical mode and will make solving problems and being creative a very difficult task. He suggests creative thinking should happen away from the computer. He also recommends moving around and that sitting still does not empower creative thinking. I agree with that idea. After I go for a run or play tennis my brain is on fire with fresh ideas. And I’m in great mood.

Manage disruptions and doing things tomorrow.
Another friend of Oddpodz is Mark McGuinness. Mark lives across the pond, is a poet and leads Wishfulthinking a consultancy for creative professionals, agencies and studios. Mark suggests managing disruptions like email and responding to clients, along with doing more things tomorrow and not today. Mark’s work and blog has been hugely helpful in moving me out of the brain freeze zone. Two of his brilliant pieces of work are featured in Oddpodz FREE Biz Findz.

I’m out of the brain freeze now. Thank goodness. I know it will be back. I continue to battle this state of mind when my plate is very full. But, I am making progress. When I feel it happening, I change my environment, schedule uninterrupted time and get away from my computer.

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Last week we posted some cool, valuable and FREE productivity tools. I’d like to comment with a follow up thought. Yesterday, I started my day at 7AM and turned off my computer at midnight and as I lay in bed, I asked myself, “what big, meaningful items did I knock off my list today?” And, the list was decent. It included: a billable project (always good), a proposal that needed to be written to generate new work (always needed) and another weekly category of FREE Biz Findz, which is directly tied to my dream and mission. So, at the end of the day I felt productive, positive and energized to score even bigger results for the following day.

So how did this happen?

4 specific things I did to have a truly productive day?

1. Don’t take calls throughout the day. I didn’t take calls while I was working. I checked my phone in the AM and at the end of the day.

2. Pick your friends and time commitments carefully. When I friend of mine called to invite me to a holiday event, I politely declined. The event was with people that are not my prime target and honestly hanging out with this friend is starting to feel like waste of time, too. Nice person, but does not add anything to inspire me, or accelerate my life course. I know this sounds cruel and maybe selfish, but decisions and time commitments with friends need to support your dream or they too be become time suckers.

3. Treat your body and mind well. I exercised for an hour and didn’t drink too much wine the night before. Both of these actions produced better and more ideas and results.

4. Take a break from the computer. Think and write the old fashioned way – on paper. 24/7 staring at a computer screen will make your nuthouse invite arrive early.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She is has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com, an idea engine for creative professionals and business. Her work has benefited large and small organizations in the United States and around the world.

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Hi there. You know it’s been a hard Friday for me and I’m a little stressed out and I don’t want to come across as a jerk or even worse, conceited, but look, let’s be rational about the free food that’s in the kitchen.

I know you don’t all make king’s ransoms. I don’t. And I know that you probably eat some crappy food. But holy %&$##, when there is free food in the kitchen do you all have to stampede in there like a herd of starved elephants? Because it’s embarrassing.

And look, yes, I know the food in there is as joyously free as soda fill-ups at an Olive Garden or as plentiful as a Seth Godin library. But you needn’t tell me; when I see ten of you get up at the same time with those dumb smiles on your faces and waddle in there on the double-quick I know that there is nothing else possibly driving you but something free that you can put into your mouth. Do you tell me because you think that you’re doing me a favor? Because you think I look emaciated? Do you tell me because having more people rushing in there somehow validates your third meal of the day before 1:30 pm? I don’t know why you tell me; because I have no doubt that were I to come face to face with you before the last Cosi pressed sandwich, even if it were one of the mozzarella and eggplant ones, you would cut my Achilles tendon with a plastic fork.

So, seriously people, get a hold of yourself. It’s pitiful.

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What is the productivity cost of the lag time or make-up period when one employee leaves and another moves into his or her position? That would require math which I’m not so good at so I’ll refer you to William G. Bliss of isquare.com.

“Calculating and adding all these costs, given our original example of the $50,000 person can easily reach $75,000 to replace them. As you can see, the costs and impact associated with an employee who leaves the company can be“

Read the 1,800-word breakdown in its fascinating and intricate entirety.

But turnover is inevitable. So what one should look to do is to minimize these costs. And with a little foresight this is possible.

Employees at the end of their line have no real incentive to make their job easier for their replacement. They’re not going to get fired. So why not create incentives for employees that are not going to leave (at least that you know of) to put together a current job description so you’re not left having to train somebody for something that you, let’s face it, probably forgot a long time ago (if you ever knew at all).

Tip: Pick a slow time during your business cycle to ask for this.

Tip: Encourage bullet pointing. We hate it but it works (the Ten Commandments were bullet pointed; are YOU going to argue with God?)

Tip: Ask that a most currently used contacts list be added to the description’s index.

Tip: Encourage them to use screenshots. Pictures are the easiest way to teach somebody. Have them print out screenshots of the steps in commonly-used programs with a red pen. This way the new hire can use it as a visual cheat sheet.

Tip: Finally, incentive it. You get what you pay for; by offering an selfish motivators people will be more willing to take the job seriously. And don’t punk out on the cheap and get everyone a pizza party; this is an investment that hopefully will SAVE you money down the road. Think iTunes gift cards or maybe a restaurant voucher.

Anyone else have suggestions?

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If you’re like us, heck if you’re just breathing, you run into obstacles as you go along. But, if you’re an oddpod that means that you are (among other things) clever, creative, curious and tenacious. You realize that challenges will arise, but that they do not signal the end of the world.

Believe it or not, we have encountered a few challenges while building our nation of creatives. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so why would we expect our Nation to be built in 23 hours or less? Why? Because we are so excited about it and about all the cool new people we will meet when it’s completed. So, we hit some bumps in the road. I’m not complaining-this is my dream job. We have a great team and we’ve figured out how to work through road blocks and with some blockheads.

Some challenges we’ve all faced:

1. Meeting a tight deadline
2. Getting someone to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’
3. Putting the right team together
4. Muddling through when you can’t find the right team
5. Doing great things on a limited budget
6. Building something that is new and different
7. Telling the world about your cool new product
8. We could go on, but you get the idea

How we’ve dealt:

1. Eliminate the words no, can’t, won’t, don’t and variations thereof from your vocabulary and stay away from negative people and influences.
2. Have ears that are twice as big as your mouth. Also, make sure that you’re all speaking the same language. Communication gaps can turn into dangerous black holes.
3. Listen without judgement, and when you open your yap, make sure you’re not cutting people off.
4, Ask a lot of questions and embrace the iterative process – getting it right will take a few tries.
5. Know where the fine line is between getting WAY off track and considering all the possibilities.
6. Even if you’ve got a tight deadline, take a break from your challenge. Sleep, run, ride a bike or a horse, read something or grab a meal. Your brain will churn and connect the dots while you’re busy doing something else
7. Find good outside sounding boards.
8. No holds barred brainstorming session with the beverage of your choice. Just make sure you have a good secretary to capture the random brilliant ideas.
9. Have a good thinking space.
10. Laugh a lot. Crankiness kills creativity.

So, how do you muddle through the tough spots? We’d love to hear….

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Take a look around you right now. Look away from the computer screen and scan around you – the surface of your desk or table, now scan farther to look at the rest of the room. Close your eyes and imagine the rooms you can’t see from here; particularly the space where you most often work on your creative projects. Take a deep breath and really take in the image. What’s the impact?

If you’re like me, a reformed pack rat and clutter-magnet (and I think many creative people are), you might even find it difficult to breathe – almost like the piles, mess, unwanted and un-useable items are taking up air. Well, they are!

Clutter, essentially anything you don’t need, use or love, affects your creativity on many levels. In your workspace, it’s messy and makes it harder to find and use what you need to get your work done. In your schedule, it creates chaos and a feeling of a lack of time. In your mind, it clogs the pathway to your intuition and feeds fear and self-doubt.

In your heart, it blocks out love and peace by hanging onto negative emotions from the past. In your body, it weighs you down by making it harder to take care of yourself and harder to hear the messages your body sends you. In your relationships, it clouds your communication and affects your ability to give and receive.

This article will give you come clues for how to spot clutter in your life, and tips on how to begin clearing it out.

Do you have PHYSICAL CLUTTER?
1. Do you spend a lot of time looking for things when you’re trying to work?
2. Do you feel uninspired, or even dragged down, by what you see around you in your workspace?
3. Does the clutter distract you by reminding you of things you need to do (broken things that need to be fixed, half-finished projects, unanswered mail, unpaid bills)?
4. Are there things in your workspace that you haven’t looked at in years?
5. Does anything in your workspace remind you of unpleasant experiences?

Creative energy needs space. While some of the artists I spoke to when writing my book, “The Creativity Interviews”, seemed to thrive in chaos and busy-ness, most equated creative flow with a peaceful serenity surrounded by open time and open space.

Aside from space and freedom from clutter in our “home base” (the workspace where we write routinely), sometimes it’s OUT THERE that we actually do our best work. Riding on trains, sitting in cafés or surrounded by nature.

Do you have TIME CLUTTER?
On any given day:
1. Are there many things you did that you didn’t enjoy doing?
2. Are there many things you did that you didn’t need to do?
3. Are there many things you did that didn’t do you any good (maybe even did you harm)?

The clutter in our schedules can lead to a chaotic life while things just seem to “happen” to us.

Do you have MENTAL CLUTTER?
1. Are you distracted by thoughts while you’re trying to create?
2. Do you criticize yourself in your own mind?
3. Do you spend time re-playing conversations or events?
4. Do you spend time speculating about future events?

Sometimes the chatter in our minds is constant and difficult to decipher. Other times there are the same boorish and loud messages over and over again – messages like “You can’t do it!”, or, “You’re no good!”. All of them are distracting and make it much more difficult to hear our muse.

Do you have EMOTIONAL CLUTTER?
1. Do you “brood” about arguments long after they’ve happened?
2. Do you hold grudges?
3. Do you spend a lot of time focusing on the things in your life that you don’t like?

Emotional clutter stems from the same pack-rat habit of not wanting to let go. Instead of hanging onto an old sweater missing a button, it’s hanging onto an old emotion. Once an emotion is over, it’s over, unless we choose to hang onto it. That’s a powerful ability we have – to either stay enraged, sad or anxious over something that happened three days ago, or three YEARS ago, or let go and give ourselves the freedom.

Do you have RELATIONSHIP CLUTTER?
1. Is there someone in your address book that you’d like to let go of?
2. Do you find it hard to concentrate and listen intently to people?
3. Do you find it hard to be open to what other people are offering you (i.e. the appreciation of your audience or a compliment from a friend)?
4. Do you find it difficult to freely give (i.e. to perform without being preoccupied with your own thoughts)?
5. Do you say “yes” to everything that’s asked of you?

Sometimes we hold on to broken relationships for the same reasons we hold on to broken things: because we think they can be fixed (and that we’re actually going to take the steps to fix them), and because they’re familiar and safe.

The clutter in the rest of your life blocks your communication – it’s just too hard to listen with your whole heart when there are layers of clutter in the way. This affects your inner listening as well – your ability to tune into your intuition, your “muse”. Stage fright is a BIG form of clutter.

Is clutter impacting your HEALTH?
1. Are you “too busy” to exercise?
2. Is fast food easier because you can’t find your kitchen counter?
3. Do you exhaust yourself with a busy day and then putter around trying to “wind down” until late in the evening?
4. Do you not notice (or pretend not to notice) symptoms of illness or injury until they’re so severe that you have to take drastic measures?
5. Do you have a hard time falling asleep because your mind is whirling around or your emotions are surging?

If we’re surrounded by clutter and chaos, things like eating vegetables or walking around the block just don’t seem do-able or important. And yet if we don’t take care of our bodies everything else becomes much, much harder and can lead to fatigue, illness, trouble concentrating, pain, addiction and weight problems.

TIPS FOR CLEARING THE CLUTTER
1. If you’re serious about tackling your physical clutter, I recommend the book, “Clear your clutter with Feng Shui”, by Karen Kingston. She has wonderful ideas for clearing your clutter and also helps you to have a much deeper awareness of how the clutter got into your life in the first place.
2. One simple method to get the physical clutter out is to create three piles (boxes are helpful), labeled: Give away, Throw away and Put away. You can add other categories if you like (i.e. recycling, repair).
3. To quiet down your mental clutter, try writing. In “The Artist’s Way”, Julia Cameron recommends writing three full pages every morning. Find your own method – write to do lists, poems, lists of everyone you’re mad at, talk back to your inner critic, write about whatever’s swirling around your head. You can also write down questions for your muse – help with a particular verse or a request for general inspiration.
4. To deal with your time clutter, just say “NO”. This is a muscle that might need some exercising. Put yourself and your creative pursuits first – just because you’re at home, that doesn’t mean you have to be available.
5. If emotional clutter has your heart tied up in knots, practice letting go. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean condoning what they’ve done. It means freeing yourself and being open to positive emotional experiences.
6. To improve your relationship with your audience and combat relationship clutter, think about what they’re hoping to get from your performance – maybe to be transported by the music, to be inspired, to have their feelings put into words, to be soothed, to be “rocked”, to be energized or to be cradled. You have an enormous power to give them these gifts.

This article was originally published on the Muses Muse Songwriter’s Resource website (September 2004) as “Where do you Write, and Why Does it Matter?”. – Linda Dessau, 2005.

Linda Dessau, the Self-Care Coach, helps artists enhance their creativity by addressing their unique self-care issues. Feel like your creativity is blocked? Sign-up for the free e-course, “Roadblocks to Creativity” by visiting www.genuinecoaching.com

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