I am prone to thinking that everyone has their act together way more than I do.
This is true when it comes to creative inspiration. When I think of the most creative people I know—friends, family, Taylor Swift, etc.—I picture their creative process occurring in an idyllic meadow, birds chirping and water lapping, and these visionaries of mine sit peacefully, jotting down amazing idea after amazing idea in their leather-bound journals with their gel-tipped pens. Beginning-to-end, this process takes them probably, like, two minutes.
My creative process, by comparison, is messy, convoluted, circuitous, and pensive (also known as “spacey”). Sometimes good ideas come quickly. More often they arrive sporadically, in the midst of some bad, weird, or unusable ones.
But, I get there eventually!
And, if I’m being honest with myself, I know that even the most creative people don’t find inspiration right away every time. That’s why it’s called a “process,” right? Everyone’s process has its bumps, and it’s these bumps that lead to some of the best ideas.
Normalizing—and celebrating—the entirety of the creative process, in all its mess and funk, might allow even more people to see themselves as creative. After all, many of my best ideas come on the tails of many of my worst ideas. If I gave up at the first bizarre or unhelpful thought that entered my head, I would never get to the good stuff.
Embracing the bad in pursuit of the good seems like an ironic path to creative inspiration, but it gets you there nonetheless.
Brainstorms so bad that they’re good
Creativity is a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets. There was a time I took this wisdom quite literally, following the advice of author and entrepreneur James Altucher who, in his book Choose Yourself, proposes that in order to get better at ideating one must simply do more of it, specifically coming up with 10 ideas each day, no matter what. I tried this for several weeks, ideating on new businesses, morning routines, nicknames for friends, never-before-seen food concepts—you name it, I could rattle off 10 ideas about it.
This new muscle carried over to my work as a content creator where I was constantly coming up with blog post headlines and email subject lines. In fact, I saw Altucher’s 10 ideas per day, and I raised him: I did 25 headline ideas per blog post.
You know what happens when you write 25 headline ideas per blog post? You write a lot of headlines that aren’t very good!
But I found that an interesting pattern emerged:
I had a couple good headlines right off the bat.
I then had a streak of five to 10 quite embarrassingly bad ones.
And in the back half of my list of 25 headlines, I had several very good and original ones.
The keys for me were to reserve judgment until my list was complete, to not worry about who might see this list of mostly garbage, to timebox myself so I was forced to get the bad ones out to make room for the good ones, and to follow the rabbit trails wherever they would lead.
But rather than tell you how this works, how about I show you? Below are a couple examples of just how bad (and good) these brainstorms tend to turn out.
Hopefully you’ll see that there really are some decent-to-good ideas in here!
*Note: I did each of these brainstorms in five minutes. I’ve found that the more time I give myself, the more likely I am to be tempted to only write down “good” headlines, which might take me all day!
25 headline ideas for this post that you’re reading
See the video at the top of this post for a live (bad) brainstorm session!
25 taglines for the Bonfire website
Tell better stories
The world needs your story. You need Bonfire.
Brand storytelling for businesses on the rise
Everyone is a storyteller (yes, even you!)
The secret to great stories
How great stories get told
The best brands are built on stories
More stories, less jargon
Differentiate and win
Differentiate and stand out
Be the signal amidst the noise
Once upon a time, there was a little brand that wanted to be a big brand
Knock knock, who’s there, it’s us Bonfire
Story time starts now
Discover your brand’s happily ever after
The world runs on stories. We’ll help you tell yours.
Find your voice, nail your story
Storytelling magic for up-and-coming brands
Why not creativity-as-growth?
Leave your mark with a creative story
For brand builders, storytellers, and creatives
Stories live at the heart of your business
Discover your brand’s best self
Differentiated stories, meaningful impact
Upgrade your story
25 fun ideas for Bonfire swag
Embroidered hats, shirts, and sweatshirts
Socks with the Bonfire fire mascot on them
Linograph posters with fun creative sayings like “Burn the spreadsheets” and “Join the creative resistance”
Lunchboxes
Temporary tattoos
Calendars and journals that contain creative prompts / reminders
Pencil sets / watercolors / crayons
Custom portraits hand-drawn & colored by Bonfire co-founders
Your very own Spotify playlist, curated by Bonfire co-founders
Plush Bonfire mascot
Bonfire mascot stress toy
Creativity candle
Branded oscillating fan that says “We’re your biggest fan”
Limited-run pressing of all Bonfire Substack articles
Quilt
Playing cards
Matches
Branded marshmallows
Papercraft dioramas of camping scenes
Sleeping bag
Tent
Mini kumbaya-branded guitars / ukuleles
Bookmarks
Creative prompts on glossy cards
Fire extinguisher
25 ways to get people to a lemonade stand
Get those inflatable tube people connected to air blowers
Buy a big helium balloon that people might notice from miles away and tie it to your lemonade stand
Hire a skywriter
Put advertising slogans on your car windows and drive around the neighborhood
Re-brand it as a lemonade “tasting”
Get your friends to line up in a queue beside the lemonade stand in order to create anticipation and FOMO
Put your lemonade stand on a bike and take lemonade to the people
Go door-to-door in the spring and do a pre-sale for lemonade
Roll out a literal red carpet
Set up fake news cameras all around the lemonade stand to make people curious
Get the actual news to cover your lemonade stand by aligning your stand’s brand purpose with a cultural moment in the zeitgeist
Light the lemonade stand on fire, causing the fire department to come
Put the lemonade in branded cups that people will take with them (word of mouth marketing)
Honk If You Like Lemonade signs
Misspell lemonade in a funny way
Alcoholic lemonade?
Sell lemonade along with baked goods
Sell lemonade along with Beyonce’s album Lemonade
Invite Beyonce to your lemonade stand
Ask Beyonce to post about your lemonade stand on her Instagram Stories
TikTok
Local SEO on Google
Start a Substack, documenting your feelings about the lemonade industry
Build an email list
Put your lemonade stand at an intersection and offer curbside service
Over to you
When has a great idea emerged from a messy brainstorm? How easy / hard is it for you to let the bad ideas flow? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or by hitting reply.
For more…
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And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:
1:1 coaching and mentorship
Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership
Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events
42. Watch us do a bad brainstorm