As a small business owner you probably work 70 hours a week, and still have trouble keeping up with paying your bills and finding time to spend with your family. If this is the case for you, then you probably think spending a couple hours in a creativity session is the last thing in the world you have time for. I am here to tell you that 2 hour creativity session is an investment in you and your business that you NEED. There are full scale creativity session exercises that I will address at a later time, but for now take a look at these 3 Creativity Tricks that will help you get your small business moving.

1. Reverse Assumptions - This is my personal favorite. When you are stuck in the problem solving process, try reversing your assumptions. For example, you may want to get to work faster, but there is always traffic. You are assuming there is always traffic. Reverse that assumption. What if there was never traffic? Now how could that be accomplished? You may be able to come up with a novel idea for traffic management software that decreases wait times without building additional infrastructure. Try reversing one of your assumptions for a big problem that your business faces and then brainstorm on how you could accomplish the reversed assumption. You may just reach a breakthrough.

2. Connecting Ideas - Another creativity trick to employ next time your small business faces a challenge is the process of connecting previously unrelated ideas. Let's say that you need to advertise for your new highly technical book about software used to support solar power generation, and you also need to hire 5 new software engineers. Try connecting these two separate ideas and what can you come up with? How about offering to be a guest lecturer for the computer science department at various universities in your area? You will be able to meet with potential new software engineers and promote your book to the students and more importantly the department staff. You may just enable yourself to sell a couple hundred copies of your book to the university for a class, and snatch up some of the area's best talent all at once.

3. Attribute Listing - Take your product or service and dissect it into the smallest divisible attributes. For instance, maybe you own your own consulting business. What are the attributes of your service? The initial meeting, the contract for services, the communication during the project, the completed deliverable, the billing of your consulting fee, and the post contract customer service. If you want to know how to make your business better look at one specific item and learn how to make that small piece of your business better. This should be a continual exercise, which constantly allows you to improve your service. Never be satisfied with the status quo in your small business.

If you are interested in learning about dozens of similar creativity tricks read Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko. This is my favorite creativity book which can be purchased for under $12 on Amazon if you follow this link. The key is to start thinking creatively all the time not just during a special session. You can train yourself to think this way though. Creativity is not just a God-given ability, you can learn to be creative too.