Barbara Sher's Idea Book

254 Pages·2004·1.51 MB·English

by  Barbara Sher

BARBARA
SHER’S
IDEA
BOOK

How to Discover What You Really Want
(Even if You Have No Clue)

Barbara Sher

Book One in her new series
How To Do What You Love Without Starving to Death

Genius Press Unltd.
www.geniuspress.com
New York
Barbara Sher's Idea Book ....
1st edition
ISBN 0-9728952-0-5
copyright © 2004 by Barbara Sher

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for
brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information write:
Genius Press, Box 20052, Park West Station, New York, NY 10025
DEDICATION

To all human beings who long to do what they love
and still pay the rent.
Also by Barbara Sher

BOOKS
Wishcraft
Teamworks!
I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What It Was
Live the Life You Love
It's Only Too Late if You Don't Start Now

AUDIO COURSES
Dare to Live Your Dream 12-audiocassette course
Discover Your Dream Workbook with audio CD

VIDEOS FOR PUBLIC TELEVISION
How To Create Your Second Life After 40

Live the Life You Love/Map To Success
Barbara Sher's Idea Party
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Matthew Pearl, a first-rate editor, writer, researcher and
proofreader, who worked with me almost every day for two years to turn
my scraps, notes and emails into books and who is an unending pleasure
to work with, I say, “Bless you and yours. Take the rest of the week off
and then let’s do another one!”

To Andrea Reese, my trusted assistant, who always lifted my spirits,
changed her life to meet my writing schedule and took the office load off
my shoulders to give me what every writer can only dream of: free time
to write, I give my sincerest thanks.

Together these two people created the perfect team and gave me the
happiest writing experience I’ve had so far. Best of all, both of them are
living their dreams in addition to helping me live mine—Matt in Greece
with his wife and their fine baby, Leo; Andrea with the continuing
success of her one-woman play, Cirque Jacqueline.

Thanks to all my wonderful Success Team leaders around the world
who work every day to help people achieve their goals and who sent me
some terrific success stories to share with you. Many thanks to all the
wizards on my bulletin board who continually give intelligent, heartfelt
help to everyone who asks for it and who are so knowledgeable I am
always astounded. They generously gave me permission to share some of
their best information with you.

Finally, a huge thanks to all the people who requested ideas via
letters, private sessions, telephone Idea Parties, Success Teams and my
workshops (to say nothing of taxis, restaurants and airplanes). You have
allowed me (and everyone who stepped forward to help) to do what we
love most: scout for creative solutions, cheer you on with our personal
experiences, share our information and address books, and dig around for
some way, by hook or by crook, to make your dreams come true. I hope
this book, in sharing the results of all that jolly brainstorming, will spread
your success to many more dreamers.
“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything,
as a career.

I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed,
or process anything sold, bought
or processed,

or buy anything sold or processed.

Or process anything sold,
bought
or processed.

Or repair anything
sold, bought or processed.

You know, as a career.
I don’t want to do that.”

John Cusak’s character in the 1989 movie “Say Anything”
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 9

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK 25

PART ONE: IDEA WARMUP 28

PART TWO: IDEAS A TO Z 51

EPILOGUE 237

APPENDIX 1 H-Levels
APPENDIX 2 Idea Soup
APPENDIX 3 Idea Parties
APPENDIX 4 Support Teams
INTRODUCTION

“What book are you working on now, Barbara?” one of the security officers
at LaGuardia Airport called out on one of my recent trips. He sees me so often
we’ve become old friends. This time he was standing at a different screening
machine about six feet away and the airport was noisy.
“This one’s about how to do what you love without starving to death!" I
called out.
Every person in both lines stopped and looked at me.
Now, you understand that when you shout in New York, people don’t stop
and look at you. It must have been what I said.
The security officer who was screening my luggage leaned forward. “Can we
talk? I really have to come up with something. I don’t want to leave my kids
alone all the time,” she whispered.
The man in front of me with a computer half way out of his briefcase stepped
out of line and handed me his card, saying, “Email me?”
“Where can we get the book?” the woman behind me asked. “When will it be
in bookstores?”
Obviously, I had struck a chord.
I have always loved books packed with ideas for interesting and unusual
ways to earn money. Even before I began running Idea Parties and Success Team
workshops in 1975, I had a sizeable collection of books devoted to the subject:
365 Ways To Earn A Living Without a Job, Dollars at Your Doorstep, 100
Businesses You Can Start with $1000. I still look through them periodically,
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although many of their suggestions are outdated. (Many are now out of print, but
thanks to the internet you can usually get your hands on them anyway. Just do a
search for “used books”.)
But most of the ideas in this book come from the work I do every day. The
major part, my favorite part of what I do—in private sessions, telephone classes,
television shows, in workshops or wherever someone recognizes me and strikes
up a conversation—is to try to find ideas that allow impossible-looking dreams to
come true. The routine usually goes like this:
I ask, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” and they reply, “I
don’t know.”
So far, that’s never been true. Within minutes we’ve established that either:
1) they know perfectly well what they want but it seems so impossible they’ve
never seriously considered it; or 2) they want too many things and can’t choose
just one.
I can usually dispose of the second scenario in a few seconds: “Who said you
were supposed to choose one? Do them all.” The results are delightful and
immediate. The first response is silence and an expression like a corralled horse
that just noticed the gate was open. Then they grin and you can almost hear them
thinking, “Oh, right!” and they look as though a huge weight has fallen off their
shoulders.
The first scenario goes a lot deeper, however. So, why do their dreams seem
so impossible? Because, like most of us, they make assumptions based on
conventional wisdom that stop their dreams before they leave the starting gate.
They assume everything they want to do has to earn money, usually in the form
of a paycheck. Or they think it costs a lot of money: their dream of having a bed
and breakfast means they have to buy a Victorian house. People automatically
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assume they need fancy credentials, when not only don’t they need them, but
having credentials could put them on a track where jobs are actually harder to
find. And they make lots of other assumptions, too. They’re too old, there’s no
market for what they want to sell, they have no time...that kind of thing.
That covers about 99% of what people ask me to help them with. I’ve found
the very best way to help is to run lots of brand new ideas past them, the kinds of
ideas that bust their assumptions wide open and show how narrow and inaccurate
conventional wisdom really is.

So many dreams die unnecessarily. People give up because they just don’t
have enough information: People from corporations assume that there’s only one
way to go into business and it’s loaded with business plans, bank loans and
investors. People from academia always assume you need advanced credentials
for anything you want to do. And yet, there are people doing exactly what they
love, making decent money doing it, without business plans, bank loans, a 9-5
job or an advanced degree.
So if you’re someone who thinks it’s impossible to do what you really want
(without starving to death), it’s time for some fresh thinking. You need a
different approach, new angles, innovative strategies. That is to say, you need
lots and lots of ideas to give you truly original ways to do all kinds of things.
Fresh ideas are delightful entities and they’re absolutely necessary to start
planning a path to a goal you will be happy with. Of course, even a really good
idea won’t bring the hay in, as my country neighbors often tell me. Not to worry.
Once you’ve found some ideas that wake up your interest, this book will give
you a first-rate method for adapting them to your personal specifications. (Take a
peek at Appendix 2: Idea Soup. It’s a honey.)
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