How do you step up to being more creative in your day-to-day life?

To answer this question, I’ve called in creativity guru Mark McGuinness. I stumbled across Mark in the blog series Lateral Action, which is about creativity and productivity. Mark is the founder and principle of Wishful Thinking, a coaching service for creative businesses and professionals. He even has an MA in Creative and Media Enterprises from the University of Warwick, and is the author of a popular e-book called How to Motivate Creative People [Including Yourself].

Mark started his practice as a hypnotherapist and some of his best sessions were with creative types, such as artists, actors, writers and filmmakers. He saw that his enthusiasm was up, his clients were getting results, and it was a strong sign that he was in the groove of doing his Great Work.

During our conversation, Mark shares valuable insights on creativity:

• Forget about being creative. Start creating.
• The “cash and sex” theory of balancing creativity in your career
• Getting a good system to keep the cash rolling in
• The TOTE model for managing projects
• How exercise helps creativity (and how you can find the motivation to hit the gym).

Connect with Mark on his website www.wishfulthinking.co.uk, his blog lateralaction.com, or on Twitter @MarkMcGuinness.

Listen to my interview with Mark McGuinness

Tech journalist Gina Smith had never been on TV when she was asked to appear on PBS to debate Steve Ballmer of Microsoft about Windows ’95. It was a gutsy move, but she said yes because she was determined to let consumers know her criticisms of Windows ‘95. After the interview, she was worrying “Whoa, should I have actually done that?” when ABC called and asked her to be the tech correspondent on Good Morning America and World News Tonight. And that’s how Gina started her TV career: by saying yes to opportunities, taking risks and sharing her passion.

Gina is also the New York Times bestselling author (with Steve Wozniak) of iWOZ: From Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple and Had Fun Along the Way. She’s a radio host, wrote an award-winning column for the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle, wrote a book about DNA, and now she’s a partner in First 30 based in San Francisco, which is an incubator firm for tech start-ups.

During our conversation, we talk about Gina’s serendipitous career journey and her current role at First 30, and:

• How getting a text from a friend who met Steve Wozniak at a Grateful Dead concert turned into a book deal
• Bringing great ideas to life: getting the guy who’s been working in his basement for 7 years a patent, an expert team, and a million dollars in funding
• The Purple Cow: what Gina looks for when deciding which projects to back
• Ripping the band-aid off: how to reject people without making them resent you

Learn more about Gina’s company at www.first30services.com.

Listen to my interview with Gina Smith

Today I’m talking to Mark Pearson, publisher and president of Pear Press. I came across Mark because I was interested in a book he published by John Medina, a N Y Times bestseller, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work.

The business model of traditional publishers is to publish 100 or so books per year, knowing they’ll have a few great books, a lot of good ones, and some bad ones.

Pear Press is doing things differently, and it’s a fascinating, admirable approach. They only publish one book per year, and they pursue it with full-hearted gusto. It’s gotta be a quality “great” book that can knock it out of the park and hit some bestseller lists.

In this interview, Mark and I discuss:

• Standing out in a sea of 800,000 new books published each year
• “Cut out the crap”: the advice Steve Jobs of Apple gave to the CEO of Nike, and what publishers can learn from this lesson
• Why exercise is important for the brain and taking a break from your desk is not slacking off

Visit Pear Press at www.pearpress.com.

Listen to my interview with Mark Pearson

Matthew Kelly is a fellow Australian based in North America. He is a real force for change in the world of great work and following your dreams. In his 12 books, his consulting work and speaking work (he’s spoken to over 4 million people in the last 20 years!) he addresses how we fulfill the best version of ourselves.

Matthew has sold millions of books, including The Dream Manager, The Rhythm of Life and The Seven Levels of Intimacy. He has also created the The Matthew Kelly Foundation to spread his strategies on how we become the best version of ourselves and to help high school kids figure out what they’re going to do with their life.

In this interview we talk about:

• The insight that people don’t exist for organizations. Organizations exist for people.
• The 12 dream areas: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, psychological, material, professional, financial, creative, adventure, legacy and character
• How to get members of your team to become dream managers for each other
• Why you need your own dream manager, whether you’re the janitor or the CEO

Visit www.floydconsulting.com or www.thedreammanager.com to learn more.

Listen to my interview with Matthew Kelly here

Tech writer and coder. That’s the header on Gina Trapani’s website, and it’s strikes me as exceedingly humble for someone who was named one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology in 2009 and 2010.

Gina is the founding editor of Lifehacker.com, the popular blog on productivity in the digital age, which was nominated for Blog of the Decade and led to the bestselling book, Upgrade Your Life.

Even though things were going great at Lifehacker, Gina left after 4 years to find her next challenge. Currently, she is a Project Director at Expert Labs.org, where she’s leading development on ThinkTank, which is an open source crowdsourcing platform that the White House will use.

I could go on and on, but you’ll have to listen to the interview to hear what else Gina is up to.

• Why Gina left Lifehacker, even though she loved her title, her staff, and her paycheck (and how she decided when was the right time to leave)
• Why it’s a good thing when a new job makes you uncomfortable and maybe even makes you cry
• How doing work for free can lead to work that pays
• Being a distracted email-overloaded fool, and how to trick yourself into being productive and get peace of mindGet all the details on Gina’s latest projects at www.ginatrapani.org.

Listen to my interview with Gina Trapani