Interview with Lee Silber, Award-Winning Author, Entrepreneur, and Speaker
Lee Silber became an entrepreneur at age eleven when he earned $2,000 that summer re-painting his parents’ and the entire neighborhood’s mailboxes. He later partnered with his brothers to turn their love of surfing into a profitable chain of surfshops.
To date, Silber has started five businesses, written eleven books, hosts his own radio show, and travels worldwide as a successful professional speaker and workshop leader. Home Business® Magazine recently interviewed Silber from his beach-front, home office where he conducts his business, CreativeLee Speaking, www.CreativeLee.com.
Home Business® Magazine (HBM):What is your current business?
Lee Silber (LS): After success with the surfshops, I found I wanted to make more of a difference in the world than selling surfboards, and became a professional speaker. I talk to creative types (right-brain thinkers) to help them master business techniques (left-brain skills). I also encourage “left”- and “whole-brainers” to integrate more creativity into their lives and ventures. My purpose is to urge all the thinking types to exploit their strengths and lessen their weaknesses to be happier and focus more to achieve their goals.
HBM: How does technology help your business?
LS: Technology gives me the tools to reach my goals and the freedom to do pod-casts from my boat, work from home or wherever I want. Creative people need flexibility to move around for new inspiration. However, like many creative people, I still like using pen and paper to write new thoughts in my “idea journal,” because it stimulates that part of the brain from where new ideas come.
HBM: Why is creativity especially important to self-employed individuals and small business owners?
LS: “Find a problem and solve it,” has always been the nature of creativity and the reason for starting a business. It is deciding what products or services will offer customers solutions.
My advice to entrepreneurs is to group together and form a creativity club to discuss even their most outlandish ideas and help one another succeed. There should be no judgment, only encouragement.
HBM: How can right-brain thinkers use goals and planning to achieve business success?
LS: Right-brainers are visually-oriented and should create images of their successful businesses in their minds or by modeling their ventures after well-known companies or entrepreneurs. Right-brainers are also more emotional. It is not as much about making X amount of dollars as it is about feelings and emotions. What motivates them to reach their goals is how they want to feel when they get there.
HBM: How can entrepreneurs use better time management to increase their profits?
LS: Daily, small business owners should avoid distractions and focus their time and energy first into those tasks with the most profit potential. That is the best time management for any entrepreneur.
HBM: What is a good organizing tip for right-brain entrepreneurs?
LS: My organizing theory for right-brainers is “if they can find what they need, when they need it, then they are organized.” It is O.K. to leave materials out that they are working on. If they see it, their subconscious will think about it and work to find solutions. They do not want to shortcut that creative process.
HBM: Do you have a favorite creative self-promotion technique?
LS: Entrepreneurs should be able to describe what they do in one or two clear, clever single sentences to foster the most important form of promotion: word-of-mouth. If they do that, then it will be easy for people talk about their business’ benefits to other prospective customers.
HBM: Any final tips how our readers can use more creativity to achieve business success?
LS: Business is about change. Ask yourself each day for a month if there are better ways to do each of your business tasks. Even if you do not find a new technique, the process of trying to come up with new methods encourages more creative thinking.
My final advice is to not take rejection personally. Instead of being depressed, learn from it. Ask yourself or customers what you could have done differently. It gives you a place to start and can lead you to some ingenious business solutions, no matter what part of your brain you use best. HBM
Priscilla Y. Huff’s latest book, Make Your Business Survive and Thrive! 100+ Proven Marketing Methods to Help You Beat the Odds and Build a Successful Small or Home-Based Enterprise (Wiley), can be ordered through Amazon.com. Questions or comments: .
Previously published in the April 2007 issue of HOME BUSINESS® Magazine, an international publication for the growing and dynamic home-based market. Available on newsstands, in bookstores and chain stores, and via subscriptions ($15.00 for 1 year, six issues). Visit www.homebusinessmag.com
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