"What has been will be again,
What has been done will be done again;
There is nothing new under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9
For those who are unemployed these days it hard sometimes to stand out from the crowd. There's not much in business that most of us haven't already seen. There is a basic list of ideas that people do that has been recycled and rehashed for year and years. There are only so many types of career paths or job opportunities and sooner or later you realize that there are only so many ways to stand out and recognized.
I was leaving the health club the other day and forgot where I parked. I was looking for a black Mazda 3 with a license plate SPK129. I found a black Mazda 3 but when I looked at it's license plate, it had the characters SPK135. "How many cars are currently on the road in Minnesota?" I wondered. Well, as it turns out there were over 3.3 million licensed vehicles in Minnesota back in 2010. I don't know how many there are in 2012 but I imagine it's about the same. There are only 10 numbers and 26 letters used on the plates but somehow they create over 3.3 million unique plates. Wow!
Did you know there are only 7 whole notes in a musical scale? A,B,C,D,E,F and G. There are also half steps between them (sharps and flats) as well as octaves of the same note but essentially there are only 7 notes. Every piece of music you've ever heard or every will hear, every song ever written now or in the future will be created with some variation of the same 7 notes. Why don't all songs sound the same?
7 notes, 26 letters, 10 numbers, nothing new under the sun. Patterns in human behavior repeat themselves, and the fundamental building blocks of all creation are the same now as they have been for thousands of years. HOWEVER, we are capable of creating infinite combinations with these building blocks. Music becomes infinite by changing the way that the notes are combined and layered with other notes. Written communication becomes infinite by changing the sequence and combination of words with other words.
One of my favorite things about sales is the infinite creative possibilities. There are so many tools at our disposal. Our worlds become infinite by changing the way we combine and layer the things we imagine. Don't get caught in the rut of believing that there are only a few basic elements that have to be repeated and rehashed year after year. Create something new!
In business a word comingly heard is synergy. Synergy is taking ideas and combining them. Make a list of ideas you've used before and begin to overlap and combine them with each other. This creates new breakthroughs you may not have imagined. Take two favorite ideas, goals, themes, etc from last year and send them into a head-on collision. Take the mangled mesh that they create and see what new thing you have discovered. You might be disappointed, you might be surprised. But you will begin understanding one of the secrets of creation.
Be Original!