By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your resourcefulness. Reading time: 2:23.

Your budget has been slashed. Again. You’re under the gun to generate increased sales. Again. Your advertising spots on TV and radio are few and far between. Again. You feel like you’ve been handcuffed, chained and throw into the river. Again.

Snap out of it. Tear a page out of Houdini’s Resourcefulness Playbook that helped him earn the title of The Great Escape Artist.

Slip out of those financial chains. Unlock new resources. Free yourself and your creative expression –in Houdini fashion. Here’s how:

When Houdini ran out of money to promote his appearances in Paris, he devised a clever flashing billboard in the most highly trafficked areas of the city virtually for nothing. He hired 7 bald guys (for tickets to his show).

Houdini tasked them to sit side by side on a sidewalk cafes around the city. Each had tatooed a letter on the top of his head. They wore suits and large bowler hats and faced the on-coming traffic.

Every few minutes they would remove their hats and lower their heads toward the traffic , flashing H-O-U-D-I-N-I.

Heady stuff. Houdini proved seven heads are better than one to beat the Budget Blues. I think of his resourcefulness whenever I feel my creative juices are getting squeezed dry. After all, Houdini used whatever resources he could find, even if that meant re-purposing an existing resource (like a bald head).

Beyond Publicity Stunts

And he used those resources – the seven bald heads – in an attention-commanding technique of flashing his message to a specific audience.

That creative flashing with the bowler hats heightens the creative impact beyond mere publicity stunts that simply scream a message instead of beaming it directly to an audience.

Boxer Bernard Hopkins came up with a publicity stunt, screaming a website on his cranial billboard during an ESPN broadcast.

Air New Zealand came up with a publicity stunt, screaming with 30 people who shaved their heads to help Air New Zealand get ahead.

And a few pregnant woman on Ebay came up with a public stunt, screaming an advertising message on their rounded bellies for a fee.

But Houdini shunned the screams of a wild and wooly buckshot of a publicity stunt that goes everywhere and winds up nowhere.

Instead Houdini beamed with resourcefulness that is targeted and tailored to unlock a specific lock at a specific time. And like Houdini, your challenge is to ignite the Great Escape Artist in yourself. Your challenge is to shed your financial shackles. Your quest is to get ahead. No matter if it takes a head . Or seven.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Re-purpose existing resources to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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