Idea Blueprint Girl: The (Home Study) Alternative MBA of Megan M.

Okay, I did a lot in six months. I edited a great book. I joined an incredibly intense workout program called CrossFit. (DUDE.) I picked up a project writing twice a week for a social work blog. I made a wonderful friend (or two, or three, and many more!) and worked hard on Martin Whitmore's Evil Illustration Empire. I rediscovered the sweat lodge ceremony, and gained astonishing clarity on difficult personal issues that I've only just begun to work through. I don't think I can even list half the awesome stuff I did, and some of the great ideas I came up with (and am still working on now). I worked with some great coaches, I made some exciting things happen -- but there's one thing that seems to eclipse the others (just for now). That's the one I'm going to tell you about.

Well, you know my story (or you can read it!). I do a lot of different things, and I make it work. I've been making it work for a long time, and it only gets more exciting as time goes by. For a long time I've pulled projects from all corners. I write, I design, I manage, I brainstorm, I market, I inspire, I connect, I grow, I teach, I make things happen.

Over time, I started to realize that what I was doing was just not enough -- it was inefficient, but even more, it wasn't really getting me where I wanted to be. At least -- not quickly enough!

There was no label for what I did, and therefore my marketing was limited. Friend-making was the marketing I paid all my bills with, but it was the only marketing I had. I wasn't willing to squeeze into any single box in order to market myself to strangers, because I didn't consider myself just a designer or a writer or a manager. Picky. Stubborn.

Instead, I built a network of friends who understood what I did after having known me for awhile. Though most of them only partly understood what I did, they liked me enough to want to work with me anyway. This let me make and help a lot of friends, which made me feel great, kept me off the street, kept my electricity on and bought me groceries.

This model was awesome and very people-centric, and I loved that. However, it meant that there was very little business growth except when I got to know individual people, one at a time, over a period of time. No one who didn't know me already could find me based on what I did. There was lots of permission, but not a whole lot of marketing. I didn't have a label or an elevator speech, because I couldn't find one that encompassed everything that was me. All my available terminology limited the scope of my abilities in the eyes of strangers. I needed to describe better who I was and what I did.

I was stuck.

One day, it hit me. What I do isn't really about aesthetic design, or writing, or managing. It isn't about any single thing that I've learned. It's about the way they fit together.

It's about my creativity, my problem-solving skills, my ability to build cool shit. It's about taking ideas and knowing how to bring them to fruition. It's about building projects from scratch, about my ability to think and do, to create a process and run with it until I get the results I want.

It's about my ability to generate ideas, to choose the right ones, and to plan them in a way makes sense and makes them work.

And then, suddenly, I had my label.

I started building this crazy thing called That Idea Blueprint Girl.

I rolled it around in my head for months, trying to figure out how it would work. I started writing about it, drafting pricing structures, fiddling with the details. I had some real compulsions I had to take care of:

1. I felt that ideas needed to be shared, not horded, and the best way to prove it would be to make an example of myself. I wanted to share all the ideas I knew I'd never use, and I wanted to develop them for the benefit of other people -- so that there would be more chance of someone adopting them, or using them to build something better.

2. I love idea generation and planning, because it often feels effortless -- and it's the root of everything I attempt. I wanted to do that for other people overtly, not disguised as web design or marketing fu! I wanted to work up crazy ideas for a living. I wanted my choice of projects to implement, and I wanted to encourage people to use their ideas and ACT instead of just thinking about what they wanted all the time.

I knew I could do these things -- but I was scared! I started to gather all of the pieces, and I realized that I had really come up with something that tied everything together. So the big question was, could it actually work?

I had to overcome a lot to do this. There were all of these strange unanticipated obstacles in my way.

For instance: There was no easy way to market the variegated work I'd been doing, so it was harder than doing one kind of work. And making friends one at a time is super enjoyable, but pretty slow!

This new label was technically easier, but it was scary. It was unfamiliar. It was a Big Change. And even worse, it meant putting myself out into the public sphere in a way I hadn't since I dismantled my original web and print design firm -- dismantled in the name of doing business as myself, without any ties to all the traditional businessperson "pretending" I had done for years before I realized it was working against me.

It was frightening to be creating a single presence to represent my work. Having a label, all of a sudden, felt terrifying. What if I wasn't good enough? And I thought it would work, but what if I was wrong?

Fears or not, I was running out of time. Apparating money is fun, and exciting, and makes you really respect yourself -- but if you're doing it constantly, always against the wall with three days to make $1300 appear out of nowhere, it starts to get hard. You just keep doing it and you amaze yourself, but you get to be very tired and worn down, and maybe you get depressed and start to react differently, emotionally, to your work. Things aren't as fun anymore. Your passion and enthusiasm starts to run out. That was starting to be me.

So I moved my ass. I worked with Bob Poole and Charlie Gilkey and Naomi Dunford and Tim Brownson, and had long conversations with Marty. I received incredible encouragement from many friends (and one HELL of an inspirational email from Joel D Canfield). I unearthed a ton of difficult personal issues, and discovered how tightly they were interconnected with my work. I have had to haul this thing forward every step of the way because change is hard, and I'd decided to tackle the one project that was tapped into all my blocks.

But how else to grow? How else to move forward?

Dude, this was my life we were talking about. I had to solve this thing. And I sure wasn't going to get a job.

I believed too much in what I was doing -- in my ability to show others what was possible -- to give up and get a 9-to-5.

To hell with that.

I had to launch this thing.

And so, today, I did.

That Idea Blueprint Girl isn't my whole plan -- and it isn't my only plan. But there is absolutely no doubt that it's the best next step in my process. I don't doubt that my Alternative MBA rejection momentum contributed, but I also think it was time. (I might be a little bit impatient -- as a general rule.) ;}

Thank God I finally got off my ass and did it.

For Brooke: Thanks for getting the "graduation gift" rolling. I'm thrilled to be a part of it (and man, your lens was fantastic).

For Seth: Thanks for not choosing me. I would have been thrilled either way, but I wouldn't have traded that application experience for the world -- or the ensuing projects over the last six months. Part of that success is me. Part of that is the people who believed in me. I was really proud to count you among them. :}

Thanks, guys.