A long time ago, when I was about 20 years old, I learnt probably the most important lesson of my life. I learnt something so completely unexpected it changed my entire view of the world. Today, I’m going to share it with you. If you like it, please leave a message in the comments section and let me know what you think.

I was young, and I had so many questions, and wanted to learn so much, so I took a job as a junior interactive designer at an amazing little company just outside of Toronto in Canada.

It was the first time that I really thought that I could learn something from other people. Here I was, on the lowest rung of the ladder, everybody was above me.

I thought that I could learn everything from the amazing staff there, who, I believed, would have the answer to everything.

Throughout life, we always encounter those people who have the answer. They could be the person who is in charge of financing your next project, they could be your boss, they could be the company owner, or the guy who has worked at the company for 50 years and just seems to know everything.

There are people that you naturally gravitate towards because you assume that they know the answer. They know how much money they have to spend, they know if you can or can’t do something.

You can recognise these people, because they always have a string of other people behind them, constantly asking them “What should we do about this…..?”, “How are we going to solve that…..?”.

At first glance, these look like the “People In Charge” and for some strange reason we find ourselves constantly going to them, unable to make a decision without their say-so.

I spent a lot of time watching and observing these people, and I very quickly learnt their secret. And their secret became the greatest thing that I ever learnt:

They were making it up as they went along.

Once you realise that people who appear to know “the answer” do not actually know the answer but have the skill, confidence, conviction and ability to instantly generate an “answer” then it can act as a huge mental shift!

Over time, people do not learn to perfectly recall every fact and figure instantly from their brains. They learn to adapt, to improvise and to make it up as they go along.

What does this mean for you?

This means that YOU are equally as equipped to invent an answer as you are to ask for it from someone else.

What if it goes wrong?

Think how many times your boss has told you to do something stupid vs how many times he has told you to do something that made sense. That’s your stupid to success ratio. As long as you improve on that ratio you will be fine.

How can I test this theory?

Simple, go, now, and ask a “person in charge” face to face for an answer on a ridiculous question. Watch them make up an answer, and say it with conviction.

Now, you need to go out and make it up for yourself. Build your own answers. Do what YOU think is best, after all, the answer is inside you!

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I thought that today would be a good time to talk about the idea of working for free.

In the current economic climate with lots of people losing their jobs, and it being even harder to get into the creative industry, I’d like to share with you the unusual idea that if you really love what you do, you should try working for free.

In the traditional mindset, work is a terrible idea. No one would ever turn up to work. So, instead, we are paid to go to work. Wages are simply a compensation for the crap-ness of any particular task.

Question:

If you wern’t paid any more, would you turn up in your current job at 9am tomorrow morning?

If you’re like most people, there is no way you would consider slaving away for free.

But if you are lucky and love your job, you’d turn up just because you wanted to.

As I write this, I’m in the office on a Saturday, working because I love it. Some of my colleagues are here too.

If you are struggling to get into a creative career, I strongly urge you to see if you can work for free somewhere amazing. Even if its just for a few weeks. You will learn so much about yourself, and your industry, and you will free yourself from the idea of working because you have to, to working because you want to.

Give it a try and see how you get on.

I worked at several different companies for free, and often work on projects because I want to, rather than because they pay well. If you can cultivate this positive attitude in your life, it will really change the way you view your career.

Problems?

Firstly, working for free, in most economies, cant sustain itself for very long. You need to eat, you need a place to live, you need to travel to and from your work. However, there are thousands of people who manage to work for free in some capacity for years and years, in fact, you probably know someone who does so! Volunteering, or working unpaid for charities and other causes is a great start. It helps you build skills like leadership, management, human relations, and all sorts of other useful skills in your spare time.

In some situations you may even PAY someone to work. A good example of this would be taking on a training course, or a university course. You actually pay to complete tasks, knowing that one day you will be able to charge people for those tasks, and your investment will pay off.

In some situations you may invest a lot of your own time and energy into a hobby, that effectively becomes a second job. I have seen plenty of people who have converted their attics or basements into amazing places with elaborate train sets, or who have built a bar in their home to serve drinks to their friends, essentially “working” a couple of hours a week in their own “bar job”. Many peoples “Home offices” are better equipped than their regular offices!

Working for free, also, does not devalue your work. This is very important. People will say, “If I do this for free now, they will expect it for free next time” – but in many situations I have experienced, people respect you, and you are able to charge perhaps more, because you have “paid your dues”.

Dont forget, you are also earning intangible benefits by working for free. You are learning how to get inside an industry, you are learning how everything works, how things fit together. You are learning skills that will last you a lifetime. You are making connections and making friends, and these are worth far more than money.

That’s why this guy in Australia will work for you for free. That’s why this guy is encouraging photographers to work for free. That’s why Business Week is talking about working for free. Its why Wikipedia is written entirely by passionate volunteers who just LOVE their subject.

Changes

Not so long ago, you didn’t have a Job, or a Career,  you had an occupation. – Something that occupies your life, occupies your thoughts, passions, dreams and professional conduct. So, if I were to say to you “Don’t tell me what your job is, tell me your occupation…” What would you say?

A lot of companies spend thousands, even millions of pounds on branding exercises. But, when you are starting out in a creative company, unless you are very lucky, you just cant afford the cash! Here is a quick way to save you all that money.

Leave your branding to fate! Let a web randomiser decide!

You can use a tool like the fun Makewords website to randomly generate you a company name. Simple as that.

But surely, would you really use a random name generator to title your company?
The answer of course is YES!

My friends and I spent an entire afternoon on several random name generator websites, when coming up with a name for our company that we called HMC Interactive. We went through thousands of names. The next day we settled on two possible outcomes. The first, was Pixel Kitten, cute, but not quite right. The second name was HARDCORE MONKEY CRASH!!

So, if you have ever wondered what the HMC in HMC interactive stands for, now you know. Its Hardcore Monkey Crash.

We like to keep the name a bit of a secret, but once you hear it you’ll never forget it!

So, there you go, I’ve just saved you £50,000 in marketing and branding consultation! Not bad for an afternoon!

Question:
If you could name your company any random name at all, what would you call it?

When you start out in your creative career everybody will be throwing advise at you left-right-and-centre so it will be hard to know who to listen to, and who to take with a pinch of salt.

However, once you have established yourself, and you need to grow, that’s when advice really comes in to play.

You may not know it yet, but you are probably already an expert in a very niche field. You may have one tiny idea, or one tiny way of doing things, that is so different to everybody else, and you are so passionate about carrying it through, then it is pretty straight forward to achieve your early ambitions.

It gets trickier when you have run to the end of your knowledge and understanding, and you need to branch out in new directions to pursue new opportunities. That’s when you need to seek out the best advise you can.

One of the things that I noticed when I was about 25 years old, was that people younger than me, perhaps my students, would ask for advise on all sorts of things, and I really tried to give them the best, most realistic feedback I could. When they followed my advice, they really succeeded. It made me realise just how much I could benefit from meeting other experts and getting them to help me.

I really love the idea that you don’t need a certain education, you don’t need a certain qualification and you don’t need years and years of experience. You just need to find someone who has!

I was reminded of this fact just a few days ago, when I got a call from an old friend from back home. He had started a fantastic theatre company with a group of talented friends, but their areas of expertise were in drama and performance, not technology. 5 years ago he asked for my advice on a website project, and I explained to him all the details, and explained that his team would be well served by a professional expert, but they didn’t come cheap!

He called me up, and he remembered all the advice I had given him, word for word, from 5 years ago. He and his theatre company had taken 5 years to come to the conclusion that what they really wanted to do was to do exactly what I said in the first place.

Although that might be a slow realisation process, I think its really great, as I know that his company will do really well in the future, and I am confident of their success.

Some people spend their entire lives trying to figure out every little detail along the way, but you have to be smart enough to ask for help, even if you don’t act on it right away.

Throughout life, you will often find people who will Do It For The Money, as in, people who will base all the decisions they make on a financial outcome. And there is nothing wrong with this at all. Its just alarming how many people base all of their decisions around money. Im not just talking about the big businessman who will go against their heart and their heads to just to make money, but you also get the little guy, who has been credit-crunched to within an inch of their life and wont spend a penny more than is necessary to survive.

I have seen my friends make decisions like these, where they would perhaps sell irreplaceable objects in the hope of making a few extra pounds. That might be good in the short term, but in the long term, you will have to work even harder to get those objects back. If you sold something that was dear to you, would you really be that much Richer?

All this reminded me of when I was 17 years old. I was studying my A-levels at Hind Leys College, and at the time everybody had to study 3 subjects. I decided to be different and take 4 subjects, because I was academically very smart, and I quite liked the challenge. Taking 4 A-levels instead of 3 would not give me any real advantage in life, it would not get me into a better university, it would just mean more homework and extra classes for me.

I took English, Communications, Business Studies and Performing Arts.

After a year, the extra workload was becoming too much for me, and the teachers advised me to drop one of the subjects. They told me I should drop Performing Arts. They said it was the least academically rigorous subject. They knew that I wanted to run a company one day, so I should drop Performing Arts and focus more on Business studies.

Naturally I ignored this advise completely.

I was so completely set on running my own company, becoming a millionaire and living the jet-set businessman lifestyle, that I just knew that I would make it. 100% with or without an A-level in Business studies.

So, in order to become a business man, I had to drop out of business studies.

In fact, I had no choice, because all I could imagine was what a great story it would be to tell in my autobiography, how the boy who dropped out of business studies became a successful business man.

I Did It For The Story.

And its so much fun to be able to tell my story now.

So, the next time you are faced with a dilemma, if you are really sure of yourself, and you really understand the power inside of you, then ask yourself what outcome will tell the best story……

The Problem
1) No matter how “Creative” you think you are, your boss, or those around you, just don’t get it.
2) Decision makers are uncomfortable with new ideas and would prefer to play it safe than take big risks.
3) You have the potential to be creative but no one recognises it.

The Solution
Create multiple Creativity Spikes and weave them into your day to day language.

What is a Creativity Spike?
A Creativity Spike is defined as a story that demonstrates an extremely unusual creative practise that sounds so ridiculous it could never be possible, yet it is told with such conviction that it could pass for a standard business practice.

What is it good for?
It gets people used to the idea of having extremely haphazard goings on within a relatively calm and safe atmosphere.

Some examples of Creativity Spikes I use:
“Smoke Machine Fridays”: Many companies have “Dress Down Fridays” in a terrible attempt to be cool. Go one step further by insisting on Smoke Machine Fridays. If anybody asks what it is, tell them that its exactly what it sounds like. Smoke Machines on Fridays. Don’t, under any circumstances actually fire off a smoke machine on a Friday. Just drop it in casually around the water cooler.

“Quidditch team sign up sheet”: Many companys have a 5-a-side football / soccer / hockey team or informal sporting events after work. Take things a step further and advertise for sign ups for the fictional sport of Quidditch. Place a few broomsticks in the bicycle rack for effect. Make sure that you regularly post results of the fictional matches, complete with team names, where everyone can see them. This is very effective at getting clients and staff to believe that anything is possible.

“Pornographic Screensaver policy”: Create a policy where all computers used for powerpoint presentations (perhaps in the boardroom) are installed with pornographic screensavers. The purpose being that if any presentation goes on too long, and a presenter dwells too long on a certain slide, they will be embarrassed with hardcore donkey/midget/grandma action in front of their clients. Don’t ever ACTUALLY install a porno screensaver, just tell everybody you did, and their presentations will be so much more snappy and to the point.

I will often start a presentation by telling the audience that there is a highly pornographic screensaver installed, so if I am on a point for longer than 2 minutes they are in for a shock. You’d be surprised by just how much extra attention I get!!!

Remember
The point of a Creativity Spike is to make those around you feel like they regularly engage with Dangerous and Challenging creative issues and Nothing Bad happens when they do.

It is not to lie, or pull a prank, or to create a negative environment.

If you need some inspiration look at classic fairy tales like The Elves and the Shoemaker they should give you a good staring point for how you can sow the seeds of imagination into the hearts and minds of those around you with a few magical ideas.

Welcome to the first in a collection of posts about The Montandon Method.

The first point that I want to make clear, and its really important to understand, is that if YOU don’t have a way of doing things, you will be forced to use someone else’s way of doing things.

This goes for absolutely everything in life.

Ever since we were children in school we were taught to follow rules. We were taught to arrive at school at a certain time, to do our work in a certain way, to eat our lunch at a certain time, to sit next to certain children. Everything within the classroom had a system, a way of doing things.

This prepares us for real life, where most people fall into the trap of accepting other peoples ways of doing things. You must go to work, you must pay your bills on time, you must do this thing this way and that’s it.

I have found that this is a very hollow way to live your life.

Just because someone else does something should never be a reason for you to do it.

Why should you change?
By having your own way of doing things, you can:
1) Live on your own terms instead of someone else’s.
2) Find more efficient, productive, effective and creative ways of doing things.
3) Have a greater belief that you can change “the system”.
4) Have a greater control over your reality.

How should I change?
1) Start with the small stuff, and work up to something big.
2) Believe that any system can be changed.
3) When you start to see results from your smaller changes it will give you the confidence to go for bigger challenges.

Here is a really nice example of how you can change a system.

There was a point in the life of HMC Interactive where we had to change the allocation of shares in the company, and divide it by the 3 directors of the company. That meant that each director owned 33.33333% of the company.

Our lawyers told us that we couldn’t have the remaining .33333% , one of us would hold on to the extra 1%, splitting it 33% 33% 34%. Normally one person was nominated to hold on to the extra 1%.

Well, that didnt seem like a very good system, to just randomly nominate someone to hold on to 1%!! No one wanted to let go of their precious .3333% so we decided to fight for it.

We set aside an entire afternoon to compete for the 1% in a DEATHMATCH. Solving our arguments in a virtual video game arena. An independent referee was chosen, and we fought it out in a multi player death match arena.

For a while, I was in the lead, and had picked a good position with the sniper rifle. But in the end Mike surprised me with a rocket launcher and at the last moment took the lead and won the 1%.

We called this idea “shooting for shares” and it was so unusual to have the lawyers preside over a deathmatch frag session that the story ended up making the careers section of The Times.

To be honest, it feels so much nicer to loose a share by staring down the barrel of a rocket launcher than on the pages of a legal document, and it really set a precedent that any kind of takeover or share deal in the future would in all likelihood be solved in the video game arena rather than the legal arena. Its just so much fun and so cool to do. It brought the whole team together.

To add a little bit of extra fun, we often challenge any member of the team at HMC Interactive to a video game face off to try and win back the extra 1%. My video game of choice is Dance Dance Revolution, and so far none of the team would dare to look so silly jumping up and down for shares, but the challenge always remains open!

This may seem like a silly example, but it really gave us confidence to do things our own way.

This is really important in large corporate culture. Just because there is a “normal” way doesn’t make it the best way.

So, we started finding our own ways to do everything. Like answering the phone first thing on a Monday morning and giving the first caller of the week a prize of strange Dutch chocolates.

Like finding ways to get clients on top of 8 foot high bouncy balls whilst in meetings.

Like finding new ways to promote ourselves, new ways to advertise ourselves, new ways to work in crazy situations.

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you some of the benefit of this first idea, so bookmark this site and check back in tomorrow for the next instalment.

You know, it might all sound a bit silly, but we got such a reputation for doing things our own way, I was asked to go to Westminster and talk to politicians, to help them make a system for funding creativity in the UK, and to go to Austria to talk to Europe’s leading multimedia producers to tell them how to smash the system and re-establish it for themselves.

So, if you ever find yourself saying “I cant change this system, its the law” maybe you should consider calling a few politicians and getting that law changed. Its all do-able, and its easier than you might think.

Go on then, get started.

See you tomorrow.

I run one of the most unique and creative companies in Europe, and people who see my work constantly ask a thousand questions about how I go about achieving amazing results through innovation, creativity and imagination.

And its not just one or two people who are interested, I have been asked to speak to literally THOUSANDS of people in 2008 about how they can completely re-invent the reality that they are presented with.

From presentations at LegoLand in Denmark, to TV documentaries the world over, lectures across Europe and North America, everybody is asking “How can I leap from reality to magic?”

At first, my methods might seem completely crazy, unworkable, unusual or startlingly simple, but the truth is, they all work. I’ve done it, first hand.

For the first time ever, here on this blog, I will be putting together EVERYTHING, a no-holds-barred account of how I turned a tiny 4 person company into one of the most exciting and creative places in Europe.

So, bookmark this page now, and feel free to leave questions and comments in the comments page of this blog, as I reveal for the first time The Montandon Method.