If you’re like us, heck if you’re just breathing, you run into obstacles as you go along. But, if you’re an oddpod that means that you are (among other things) clever, creative, curious and tenacious. You realize that challenges will arise, but that they do not signal the end of the world.

Believe it or not, we have encountered a few challenges while building our nation of creatives. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so why would we expect our Nation to be built in 23 hours or less? Why? Because we are so excited about it and about all the cool new people we will meet when it’s completed. So, we hit some bumps in the road. I’m not complaining-this is my dream job. We have a great team and we’ve figured out how to work through road blocks and with some blockheads.

Some challenges we’ve all faced:

1. Meeting a tight deadline
2. Getting someone to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’
3. Putting the right team together
4. Muddling through when you can’t find the right team
5. Doing great things on a limited budget
6. Building something that is new and different
7. Telling the world about your cool new product
8. We could go on, but you get the idea

How we’ve dealt:

1. Eliminate the words no, can’t, won’t, don’t and variations thereof from your vocabulary and stay away from negative people and influences.
2. Have ears that are twice as big as your mouth. Also, make sure that you’re all speaking the same language. Communication gaps can turn into dangerous black holes.
3. Listen without judgement, and when you open your yap, make sure you’re not cutting people off.
4, Ask a lot of questions and embrace the iterative process – getting it right will take a few tries.
5. Know where the fine line is between getting WAY off track and considering all the possibilities.
6. Even if you’ve got a tight deadline, take a break from your challenge. Sleep, run, ride a bike or a horse, read something or grab a meal. Your brain will churn and connect the dots while you’re busy doing something else
7. Find good outside sounding boards.
8. No holds barred brainstorming session with the beverage of your choice. Just make sure you have a good secretary to capture the random brilliant ideas.
9. Have a good thinking space.
10. Laugh a lot. Crankiness kills creativity.

So, how do you muddle through the tough spots? We’d love to hear….