Get Your Inspiration Wall Ready For The New Year

I’ve blogged a fair bit on this topic over the years. From the mockery of embarrassment for unworthy American ‘life coaches‘ to top-selling musicians in their studio.

So I realise how derision can be aimed at inspiration walls.

Particularly when they are flooded with photos of the car or any other status symbol that achievement is supposed to bring.

Its close relation, the vision board, suffers similar scorn.

My take is that I rail wildly against the blankness of most office spaces.

Glossy Marketing messages, expensive corporate art and printouts about correct photocopier usage just do not cut it. Definitely not for any aspiring quota-buster.

You have a space. You must adorn it as is best for you.

If you’ve only a relatively tiny, singular piece of plasterboard or faux velvet cubicle divider real estate, then your number one aim should be for visuals that support your sales process.

Anything that reinforces this is a winner. Pictures, photos, diagrams, headlines, scribbles, logos, portraits and lots and lots of colour.

If you have more than one wall at your disposal, then you’ve a choice of further themes.

In the run up to Christmas I came across a trio of ‘inspiration’ visuals.

Firstly, four women are raising funds to row from California to Cairns across the Pacific. Donate and you can pen a few words of wisdom that will be plastered on a wall of their vessel. They themselves term this their inspiration wall.

Next, for the upcoming cricket 50-over world cup, the S Africans (nicknamed the Proteas after the national flower) are running a competition for fans to create motivating quotes. Strapline; ‘inspire the Protea fire’. Obligatory hashtag; #proteafire. The top two will be used (and presumably displayed) around the team,

Finally, Bloomberg’s Disruptors featured a chap involved thirty years ago in an apparently iconic Apple tv ad; 1984. Lee Clow was interviewed mainly in front of what looks like some of the work of which he’s most proud. A kind of portfolio wall (pictured below). Like we might have testimonial or client displays.

I am certainly not one for the glib regurgitation of supposedly “motivational” web-farmed quotes and the whole ‘successories’-style ‘make-it-happen’ nonsense. (Here’s their Service ‘nugget’; “Extraordinary service is the result of anticipating the need and providing the solution before the customer requires it.”)

But your own relevant messages and visuals I am extremely keen to see you curate.

The upcoming holidays often gives a small measure of time where you can devote an hour or two on crafting exactly this kind of monument to your ambitions.

Channel your inner schoolchild and run amok with the glue pen, rounded scissors and markers. Here’s your chance to show you mean business and set next year on the right track.