Newsflash, microbusiness owners: there is never a shortage of creative inspiration in the world around you.

But knowing where to look for creative inspiration — and more importantly, where NOT to look for it — as a values-based business owner, makes all the difference between being a strong and clear original voice and just a bounce-back in the online echochamber.

Here are 6 places to look outside your business niche for creative inspiration (and a little further down the page, 3 places never to look):

1. Choose 3 magazines that have nothing to do with your industry but that you find engaging, aesthetically interesting, page-turnable. Bon Appetit? Real Simple? Redbook? What cues can you take from their page layouts, headlines, types of features and columns, monthly foci? How can you adapt what they’re doing to suit your brand conversation (sans blatant ripping-off, of course)?
2. Allow music to sway you. Choose three songs or bands that move you and feel like the world you’re creating through your brand and bask in them when you’re getting into the creative flow. Curate a Pandora station that grooves you when you do your work. (Those Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons really come in handy.) Or handcraft playlists reflective of your brand’s mood on 8 Tracks. (Hat tip to Brit Hanson for leading me to 8 Tracks.)
3. Get visual. Create a Pinterest board depicting the world of your brand. Add to it often and reference it (at least) weekly. Keep it tight, on-message, and on-mood. For good examples from friends of The Voice Bureau, check out Laura Simms’ board for Create As Folk, Kàren Wallace’s vision for her Calm Space Salon, and Kyeli and Pace Smith’s brand inspiration board. For even more examples, see this thread on our Facebook page.
4. Watch films and TV shows that have qualities you’d like to play up in your own brand. Maybe the bawdy humor and curiously funky apartment set of New Girl really calls your name. Perhaps there’s something about the writing of Mindy, The Office, or Scandal you’d like to embrace in your brand. Inspiration can come from the oddest of places.
5. Find your muse’s favorite place to play. My muse loves water. For me, there’s no place like the shower to generate fresh new approaches to the work I do. I’ve been known to mindmap a novel when sitting by the ocean. Driving on a road up into the Blue Hills that runs beside Walla Walla’s Mill Creek (see my photo in this post) — that gets me all hopped up on business ideas. Honestly, even doing the dishes does it for me and my creativity. What’s your muse’s natural element? The woods? The dark? Wintertime? (Better book that trip to Antarctica.)
6. Find your layperson with genius business ideas. I guarantee you have one of these in your life, though you may not have identified him or her yet. What I mean by ‘layperson’ is someone who does not have any specialized knowledge of your topic area and certainly has no familiarity with doing business online. As you’re casually chatting with people like this about your business — think: your across-the-street neighbor, your favorite barista, your college roommate who you haven’t seen since you were 22 — stay open to their spontaneous input and off-the-cuff questions about your work. Their beginner’s minds and unjaded eyes might become your secret assets in generating new ideas. And if you’re lucky enough to live under the same roof with a layperson business genius — good for you!

And now, let’s switch gears.

I’ve written a good deal about mimicry in the past. This post on eschewing the mimicry of “brand idols” has been a popular read. And I once wrote about my own unintentional mimicry of an online voice I really admired.

I’d like to believe that most mimicry comes from an unpracticed voice and from insecurity about one’s own gifts, strengths, and points of differentiation. Still, if we catch ourselves mimicking online colleagues, peers, or inspirational voices — it’s time to cut that stuff out.

Here’s how to stop borrowing other people’s ideas before you even start.

3 Places Value-Based Microbusiness Owners Should Never Look for Creative Inspiration:

1. On your direct competitors’ websites or social media profiles. If you feel you must keep an eye on these people, keep them in a separate Twitter or Facebook list where you can check in on them in discrete intervals — and then resolutely look away.
2. On the websites or social media profiles of the most prominent, beloved, and widely shared voices in your industry. Really? you may ask. But these people do inspire me. I get that. But marinating your brain in a high profile brand conversation day after day only serves to dull your own creative angles. And when many, many values-based microbusiness owners are watching (and unintentionally mimicking) the same few brand conversations, this is how the echochamber effect gets perpetuated.
3. On the websites of same-niche people you have worked with in the past, either as hired creative professionals or as your own clients. In other words, don’t closely watch people you have hired or who have hired you if they’re in the same niche (i.e. you are a life coach who teaches yoga, they are a life coach who teaches yoga). There are too many similarities, shared values, and overlapping conversations, and that similar material can be downright irresistible.

In the comments, I’d love to hear:

Where are your favorite outside-your-niche places for creative inspiration? And what do you think of the 3 places never to look? Do you agree? Disagree? I value your take, so lay it on me.