Ton envision and ensure success for your business, figure out what makes you tick

by Kathleen Martin

When my son, Aidan, was born, I believed that he would never eat baby food from a jar. I would cook and purée organic vegetables at home, freezing tiny perfect portions in sterilized ice-cube trays. But my husband and I are both self-employed, and, therefore, not eligible for paid parental leave. That meant we joined the ranks of working parents trying to balance home and career long before Aidan was ready for solids. So, in the end, our ice cube trays remained full of ice, and Aidan ate baby food from a jar.

In 2005 Melanie Tingley of Lantz, N.S., had her own work-life balance questions as her maternity leave from an independent claims adjustment firm in Halifax drew to a close. The single mother wanted to find work that would allow her to continue to stay at home with her son, Aithne. “What was I going to do? My parents and I would talk about it,” she recalls. “I love food, I love cooking, so I thought maybe I could make food for people in the community.”

Then in a “breakopen” moment (for an explanation, see my column in the June/July 2008 issue of Progress) inspired by too many Sundays spent making her own baby food, as well as other time-strapped moms she knew who couldn’t make their own but wanted to, Tingley decided to create a line of fresh-frozen baby food. About six months later,
in early 2006, Tingley launched Baby’s Harvest. Although she declinedto reveal revenue, five flavours of the product—carrot, squash, apple, pear, and spinach and sweet potato—are now available in about 65 Sobeys stores and specialty grocers throughout Atlantic Canada.

What is particularly interesting to me about Tingley’s story is not just her ability to find a gap in the market and fill it (solving my fresh versus jarred baby-food dilemma in the process) but also her approach. Both energetic and direct, in 2003 Tingley left a bachelor of arts degree program (with the goal of pursuing studies in applied human nutrition) at Mount Saint Vincent University after the first three weeks because “I just couldn’t sit still,” she says. “In high school everybody knew that about me, so it was nothing for me to leave class. I’d go into the [school] office and help out there. I had a good argument for my teachers; I said that I wanted to be hands-on. I wanted to do something.”

After deciding to launch Baby’s Harvest, Tingley tapped every new-business resource she could find, hammered out financing, conducted market research, and designed packaging, largely all on her own. She met with grocery-store buyers to get the product onto their shelves. And throughout what might have seemed like a daunting process to some, she kept moving forward.

Jeff Mauzy and Richard A. Harriman, co-authors of Creativity, Inc., would suggest that Tingley understood and instinctively maximized her “personal creative climate.” “Regardless of company efforts,” they write, “the pressures of competitive business can generate levels of anxiety that might defeat anyone’s creativity.” To be successful in circumstances such as Tingley’s, and particularly if you work in a large organization, you need to wrap yourself in “the bubble of a personal creative climate, [which] insulates people from the indifference or hostility of the larger climate.”

The idea is that you have to know what you need to be creative, including what kind of support you need from others and the kind of external factors that might unhinge your creativity. Then do what you can to protect your creative profile personally, and figure out which dampening external factors you can change and which you’ll need to tolerate.

Mauzy and Harriman say that to assess your creative climate, you should carefully consider your expectations for your work. “Expectations are fundamental,” they insist. “A person who expects that the problem at hand is solvable, and that he or she is capable of crafting the solution, will find that expectation shapes his awareness and performance in productive ways. When you expect that what you are working on will have a successful outcome, you more readily dip into resources and energy you would not otherwise expend because you believe the extra effort will be rewarded. Expectations become self-fulfilling. With each new success, confidence and competence and expectations grow, which in turn leads to more ambitious challenges. People who envision and expect creative results in their work get creative results more often than people who do not.”

This is where Tingley shines. Surrounded by supportive family and friends and a passion for her work, she is certain that her business will be successful. Currently she is preparing to meet with buyers for Superstore in Toronto and is confident about her product, her vision, and her decisions. And because creativity breeds creativity, there’s more to come. “Right now I’m working on expanding my market, my line, and creating awareness and getting people as excited about it as I am,” she says. “There are so many ideas swirling around in my head.”

Kathleen Martin is a freelance journalist based in Halifax. She can be reached at masthead@ns.sympatico.ca.