Big eyepatch energy: Make limitations your superpower 🦸

Last weekend, I found myself explaining to my nephew why some artists have the power to completely change how we see the world. He'd asked me about personal heroes, and without hesitation, Dale Chihuly's name escaped my lips.

"Who?" he asked, crunching on his breakfast cereal. (I love that kid.)

Storytime: Me, a few years ago in my college art history class, barely awake after pulling an all-nighter. The professor dimmed the lights and clicked to the next slide. I settled in for a light snooze.

And there it was. Explosive color. Organic forms that seemed to defy physics. Glass that looked like it was still in motion, frozen in time but somehow still dancing.

"This," the professor said, "is the work of Dale Chihuly."

I snapped fully awake. The piece was one of his ceiling installations – a riot of twisted, vibrant glass shapes that transformed the entire space beneath it. It was chaotic yet intentional. Fragile yet commanding.

We're lucky enough to have one of Chihuly's sculptures at the Come Wright Inn.

What the professor shared next changed how I thought about creativity forever.

Chihuly had lost an eye in a car accident in 1976. That's really rough for an artist. Later, a bodysurfing accident dislocated his shoulder, making it impossible for him to hold the heavy glassblowing pipe. By all conventional wisdom, his glassblowing career should have ended right there.

Instead, he transformed into a director, collaborator, and visionary. Unable to perform the physical acts of glassblowing himself, he assembled teams of artists to execute his designs under his guidance.

My nephew looked up from his cereal. "So he couldn't do the thing he was famous for anymore?"

"Exactly," I told him. "But instead of quitting, he reimagined what being a glass artist could mean."

This, my friend, is the lesson I carry into every conversation about unconventional marketing and brand building.

The most powerful brands aren't built on doing things the way they've always been done. They're built on the courage to reimagine what's possible when conventional paths are blocked.

The truth is, most businesses hit their own version of Chihuly's moment – that point where the old way doesn't work anymore. Maybe it's an algorithm change that tanks your visibility. Perhaps it's market saturation that drowns out your voice.

Whatever form it takes, your Chihuly moment is not the end. It's an invitation to reimagine the future.

When I work with clients who feel stuck in traditional marketing patterns that no longer serve them, I tell them Chihuly's story. The question isn't "How do I keep doing what I've always done?" but rather "What new form can my vision take?"

"Alright, hear me out: dwarven-themed coworking space… with tankards."

Chihuly didn't stop being an artist when he couldn't physically blow glass anymore. He became a different kind of artist – one who created through collaboration, vision, and leadership.

What kind of entrepreneur will you become when your current methods no longer serve you? What will you reimagine?