The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative.
Creativity. It’s a word we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? On the Syncreate Podcast, we share stories of the creative journey. We talk to changemakers, visionaries and everyday creatives working in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Our goal is to explore creativity in all its facets, and to gain a better understanding of the creative process – from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
The Syncreate Podcast is hosted by Melinda Rothouse, PhD. She helps individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life through coaching, consulting, workshops, retreats, and now, this podcast. She's written two books on creativity, including Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities (winner of a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation), with Charlotte Gullick. She's also a musician (singer-songwriter and bass player) and photographer based in Austin, Texas.
The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Episode 30: Creative Mornings Austin with Ben Thoma & Brian Thompson
Ben Thoma and Brian Thompson are the Co-Founders of Creative Mornings Austin, a local chapter of Creative Mornings, a monthly creative gathering in cities around the world. Described as “church for creatives,” Creative Mornings includes coffee and breakfast, a musical guest, and a presentation by a member of the local community, in a different location each month. The mantra of Creative Mornings Austin is “Everyone is creative, and everyone is welcome.” Our conversation explores the nature of creativity, the importance of creative community, the notion of “genius,” and tips for sparking your own creativity.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, try giving yourself a creative prompt, along the lines of an advertising brief, with specific constraints. It’s hard to stare at a blank page or a blank canvas, so give yourself some parameters, a “box” to start within and work your way out from. For examples, you can find many prompts in our book, Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 10: Imagination and Creativity with Psychologist and Creativity Coach Dr. Diana Rivera, Episode 17: Creative Collaboration with Syncreate Podcast Producer Mike Osborne, and Episode 28: The Spirit of Collaboration with Attorney & Musician Randy Langford..
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors, so if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group, starting in July. You can find more information on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube @ Syncreate, and we’re now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
Episode-specific hyperlinks:
Austin Kleon - Author of Steal Like an Artist + Show Your Work
Brian Thomas’ Website - brandwriter.com
Show / permanent hyperlinks:
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate. This is a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to be creative, and our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
So, very excited to have you two here today. We have Ben Thoma and Brian Thompson, the Co-Founders of Creative Mornings Austin. And Creative Mornings is a sort of global organization that has chapters in many different cities around the world. And there's generally a monthly themed creative event. And so y'all have, for what, eight years now.
Ben: 10.
Brian: 10 years now, almost.
Ben: Almost 11, yeah.
Melinda: Okay, awesome. You’ve been bringing Creative Mornings to the Austin community. So I'm very delighted to be talking to you today. And I've, you know, had involvement with Creative Mornings over the years in various ways, as an attendee, as a presenter at one point. And, you know, Ben, when you and I were kind of talking initially about the possibility of doing a podcast episode, you described Creative Mornings as kind-of “church for creatives.” And so I'd love to hear more about that.
Ben: Yeah, I think that's been something others have said about us. That hasn't been our intent, but we, yeah, we tend to draw people into the space where you can be pensive. You meet somebody new as you sit down, and we have a lot of the same rituals that a lot of religious organizations might have. So, we gather, we feed you, we have a sermon, we have music.
It's easy to see the connection if you are looking for it. But yeah, I think that comes out of just wanting to create a space that is both predictable in terms of, I know what I'm coming into each month and I've done that before. But also being a place where we're asking someone to speak. And so how do you set that up, and how do you warm people up to receive a message and hear something new? Unlike church, we move it around. I guess we're like an old school church?
Brian: Like a revival!
Melinda: A traveling, church, yeah.
Ben: That's what we should do, a revival church.
Brian: But it's, that consistency does create a space for fellowship to naturally happen. So in that regard, it is very much like church, I guess. I mean, can I get an amen?
Melinda: Yeah. Exactly. So you're in a different location each month.
Brian: Yeah, and that's important to us because we really do want to show off different areas of the city, both for accessibility. You know, you might not be able to get to a different part of town, but also giving people access to spaces that they may not otherwise get to experience.
Melinda: Yeah, and just some of the ones I've been to, they've been at different office spaces or one was kind of outside at the former Livestrong Foundation. and you know, just different, some breweries, all kinds of different venues.
Ben: Yeah, breweries are great because they're typically not busy in the morning.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: So a key part of Creative Mornings is that we do this thing in the morning, but it's also just one of the elements that sparks inspiration, is just getting out of your office, getting out of, you know after the pandemic, your bedroom or wherever your office might be, and even driving to a different part of town. For a lot of people, that's that checks the biggest box of all, is just getting up again in somewhere new.
Melinda: Yeah, kind of getting out of your routine, shaking it up a bit.
Brian: Yeah.
Melinda: Yeah. So one of your kind of mantras, as it were, with Creative Mornings, is that everyone is creative and everyone is welcome. And from what I understand, the two of you kind of embody and embrace those two principles in different ways. So tell us more about that.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's why I was so excited about today, because when I first heard the intro to your show, I was like, Wow, values aligned.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: And that is something that's really important to us, is finding people with similar values, or overlapping values, and amplifying that. So for me, it's really that the dual of that: everyone is welcome, everyone is creative.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: And I kind of see my role in Creative Mornings. Austin to be kind of the cheerleader, if you will. I really want people to, to step into the space and feel like they belong, feel like they are seen. And this is a space where they can be themselves and really connect.
Melinda: Yeah. Awesome.
Ben: Yeah, And I'm, talking about the alignment. I mean, everyone is creative. It's one of those things that seems obvious on the surface. But for Brian and I, coming from a background where we both worked in advertising, we were often in the creative department. So that wasn't a hard thing to like accept it. I am a creative professional. I am a creative human being. But for a lot of people, they have been talked out of that idea throughout their life, whether it was a teacher who said, you know, you're really good at this. You're not good at creative stuff like art, or you're not good at drawing, so you're not, you shouldn't really pursue this creative area.
Melinda: That was me. Yeah.
Ben: For people who think, I'm not good at music, so I'm not creative, I'm really good at numbers.
Melinda: Yeah.
Ben: But I think the truth is that it is innate. It's innate to us as humans that creativity is a part of who we are. We don't get to choose who is or who is not creative. We all have it. We just use it to different degrees, to different levels. Not all of us have to be professionals in order to be creative. And so for me, a big part of that is just putting that out there and letting you know, if you showed up here, we see you as someone who is creative. How you pursue that, how that manifests itself for you, could be very different than the next person. And we try to represent that. The big piece that I get to do, which is a joy for me, is curating our speakers.
Melinda: Yes.
Ben: And so we're constantly looking for speakers who break the traditional mold of what you think is a “creative person.” And in fact, what I just did there is like one of the things I try not to do, which is to use creative, as an…Or no, I did it right. I did it right.
Brian: It’s not a noun.
Ben: Yeah, we’re trying to focus on creativity, or the word creative, as an adjective, not a noun. And so looking for creative hobbyists, creative entrepreneurs. My favorite example that I always bring up is the attendee who would do taxes during the day, but then do taxidermy at night. So that, you know, is just as relevant a creative person as anyone else, you know, as if Matthew McConaughey was sitting next to him. Both are creative.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Brian: Yeah. To Ben’s point, creativity manifests in different ways.
Melinda: Yes.
Brian: So, you know, it's somebody that works in Excel spreadsheets all day. I've seen some formulas that boggle my mind.
Melinda: There is some amazingly beautiful spreadsheets out there that I personally could not.
Brian: Because, I mean, creativity really comes there's two forms. It's either connecting dots to create something new, or it's solving a problem. And what realm, or what profession, or what activity doesn't involve one of those two things?
Melinda: Yeah, for sure. In one of my recent episodes we were talking about scientific creativity, and people don't always put that together, or mathematical creativity, or business creativity. And personally I see sort-of creativity and entrepreneurship is absolutely intertwined.
Brian: Literally creating something that happens to be a business.
Melinda: Exactly. And you're engaging in the process of innovation and problem solving. But, you know, to your point, Ben, it's amazing, you know, how many people have these, you know, almost sort-of trauma around being told early in their life that they weren't creative in some way. And people really carry that. And so many people kind of go, “Oh, well, I'm not creative.” And it's like, we all have that capacity. And as you said, we use it in a myriad of different ways in our daily life. You know.
So I'm curious, you're mentioning kind of the format and the speakers. So usually people arrive, there's tacos and coffee, there's a musical guest, and then a speaker, sort of a TED-style talk.
So how do you go about curating the speakers and kind-of, what do you look for or how do you engage in that process?
Ben: Yeah, I mean, everyone's a potential speaker. If everyone is creative, everyone's a potential speaker.
Melinda: Exactly.
Ben: So that's a good problem. What we typically do, is we sit down with people, and we just talk through their story. It usually starts with “How long have you been in Austin?” Because that's the connective tissue to our event, in our in our city, and ends with “That's amazing. I didn't know that existed or what you're doing is incredible.” So what happens in between, there is just generally a series of questions that just gets to what is it that you do, and what gets you excited? What's your creative journey like?
And then we layer in the themes that we have coming up. So those themes aren't known publicly. They’re something that we keep a little close to the vest, just because it's the sort of thing that when we announce our event, it's one of the surprises, the person, where it will be, the theme. They all can be surprises in that given month, but we share that with our potential speakers. And then I ask them to tell me what word, because they're all one-word themes. What word resonates with you? And that generally gets to a great story or a great insight. And that's when I know, okay, we've got someone who's really great for this theme. Yeah, and then we get into details and stuff like that.
Brian: The other nice thing about the themes is that the creative brief, if you will, that we give our speakers, is always the intersection of that word and creativity. Yeah. What does that mean to you.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: And that's a pretty, pretty broad Venn diagram overlap, because you know, the words vary from--next month is going to be Perspective—Oh! That gave it away; I’m not supposed to tell. But so then in the past it's been anything from Wilderness, and what's fun is the different chapters around the world each pick a theme. So when it was our turn, the theme that month was Weird, in Austin; Keep Austin Weird.
Melinda: Nice, Yep.
Ben: Well, the thing that is really important to me about it, because giving a talk is a creative act as well. I mean, you're putting together a presentation. You're sharing of yourself. Storytelling is a creative act. And so what we're doing is giving just the right amount of rules for our speakers creativity doesn't come from just a blank canvas. It comes from a canvas that ends and ends and ends, and then you've got to work within that.
Melinda: Yeah.
Ben: So we just try to set up those two guardrails as the “always on” theme, which is creativity. And the monthly theme, which is, this month is Native. So creativity and Native, where they intersect. And that gets a reaction out of people both from the speaker’s perspective and also the, I think, the audience's perspective. “Oh, I want to hear someone talk on that theme. I want to hear someone else's. I have my own thoughts about that.”
But importantly, that in the time box of 20 minutes, just how much time you have sets people on this proverbial road to explore and create something that stays in the lane. And that's really important because it becomes, yeah, that creative act. You're actually not just talking about your journey, you're actually doing something creative by being in front of people.
Brian: Yeah, those 20 minutes provide just enough structure. I mean, you could do anything you want within that 20 minutes, right? We don't vet the talks or approve them in advance, so one of the, like Ben mentioned the word surprise earlier. You never know what you're going to get, right. Show up. I mean, we've had people, a lot of people, share their personal journey, or their professional journey, or where those two things overlap. But we've had people do like artistic pieces, spoken word. It really just, you never know. One speaker did his entire talk accompanied by a pianist. So people really bring their own flavor to it every time.
Ben: He also took a lot of creative liberties with the time. It was a long 20 minutes.
Brian: Creativity, much like giving a talk, any creative act, you have to have just enough structure.
Melinda: Exactly.
Brian: So it's, everybody says “Think outside the box.” Yeah, well, you have to have a box.
Melinda: In order to get outside of it.
Brian: And that provides the rules. And then you can decide what rule you're going to follow, or which rule you're going to bend or break.
Melinda: Yeah. It's often said that creativity comes out of constraints, right. And that's one thing we were kind of talking about when we were chatting about this, is that you know how structure and sort of the rituals that you all incorporate into the event, how important that is. So you know, on the one hand it provides a container, if you will, but then there's a lot of room to play.
Brian: Yeah, the flow of the event really provides kind-of a landing pad for people, because we do provide coffee and tacos. So you get, you arrive, you get a feel for the space, you get in line for your coffee and then you talk to the person in line next to you. And the same thing happens when you grab your taco and suddenly now you've had these intentional moments, more than intentional by us, to set them up. But you know, you've met somebody new that you didn't know before.
Melinda: Exactly.
Brian: Now, you know, there's somebody there that you can recognize. Maybe you sit with that person, maybe you don't. But then people, you know, kind of mix and mingle while they're drinking their coffee, and then you find a spot to sit, and oh, there's somebody new to talk to. And then the talk starts. You pay attention, you take it in, and then afterwards you talk about what you just experienced. You bump into that person that you saw at the beginning again, or you see a friend or an old coworker haven't seen in a while, and then suddenly have something to talk about. Not just the usual. “How are you? How have you been?”
Melinda: Right.
Brian: Wow. What did you think of that? Or that, here's what I took away from this experience.
Melinda: Totally. Yeah. One of my favorite actually, Instagram posts, is from a Creative Mornings, where it was like “Meet the person next to you and now take a selfie together.” And I can't say that I've kept in touch, but we had a lovely little moment, you know, and I love it when that photo comes up.
Ben: It's that shared experience. It's what, ‘cause we've talked a lot about what are we here for? Is it just to put on a talk and things like that? And we really want to create and cultivate community, and we're putting that around creativity, and creativity is the one thing that could unify us. But then after the event’s over, everyone who's been there has had that shared experience. So, you see that person again five years from now, five minutes from now, you can at least hearken back and say, you were at that event, too. I remember this. And that connective tissue makes us a much stronger community, and gives you the basis by which you can unlock far more conversation, because you're just getting past the basics and you're getting into the good stuff next.
Melinda: Yeah. Yep. So one of my personal favorite themes, in fact, Charlotte, my business partner, and I writing a book on creating in community. So I think, you know, for Creative Mornings, you know, it's all about creating a sense of community and just the power of that. Because sometimes when we're working individually, we can start to feel isolated and just to know that there's a whole community of people out there, bringing them all together, sort of cross-pollinating.
So I'm curious, you know, your thoughts on, you know, the importance of community and maybe, I don't know, is there anything that's kind of surprised you over the years, or new connections forged or, you know, things that have come out of the creative mornings gatherings?
Brian: Yeah, I think two words you just said really sparked my because it's about community, but you also use the word cross-pollinate.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: And that's really where the magic happens.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: Because what is community but forming connections, and how are ideas formed? You connect to things that may or may not have ever been put together before.
Melinda: Exactly.
Brian: So, you expose yourself to new people, new thoughts, new ideas, new backgrounds, diverse opinions, and suddenly all that kind of goes into a stew, if you will.
Melinda: Yes.
Brian: And you don't know what you're going to, what you're going to make, or what it's going to taste like until you're in it.
Melinda: Yeah, yeah. And you never know exactly who's going to show up from month to month, or what that's going to look like.
Brian: Yeah, so we've had people that have found collaborators to work on a project. People have found jobs, people have found romance, even. It really is all about forming connections. And again, that communal experience just provides a container for those connections to happen.
Melinda: Yeah. Awesome.
Ben: Yeah. One thing I would add is I think of it as a chance to meet neighbors. And we live in a society now where I can't even tell you one of my neighbors names, but I can tell you the other one. Why is it that we have trouble with the people physically, you know, right next to us, but we're okay with, you know, getting to know someone on the Internet around the world. And the Internet is beautiful for that. I mean, actually, the Internet is what brought us together.
Melinda: Yeah. I was curious about that, actually. How did you two connect?
Ben: Yeah, this, you know, pour one out for Twitter. But, you know, that was that was the means.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah.
Ben: Prior to dating sites Brian and I found each other on Twitter.
Brian: Yeah, you know, we both, we both lived in New York, followed each other on Twitter, but didn't know each other in real life.
Melinda: Oh, interesting.
Ben: And then he moved to Austin about six months to a year before I did. But we both had a very similar experience coming here and feeling welcomed by the city. And so I really wanted to start this with someone who I thought would understand and appreciate what Creative Mornings was. I had been an attendee at Creative Mornings in New York when it was founded, and I know Brian had probably commented on, appreciated, and followed Creative Mornings in some way. And so when I reached out to him, I said, “Let's get together and float this idea.” And the idea was just let's pitch being the hosts for this.
Melinda: Yeah.
Ben: But going back to that, the other idea of neighbor, is just that, we want to put people on stage who are, you don't just see as this thoughtful individual, inspiring individual, but really as that inspiring neighbor. That person who lives where I live, that is within my reach, and hopefully expose the opportunity to, you know, widen your lens, and just see more people as your neighbor. And are worthy of your appreciation, and that they are creative and their creative acts may be interesting to you. I mean, that's definitely true of Brian, for me. I'm constantly amazed at the things that he tackles and his own entrepreneurship, his creative writing. There's lots of ways that I see him as a creative neighbor that, you know, this, doing this work together has made clear to me in ways I would never have fully appreciated if it wasn't the…
Brian: The beauty of it happening in person is you you're meeting your neighbors. Literally, when you grab a taco or coffee, you're seeing a neighbor up on stage and there's this sense of, if they can do this,
Melinda: Yes.
Brian: I can certainly my thing, and what's great about Austin, and Creative Mornings in general, is that other people want to see you succeed. They are more than happy and absolutely willing to lift each other up. We use the phrase that, you know, you're not just showing up for yourself, you're showing up for each other, even if you're, you know, totally introverted and you just want to grab your tacos, sit in the back, and watch and then sneak out without talking to anybody. That's okay, because you're still welcome and you're still a part of this experience and you take from it what you will.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that.
Ben: One last thought here is just this city has grown so much.
Melinda: So much.
Ben: In the years that we've been here. And the idea that someone else is your neighbor gets harder and harder to imagine. But there's just so many people here. You know, I think we're over a million people proper in the city now. And we've got just neighborhoods where people really don't leave. Like people talk about not going north of the river, south of Town Lake and things like that.
Melinda: Don't want to deal with the traffic.
Ben: Don't want to have to cross a bridge because it's a pinch point or whatever. But the reality is, you know, that there's so much that we've experienced firsthand that feels neighborly and this city is great at. And so as we've grown, I hope that we've been able to keep that connective tissue going, or more opportunities for that connection to happen because we saw it so evidently when we arrived. And I mean, we were big when we arrived, but Austin's just exploded since, probably because of us. [Laughter]
Brian: Yeah, that's, that's it. And so because of us, so many people move here, but Austin and us, obviously, attract a certain caliber of people for sure, who want to be a part of the center, people that want to create things, and make things, and live a life that Austin lets you be a part of. And that energy feeds on, it feeds on itself. Every person you meet is another opportunity to learn something new or find a spark, and you don't know where that's going to lead you next.
Melinda: Yeah, and I love this because it speaks to me to the theme of, this has come up in some of the episodes recently where, you know, kind of in the maybe wider, mainstream world there's, at least in our society in general, there's so much emphasis on competition, right? Getting ahead. And to me, I think what is so important and so enlivening about creativity is collaboration and supporting each other.
And like what you said earlier, you know, like we want everyone to succeed and look, we're all here together, and we can inspire each other, and we can learn from each other stories and maybe find collaborators. And, you know, it's so much more, to me, satisfying and enriching if you approach things and creative work in that way rather than like, oh, I've got this idea and I can't tell anyone else about it because they might steal it, or, you know, something like that. So yeah.
Brian: Yeah, no, ideas are just out there in the ether. They find a home, and if that home isn’t with you, they're going to find, that idea is going to go to somebody else. So just put it out in the world because you don't know what's going to happen.
Melinda: Exactly. And one thing leads to another. You know, once you start putting something out there, maybe you find collaborators, or people who are interested in doing the same thing, or like, I can support you in this way, or I can support you in that way, or I know someone you should talk to.
Brian: Oh, have you thought about this?
Melinda: Yeah, yeah.
Ben: Yeah, I mean, we have both worked in advertising. I think advertising did a great job of teaching me that you have to just pump out ideas at a fairly high clip because that's what the industry demands. At least when you're an art director or copywriter, like we were. But the real thing that I learned from that is that you don't have room for new ideas to sit in your head and take up space in your head until you express the ones that are right there.
Melinda: Yeah.
Ben: I think often of them being in the ether, around me, and grabbing at them, But you won't, like to Brian's point, anybody else can grab it too. It is ethereal, and it's all about execution. So, Brian's a great example of taking an idea and trying to make it into a small business or project. This Creative Mornings thing has been very much that for us. We use it as a platform to create little projects here and there, like we do ornaments every December, which forces us to create something that is easily laser engravable typically and speaks to something that's happened in the community.
Brian: And we've done things like limited run posters just to give away, for fun, just because it's something cool to do and it's, to mix a metaphor, you know, these ideas are floating around in the ether. What if we do this? But then creativity is also a well, and that well never runs dry, right? And that you can always go back and think of another idea. And it may not feel like that in the moment when something doesn't pan out or when you're feeling stuck. But then you take a walk or you meet somebody new and suddenly a new flood of ideas comes through.
Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah, I love that because, you know, there's that saying like, there's nothing new under the sun, everything's been done before. But we each have a unique perspective and set of experiences that we bring to any creative idea, and only we can tell our story, or tell it from our perspective, right?
Brian: Yeah.I mean, the sun rises and sets every day, but step outside and that light is going to look different every time.
Melinda: Exactly.
Ben: Man, we're trying every metaphor we can.
Brian: I love torturing a metaphor.
Ben: We often go back to our first speaker, who's a native Austinite, not native Austinite. No, I'm sorry, his name. It is his name. His name is Austin Kleon. We're big fans. And when he spoke, he was talking about his second book in this trilogy of books that he put out, which was Show Your Work, but before that was Steal Like an Artist. And I loved that book because it acknowledged that I'm going, I can take that same idea. And, but inevitably my fingerprints, whatever I do to execute will be different than yours
Melinda: Yes.
Ben: And so he I think at some point the book he like challenges you to go paint a Van Gogh and it's like, you will never copy it, right? You will never copy it. You can be accused that you were, you know, trying to make a Van Gogh, but ultimately you put your own experience and your own hand into that. And I think that's the difference in stealing like an artist, is recognizing that you can't not put yourself into it, if you go for it. So like, it's easier to simplify like Uber and Lyft to do the same thing. Well, no, there's a quality to each that is different, intentionally and unintentionally, and their also companies. So like, what can you really do? There's thousands of people affecting those brands. I mean, we talk about brands because we think about things in that way, given our history.
But yeah, but ultimately as an individual, you go ahead, go try to copy that thing, do it. And then that little thing that's different will be the thing that sparks something that makes it unique. And yeah, you get to create in that. And so that's often like the thing that you could do to, if you are a person is like, I'm not creative, I can't be creative. It's just go copy stuff, right? Just do it. And inevitably you make it your own.
Melinda: And you're going to learn something in the process like, how did they do that?
Ben: Yeah. Yes, 100%.
Brian: One of my favorite exercises, when I was trying to find my voice as a writer, was to literally type out a short story. Copy it. Word for word. I'd like, literally typing up stories. And it just it really resonates because by you pick up how they do it and then you go to experiment with what do you want to do differently?
Because the point, we all have our own experiences and influences, and those come out in our work, whether it's intentional or not. Which is the beauty of going back that idea of you don't have to be competitive, because you might be doing something very similar to my idea, but it is not going to be executed the same. So you don't have to worry about running out, either of ideas or the outcome of those ideas. There's, the table is big enough for everyone to get a to get a seat.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: I'll torture another metaphor; it's the pie, you know, you don’t have to fight over crumbs, or like, I'm going to I'm going to get a bigger slice.
Melinda: [Laughter] Yeah.
Brian: Let's make a bigger pie.
Melinda: Yeah, exactly. And I'm in the Syncreate book we talk about, you know, study work that you admire, you know, just like you're saying, and like literally typing out someone's else's story, you start to learn the craft, right? Oh, I see what they're doing there, you know.
Brian: Yeah.Or try doing it with something you don't like.
Melinda: Right.
Brian: I--that's not for me, but people love it. Why is that?
Melinda: Why, yeah.
Brian: Like, pick it apart. Why does it resonate with other people?
Melinda: Kind of deconstruct it.
Brian: Yeah. Or what is it about me that it doesn't resonate with?
Melinda: Yeah. So I'm kind of curious, since you both come from an advertising background and you're both in this creative realm. I'm curious, like number one, you could take this however you want, whatever direction, but like, what have you learned about creativity and the creative process, or your own creative process, by virtue of that work? And another way to maybe phrase it is like, what advice would you give to someone, either just starting out or kind of struggling with their own creative process? I'll just throw that open.
Brian: We've talked a lot about structure already, but I'm going to I'm going to narrow it down a little bit more to the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” So, you know, you have to, like, everybody has guilty pleasures and that's great. And you can enjoy those, but also, look for things that inspire you and take that in. But in the advertising world, when you get a project, it's like creativity on demand. You get a creative brief and that outlines all the information you need to solve this creative problem. How do you sell more soap?
Melinda: Right?
Brian: Well, here's the ingredients of the soap; here is the people who buy the soap. And here's what we want people to know about our soap, and here's how we want them to feel when they use it. So all those constraints, all that, that box is handed to you.
Melinda: Yeah.
Brian: So I guess I'm saying give yourself a box. And just start throwing stuff in it and see what happens.
Melinda: Yeah. Like give yourself a prompt, give those guidelines, those structures, and then see.
Brian: Yeah, the idea of the blank canvas came up, like if you just stare at a blank page.
Melinda: It can be overwhelming.
Brian: Yeah exactly.
Ben: Yeah. I mean, and so many times in advertising, being on the receiving end of a creative brief, you'd go, yeah, that's like three too many rules. Or there is the opposite, where it's like, well, you, here's the solution. You just wrote the headline in the brief. Here it is.
Brian: Or this is garbage. You're going to get garbage out, so let's challenge those assumptions. Let’s challenge those rules.
Ben: I think, so yeah, I think as students, we were taught to make spec work, which was to make up the brief, or make up. And so, you can certainly do that for yourself, not in an advertising capacity. You could say, if you want to try making a podcast, here is the audience I want to talk to. Here's the format, here's the time, etc.
I wanted to touch on something that I feel like was freeing for me, which was I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the one who came up with the idea, that it was it was on me. And I think this happens in the ad industry a lot where, you know, you're just being asked to produce ideas. And the truth of the matter is that I found it crushing. The pressure of it was ultimately too much. I mean, we're both not talking about still being in the ad business.
Melinda: Right.
Ben: It was fun for a while. But what freed me from that was a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. And she has been and is, I don't know if I'm using this right, it might be a malapropism, but it, she's like my muse or I'm her muse. I can't remember which way it would be, but she has served several epiphanies to me through her work. And one of them was around genius.
Melinda: Yes.
Ben: And so, I really took that to heart. And if you haven't seen the talk, it's worth looking at because she's more eloquent about it. She's also more accomplished than I am. But she talks about the, looking to the root of genius, and that coming from the Greeks, and the ideas that genius was, it was intended to be a spirit who worked alongside you.
Melinda: Yes.
Ben: As opposed to what we do now, which is assign that as a definition.
Brian: Or a title, or a characteristc.
Melinda: Or an inherent trait or something.
Ben: So. So Brian is a genius,
Brian: You don't think?
Ben: No, sorry, Brian. If you listen to Liz.
Brian: I mean, no, I'm not. I mean.
Ben: No, the truth is that it, that she talks about it from her writing perspective, where she talked to her genius, she anthropomorphized the genius. And I think that is a good way to do it, actually. But I really thought about that, and bought into it, and it freed me of the pressure and of feeling like it was all on me. It was on my shoulders to go create something. Instead, you have to show up and do work.
Melinda: Yeah.
Ben: And if that collaboration between Spirit and you is present, then something bigger and better will happen. And I think the thing for me is that the truth of that spirit is, the things that you surround yourself with, whether it's the books you read, the movies you watch, the places you go, the food you eat, the people you commune with. All of that makes up your spirit and your shared the experience that your spirit and you have and all of that is available to you when you're doing the work.
Melinda: Yes.
Ben: So you got to sit down at the typewriter, or the computer, or the laptop. You have to sit at the easel, you have to sit at Photoshop. You have to get in front of the microphone, whatever it is that you're trying to use as your creative tools. And you have to be willing to just go to work, and then do enough outside of work to create a very robust spirit to work alongside you, and realize that that spirit has all the choice in the world whether it wants to work with you right then or not. So I think she says, like, I'm going to be here for 8 hours. If you'd like to show up and work with me, that'd be great. And so for her, speaking to it was helpful.
Melinda: Exactly, yeah.
Ben: I haven't gotten to that point where I've had to do that. But I think for me, there's just truth in removing that pressure, remove that idea. You know, the way I think of it, it's like I just say it about people who say it. People will say Kanye is a genius, and I just go Kanye is not a genius.
And I just state that. And that helps framing of the idea like, no, he is not a genius. He's working with his genius a lot, and clearly not other times.
Melinda: Right, exactly. And then there's two things that really are salient to me about that. Number one is, you know, creativity is all about making associations between things. So the more, kind-of, richness we have in our environment, and our interactions, and what we're reading and listening to and you know, that then those ideas are constantly, you know, brewing in our minds. So we have that that to draw from. And then we’ve got to actually just sit down and do the thing and, you know, create the conditions for the muse, or the genius, or whatever it is to land in our space. And that's, I think, one thing a lot of people struggle with, right? Oh, there's so much going on in life, and so many responsibilities and, you know, carving out that time to sit and do the work.
Ben: Well, the other thing, that relates back to us, is find yourself a partner who doesn't have exactly the same life. Because they bring their muse; they bring their spirit with them, and it just grows the experiences that you're drawing from. And Brian said it earlier, that creativity is just putting two things together that may have never been joined before. Well, that comes from those shared experiences, comes from those disparate experiences. And one of the good things about advertising was, it taught me at least that, you know, work with a partner.
And you like, even just being in a session where you talk through things, and there's a mutual respect, and an appreciation for the skills that the other person has. You just get to a better place. And so the way I've done that recently, besides working with Brian on Creative Mornings, is actually having an accountability partner for writing just LinkedIn posts. Just having someone that I meet up with once a week, and we write posts together, and then we like each other's posts so that we can help the algorithm out.
Brian: Lift each other up.
Ben: Yeah, lift each other. For sure. But, you know, he edits mine, I edit his. And so giving yourself some kind of partner, who may just be an accountability partner, but ultimately, as a partner in the work, he's writing about very different things that I'm writing about. So we don't have to make the same mistake.
Melinda: Right, Exactly.
Brian: And what that what that does, it's another way of creating accountability. But it forces you to be present. So whether you're talking to another person, or that creative spirit that's guiding you, you have to find that focus. And like now I'm doing the work. And it doesn't have to be 8 hours a day. It could be the 5 minutes while you're loading the dishwasher.
Melinda: Use the time you have.
Brian: You know, but it's about “Now I'm going to focus on this.”
Melinda: Yeah. And you can be amazingly productive, actually, in short spurts. And then…
Brian: Just having kids. Gone is the luxury of time. It’s like, I've got, you know, when they were younger, it's like somebody just fell asleep. I've got a half an hour to get everything done that needs to be done. And that, you know, that includes the dishes and the project I'm on deadline for. And that really did kind of cut out the B.S., if you will. And like, I'm going to put in the work and maybe the outcome is something that that works, and maybe it doesn't. But I've carved out that time to put the focus into it, and it's gotten me a step closer to where I need to be.
Melinda: Exactly. Yeah, that's great. All great tips. Accountability partnership, the synergy of collaboration. So I'm mindful of our time, which is flying by, but I kind of want to end, well, anything else you want to add to the conversation that we haven't touched on yet? Related to Creative Mornings, creative process, what y'all are up to beyond Creative Mornings? Anything else to share there?
Brian: Go personal? Are we gonna do that?
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah, love to.
Brian: Well, Ben's alluded to, I love a good side hustle. Because again, you know, we have these ideas and throw them out into the world. Ben mentioned the ornaments we do every year. I have a laser engraving side hustle, where I have a laser engraving machine and I just make stuff. I put a lot of logos on coasters and that's just a fun avenue where it's not something I ever thought was going to turn into a side business. But it was a project that just grew over time to a life of its own. So be open to those ideas, because you don't know where you're going to going to lead. And then you know our past careers…
Ben: Wait a minute. Hold on, hold on. lasersmakeitawesome dot com.
Brian: If you need your logo engraved on a coaster, or perhaps wooden nickels to give away as tokens, buy one, get one free, deals, go to lasersmakeitawesome dot com.
Ben: Brian. Brian loves to make a business with a cool name, so.
Brian: I can't do anything unless I come up with a name. That's another trick. You have to figure out what gets you excited about a project and focus on that first.
Ben: And give, well, to your point, about give it a handle.
Melinda: Yeah, and just putting a name to it does help you focus.
Brian: Yeah. And it gives you the ability to talk about it. It's like, you just have the little story. So that's a side hustle I've had for years. What my, my focus has always been copywriting. That's a long career in advertising. So, you know, if somebody wants to give me a pile of money to come up with ideas for them or hear some great words, always happy to do that. brandwriter dot com
Ben: There you go.
Brian: But it's funny, I used to have notebooks where I would just scribble down random ideas. And then years ago, and still to this day, now I just have a random idea and I buy the URL. So yeah, I think this is true of a lot of crazy people these days, where you just you have URLs that maybe nothing will come of it, but you know, you've got that gem there waiting.
Melinda: Just in case.
Brian: I want to come back to it.
Melinda: Totally. Yeah. How about you, Ben?
Ben: Yeah, I don't have side hustles that I do. I'm actually the guy who says you don't have to make your hobby a job. That's...
Melinda: That's also so true.
Ben: It is also true. So, yeah, I mean, I'm, I was just trying to think about what I should share. I think the only thing I would add to all of this is that, you know, putting time into things that you care about, being a volunteer for many things in my past and currently, it's the thing that sustains me when I'm working on the hard stuff. So I think being a volunteer has been, my life lesson is, that it it's meant more to me than any money that I've received.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Ben: So, money is great though. Money is oxygen.
Brian: Yeah, we love money. To the to the oxygen thing because that's a great metaphor.
Ben: Well, so this is something that I, one of my truths, which is that money is oxygen. And it is again, not something I thought of. It’s just something that
Brian: You stole it.
[Laughter]
Ben: I stole it. I didn't even put my own mark to this one. I just repeat it constantly to let people know. But yeah, well, I'm job hunting right now, and so this is a point where the money isn't flowing. And so, I'm very aware of the fact that it is like oxygen and it feels a little bit more like gasping than I would want it to. Whereas on the other side, if you've got more money than you need and you're still going at it and still going after more, it’s giving you a high that is not leaving you clearheaded. You aren't necessarily focused on the balance of having something important in your life that isn't about money. And so we talk about it with Creative Mornings, like do we want to have just enough money to run the event. We're talking about becoming a nonprofit right now and working on that. And some of the thinking is actually to get more money, do more things.
Melinda: Yeah.
Ben: But that's the reason, not just to get more money.
Melinda: Unto itself, right.
Ben: But that's a way of framing money that has been helpful to me, so that I at least can, like most things, if you can name it, you can have some domain over it. And so thinking of money as oxygen has allowed me to keep a good framing for what my money should be, and what it needs to be, and what you hope it to be, in other places too.
Brian: To Ben’s point, creativity does not have to be what gives you that oxygen.
Melinda: Right.
Brian: You know, I love turning ideas into businesses. And if I can make money, that's just the brand guy in me just thinks that way. It doesn't have to be.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Brian: Ben's point about volunteering, that's what I love about Creative Mornings. I always say we get more out of it than we put into it.
Melinda: Yes.
Brian: I think that's true of volunteering and I think that's true of whatever creative actor you're pursuing. You know, the journey is the destination is another cliché, but it really is about, it's not about the output, or the price tag you put on it. It's about what do you learn along the way? And just enjoying that ride and seeing where that flow takes you next.
Melinda: Yeah, the process unto itself, the experience. Absolutely. So thank you, guys.
Brian: Yeah, we could do this all day.
Melinda: I know we might have to do a Part 2. We'll see. But so if people want to learn more about Creative Mornings Austin, how can they find you?
Ben: Yeah. creativemornings.com, creativemornings.com/atx if Austin is your city. But really, I mean, the joy is to share it with everyone. So when you go to the website, you can pick from a dropdown and find the city closest to you. Texas is blessed with five different chapters.
Melinda: Five, wow – I didn’t know that.
Ben: El Paso, we're waiting for you to show up. [Laughter] But really, if you're traveling, another great way to do that is to look up to see where you're going. Maybe they have a Creative Mornings to get to meet people in a community that you really care about. But yeah, here in Austin we do it once a month. You're always welcome, and we're always looking to find new speakers and venues.
So if hearing this inspired you to think Creative Mornings would be something to host, either in your place of business, or maybe you want to help support those tacos. We can always use that support too, so you can find us online at creativemornings.com. You can email us: austin@creativemornings.com. The important thing is there's an “s” at the end of morning. So Creative Mornings.
Melinda: Alright. Perfect. Awesome.
Brian: Thank you so much.
Melinda: Yeah, it’s been great! Thank you.
So at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Synreate 2020 for Coaching group. It's a six-month coaching group that starts April [now starting in July], and you can find the podcast on all the major podcast channels and on YouTube. We’re on social media, so find us, connect, subscribe. And the podcast is produced here at Record ATX Studios in Austin and with Collaboration from Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios.
