Ep 108: Creative Brief Mastery

Getting It Right the First Time

SUMMARY

Are your creative projects suffering from the "revision loop of doom" because nobody understands what the client wanted in the first place? In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, we dive into the art of creating bulletproof creative briefs that align expectations, prevent costly revisions, and make your first draft feel like the final one.

Recently, I worked with a client who had gone through several rounds of revisions on a project only to realize that the brief hadn't properly captured their vision. This cost them weeks of work and thousands in billable hours. Many creative professionals treat briefs like a box to check rather than what they truly are: the strategic foundation of successful projects.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: A great brief must be concise yet comprehensive, including clear problem statements, specific objectives, target audience definition, brand voice guidelines, technical requirements, timeline with milestones, and budget parameters.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Document all discussions and decisions in writing or with recordings. This documentation serves as a boundary-setting tool that prevents scope creep and provides a reference point throughout the project.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Use the brief as a living document throughout the project. Start each meeting by referencing it, establish formal change request processes, use it as evaluation criteria for internal reviews, and train clients to refer back to it when providing feedback.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Every creative brief needs to start with the problem. That's starting with why—why are we doing this in the first place? What problem are we trying to solve?"

• 💬 "The brief is a contract, not a suggestion. If you spend the time asking the right questions and building the right brief, then it's a simple work order at that point."

• 💬 "A great brief does not constrain creativity—it focuses it. Taking time upfront saves exponentially more time during execution."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Creative Meeting Success Framework - A free resource with specific sections for brief creation and review, plus questions designed to uncover hidden client expectations

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Are your projects suffering from the revision loop of doom because nobody really understands what the client wanted in the first place? Today, we're going to dive into the art of creating bulletproof creative briefs that align expectations, prevent costly revisions, and make your first draft feel like the final one. Let's get into it. Taking creatives from chaos to clarity.

Welcome back to Creativity Made Easy, the podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. This is a podcast for all creatives, designers, photographers, writers, and all creative entrepreneurs who are seeking practical, actionable strategies to grow their creative business through efficiency. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative process coach and consultant. And I help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams to create with efficiency as they scale together.

Before we get into today's episode, I want to invite you to subscribe on YouTube. If you're watching, go ahead and like and ring the bell as well. If you're listening on audio podcast platform, I would love for you to rate and review it on whatever platform you're on. This helps get the content out further to those like yourself who can benefit from it. I want to mention that you can gather any free resources that I mentioned that I've created or I'm available to share with you. You can get them at Dustin Pead dot com slash free. That's D U S T I N P E A D dot com slash free. And lastly, you can follow me on social media. Instagram is where I'm the most active, but I'm also on LinkedIn, Facebook, places like that too. At Dustin Pead, D U S T I N P E A D. All right, let's get into today's episode.

Creative brief mastery, getting it right the first time. So recently I worked with a client who had gone through several rounds of revisions on a project only then to realize that the brief hadn't properly captured their vision. And it cost them weeks and weeks of work and thousands in billable hours. Listen, many creative professionals treat briefs like a box to check rather than a strategic foundation of successful projects. Building on last week's discussion about automation systems, today we're going to explore how a well-crafted brief can prevent the need for some excessive revisions and keep your automated workflows running smoothly. So I want to kick off with a story from a company that you've heard of and a company behind the company that you may not have heard of.

Oral-B, we all know them as the toothbrush giant, right? So they hired this company, IDEO, to help them develop a new product, this cross-action toothbrush that is now world famous, right? So they detailed the design brief, focused strictly on the user experience, like the customer journey, right? Like, how are they going to use it on a day and what matters most to them? So the brief included a lot of research about brushing habits that revealed insights that customers really care about grip and pressure and reach, all these different things, right? And so the results were the cross action toothbrush became one of Oral-B's most successful products with over a billion dollars in sales. The point is this, the investment in a thorough brief led to a breakthrough in innovation and it saved countless hours of revisions. Today I want to walk through a few areas that will help you create the best brief possible and get rid of those countless hours of revisions.

So let's get into the first point. Let's talk about the anatomy of an effective creative brief. What should be in the brief? Well, first off, a brief should be brief. That's right. You guessed it. It should be concise, right? Yet comprehensive. We're not trying to deliver, you know, a three ring binder full of information. We're just trying to give them enough information, but really good information that we need for both the client and us to be successful. So there's some essential components that every creative brief must include.

All right. So number one, it's got to include a clear problem statement. So we say all the time, creativity is problem solving, nothing more, nothing less. So what's the problem that we're trying to solve here? You need to include that. It needs to be super clear, specific as possible. And speaking of specific, you need to have specific objectives. What does success look like? What does a win look like here? Brené Brown says all the time, paint done for me. When it's all said and done, what is a win or success look like? It needs to include the target audience definition. So who is it that we're that that is going to that we're hoping will receive this this design, this video, this photo the best way, right? So we want to have the target audience in there, but we also want to know just a little bit more. not just saying like, it's humans, target audience is humans. Okay, let's get a little bit more specific than that. Is it Latino Americans, male ages 35 to 45? See that now we're getting specific.

It also your brief needs to include brand voice and tone guidelines. These are so huge because this is where you get to lean in, I think a little bit as a creative, because most organizations don't really know a brand voice or tone guideline, especially if they're a smaller organization. They don't even really understand what that means. But every brand is a reputation in the world, whether it's a personal brand or a company brand. Every brand has a reputation. It would be super weird to see Coca-Cola in a blue bottle. Right. Everybody knows Coca-Cola comes in a red wrapper or red can or a red bottle, right? So how understanding that voice and those tone guidelines go a long way. And this could be as simple as saying, Hey, do you have any brand identity guidelines for your, for your organization or for yourself? And if they say yes, great. Send those on over. We'll include it in the reef. If they don't, then we can start to walk through that process with them and Hey, maybe you have another job out of it.

The brief also needs to include some technical requirements and constraints. Are there anything that's going to stop us from getting this done and what do we actually need in order to get this done? The creative brief needs to include a timeline with key milestones in it because we've talked about this before with our communication with our clients. We don't want to just go, all right, the project's kicked off and we'll see you when it's time for revisions. We want to have key milestones built in there throughout the process. So a clear timeline with clear key milestones is a must for a creative brief.

And lastly, you gotta have budget parameters, budget parameters. Now know everybody doesn't like to talk budget because we don't want to show our cards or we don't want to show our margins or we're afraid of the budget being too small or so big that it intimidates us. But understanding those budget parameters goes a long way because then you know, then you can serve the client better. Hey, we've got this much money for this project. Great. Once we get up to that amount or as we're approaching that amount, then you can say, hey, look, I know your budget is this. I want to be sensitive to that. Here's where we are on this project right now and how we got there. All of that to be included in the brief will create a successful creative brief. So clear problems, specific objectives, target audience, brand voice and tone, technical requirements and constraints, timelines with key milestones and budget parameters.

Look at the end of it all. There's a difference between prescriptive briefs and descriptive briefs. Prescriptive briefs tell how it needs to be done. And as creatives, we don't like prescriptive briefs. Don't want to, we don't want to be told how to do it. We have our own process and we have our own angle that we would like to take, but descriptive briefs, they explain the what and the why, and that will get to a win every single time. Stefan Sagmeister, who's a famous graphic designer, said this. He said a good brief is worth its weight in gold. Listen, he says it clarifies thinking and established shared and establishes shared expectations even before a single pixel is pushed. That's why these creative briefs are so, so important.

All right, so it's time to actually make this creative brief. And that often comes with interviewing our clients and figuring out what it is that they actually want. Listen, clients often don't really know exactly what they want. And I know that you know that already, and I know it's funny and we joke about it behind the scenes, but they don't. So what we need to learn to do and what will keep us from further headache is to ask some really great questions so that we can help them discover what it is that they actually want. So I'm to give you some specific questions to ask here when you're working on when you're developing this this creative brief with your client.

All right. Number one. What problem are we really solving here? We talked about how every creative brief needs to have that. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. We have to start with the problem. That's starting with why. Why are we doing this in the first place? What problem are we trying to solve? Hey, oral B, it's that we're trying to have a career with the problem that we're trying to solve is a more exciting experience for people to brush their teeth so that they will brush their teeth more often because we care about dental health. Exactly. Right. So what problem are we really trying to solve here?

Second question. How are you going to measure success beyond just liking the creative? Right. So besides just like, I really like that video. OK, great. But when you go to use that video, what does success look like for you on the other side of that? Because for us as creatives, we need to think beyond just what we're creating and think about the impact in which it's going to have because understanding the end goal, understanding the impact that it's going to have will help us to create more targeted and more effective creative every single time.

Third question, what's an example of something similar to what we're trying to do here that you really admire. Now this is getting some preferences. This is getting a little look into what they really like. This is an opportunity to find out like, oh, I see that they really like this campaign or they really like this video or this design or this photo treatment. And so you go, okay, if that's what they like, then I can get a little closer to that style in which they like.

Next question. What approaches have you tried before that didn't work? Did you try a man on the street style video and you didn't like that? Have you tried client testimonial videos and you didn't like that? Have you tried a photo shoot outside and you didn't care for that or inside or with this color or this jacket or all these different variables, right? What have you tried before with this project or this style of project before that didn't work? This is a great question to ask because it avoids you from ever even going down that road or that path. And it's going to save you so much time and frustration.

Last question. Who needs to approve this work? And what are their priorities? You might not be meeting with the ultimate approval, approval or decision maker, right? So what's their, uh, if it's someone else, other than who you're on the call with, what are their priorities and really start to kind of get that at the end, at the end of the day, understanding the, the decision makers priorities will allow you to hit the target closer every single time.

So when you're in this call, last tip I want to give you when you're in this kind of interview with the client, the tip that I want to give you here on this is to document those discussions and decisions. Now you can do it in writing or you can record if it's a digital if it's a digital meeting, you can record the zoom. I use Fathom for all my zoom meetings because it automatically records and takes notes and summarizes the whole meeting. If you have a zoom paid zoom account, it's absolutely free to use. So I super love that. And then we will send that out to the person that we met with afterwards that they can see the exact recap in a succinct form of this is what we talked about. This is what we decided. This is where we're going next. Right. So document those decisions and those discussions and writing or a recording the discussion and that brief that you create those two items. They're going to serve as a boundary setting tool that prevents the all dreaded scope creep because you can constantly go back, refer to it we'll talk about that next and what I call red flags in creative briefs.

All right, so we told you what to include in creative briefs. Now I want to talk about some things that you need to avoid. These are red flags. When these things pop up, you need to pause and regroup. Number one, and this is the most common, this is the most common sin when it comes to creative briefs, is vague language. You ever gotten a creative brief and it just says, ah, just make it pop or we just want something really creative. What does that mean? Something really creative or something that pops could be completely different from one person to the next. So we got to we got to avoid that vague language.

Another red flag is contradictory objectives. We want it sophisticated, but playful. What does that even mean? How can you be both sophisticated and playful? At the same time, we need a little bit more clarification here on what that looks like.

Another red flag, missing approval processes or undefined stakeholders. What we're talking about here is if there's no accountability as to who's supposed to be in charge of what part of the process and there's no expectations clearly defined, if those things are missing, that's a red flag.

Another red flag, unrealistic timelines relative to scope. This one happens all the time. People will come in your office or they'll hop on a meeting with you and they'll lay out this grand idea and everybody's really pumped about it. And you're like, man, this is going to be a great project over the next couple of months. And you go, all right, so let's talk about when, would you like to see this by? And they're like, oh, next week. That's not possible. Right? So unrealistic timelines relative to the scope of the project is a red flag every single time.

Next red flag is a lack of budget transparency. We talked about what's supposed to be included. So obviously the opposite of including realistic budget transparency is the lack of budget transparency. If there's no mention of budget whatsoever and it's not clear or transparent, that's a red flag. You've got to regroup on that part of the brief.

Next red flag is constantly shifting the targets. And here's what this sounds like. It sounds like, I don't know what we want, but we'll know when we see it. Now you got to ask better questions that that's not going to work. Not going to we won't we won't even know what target to hit, much less shifting targets. Right. So you have to address each of these red flags professionally. Emphasis here before the work begins and you do that with a proper and effective brief.

And in this process, once you have this brief, I just want to empower you for a second. You have to have the courage to push back on problematic briefs. It's gonna save everyone time and frustration. They may get annoyed at all the questions that you're asking, but they hired you for a reason. They need to trust you and you need to be able to walk in that confidence that you're there for a reason and have the courage to say, I know this is a lot of questions, but trust me, it's gonna help us hit the target for you more effectively and quicker if we can just work through these difficult questions a little bit.

There's a designer, Michael Barut, his approach is this. He says, the brief is a contract, not a suggestion. And I think many times creative professionals look at the brief as a suggestion. It's not a suggestion. If you spend the time asking the right questions and building the right brief, then it's a simple work order at that point. It's not a suggestion, it's a contract.

Speaking of it being a contract not a suggestion the last point I want to make is that once the brief is created and it's proper right you have to use the brief as a living document Throughout the project right so you're gonna start each project meeting referencing the brief page just to regroup This is what we're trying to do here right and again. It's concise So it's not gonna take very long to go through it then you're gonna establish formal change requests when objectives shift So what does it look like when the objectives shifts everybody has this from electrical contractors that I've worked with before to videographers that I've worked before. Everybody has a, has to have some type of process of what happens when we need to request a change, whether it's inside the scope or outside the scope. Need to have systems and processes in place for both of those. So what's a formal change request process look like when the objectives start to shift? Because that can happen. You can get half of the project and the top person comes in and says, know, I know originally we talked about the target is this, but the more we thought about it, the target is actually this. Great. Not a problem. We're just going to have to restructure the brief a little bit, readjust our timelines, understand what that change request looks like for both parties. Right.

But you're going to use the brief throughout the process as evaluation criteria when you do your internal reviews and revisions. So before it ever even goes to the client and you're looking at over as a team or you're doing the dailies, right? You're in the brain trust meeting like Pixar. You're going to have that brief in front of you and you're going to use it as your evaluation criteria. Is it hitting, is it actually trying to solve the problem? Is it hitting the mark? Is it within the budget? Is it all these things, right, that we talked about earlier that should be in the brief? You're going to have that for yourself so that by the time you actually send it to the clients, it's going to be way, way, way closer because you've already done those internal revisions using the brief as the evaluation criteria.

And then you're gonna train your clients to refer back to the brief when providing feedback. So you're gonna send draft one to the client, send the brief along with it and say, hey, just remember, this is the brief that we discussed and here's the actual creative that we made for it. Just would like for you to look at those side by side the same way we did and let us know if we're hitting the mark, right? And then throughout the process of, throughout this process of back and forth with clients, you're going to learn a lot of lessons. And so you need to document those lessons to improve future briefs. You should always be adjusting, always be adjusting your briefs. It's it's a, it's a wet cement is what I call it, right? Wet cement, meaning like it's, it's, there and it's, and, and, and, and it's, it's a foundational piece, but it's not sets and stones. So we can move it when needed. We're not going to move it just for moving it sake.

All right. So I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that you can find free resources at dustinpead.com slash free. One of them that's there is an effective creative meeting. And, and, and I know that we're talking about creative briefings, but a lot of times that that is birthed out of an effective creative meeting. So if you go to dustinpead.com slash meetings, you can download that. Has specific sections in there for brief creation and review, and some questions designed to uncover those hidden client expectations. To dustinpead.com slash meetings, or you can go to dustinpead.com slash free and pick that up absolutely free today.

So a few closing thoughts. A great brief does not constrain creativity. It focuses it in, it narrows it in. Taking time upfront saves exponentially more time during the execution, and the clients value professionals who guide them through a thorough brief development process because it tells them that you care and that you're paying attention to the details. The brief is your most powerful tool for managing expectations and ensuring project success.

Also next week we're back episode 109. We're going to talk about the focused creator, productivity systems for distracted minds because we all know what that's like. I want to remind you again, you can download the meeting resource at dustinpead.com slash meetings. You can follow me on social media at Dustin Pead. I would love for you to review and share this podcast. I cannot wait to be with you next week on creativity made easy podcast. Have a great week.

Ep 105: The Power of Process: How Structure Actually Enhances Creativity

Breaking the Myth That Process Kills Creativity

SUMMARY

Have you ever noticed that the most brilliant creative minds aren't just wildly chaotic, but actually rely on systems and structure to produce their best work? In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, Dustin Pead shatters the myth that process kills creativity and explores how the right kind of structure can actually set your creative mind free.

The common misconception is that creativity requires complete freedom. However, as Dustin shares from his own experience designing a Good Friday service with zero parameters, too much freedom can lead to decision paralysis. When given constraints and clear parameters, he and his team created one of the most talked-about experiences for years to come.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Constraints expand creative thinking - Parameters and boundaries narrow your focus, allowing you to use 100% of your brain power on creative problem-solving rather than establishing the framework. Stanford University research shows that participants with moderate constraints produced more innovative and practical solutions than those with complete freedom.

• ⚡️ Structure creates ideal conditions for creative flow - The "flow state" (being in the zone) is where creatives produce their best work with effortless creativity. Having structured time, place, and rhythm creates the perfect conditions for flow by removing distractions and reducing decision fatigue.

• ⚡️ Systems multiply creative impact - As Scott Belsky famously said, "Creativity × Organization = Impact." Your creative potential is multiplied by organizational systems, not diminished by them. The most successful creative professionals balance innovative thinking with structured approaches to execution.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Creatives love to tell people that they don't want to be put in a box, but when the rubber really hits the road, they need the box in order to create. They need the boundaries, they need the non-negotiables because they narrow the focus for you so that you can hit your mark each and every time."

• 💬 "Creativity × Organization = Impact. What that means is that creative potential is multiplied by organizational systems, not diminished by them. The most successful creative professionals are ones who balance their innovative thinking with structured approaches to execution."

• 💬 "The goal of structure is freedom. It's freedom, it's not restriction."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Free Guide: 5 Project Management Pitfalls and How To Avoid Them

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Have ever noticed that the most brilliant creative minds aren't just wildly chaotic, but actually rely on systems and structure to produce their best work? Today we are going to shatter the myth that process kills creativity and explore how the right kind of structure can actually set your creative mind free. Let's get into it. Taking creatives from chaos to clarity.

Welcome back to Creativity Made Easy, the podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. This is a podcast for all creatives, designers, photographers, writers, all creative entrepreneurs who are seeking practical, actionable strategies to grow their creative business through efficiency. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, Creative Process Coach and Consultant. I'm here to help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams so that they can scale with efficiency together.

Today we're gonna talk about the power of process, how structure actually enhances creativity. But before we get into that, I wanna remind you, if you're listening on a podcast platform of any kind, I would really appreciate a five star rating or review. It helps get this content out further to those like yourself who can benefit from it. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm so glad that you're here. I'm constantly tweaking my look. So if you have any feedback about the studio here, please let me know. But this is my office and I'm super blessed and pumped to be able to work at such a cool space. So if you're seeing that, take a look around. If you have any questions about some things that are in the background, in the background, that's always changing because I change a lot. Please reach out to me and let me know. But I would appreciate like subscribe and ring the bell if you're watching on YouTube.

And if you are interested in learning more about me or what I can offer you in your creative business or your creative entrepreneurship, you can reach out to me and find me online at DustinPead.com or you can find me on social media at DustinPead. That's D-U-S-T-I-N-P-E-A-D.

All right, let's get into today's episode. Several years ago when I was in ministry, if you know my story, I spent almost 20 years in full time local church ministry, specifically in the creative departments, music, communication, tech, that type of thing. Right. And I was given the opportunity to design our good Friday service, which at the time of this releasing of this episode of the podcast tomorrow is good Friday. So this is a timely illustration story for you. I had the opportunity to design our entire good Friday service from top to bottom, zero parameters. I was like, man, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. This is every creative's dream to have given a full blank canvas and say, just create your whatever you want, just create it. And we trust you, right? It's an amazing feeling as a creator. I was paralyzed almost instantly with decision fatigue. I went back and ended up asking for some guidance and parameters and it ended up being one of our most talked about experiences for years and years because the common misconception is that creativity requires complete freedom. But in that moment, what I needed were parameters. I needed to know how long the service needed to be, what the feel of the service we were going for. mean, most Good Friday services are a little bit somber. Is that what we want to do? Or do we want to celebrate the cross? how are we? What's our angle here? What are we going to do? How much singing do we want involved? How much participation do we want involved? All questions that I needed to know in order to build this amazing experience for 45 minutes on a good Friday service and got those parameters and me and the team knocked it out. And it was, ended up being, like I said, one of the most talked about experiences for years because we had some really good parameters, but we still were able to kind of run our creativity lens through it.

So what I want to talk about today is this misconception that processes and systems hinder creativity. Let me first start with how constraints can expand creative thinking. Constraints, which it sounds like a negative word, but they're just parameters to work within. They're non-negotiables. They're boundaries. I often say that creatives love to tell people that they don't want to be put in a box, but when the rubber really hits the road, they need the box in order to create. They need the boundaries, they need the non-negotiables because they narrow the focus for you so that you can hit your mark each and every time, right? If you were to just walk out and fire an arrow, they would go, oh, you missed. Well, I wasn't really aiming at anything, right? It's the whole Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You're not aiming at the thing, right? So some examples of constraints commonly are headlines and these things are going to sound just before I get into the list. These things are going to sound ridiculous. They're going to sound like I hate these things. Why would I invite these things into the process? Just stick with me here for a little while. But productive constraints, they can be deadlines. Nope, they can be the B word budgets, right? The money for it. Or they can be technical limitations like us and my early church days. We had zero budget.

So we had tons of technical limitations that we had to overcome. But listen, limitations and these constraints, they force us to think differently and find innovative solutions. There's a study that Stanford University did a few years ago on creativity and constraints. what they found was that introducing specific limitations actually enhanced creative problem solving compared to wide open parameters. Researchers observed that participants who were given a moderate amount of constraints, they produced more innovative and more practical solutions than those with complete freedom. And this is, they said that this was likely because of the constraints provided helpful starting points and narrowed overwhelming possibilities. I'm going to say that again. It narrowed overwhelming possibilities. If you're feeling overwhelmed today, and the possibilities of your creativity, it's probably because you don't have any boundaries on it. You don't have any helpful, useful, productive constraints. They went on to talk about how this phenomenon is sometimes called the paradox of choice, which is a fancy way of saying there's too many decisions, decision fatigue, too many options, right? And so what they did is they demonstrated that removing the paralysis of too many options, it allowed the participants to focus their creative energy more effectively. Do you see what I'm saying here? So they're not having to spin their brain power coming up with the parameters and then filling the parameters. They were already given the parameters. They can use a hundred percent of their brain power towards the creative problem solving.

The study concluded that the sweet spot for creativity involves providing enough structure to guide thinking without being so restrictive that it stifles imagination. That's not what we're trying to do. A prime example of this is Twitter or X or whatever it's called these days. Twitter, when it was first introduced and I'm pretty sure still now I haven't really used Twitter all that much. But Twitter had a character limit. And a character limit on Twitter blew up because people were like, oh, this makes me get more concise and creative with my communication. Do you see how parameters and some productive constraints can heighten your creativity?

All right, let's talk a little bit about this science, this brain science, neuroscience behind creative flow. You'll also you'll often hear creatives and athletes alike, people that are highly skilled professionals in their field. Writers will talk about this a lot. They talk about a phrase called the flow state. Right. And the first time I heard this, I thought it was just some mystic mumbo jumbo. And it can easily get there for sure. But flow state is actually a psychological condition where a person becomes fully immersed in an activity like imagine your kids when they're watching TV, they are fully immersed in that flow state. Although I would argue that maybe it's not the most creative activity to just sit around and watch TV, but you understand what I'm saying. They have a fully immersed in that activity. They're experiencing deep focus. They're obviously enjoying themselves and they have a complete distorted sense of time. It's, it's often described as being in the zone, right?

I know when I was writing my book last year, the very first day that I sat down and started writing, remember specifically I was sitting in my local coffee shop, I started writing and I just lost myself on all track of time, right? Because I found myself in this creative flow. I looked up and a few hours had went by and I didn't really understand where I was or how I got there because I was so immersed in the story. I was so in the zone, right?

So for creatives, this flow state, it matters tremendously because that's where you produce your best work with what seems like effortless creativity. And it bypasses all the self-criticism and accessing of deeper levels of innovative thinking. During this flow, creative professionals experience a heightened pattern recognition and make intuitive connections that might otherwise be missed during normal consciousness, right? So this structure around their time, this is the time, this is the place, this is the rhythm we're gonna talk about in a minute. This structure, it creates conditions, right? It's like, hey, there's hurricane conditions or there's storm conditions, because everything has kind of been set up and working in the right atmosphere, right? your right environment for that storm to happen. And we're trying to create creative storms every single day, right? We're even trying to create, wait for it, brainstorms. Okay. That's just a dad joke. We can get on past that for a second, but the structure creates the conditions that are needed for flow to occur by removing distractions, right? It's, it's a, it's a, it's a routine. It's a habit. It's a rhythm that reduces decision fatigue, Steve jobs and his outfits is a prime example of this. said that he wore the same thing, the same outfit, not the same exact clothes, but he wore the same outfit every day because it was one less thing he had to make a decision about. And so it freed up some mental bandwidth. so processes and systems, don't hinder creativity. No, no, no, no. They free up the mental bandwidth for actual creative thinking and when we work in systems and predictable workflows into our creative rhythms, they can actually reduce anxiety because we don't have to make all the decisions. We can just show up, understand our parameters and start creating immediately with 100% of our brain power. It reduces anxiety and it reduces creative blocks.

All right. If you're still not on board yet, let me give you just a couple of quick case studies of highly creative companies or people with some strong processes, right? If you've ever read the story of Pixar, you understand that they have a development process and brain trust meetings and they have their own process and they have these brain trust organized meetings where people can review the work that is constantly becoming out and everybody can collaborate and give feedback. But no one would ever look at Pixar and say they're not creative at all. Like Pixar has broken the mold on creativity time and time again in their industry. Apple, when they were under the designer Johnny Ive, he had this 10-3-1 model where he would say, we're going to have 10 ideas and then we're gonna narrow it down to the best three, and then we're gonna narrow it down to the best one. That little thing right there of saying this is how we're gonna do it, no one would look at Apple in that heyday and say, this is not a creative company. People longed to work for and buy Apple products because it made them feel more creative. Scott Belsky, who's with 99U and B. Hansen, all these companies over the years, incredible, incredible creative professional. One of his like all time bestselling books making ideas happen Please go buy that book. It's it's incredible. But in that he talks about how creativity is a quote. He says creativity times organization equals impact Let that sit in for a second creativity. We all have it Times not just plus but it multiplies with organization equals impact. And that's what we're all out here trying to do. We're all creating our art in order to make a difference, in order to make an impact, whether it's a financial difference or it's an artistic difference or a social impact difference. We all want that difference. And so the way to get it is creativity times organization. That's what equals the impact. And what he meant was that there's creative potential is multiplied by organizational systems, not diminished by them. At the most successful creative professionals are ones who balance their innovative thinking with structured approaches to execution.

All right, so hopefully by now you're convinced that processes and systems don't hinder creativity. And if you're a person that has little to no processes or systems, or you're still trying to figure out which ones you need, let's talk for a second about identifying which processes you need to implement first. And we're going to talk about First, first thing you need to do before you kind of go down either one of these paths, because we're going to talk about it for solo creators, and we're also going to talk about it for creative teams. But before we dive into either one of those, you need to be really honest. And sometimes this involves bringing outside help in someone like myself who can sit down and together, we're going to identify your biggest creative bottlenecks, your biggest creative bottlenecks. Is it internal communication? Is it communication with your client? Is it a repeatable processes and over and over? Is it that no one can find any documents or files that they need anywhere? Whatever it is, you're going to first identify your biggest creative bottleneck. And once you have that, now we're going to talk about the three most important processes for solo creators. OK, so you have your bottleneck in mind. Think about this. Number one, you need to have a consistent Idea capture system again. This is for solo creators, right? And yes, these things are important for creative teams as well But I'm talking just to the solo creator right now You need to have a consistent idea capture system that allows you to document inspiration Whenever it strikes I think about Jerry Seinfeld and always carrying around his legal pads with them all the time his legal pads have been noted at nauseam about how he would use those or wake up in the middle of the night and scribble stuff down the next day, he'd have to wake up and be like, what is this that I wrote? But he had a system. So when an inspiration was striking, he had a place to go. So it doesn't matter if it's a digital tool like our phones, or it could be a remarkable tablet, or it could be, I know, I anything else around here in front of me right now. It could be your computer, it could be Post-it notes, could be field notes. I used to love carrying around field notes. I need to get back into that. But having one place, not multiple places where it's scattered all over, because that creates chaos and we're trying to go from chaos to clarity, right? But having one place, whether digital or physical, that ensures that great ideas aren't lost. So you need to have an idea capture system.

The second thing a solo creator needs is structured time blocking rhythm that separates the idea time from the execution time from the administrative work time. You need to have three buckets as a solo creative. You need to have idea time should be blocked out on your calendar every day, every week, however often you need to do it, right? Execution time should be blocked off on your calendar every day, every week, however often you need to execute the ideas. And then there's the unfortunate administrative work. If you're solo, you also have to do the administrative work. So you have those three buckets for three distinct periods. And the reason you do that is it prevents the context switching, right? You don't have to switch your mind, go, okay, well now I'm in idea mode and now I'm immediately in execute that idea mode. And okay, now I've got to take a break for a second and do some admin stuff. Do you see the chaos that that begins to cause? It does not maximize creative flow. And that's what we're after.

The third thing for creative solo, for solo creators is a clear project completion framework that's going to be defined by milestones along the way so that you know you're tracking towards the right end goal and some finishing criteria, right? You, how do we know we're done? How do we know when we've won? Because the, the, the tendency here creative, if I can just speak candidly with you for a second, you know, the tendency is for you to fight against perfectionism and you'll keep editing and keep editing and keep editing and keep editing. And you've edited that thing to death. And it was at one point early on in those edits, like probably version three, four or five, somewhere in there. It was really, really great. But you kept editing it and editing it to death. And now you're left with nothing because you constantly are combating that perfectionism. So having a framework of your project completion is super important to know when you've done. What's the criteria for knowing that we're done? Is it a certain amount of edits? Is there a certain satisfaction rate amongst the team? Whatever it is, you gotta have that to ensure your creative work actually launches rather than remaining perpetually and that we're almost done. This is almost done. This is almost done. Almost done is like the worst phrase for creative production because almost done is never done. You know what mean? So those are the three things for solo creators, idea capture, time blocking, and project completion. You got to know when it's done. All now let's talk about the three most important processes for creative teams, okay?

For teams, yes, those things are important before, but teams are gonna, the dynamics a little bit different. So for teams, you need to have a standardized feedback protocol. And what this does is it establishes when and how their critiques happen. It specifies what constructive feedback looks like. And it ensures that the creative work improves without demoralizing the team, right? You don't wanna do that. You wanna be able to say, hey, look, I know this can be better. So how can we make it better together? So a standard feedback protocol, whatever it looks like, this is it. Everybody knows it. Everybody uses it. This is how we provide feedback like brain trust meetings at Pixar.

Second thing for creative teams is you need to have a transparent emphasis on transparent needs to be open so people can see it. Project management system. If you're like me, I use Asana, it doesn't matter. You can use Monday, you can use Trello. If you have to, just don't use Basecamp. But Post-it notes, it doesn't matter, whatever you use, as long as it's transparent and out there in the open for the entire team to see so that they can see their part in it. And they don't want to be the kind of the stick and the spokes that clogs up the process, right? So you want to be able to see that. But in that process, in that project management system, you need to clearly identify who owns what project task, whatever you need to establish clear deadlines and you need to make sure that the dependencies are visible so that the handoffs can happen smoothly. Right. So, hey, we can't edit the thing until we can't edit the video until the video is shot and they go, well, great. We can't shoot the video until we have a place to shoot it. Logistics. Well, we can't really think about the logistics until we know the story. Right. And so you understand those dependencies and how they all fit together.

So standardized feedback, transparent project management system. The third thing that creative teams need the most is a defined decision making framework. This is similar to our third point for solo creators, but a decision making framework that that will clarify who has the final approval, who's the head of this project and what is the criteria that's going to be used for making creative decisions? How are we going to resolve creative differences without constant revisions or a whole, let's design by committee. That's not what we're trying to do here. We still value independent creative work, but together, how are we going to make this decision? Decisions need to be made the same way over and over again. I actually just finished this great little book. you know the Do book series, just beautifully designed books, but this one right here is Les McCown. not, I'm sure I'm butchering his last name. He's wrote many leadership books, but this was do scale roadmap to remark to growing a remarkable company. And in this, talks a lot about making sure that you have a clear, clearly defined decision making framework. Again, what that's going to do is going to clarify who has final authority, what criteria is going to be used for making the decisions and how to resolve the differences when they come about.

So I've used the word framework a lot so far in this and I get it, it's an overused term. Essentially all it means is that you have a template and I use Asana, my project management system. I store all my templates in there so that when I have to use that template for something, it's a simple copy and paste it into the project that it needs to be in. And then from there, I'm just going to add the who's doing it and when they're doing it, right? It's D-O, it's not D-U-E, remember that. So wherever you want to put it, just use the one spot for these frameworks or these templates, however you want to talk about it, whatever word you want to use for it. But I use Asana. You can take these things to say, this is how we're going to do these things. You can kind of build that process out, build that template, that framework out in Asana or your project management system. Just don't just don't assign it to anybody or put any due dates on it. And then you can just copy and paste it. And then you add assignments and due dates to it. And boom, there you go. You're consistently using the same thing every single time.

In summary, structure enhances creativity. Structure enhances creativity. So I want to encourage you to just start with one process improvement. I've mentioned a lot in here today. But if you could just start with one process improvement, how you can implement it, how you can take the idea, write it down, capture it, put it in a template and do the same thing over and over again, that's what's gonna allow your creativity to thrive because you're using less and less of your brain energy trying to think about how something needs to get done rather than actually getting it done. So let's not, let's not be overly, let's not overwhelm ourselves with the how let's set ourselves up for success. The goal of structure is freedom. It's freedom. It's not restriction. Okay.

All right. So if anything that I talked to you about today has struck a nerve, this is what I do for a living. This is my business. This is Dustin Pead.com. This is chief creative consultants, LLC. This is what I'm spending my days doing now and I would love to help you with it. if you are anything that I said in today's episode kind of struck a nerve with you go to Dustin pead.com and hop on my calendar and let's chat about how I can help you go from chaos to clarity in your processes and systems.

Next week we're to talk about profitable business owners. We love that word profitable. Project planning. We're going to talk about how to set timelines that can respect your margins. And so a little bit more of what we today was kind of a lot of the why it's important. Next week, we're going to really start to get into it. Profitable project planning. I don't know how I came up with that one, right? Setting timelines that respect your margins. So feel free to mention me or the handle of the podcast at Dustin Pead. You can download any of my free tools at dustinpead.com. actually have a tool on there. If you go to dustinpead.com slash pitfalls, it's a guide to eliminating project pitfalls. Totally free. Just grab it, house around your team, nonchalantly slip it on your boss's desk and say, is how we're going to avoid this project pitfall again. But go to dustinpead.com slash pitfalls to grab your copy. Next week, the profitable project planning, setting timelines that respect your margins. Y'all have a fantastic Easter weekend. I'll talk to you next time on Creativity Made Easy.

Ep 104: Getting Things Done w/ Peter Hainsworth

Where Operations Meets Creativity

SUMMARY

Do you ever wonder how to bridge the gap from your creative dreams to actual execution? In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, host Dustin Pead sits down with Peter Hainsworth, Director of Operations at Ridgeline Electrical and founder of The Ops Group, to discuss the crucial relationship between visionary creatives and operations professionals.

Peter shares his journey of creating a community for operations professionals who often feel isolated in their roles. As the implementer of visions and dreams, Peter offers valuable insights on how operations people can support creative professionals while maintaining efficiency in their organizations.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Operations professionals are vital for turning creative visions into reality. High visionary creatives often don't understand the effort required to bring their ideas to fruition. Having a strong operations person allows visionaries to focus on what gives them energy while delegating tasks that drain them.

• ⚡️ The customer journey is the most essential process for bridging creativity and operations. Mapping out the entire customer experience from first contact to loyal customer creates clarity for both visionaries and operations teams, ensuring everyone understands the path forward.

• ⚡️ Technology tools that centralize information are critical for operational success. Whether using Notion, Asana, or even Post-it notes, having a central repository where everyone can access information keeps teams aligned and projects moving forward.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Hire people that are better at doing the things that you're not great at... Find their strengths, bring them on, and then work together as a team moving forward." - Peter Hainsworth

• 💬 "When we separate the vision and the efficiencies and the operations, we pull those apart. Now we have two opposing forces trying to work together going down the same road and it doesn't work." - Peter Hainsworth

• 💬 "Operations folks are so detail oriented. We want to see those little details, the minuscule number that's off to the side that some people don't care about. Those are sometimes the biggest impact on your organization moving forward." - Peter Hainsworth

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️The Ops Group - Peter Hainsworth's community for operations professionals

• ⚡️ "The Ops Guy" Microcast - Peter's podcast on Spotify

• ⚡️ASANA for Creative Teams eBook - Dustin's guide to implementing project management for creative professionals

• ⚡️Do vs Due Worksheet - Free resource for determining high-value activities

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you ever wonder how you bridge the gap from your creative dreams to actual execution and seeing the thing come to real life? Today, I have a very special guest, Peter Hainsworth of the Ops Group that's going to join us to talk about bridging the gap from creativity to execution. Let's get into it. Taking creatives from chaos to clarity.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Creativity Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm here to help creatives know themselves, their process and their team so that they can create greater things together. Episode 104 is here with a very special guest. Like I mentioned in the intro, we'll get to him in just a moment. But before we do, I want to thank you for watching, listening, however you're consuming this content. If you're listening on audio podcast platform, I would really appreciate a five star rating or review. It helps get this content out further to those like yourself who could benefit from it. And speaking of that, why not share it with somebody who you know could benefit from it. If you're watching on YouTube, thank you so much for joining us. I would love for you to hit the thumbs up button. It helps the algorithm helps get this stuff out to more people just like yourself and subscribe and ring the bell to be notified of all content that is dropped on here on a regular basis for you.

Lastly, if you're interested in anything that you hear today on this podcast, or you would love my help, I would love to offer you a free 30 minute coaching session. You can go to dustinpead.com and click on the let's chat button that those buttons are all over the website, no matter what page you're on. I would love to chat with you and love to offer you a free 30 minute coaching session for your processes and systems and your creative professionality.

I'm super excited for today's conversation with Peter. He has a lot of amazing things to share with us. So let's dive right into it now. Well, Peter, thanks so much for joining us on the Creativity Made Easy podcast. I'm glad you're here, Absolutely, man. Glad to be here. We've been just a little behind the curtain. We've been trying to get this thing scheduled for a long time. And Peter is so popular. It's hard to nail him down, but I'm glad he's here today. Peter is director of operations at Ridgeline Electrical in Indianapolis, Indiana, one of the clients that I work with. But also what we're going to spend a lot of time talking about today is he is the founder of something called the Ops Group. Peter, what's the Ops Group? What's that all about?

So the Ops Group is actually kind of just like what it sounds like. It's a group for, I know, right? I came up with all these other names for it when I first started. You know, at one point it was director of results. And that's super cool name, but it doesn't really flow off the tongue. And I had someone actually involved with the group who just was like, you know, when I tell people about this, I never can remember the name. So I just call it the ops group. And I was like, that's it. Are you OK if I use that for the name? And they were like, yeah, for sure. No big deal. And so the ops group is a peer group that is designed for folks that are in operations or operation professionals, specifically targeted towards those of us who are making the day to day happen and feel that there are challenges that we face that put us kind of on the island. And I won't get too far into it, but the idea is let's get together and talk. Right. Yeah. No, I love that. love that.

Yeah. I mean, I think in any profession or any sector or hobby or anything like that. If you can build community around it, it just creates sustainability and a support system there. So specifically as we're talking to today, Peter, we're going to, we're going to use the lens of creativity because that's what this podcast is about. But for our listeners who are strictly creative professionals, we know that creatives are high visionary people. And that's usually where I come in. Right. And it's the reason why Peter and I get along so much because we make things happen. We get the things done that the high visionaries will cast vision for and then we'll and then we'll actually bring it to life for them and for the organization.

So so there'll be a lot of talk today about, you know, just in the businesses or in the markets or things like that, or even in the creative landscape of things, just know that we're going to be using creatives and visionaries kind of interchangeably. So if we say visionary, we're talking about a creative. If we say creative, we're talking about a visionary.

With that in mind, Peter, I would love to know what inspired you to even create the ops group to begin with? I know we talked about the community piece, but why do this? Sure. So actually before I get into that, I have to create another, give you another definition that we'll probably use interchangeably. Yeah. And that is when I talk about like a head of operations or director of operations or COO, Chief Operating Officer, or another word that's familiar with the EOS community as integrator. We're talking about the same person, the same role, right? Yeah. So the individual who is in charge of making things happen and executing on the vision, right? That's kind of the big picture of those roles.

So a couple of years back, Ridgeline Electrical, implemented fully into the EOS, method of business, which is an operating system. It's, it's set up as an accountability structure, things like that, right? I'm sure Dustin, you've done more talking about this than I can even go into. So, yeah, not a ton of EOS talk on this podcast, but the of behind the scenes with the clients for sure. So, okay. So it's, it is a, I'll give a high level then real quick. So we are on the same page, but, The idea is it creates accountability and transparency within your organization. Within that is a operational structure or an accountability structure, they call it, of how the business runs through a, quote unquote, chain of command. So as you've said, if you've alluded to, we've got visionary and creative, that would be your visionary within EOS. And then your next person would be your integrator or your chief operating officer, your head of operations, whatever you want to call that.

So a couple of years ago, Ridgeline implemented this system and I have been in operations for the last decade in one capacity or other. However, I've never been an integrator before. So when it was mutually decided from our executive team that that was gonna be my role taking on moving forward, I started asking a lot of questions that I didn't know answers to obviously. And I said things like, hey, you know, can you point me in the direction of someone who's done this before so that I can talk with them and, you know, have a mentor and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, because like, I've got this structure laid out in the book of how it's supposed to run, but I don't know what questions to start asking first. Where do I even start? Do I start with processes? Do I start with systems? Do I start with leadership? Like, where do I even go?

And, and the implementer that, that did the work for us, her name is Jen. Fantastic. She goes, I don't really know of lot of integrators in the Indianapolis area that you can connect with. Because it was a fairly newer concept back when we started. Not many people had implemented at that point. It's much more popular now, much more prevalent too. And so I started asking other people, hey, can you point me in the direction of someone who's done this? Or I even started at some point asking, hey, is there a group around of people who can do this? And everybody said no. We don't really know of anybody.

Couple months down the road that the answers changed from not really don't know anybody, but you should start it. That's what it went to is you should start something. And I said, absolutely not. I want to go to learn. I don't want to teach other people because I don't know what I'm doing. after a couple years of hearing that same messaging over and over again, it finally clicked for me and realized that not only is there nothing out there, but There is a need for this. There are other people who are interested in this. There are other people who would benefit from this as well. So I said, fine. In July of 22, after the urging from my visionary Blake and then also my wife and his wife, I said, fine, I'll do it. And I started the ops group. It was very different back then. We had a couple people come in and join me on the first week, the first month. We meet once a month.

And I very quickly realized that this was incredibly valuable for multiple reasons. And not just for myself, but for the other people that were there, they found great value from just hearing, hey, I'm not alone in some of these challenges I'm facing. let's get down to Brass Tacks here because the creative pros that are listening to this right now, the high visionaries, they're A lot of times they don't necessarily understand the effort that it takes to see things through fruition and actually see their vision come to life. They had success at some point in their life by squeaking out something that everybody loved. And so they go, I can just keep doing that again and again. But why do creatives or strong visionary people, why do they need a strong ops person?

Sure. in order to sustainably continue, and I say that because I think a lot of creatives, and at different times in my life, I've been in a position of creative, I've been in a position of visionary. When you're in that spot, and if that's where you live all the time, I understand this to an extent, having the vision of the OTS Group and building some of those things, we forget how hard it really is at times to, in your words, squeak something out that people love. It's easy for visionaries and creatives. And I'm not saying this as a blanket statement. This is just more of a generic, majority of folks are this way. It's easy to forget how hard it is to execute on things. And when you get into more people, it becomes much more complex.

Yeah, it's so much more complex to do that. And that's I think that's the biggest thing, too, is is realizing that as you scale, you can't do it all on your own. And nor should you. As a visionary or creative, you've got incredible ideas. And I'm sure that a visionary creative has felt at one point or another. My gosh, I could just I could have all so many more ideas and be so much better at putting this out there if I didn't have to just do all the work to right.

Right. So there's some quotes out there saying, and the basic gist is, hire people smarter than you. Yeah. I kind of agree with that. I would tweak it a little bit. Hire people that are better at doing the things that you're not great at. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Find their strengths, bring them on, and then work together as a team moving forward. Yeah, it's a touch of humility to be able to say that I'm not great at everything. Right. But I think an angle that I've been able to take Peter with with some of my clients who are creative pros is to go, yeah, not don't think of it as you're not great at everything. Think of it as what you really want to be want to spend your time doing. And what you don't want to spend your time doing.

Right. So you don't want most creatives don't want to spend their time doing the things that keep the operational wheel spinning. Yeah. If they don't do it and no one else does it, guess what? The wheel stops spinning, and there's no progress, there's no moving forward, there's no money making, there's no opportunity, any of that stuff, right? Then you're just relying on luck, which is an extreme gamble, right? But when you have this person in place, you could say, okay, I understand, I may not be able to get to the place in humility where I can say like, hey, I'm not good at everything, but I can at least easily get to the place and say, I don't want to do X, Y, Z. I only want to do A, B, C, and I'm going to hand off X, Y, Z to somebody else so that the proverbial wheel can keep going.

Peter, why don't you walk us through how a operations person can directly support the, I'm going to use both of these words, the creative vision. How can we support that creative vision? but also maintain operational efficiency. Before I go there, do you mind if I back up for a second? Go. Go, One of those things. Sure, I'm just closing the conversation. No, you're good. I love it. And I will get there. I promise. But I was thinking about this as you were talking. One of the things that I like to use as a tool to help people get to a point where they're willing to say, OK, I'm not the greatest at this without saying I'm not the greatest at it, is to ask them or ask yourself, what is the one thing that gives me the most energy. Yeah, that's right. And then go after that. And then conversely, what's that thing or things that robs me of energy? What is the thing that you find yourself putting off? You find yourself avoiding, even if it's a 30 second task, but you just don't want to do it because it takes away the energy from you. Those are the things that you should be bringing other people in to be able to take care of for you.

Absolutely. That way you can focus on your unique ability as a creative or a visionary to focus on moving forward. We'll come back to the question in a second too, but I love that you use the word focus. was just literally before we hopped onto this podcast recording today, I was writing a report for a client of mine after doing some research into all the things that they're doing. And we've been having these conversations in our coaching sessions about the focus funnel, right? What can you eliminate, automate, delegate, or procrastinate and bring back to the top of the funnel again? And it's the same thing, right? It's like what we first went through a time and energy audit, which is a Dan Martell, buy back your time concept, his book, buy back your time. You go through that audit, you basically write the things down that brings you energy, the stuff that you basically you're taking notes throughout your day of this brought me energy, this didn't, this brought me energy and it was high value. This, and this brought me energy and it wasn't high value. This brought me, this didn't bring me energy at all. And it sucked the life out of me. But it was really high value, you know, or this sucked the life out of me. And it was also extremely of no value. So you start to kind of see the quadrants of like,

Hey, if it sucks the life out of you and there's no value, guess what? Eliminate it. If it sucks the life out of you, but it's high value, delegate it to somebody else. If it gives you energy, but it's really low value, automate it. And if it gives you energy and it's high value, that's the sector that you need to be focused on. And like what you said, Peter, you need to surround yourself with the right people. But yeah, it's the stuff that you get. And I love too, you said the energy, you know, what gives you the most energy, not what gives you the most joy or happiness, because we know happiness is fleeting, right? There's what makes you happy today as a creative visionary or a person in general, doesn't matter what status you're in. What makes you happy today may not make you happy tomorrow, but it's about what feeds you the energy to continue moving forward. All right, as you were.

Okay, so your question was, now I gotta, can you restate? Yeah, I will. So how does the operational person support the creative vision but also maintain some operational efficiency. So how do we sit on that balance of I understand the vision, I understand the creative, let's dream a little, let's live a little, let's get our heads in the clouds for a little bit, but how do they also maintain operational efficiency while being able to get there as well? Sure. I think that is the question of the city.

I mean, I will not I will not sit here and pretend that I've got it all figured out. There is no way in hell that I have. But it's an it's an active, I would almost say day to day type of thing, you know, and part of it is, I think what's easy for the operational professional is to forget the vision, because we get and we want to be so buried in the efficiencies and so much in the process and the systems and making things turn and making things go. It's actually, I think it's a detriment to us to not see that vision. Yeah. So part of walking that balance is you as an individual, as the operational individual taking the responsibility to not own the vision, but have ownership with the vision. There you go. The vision becomes part of who you are too. And it will dictate how you move forward on things.

Yeah. Doesn't mean that you forget your efficiencies, but it means that you learn to understand that efficiency for efficiency sake is not the value, is not worth it, right? That's not the point. The point of the efficiency is to make sure you hit the big picture, is to make sure you hit your goals that are put out there, right? That's the point of the efficiency. Yeah. And when we separate them, when we separate the vision and the efficiencies and the operations, right, we pull those apart. Now we have two opposing forces trying to work together going down the same road and it doesn't work.

So I would say it's a marrying of both in a very, It's heavy responsibility in the operations person to understand and have a clear vision view of that vision. And sometimes that's hard to get, because we want to just put our heads down, get behind our desks and do our work. Right. We want to just get done. What it takes sometimes is sitting down with your creative and saying, here's what I think your vision is from my perspective. This is where I think we should go. Tell me, you know, is that are we on the same page? And then in EOS, it's called a same page meeting for that reason.

And it's, it's crucial that you stay in those and that you keep that that moving forward, because then you understand, truly understand where that vision needs to be to get there, because you're the one responsible for taking care of making sure that you see that vision and execute on it. And your visionary or creative is starting to get a picture of the steps it's going to take to get to that point. So their expectations are set realistically, your expectations are set realistically, and you can move together along that road.

Yeah, it's funny. We say on this podcast all the time that you have to learn to ask really great questions. then the method you talked about there too on the same page meeting is a great way to start that same page meeting is to repeat back what you think the vision is, what you think the direction is, and put it in your own words and then just kind of have that back and forth conversation until everybody goes, yes, you're visionary. Blake is a partner of mine and the culture base as well. And we often in our weekly meetings will have a lot of, this is what I'm hearing. Is that accurate? And it's usually four or five rounds of that before we both understand each other.

But you mentioned systems earlier. I want to get into that just for a few minutes here. What are some essential systems that you think every business needs to be able to take the vision and put it into reality? It's pretty basic, actually, depending on your industry. obvious, but basic to me that that I would say everybody needs. You got to start with a database. And by that, I mean like somewhere where your tasks and your projects live, some software or some Excel spreadsheet, whatever it is that you or everyone in the organization or within the department, whatever it is, can see and understand where, how to get to that data. That's absolutely crucial.

In Ridgeline, we use Notion and that holds my projects for the quarter. That holds all my tasks for all of my departments. It holds my meeting notes for every meeting that we do. It's the central location for all of that. I, if you don't have that, I would say as an operations person, that would be your first step to start with. Yeah. Get some centralized location of information.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a, tell people all the time, you know, cause I'm an, an Asana evangelist, but at end of the day, if you just had one wall in your office space and it was filled with Post-it notes, as long as everybody knew that that's where everything went and that's what they can reference. That's all that matters. It doesn't matter what platform you use. Like what you said, it's about having that central location that everybody knows. This is where you find the information and this is where information goes so that we don't forget it later on.

So what are some, processes that you think creative and visionary people need to start putting in places in order to disseminate these things down to their operational people and get the things moving the way that things need to be getting moving. Yeah, sure. I think one of the biggest ones that's most important to start with is your customer journey. What is it? What is the so good? What is what is from start to finish? What does that look like? Because a lot of visionaries have or creators have that vision in their head of what they want it to look like.

And then when you start putting it on paper, the ops person goes, oh, well, we're missing this. We're missing that. We're missing this. We have to fill these gaps, so that we can have that all the way through. sometimes when the visionary writes it out, they start looking at it going, OK, this is not actually realistic. I don't think we can actually do this. putting those things down as your customer journey is probably your number one process to have. And then after that, you've got your sub-processes of how do your sales work, how do your operations work, how do your finance work. Those things are secondary, but your customer journey will dictate all of that and how those run.

That's so good and so true. And it's just a simple to talk creative for a second. It's just a storyboard of your customer's experience. How did they find you? What did they feel? What was the pain point that they were feeling before they found you? What was their first interaction with you? What did that look like? What was the interaction? All of that stuff all the way through them being a full on loyal repeatable customer. Yes. How do they feel at that moment? It's their entire storyboard.

I love creativity Inc for this because they teach about storyboarding in that and how much they use it at Pixar. And it's the same thing. So if I could just speak creative ease for a second, it would be do a storyboard of your customer journey. I know you mentioned notion as well. I mentioned Asana. We even gave a shout out to Post-it Notes at one point. there any other tools that you would recommend for managing creative or visionary operations?

I mean, there's so many of them. You can use ClickUp. You can use monday.com. There's all these different products out there. As far as other systems for, if you're heavy into EOS, there is a software called 90, where a lot of your stuff can be put in there. I mean, I didn't talk about meeting notes earlier. What are you going for meeting notes? How you caption all that? Sure. a lot of that is within notion. I build out what our agenda will be on my meeting card or whatever you want to call it. And then it links directly at the bottom. put a link into our tasks. So it's fills out the tasks and then I will take notes within the tasks or within our meeting topics that are also listed in there as well.

And you guys are also using like an AI recording device for either in person or over the phone or digital meetings as well. What is that and how does all that work and why is it important to have that? We've got a couple actually. So I have an AI software called Fathom that sits over top of Zoom and Teams. It'll work with any of the virtual meeting softwares. I think... You're in any session with me, it's always in there. Exactly.

Same. You know, I think it's important to have one of those platforms, whether it's Teams or whatever you want to call it. We're not in the world of everybody goes to the office every single day. We're getting more towards, let's go to the office more, but I think the virtual aspect will always be there. The biggest value that I see of having that recording over the Zoom or whatever your virtual meeting space it looks like is the power of AI today is not just to record, but it also pulls out important and key parts of the conversation. It can pull out task lists. can pull out high level topics. can tell you how long you talked about something and whether it was important or not, right? There's all these things that can do for you.

And it's valuable to have that because there's been numerous times we've done what we call a project verification with Bridge Line. So we win a project. then go through the estimate and it's a handoff from our sales department to our operations department. I can't tell you the number of times that they've asked a question going, oh man, I don't remember what was, what was said about this. Well, I can easily pull up my Fathom recording and I don't even have to listen through the whole thing, I can look through the transcript and find that spot and then listen to the 30 second clip that I need to.

Yep. And it just creates that ability to go back and see that and have that clarity of data. And then your customer journey is continued properly because now you're fulfilling what was committed to by the sales team to the customer. Right. So if you're a fan of Mad Men and you're watching the women and the secretaries come into the room, sit in the corner and take notes the entire time or read this back to me. What was just said? It's essentially a digital version of that now. Correct. You don't have to pay anyone to come in. Pro hack or tip here. If you have a paid zoom account, it's absolutely free to use. Yeah. It's wonderful.

The other side of it that we do have is called plod. P-L-A-U-D, I believe it is. Yeah. And it's a recording device that connects to your phone and it does a mix of just recording, but it also will transcribe it through AI. You can create templates. So if you have a same meeting over and over again, you can create a template of how you want it to transcribe that into a summary or into details, however you want it to look. And then you have an active recording and transcription of in-person meetings as well for the same reason, being able to look back and compare notes or, hey, we said such and such is what we had determine was going to be the direct of moving forward or, hey, you said such and such details. We didn't realize that, but now we have the recording so we can move forward on executing on that.

And I think it's important to have those. And in a lot of times too, plot is really nice because I can click the button on the back and just speak and do it a note that I just want to remember for later or some idea that I had come up or something I need to look at. It's a great task list for that too. So that's another one. I think one area that probably with my industry, the construction side, we don't do as often, but needs to be done more as a customer relationship management tool.

There's a lot of those out there. HubSpot is obviously the first one that comes to mind, but there's some other ones that are just as good and better depending on what you need. And I think in the bidding world, which is where we live, right? We live in the space of we're not actively marketing towards our customers, our customers are sending us projects they want us to bid. In that world, we don't always do a lot of customer relationship management, a CRM, right? Because we think, well, we don't need to see that coming in. don't need to spend the expense on that.

But the reality is there's a lot of data within that that is helpful for you in making the decisions. OK, if I get 100 bid requests come in, which ones am I going after? I only have capacity to do 30 of them this month. So what 30 are they going to be? Well, if you have the backup data of who you've worked with before, what the project types were, all those things, you can sift through that data in a CRM and be able to make better decisions and be more strategic about, hey, I've limited time. Let me use this software to tell me where I should put that time to be the most successful. Yeah. Yeah.

I love that. We use a lot of that. heard me talk about these processes and systems before. We're walking through that all the time with our CRM. One that I specifically use and an ambassador for creative people is VidLead Studio. It is essentially a white label service of Go High level specifically designed for creative professionals. customer service is fantastic and it's super affordable. I would highly recommend it.

One last question for you, Peter. And then I want to know where listeners can learn more about the ops group, but how do we, if you have the ear of a creative professional or a visionary right now listening to this podcast, how do you, what, how do you convince them, to embrace systems and processes? Well, the first thing I think you would have to say is you don't need to do it. I can handle it. That's the first, that is probably the first step is like, Hey, look, this is, this will be on me moving forward.

Right. I think a lot of the challenge is for creative people or visionaries is they don't want to locked into a box. And that's completely understandable. Right. And if you had gone back five years from, know, from today, five years previous, 90 probably 98. I'm just pulling that number out of thin air, but probably 98 % of your softwares were you're locked in for a year or two years or whatever it is. It's a long-term contract and it's a big expense to put in upfront, et cetera. Right. Nowadays we are in the, in the age of month, the month we're in the age of plug and play things just pop up on your screen because you clicked. Yes. I want to try it. And you've got 14 days or 30 days and it's all right there. Right.

So the long-term commitments aren't there. So there's no locked into that box. There's also the aspect of, for the creative and visionary out there, our brains as operation professionals, we are soothed by a good software that works well and that we can implement properly. And implementation is probably one of the most difficult things to actually make happen. Yeah. But Operations folks are so detail oriented. We want to see those little details. We want to see the little things. We want to see the minute, minuscule number that's off to the side that some people don't care about. Those are sometimes the biggest impact on your organization moving forward. And a lot of that data comes from compiling it in a CRM or a system or a software that gives you instant reports.

That's probably what would be my biggest selling point to a visionary or a creative is, hey, look, you want to get to X. I want to get you to X as reasonably quick as possible. We want to get there. In order to do that, there are decisions that need to be made on a day-to-day basis. If I have to compile all the data from multiple sources, it's going to take us 10, 15 times longer to get there. If we implement this software, we can get that data instantly. Right. So we're maximizing our capacity while using a tool that exists for us. And the best part of it is I can send you the reports and tell you how to read them. You don't have to deal with it at all. Yeah. I love it.

I love it. Well, Peter, thank you for your time. Can we have people listening to this that are want to know more about the ops group? Where can they learn more about that? So there's two different ways. Actually, three if you think about it. If I think about it rather, you can go to my website. It's theopsgroupindie.com. Check that out. Just because it's indie doesn't mean I'm only in the indie market. That's where I'm at right now. But I'm willing to talk to anybody across the nation. Obviously, just keep in mind the time difference. But you can go there. You can check me out on LinkedIn or the Ops group page on LinkedIn as well. It's just the Ops group. And then if you want, I am in the process of pushing out a new microcast, I'm calling it, and it's called the Ops Guy. It's right now only on Spotify, but I'm working to get it other places, but you can find out more about me there too.

I love it. Love it. Peter, thank you so much for joining us today and walking us through how to bridge this gap between creative visionary to operations. Man, was, I know, really helpful for a lot of us. For sure, man. Glad to be here. Thanks so much. Awesome. If you're listening to this and you're interested in having me help you with your creative operations, you can head over to dustinpede.com and click on the Let's Chat button. But if you want just an easy kind of gateway into the things that I'm going to bring to the table, Go to dustinpead.com/resources and pick up the ebook Asana for Creative Teams.

Now, I know it says Asana, but all the practices that are in it could be used on Notion or they could be used on our faithful friends, Post-it Notes. It doesn't really matter. It's about the processes that you use. It's not about the platform. It's about the processes. So I think it's like 10 bucks on the website. Go pick up Asana for Creative Teams ebook. And then the do versus do worksheet for free at dustinpead.com/resources. I think that's all for this week. I cannot wait to be back with y'all next week on another episode of Creativity Made Easy.

Ep 103: Q1 Review & Q2 Strategy Session

Transform Chaos Into Clarity

SUMMARY

In this strategic episode of Creativity Made Easy, I walk creative professionals through an essential quarterly business review process. Looking back at Q1 achievements and lessons while mapping out Q2 opportunities, this episode provides a practical framework for evaluating progress and setting actionable goals for the months ahead. Whether you're a freelancer, agency owner, or creative entrepreneur, this systematic approach to quarterly planning will help transform insights into focused action steps for sustainable growth.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Separate Emotions from Outcomes: When reviewing your Q1 performance, it's essential to objectively assess your results without emotional attachment. Look at the data, identify patterns across projects and clients, and measure results against your original objectives.

• ⚡️ Track the Right Metrics: Creative businesses should measure four critical areas: revenue versus projections, time allocation reality versus plans, client satisfaction indicators, and personal creative fulfillment. These metrics tell the complete story of your business health.

• ⚡️ Strategic Focus, Not Addition: Q2 planning isn't about doing more—it's about strategic focus and choosing key opportunities that align with your long-term vision. Use the 12-Month Outlook framework to organize projects through the 4D Creative Process (Define, Dream, Design, Develop).

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Your Q1 achievements aren't just metrics—they're evidence of your systems either working or not working. When something succeeds, you need to document that process."

• 💬 "The most valuable lessons don't come from what went right always either, but sometimes understanding why certain initiatives fall short of expectations are some of the most valuable lessons."

• 💬 "Quarter two is not a time to go wild, right? You kind of went wild at the beginning of the year, but quarter two is for beginning to narrow that focus."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Download the 12-Month Outlook Template

• ⚡️Do vs. Due Framework

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

If your creative business feels like it's running you instead of you running it, then you're about to discover the quarterly planning system that will change everything. In this episode, I'm going to show you exactly how to transform your quarter one insights into a strategic quarter two action plan. That's going to bring clarity to chaos and purpose to your creative work. Let's get into it. Taking creatives from chaos to clarity.

Welcome back to Creativity Made Easy, the podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. And I'm here to help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams so that they can create with efficiency as they scale together. And part of scaling and efficiency is review and strategy. And it's that time of the year we've ended the first quarter of 2025 already. I'm not sure where the time has gone, but we're there and we are reviewing quarter one and now we are intentionally and strategically planning out our second quarter.

So if you're a creative of any kind, designer, photographer, writer, all creative entrepreneurs, this episode is obviously for you. Every episode is for you and I'm excited to dive into it with you today. So we're going to dive into how to review your Q1 performance and create a strategic plan for Q2 that will help your creative business go to the next level. But before we dive into that, I want to remind you that if you are watching on YouTube, I would love for you to hit the like, subscribe and ring the bell, all three buttons so that you can be notified every time we drop new content just like this every single Thursday, release a podcast here on YouTube and all audio podcasting platforms.

So if you're listening there, whatever your platform allows, I would really appreciate a five star rating or review that helps get this content out further to those like yourself who can benefit from it. Every Sunday I release a newsletter with kind of top five insights from the week. And then every Tuesday I release a blog post style article to kind of help some of the things that we're talking about as well for creative professionals. You can sign up for that newsletter and blog posts that comes out, each once a week, Sundays and Tuesdays. If you go to dustinpead.com and click on the newsletter button, or just go to dustinpead.com/newsletter.

All right, let's get into it. So we have finished quarter one before we move into quarter two, let's pump the brakes just for a second. And let's do some reflection here. No, I'm not talking about the kind where you meditate and close your eyes, which if that's your thing, go for it. I think it can certainly help some mindfulness practices, but that's not what we're talking about today. Today we're looking backwards so that we can move forward with intention. Your data or your insights from quarter one, it's gonna tell a story. And the question to ask yourself right now is, are you listening to that story?

Are you paying attention to it? Are you understanding the nuances, the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities, the threats, right? The SWOT. SWOT is just a methodology, right? It's just a way to objectively assess things. So there's three things I want you to remember no matter what system or methodology you use when you are trying to objectively assess some past occurrences or patterns or results. Number one, you have to separate emotions from outcomes. Now this is super difficult for me. Enneagram Four noted here on this podcast for a long time. I really love my feelings and my emotions and it's hard for me to separate my emotions from the outcomes that I've seen.

There's some things in my business over this last quarter that have been blown me away. Wow, I didn't think we could do that. There's other areas of my business in the last quarter where I go, man, I feel like a failure because of that lack of outcome, but we have to learn to separate those emotions from the outcome. That's the first thing. Number two, you have to be able to identify patterns across projects and clients, right? So what are the kind of the same things that come up over and over and over again, whether it's internally with your team or with your project. Then thirdly, you have to be able to measure those results against the objectives.

So what are the patterns and what are the results that came out of it versus the original objectives that you had for the quarter? And if you didn't have any objectives for the quarter, this is a great time to start for next quarter so that you do have some objectives, some key metrics that any creative business should be tracking is right. Revenue versus projections. We're in this to make money. We're in this to provide for our families and for ourselves and grow our mission and our vision for what the company could be. So you have to measure, right? The actual revenue versus what you projected, right?

And so this is a great opportunity for me to plug the core group, not being paid by them in any way, shape or form, but I use them. The core group uses a profit first financial model and they specifically help creative businesses with their finances and they will handle all your bookkeeping and your payables and all these different things, right? But they will be able to show you your revenue versus projections. I just got my stuff in recently for a couple, about four weeks ago to show me, this is what actually happened, right? But they also know what I'm trying to project as well. So we were able to kind of analyze that.

Another metric that you need to be analyzing is your time allocation versus how much you actually planned for. The time allocation reality, versus how much time you actually planned for. So this is where the do versus do process comes in handy. Where I teach a lot of my time margin when it comes to projects is are you allocating for the time that it's actually going to take, not the dream land of, I can do that tonight. I can complete this whole big long edit tonight and I'll have it to the client first thing tomorrow morning. They're going to have no revisions. They're going to love it. And so there, everybody's going to leap with joy and dance and Lily fields.

We all know that's not going to happen, right? There's going to be things that come up. There's going to be revisions that come up. And so allowing yourself that margin time. And so did you allow yourself that margin time or did you not? And how can you better do that in quarter two? I would argue you could do it with my do versus do framework, DO versus DUE. You can look that up later. All right. Another thing you need to be measuring as a creative business is client satisfaction, right? Client satisfaction is a big deal. One thing that I've been working on just this week as the time of this recording is putting together just a short survey of, over the last 30 days, what has the journey of working with me been like for you?

And that's gonna help me see that. And as I do that every month, every 30 days over time, I'm gonna be able to see with individual clients and with the business as a whole, I'm gonna be able to see client satisfaction. And I'm gonna be able to see up seasons and down seasons. And I'm gonna be able to ask the questions why, and I will be able to lean in, keep my foot on the gas on the strengths and be able to lean in on the weaknesses that I can grow client satisfaction. We are here to serve our clients, so client satisfaction is ultimately what pays the bills.

And then lastly, you need to be measuring personal creative fulfillment. Now I know this is something that most businesses don't measure because it's just about getting the thing done and the bottom dollar and can we win that project bid? But listen, if you're not personally fulfilled in the creativity in your creative business, all the other projections and all the other metrics don't matter. And so you need to find the space for you that really fulfills you creatively and sit there as much as possible.

Now, if you're an owner, I understand there's other things that come along with this, or maybe you're a mid-level manager, or maybe you're at the bottom and you don't get to choose what you want to do. But at the end of the day, if your personal creative fulfillment isn't up part of a metric that you're measuring, then you're going to be miserable and your business is going to suffer for it. All right. So we talked about what we need to be measuring when we look back at our previous quarter, whether it's quarter one or whatever quarter you find yourself in right now, looking back at the previous quarter, we understand that your quarter, your previous quarter achievements, they're not just metrics. What they actually are is evidence of your systems either working or not working.

And when something succeeds, you need to document that process. Yes, you need to celebrate it when something succeeds, but you need to document the process because you're like, Hey, that really worked. Why did that really work? Let's document it so that we can do it again and again for not only the same client, but for all the rest of our clients, right? The most valuable lessons don't come from what went right always either, but sometimes understanding why certain initiatives fall short of expectations are some of the most valuable lessons.

So two major parts of this kind of extracting some valuable lessons, right, is externally with your clients and internally or retrospectively with yourself or your team. Right. Maybe you are the team, right. But maybe just having a time for yourself and you can reflect what worked, what didn't, why did it work? Why didn't it work is important, but also creating client feedback integration strategies are going to be huge for you as you grow your creative business, because you won't be able to identify always what worked and what went so well.

Maybe for you, it was just kind of average and okay, but the client really was wowed by it. Why were they wowed by it? Was there something, was there a part of the process that took it to the next level for them? And if so, maybe that's an indicator for other clients as well. I was recently sitting in a potential client meeting and I was sharing some things that I thought were extremely kind of average, mundane, like, yeah, everybody knows this, right? And the potential client was like, wow, that's, I never thought of that before.

And I'm going, what? You never thought of that before. And then it dawned on me as I was leaving that meeting, like not everybody sees that, not everybody thinks like that. And that is a unique value that I can bring. That's unique value that you can bring when you see that a client has a light bulb go off that was not a light bulb for you, right? That's a moment there to lean in, but really asking for their feedback. Don't overwhelm them with a 40 question survey, right? Send them five questions once a month at the most, right? About how they have, how they felt about working with you, what they felt about the outcomes, what they wish was better, what they really love, you know, all these things, right?

Those things as you track those along, whether you use it like a Notion board or Excel spreadsheet, it doesn't matter. As you track those, you're gonna really start to understand the meaningful insights and the valuable lessons that you need to grow your business from one quarter to the next. All right. So we talked all about looking back at the previous quarter quarter one, if you're listening to this episode or watching this episode in real time, when it comes out in April of 2025, whatever quarter you're looking at previously versus the next quarter coming up.

But specifically, I love the momentum from Q1 to Q2. It's very, very unique. And so let's get into talking about what Q2 can look like after you've reflected on Q1. All right. What I love about this moment in time, when we go from the end of the first quarter, which is the end of March, into the beginning of April, is this, by this time, you have probably faltered a little bit on your personal and professional goals. You set some high lofty goals back in January or the end of the year and now you're starting to see how it's actually shaping out, right?

Anything worth trying is worth trying for 90 days. Well, you just tried it for the past 90 days. How is it working for you? Do you need to shift some things? Are there some goals that need to be completely redone and re-changed? Is it the same objective as it was three months ago. Are the things that were super important to you three months ago, are they still the same things that were super important to you now? Sometimes they are, and that's great. Sometimes they're not, and that's okay too. But quarter two planning isn't about adding on, right? It's about strategic focus and choosing some key opportunities that align with your long-term vision rather than pursuing every possible direction.

Four areas here that I want you to think about as you're looking ahead at quarter two and you're stepping into it out of quarter one. We've learned some things, we've recognized some strengths, we've identified some weaknesses, some opportunities, some threats. And so now as we go into quarter two, there's these four areas I want you to think about as you make decisions about what you're going to focus on in Q2. Number one, strategic alignment. Your strategy changes, right? But your vision doesn't really change, right? How can you align strategy even more narrowed and even more focused and even closer into where you're headed with your vision?

I think a lot of times we start Q1 with this big wide list of all these things we're going to tackle. But I think as the year goes on, I see that road kind of narrow and narrow and narrow. And that's not a bad thing. That's a great thing. You can continue to shave off and rid all the fluff of the stuff that you wild ideas that you had in January. And you can begin to get really strategic about the alignment that your decisions are going to have in quarter two. Number two, profit potential. Profit potential.

This is what keeps the business financially moving forward. Are there some things in your business that are just making more money or that should you be charging more for certain things? Market change for that or clients coming too easy because you're so cheap. And do you not have enough money to pay the help that you need to get these things done in a scalable way? So look at the profitability potential as you move into quarter two. Number three, like I said earlier, creative fulfillment. This is a major factor in how you're going to be able to continue to push forward and in Q2.

If you're drained creatively from Q1 and you have no change in sight for Q2, by the time you get to the summer, you're going to really be wondering if you should just fold this whole operation or not. So find a way and find a strategy around creative fulfillment for your second quarter. And lastly, long-term business building value. Let's not just think in this only quarter two mindset, right? At some level, we want to look a little macro or a sorry, a little micro. But I think always in every quarter, there needs to be a hint of macro.

I know for me and my business right now, over the last three to six months, I've been working on a three, five and kind of a three to five year business plan with some long term goals and the 10 and 20 year time frame. Right. And I'm always kind of keeping those in sight as I'm adjusting. But as the road narrows and narrows and narrows, as I get closer to those things, then we understand we have strategic alignment. We have profitability potential. We're keeping creative fulfillment a factor, right? But we're also focusing on those long-term business goals and long-term business building value.

All right, there's one tool that I have used for many years that I just created one day on a spreadsheet because we needed it and I was just kind of fed up with having to constantly remember what has to happen each time every year in order for us to propel the momentum that we need to, especially in Q2 as we go into the summer, which we're going to talk about here over the next few months on this podcast and on the blog. But this is called the 12 month outlook or the 12 month rhythm, what are the 12 month planner, whatever it is.

And in every planner you get, you're going to open it up. And then somewhere you're going to see some type of an annual planner where it's going to have 12 months in there and it's going to give you an opportunity to kind of jot some things down. On my 12 month outlook, I pair it with the 4D creative process, which quickly, if you don't know what that is, it's a creative process that walks you from very beginning of identifying the problem all the way through delivering the final results.

So number one of the first D of the four Ds is to define the problem, right? Creativity is problem solving, nothing else. We got to define what it is that we're trying to do here. The second D is to dream. This is the brainstorm session. This is where creatives really love and thrive and they have all sorts of ideas. It's about quantity of ideas, not quality of ideas. And then there's the third D, which is to design. And this is where we're taking that big bucket of ideas. We're picking out the things that are work and we're putting together the blueprints of how we can see solving this problem coming to life.

And then the last D is to develop. And this is where we take those blueprints and we begin building out the solution that we worked towards over the 4D creative process. Now I use this 4D creative process on my 12 month outlook on the left hand kind of vertical. I'm not sure if it's the X or Y axis. I can never remember. I guess it's the X axis. I can't remember, but vertically on the left hand side, I have each stage of the 4D creative process.

And then horizontally across the top, have each month of the year. And so every single month of the year, there's an opportunity for me to be defining something, to be dreaming about something, project to be designing projects and solutions, and for me to be developing those. And so every single month of the year, I'm always doing at least one, I'm always moving towards at least one direction in on those creative process every single month of the year. And so you see that on the left versus the months across the top.

And what it allows you to do is just take a 30,000 foot view and be able to see, well, if I want to see my, just take this, say you want to write a book. If I want to see my book release in October, or let's just say December to get to the end of the year. If I want my book to release in December, this is the same method I used to plan out how I wrote and released my first book last year, growing upward. Check it out on my website. It's a short memoir about mental health.

If I want that book to come out in December, then I have to be developing it or writing it, right? Probably for a good six months. That takes me back to June. Now, the design phase of that would be really kind of narrowing down in my stuff and see how I'm working backwards, right? So if I need to start developing the last D in June. That means I probably need to be designing and kind of narrowing things down in mid April or May. And then that probably means I'm going to brainstorm about what this book could be in February or so.

And then January, I'm going to really kind of define the structure, say this is what I think the book needs to ultimately accomplish. And so as I'm walking through the year, by the time I get through December, I've walked through the entire 40 creative process using this 12 month outlook and staying on track. And I'm just looking at one month at a time. So when I come to May, I'm looking at all my projects that I'm defining, all the projects that I'm dreaming about, all the projects that I am designing and all the projects that I or the team are developing and having that strategically throughout the year will help.

Make your quarters in your months, the months and the weeks add up to months and the months add up to quarters and the quarters add up to years, right? And it comes, you know, as you get older, it comes faster than you think. And so there are opportunities there for you to kind of put your milestones in along the way so that you can remain focused. So every month on my whiteboard, I've got the four D's written out. What am I defining this month? What am I dreaming about this month? What am I designing or creating blueprints for this month? And then lastly, what am I developing this month?

And as I move across the timeline of the 12 month outlook, it moves along with me. And so as you're preparing for quarter two, maybe you're like, that'd have been great if I'd have had that in quarter one. It's okay. You can start it now in quarter two. Not all things have to end in December. You could have some shorter term things that end in September and you don't have to have a whole month for each D. It may only take you a week to really define it or less. It might only take you a day to define it, right?

Then you can spend three or four weeks dreaming it, and then you can spend a couple of weeks designing it and kind of laying out what it's gonna be, and then you can spend the bulk of your time, right, actually doing the work and making the thing happen, which we know again is where the do versus do framework comes in. So can grab your 12 month outlook sheet from dustinpead.com/free. That's dustinpead.com/free and click on the 12 month outlook and start using that today as you plan through quarter two and beyond.

All right, before we wrap up, I want to just kind of give us an action plan through quarter two here, because I think often what happens is we start our quarters out strong. And then by the time we get to that seventh or eighth week of a 12 to 13 week quarter, we're like, what am I supposed to be doing again? And so I think, yes, having these quarterly goals are a good thing, but you need to break them down into monthly milestones and you need to review those milestones and what we call like review, built in review checkpoints, right?

So every month, throw yourself a task, a monthly task on your project manager or a reminder on your phone or a post-it note that someone walks into your office and sticks on your forehead every 30 days and says, Hey, just review the milestones of what you said you were going to do this month. Where are you at on the 4d creative process? Where are you at in the 12 month outlook? Where are you at?

And what you said you were going to be narrowing in towards for Q2. And whether you have a team or not having a solid project management tool or system that's going to work for you is key here because you can't be expected to remember everything at all times and to be constant on everything at all times. So having those triggers to go off when they need to go off and remind you when they need to remind you are going to be big.

Now, if you do have a team, whether it's just plus one or plus 20, it doesn't matter. Some communication protocols here are going to be in place and you're going to need to remember in your one-on-ones. You're going to need to remember in your weekly you know, huddle ups, whatever you have, you're going to be able to, you're going to have to remember to communicate those on a regular basis. So that's the, if that means the old school way of writing it down on the palm of your hand so that you can remember it when you get in class, do that, whatever it takes, do it because the consistency is what's going to get you there in the end, every single time consistency is what wins.

And then you need to set up the systems and your, in your world and your business to be able to create that consistency. And that's what I help teams do every single day. We're creating systems and processes so that we can be consistent because consistency breeds excellence and breeds scalability. Quarter two is not a time to go wild, right? You kind of went wild at the beginning of the year, but quarter two is for beginning to narrow that focus, some focus metrics for Q2. That's what I want you to focus on in the next week as we're entering into this time period.

Create some time blocks for you to move towards those strategic priorities, right? We don't just happenstance come across success. It's because we planned time to move towards it, right? If you want to work out, that's a goal of yours is to work out every day. If you don't plan the time to do it, if you don't put it in your calendar, if you don't block out time in your day, then it's not going to happen. You're not just going to magically stumble into, look, I happened to work out today. Great. That actually lines up with my goals.

It's intentionality. So time blocking for these priorities is going to be big for you in quarter two. Don't let the month happen to you. Don't let the quarter happen to you. You can take a whole take hold of it with time blocking to pursue your strategic priorities. All right. You have to say no to some things and that's okay. But saying no, create space for some very strategic yeses.

All right. So remember reviewing Q1 and reviewing the past quarter is going to be key for you to understand how to move into quarter two the best. You can use my free tool, the 12 month outlook. You can get that at dustinpead.com/free. If you have any questions or comments about this, I would invite you to do that. Reach out to me on social media @dustinpead, P-E-A-D. You can email me, dp@dustinpead.com. You can find me anywhere online, my website as well. You can fill out a contact form or even schedule a call and we can talk about these things.

But I wanna thank y'all so much for joining me through this quarterly review time. Cannot wait to be back with you next week. We have a very special guest in next week's episode that I cannot wait to share with you. You're not gonna wanna miss it. Talk to you next time on Creativity Made Easy podcast.

Ep 102: The Art of Creative Leadership

Inspiring Your Teams Best Work

SUMMARY

In this powerful episode, Dustin Pead explores the essential elements of creative leadership that help teams thrive. He breaks down the four leadership archetypes every creative leader should embody: the visionary who sees potential others miss, the coach who develops individual strengths, the shield who protects creative space, and the bridge who connects client expectations with creative reality. Dustin also shares practical techniques for building psychological safety, a structured decision-making framework (RACI), and guidance on developing your authentic leadership voice. Whether you're leading a small creative team or a large department, these insights will help you inspire your team's best work while maintaining their well-being and creative energy.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Leadership differs from management - management focuses on processes while leadership centers on people. The best creative leaders embody four archetypes: visionary, coach, shield, and bridge.

• ⚡️ Psychological safety is essential for creative teams because innovation requires experimentation and potential failure. Build trust through honest feedback loops, celebrating failures as learning opportunities, and modeling vulnerability.

• ⚡️ Use the RACI decision-making framework (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to clarify roles and ensure proper communication when making creative decisions.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Quantity of ideas over quality of ideas breeds the bravery that you need in a brainstorming session."

• 💬 "A lot of really great leadership is not about the direct actions or direct interactions. A lot of really great leadership is just being a really great example."

• 💬 "Clarity is kindness. Make sure you're actually communicating decisions. Have somebody in your corner that can constantly poke and prod you and say, 'We don't know what you're thinking. We need to be informed.'"

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️The Creative Leader's Guide to One-on-Ones

• ⚡️The Culture Base Podcast

• ⚡️Connect with Dustin: Website | Social Media @DustinPead

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to the Creativity Made Easy podcast, the podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant, and I help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams so they can create with efficiency as they scale together. I'm so excited for today's episode. Today, we're going to dive deep into the art of creative leadership, not just managing a team, but truly inspiring them to create their best work.

Before we jump into that, I want to remind you that you can learn all about me and how I can help you or your team at DustinPead.com. That's D-U-S-T-I-N-P-E-A-D.com. You can also find me on all social media at DustinPeed. If you're watching on YouTube, I'd love for you to hit the thumbs up button, like, subscribe, ring the bell, all that fun stuff.

I have a newsletter that I release every Sunday afternoon to get you ready for the week. Five things that I want to share with you before we dive into the work of the week. And then every Tuesday, I release a blog post episode to that same email list. So if you're interested in that, go to dustinp.com and look for the newsletter button and go ahead and add your email address into that. I would love for you to take advantage of that for that to anyone else that you might find it helpful for.

All right, let's get into today's episode, the art of creative leadership. I think it's important before we dive too deep into this that we start right at the top by defining what leadership is. There's a little bit of difference between some management and some leadership and we do need both. And there's going to be a time in your creative business where you or your, the director level, or they're going to have to be both. Right. But let me just break this down to you, right? Management is about processes, right? That's a lot of what I'm talking about usually on this podcast, but today we're going to talk about leadership and leadership is about people. That's why I say I help lead. Help creatives know themselves. Number one, you have to know yourself in order to know, and in order to know how to lead yourself and lead other people, right? Know their processes, the management side, and their teams, the people, so they can create with efficiency and scale together, right? So management is on the process side. Leadership is on the people side. I'm make that variation very distinguished here, right up at the top. Managers handle tasks and projects, right? Leaders inspire vision and there's gonna be like I said, there's gonna be a time where that might you might have to sit in both seats And that's totally okay. But as your team grows and scales you'll begin to lean less on the management side and more on the leader side.

So let's get into the creative leaders mindset a bit. So the creative leaders mindset is about cultivating strategic thinking. Versus what it used to be when you're managing is the tactical execution of it the who's going to do it, how they're going to do all that stuff, right? The creative leader mindset as well is balancing creative excellence, right? We still want to pursue excellence, but you also have to keep in mind team well-being. You don't want your team to burn out in the pursuit of excellence. The creative leader's mindset is also developing the emotional intelligence that you yourself need as a leadership superpower. That's where we talk about knowing yourself.

And so, what I want to talk about today is these four different leadership archetypes for creative teams. It's not an exhaustive list. This is just what I've seen in my observation. So you can kind of see where you might naturally lean into and then you can fill in the gaps around you. So I think there's usually what we see and really good leaders is that they're high visionary, right? A lot of really good ideas. But their superpower here is not their ideas. Their superpower is seeing the potential in things that others don't see. Seeing the threats in things that others don't see. Think about the leader at the front of the pack. You want them to be able to see the good and steer towards it. And you want them to see the bad and steer away from it. So the visionary leadership archetype does that really, really well.

The coach leadership archetype, think we need all of these there. Again, there's just going to be strengths, right? The coach part of your leadership is developing individual strengths, right? Some of the best leaders I know spend a good portion of their week coaching their teams, coaching their teams and how to develop their, their, each, each of their individual strengths. Then there's the protector, right? The shield is a third archetype, right? That you need to need to be kind of living in as a creative leader. That's protecting the team's creative space, right? The manager wants to do, do, do, do, do, right? That's me. Love to kind of get in there and make sure things get done. But the, also the leader part of me goes, Hey, we also need to make time for creative space and, and, and understand that we can't fill our agendas so much that there's no room for it. That's why I talk a lot about renewal days and creative fuel days and this podcast on my blog as well.

The fourth archetype is the bridge. I love this part of the creative leader because what they do is they connect the client's needs with creative reality, right? Sometimes the client comes in and says, we want the world. And you're going, it's really only possible to give you the state, right? We want everything. And you have to kind of come in and say, we can give you this much of everything. Can't give you all of everything. We can give you a portion of everything. So as you're developing the creative leader within yourself, remember the visionary, remember the coach, remember the shield, remember the bridge. You need to be acting in all of those types. There's going to be parts of you that are going to be stronger in that, parts of you that are going to be weaker in that, but you really need to be operating in all four types to be a great creative leader.

All right, let's talk about psychological safety for creative teams. I know that sounds like some big like, whoa, what are we talking about here? Listen, psychological safety is a shared belief that team members can take risks, right? They can also speak up and they can be vulnerable without fear of punishment or embarrassment. Essentially, what that does is it creates an environment where people feel safe to be their true authentic selves and in creative work. Obviously that safety is critical because innovation requires experimentation and failure and creative pros like ourselves, we need to be able to feel secure enough to be able to share some kind of maybe half formed ideas that aren't fully fleshed out yet. We need to be able to question some assumptions a little bit like, I know we've always done this, what if we, right?

And propose some possibly unconventional solutions. And we need to be able to do all of that. You need to be able to do it. Your team needs to be able to do it without fear of judgment, without fear of saying, I don't really know if that's going to work or you're always this or you're not enough this or you're too much this and you get your head out of the clouds because all that does, you know, it should be true for yourself. So it's obviously true for your team. All that does is stifle their creative potential.

So I wanna give you just a few techniques to kind of build some trust within your creative teams so that it becomes a place where psychological safety is a real active thing and not just some hoped upon goal that maybe one day it'll magically happen, right? We know that we need intentionality to make things happen in order for change to be made. In order for a change to happen, a change must be made. So make sure these changes are set up in your organization to build trust with your creative teams.

A couple of things I would recommend. Number one, regular and regular honest feedback loops. This can look different for so many teams and feedback loops can be standing around a water cooler or feedback loops can be sitting around a conference table or feedback loops can be one-on-one at the local coffee shop. But having them, having them exist and using them is what matters. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's going to be clunky and messy at first, right? But being able to say, hey, looking back at this last project, how did you feel we handled that as an organization? How do you feel you handled that project as an individual part of this team? And then just be honest and transparent about it without fear of judgment. That breeds that psychological safety into major part of the art of creative leadership.

Secondly, you need to celebrate failures as learning opportunities. One of my all time favorite clips. And I've said this many times in this podcast before I've said on stage and speaking opportunities before my favorite clips of all time is from a movie called Meet the Robinsons. It's an animated film and long story short, there's a kid who's really into innovation, loves inventing things, right? And he's sitting around the table full of this family, this highly creative family. And he has this peanut butter and jelly, like dispenser gun where it can make peanut butter and jelly really quickly. Right. And he's so excited to show the family shows the family and just like what usually happens with his inventions, it blows up and makes a mess everywhere. And he's totally embarrassed. And he's so sorry. He's like, being so hard on themselves and the family's like celebrating like, yeah, you failed. And he's like, super confused. Like what is happening right now? I didn't y'all just see the mess I just made and how the thing didn't work. And they lean into them and they're like, look from success, we don't learn so much, but from failures we do. We celebrate failure. And we, as the movie goes, you know, the phrase we keep moving forward.

Third technique for building trust with creative teams is you have to actually model this vulnerability as a leader. And I really do think that vulnerability is a practiced skill. It's a skill that's developed. And so the more that you can practice that around co-leaders, around other peers who maybe aren't in your organization, the better off that you can begin to model that in your own organization. Listen, a lot of really great leadership is not about the direct actions. It's not the direct interactions, right? A lot of really great leadership is just being a really great example. Man, I wish my team was more, was more vulnerable with me. Well, are you vulnerable with them? And I wish my team would model more creative research. Do you do that? Right? If the team will, will never supersede your, ceiling that you raise as the leader, right? So if you want your team to be at 80% on something, then you had better be at least 100% on something, right? And include, include, and this includes vulnerability as a leader. Let me give you an example of this.

In our 4D creative process, the second D is dreams. So the four Ds are define the problem, right? We need to know what problem we're trying to solve and you know, the parameters. The second D is dream. We're going to talk about that here in a second in this illustration. The third D is to design like, we've, we've, we figured out what we're going to kind of blueprint this thing out. And the fourth D is to go and develop it. Right. That's where the rubber hits the road and we do the work. I want to emphasize this on the second D real quick, the dream D or the dream portion of the creative process. This is where we brainstorm. Right. And anytime I lead a dream session or a brainstorming session, I only have a couple of rules. And one of them is that quantity over quality breeds bravery. I'm going say that again. Quantity of ideas over quality of ideas breeds the bravery that you need in a brainstorming session. Brainstorming sessions are not about the quality of ideas. That's for the design. That's for the third D. That's for the design phase. Then we can analyze all the ideas on the board.

Right? But if we walk into a brainstorm or a dream session and we immediately say, only the best ideas, please. No one's going to speak. No one's going to speak because they're so afraid of it not being a great idea. And so if you want to create this psychologically safe workplace, this it's it's it can be as small as in a brainstorm session. Hey, look, there's no bad ideas. No one gives any negative critique to an idea. You can only build upon an idea. And I like one of my favorite rules for dream sessions or brainstorming sessions is to start every, every idea with the phrase, if, Hey, what if we, or what if this didn't, or what if the thing that we thought was wasn't right? What if is a great place to start? So practical exercise here, quantity over quality and brainstorm sessions be vulnerable, model the vulnerability as a leader, do some safety check-ins at the beginning of creative meetings. How's everybody feeling? we in, are we feeling safe here today? Is this a safe place here today? And if not, maybe it's time to shift up that meeting and get to a safer place. Maybe sometimes it's more important than that meeting as a whole.

All right, the next part of being a really great creative leader is a part of being any great leader, and that's decision making. And so I want to talk a little bit about the decisions that we have to make every single day as a creative leader and how to make them, right? We face the onslaught of decisions every day, little minor design tweaks to major strategic pivots. It's a constant decision-making aspect of our lives as creative leaders, and it can quickly deplete your mental energy. It's a worldwide phenomenon known as, you know it, decision fatigue. But as the day progresses, creative leaders experiencing this fatigue tend to either make impulsive choices without consideration or they avoid the decisions altogether, which lead to bottlenecks. There's a model, this is not my model. There's a model that I found online that I think works really well for creative leaders to make decisions on projects. It's called the, I pronounce it the Rocky model, the R-A-C-I. So Rocky, Racky.

However you want to say it, because it'd be rassy. I don't know. But this is a great model for anyone who doesn't know where to start and making decisions. just go, I'm overwhelmed with decisions. Go, OK, great. Let's use this model here. Number one, who's responsible for this? Not looking retrospectively, but looking forward and making this decision. Who needs to be responsible for carrying out this decision? That's the R, responsible. The A, who is it accountable to? Is it accountable to you as a leader? Is it accountable to the client? Is it accountable to another director level or another person on the team or in the organization? That's the A. So responsible R for responsible A for accountable. The C here is who needs to be consulted on it, right? This doesn't, this doesn't mean that they're going to be a part of the project, but they at least might have some adjacent identification or some adjacent knowledge that would be useful to being able to handle this project in the best way. Maybe somebody within the organization, another department, maybe somebody not in the organization at all, or not even in your field at all, but you think it would be valuable to consult them on this particular project. So R, responsible, A, accountable, C, consulted, and the I is who needs to be informed. Now this is where leaders struggle the most. I think they're really typically okay at one or all of the first three of responsible, accountable, and who needs to be consulted, but who needs to be informed because the leader has had the thought and the conversation back and forth in their own mind so many times, they tend to fail to release that information out their mouth and towards the people who actually need to know the information who needs to be informed. So if you want to model some really good decision making yourself, we talked about modeling that right. Model who needs to be responsible, who needs to be accountable, you know, who are we accountable to for this project, who needs to be consulted for this project and who needs to be informed. Make sure you're actually communicating it. Have somebody in your corner that can constantly poke and prod you and say, Hey, listen up. I know you've thought this a billion times, but we don't know what you're thinking. We need to hear, we need to hear that we need to be informed of this information is clarity and clarity is kindness.

All right. The rocky, rocky, rassy, however you want to say it model, RACI is a great model for decision-making and creative projects, responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. All right. There's another really critical aspect of creative leadership. And I mentioned it at the beginning when I talked about how great leaders are great coaches and in coaching usually happens in a one-on-one setting. And I do think you need to be having regular, fine regular is up to you, one on one meetings with everybody that directly reports to you, not everybody throughout the organization, but everybody that directly reports to you. And they need to be having one on ones with everybody that directly reports to them and so on and so on. And so I want to introduce to you a free resource that I have for you. It's called the creative leaders guide to one on one. And this is an opportunity for you to have something completely out for you that goes through the structure, progress reviews, growth planning, creative inspiration, all these different aspects of how you should be holding one on one, the who, what, when, where, how and why of one on ones within your creative team. I have it all there for you. Go to Dustin P dot com slash free and click on the giant thumbnail that says the creative leaders guide to one on ones. Make sure you check that out. I'm not going to spend a ton of time in that today, but you do need to dive into that in order to be an effective leader.

Lastly, just real quick, you need to be developing your unique leadership voice. If you want to truly embrace the art of creative leadership, you need to be embracing how to develop your own unique creative leadership voice. The key here is to be authentic. Don't try to be someone that you're not. People can smell a fake a mile away, and especially if they're less than a mile away because they're on your team. So be authentic with it, who you truly are, lean into that. That breeds that vulnerability that we were talking about before. To develop your communication techniques, right? Just communicate. There's some things that you need to gatekeep a little bit. There's some things that you need to be able to give some creative direction on. And there's some, and some or most things that you need to be communicating the why on, right? So gatekeeping some constructive feedback from clients maybe, or major business decisions a little bit, right? But for the most part, you want to be open, authentic and available and vulnerable. Give some effective creative direction and communicate the why behind decisions. And we've talked many times on this podcast before, I would encourage you to go back to an episode that I did with my friend, Darren Cooper of 1898 creative, where we talked about the power of storytelling and your creativity, the same thing in creative leadership. And we actually just covered this topic as well over on the culture based podcast with my partner over there, Blake bear, go to the culture base.com B a S E.com to learn more about that. But you have to learn how to provide, this is the delicate balance, right? You have to learn and there's it's really up to you to decide in your unique situation, but you have to put effort into learning how to provide critique that inspires and doesn't deflate. All that comes into your own unique, authentic leadership voice.

So today we talked about the four archetypes of creative leadership, right? The visionary, the coach, the shield, the bridge. We talked about the psychological safety and how to be able to do some safety check-ins and some dream session brainstorm rules and how to model that vulnerability as a leader. Talked about the rocky or rocky decision making framework, right? The RACI, who's responsible, accountable, who needs to be consulted and who needs to be informed and moving forward with how to make creative decisions. Talked about one-on-one meetings briefly. But I would highly encourage you to go to dustinp.com slash free to download your free guide to creative leaders one on once. And then lastly, we talked about how to develop your own unique leadership voice. The key here is to think about when you're going to communicate, how you're going to communicate and make sure you're communicating the why behind your decisions as often as you possibly can. Don't forget storytelling. Storytelling is key. Anytime you want to communicate a certain idea or culture value or direct vision, direction, whatever it is, stories always are stickier than just some poetic words that you can wax.

Next week we are nearing the end of the first quarter of the year. So next week we're gonna do a quarterly review check-in. We're gonna look back at quarter one and review some of that stuff with you. And then we're also going to look at a strategy session for Q2. We're gonna talk about some lessons that we learned in Q1, some achievements, and then some opportunities and actions that we can take in Q2. Again, I want to remind you about the free resource. All my free resources can be found at dustinpede.com slash free. But today go and download your guide, your creative leaders guide to effective one-on-ones dustinpede.com slash free. It's right there for you. Please take it, use it, send it to whoever who needs it. Send it up, send it down, send it sideways to peers. But I'm so glad that you are with me today. If you have any questions about anything that I talked about today, feel free to reach out to me on social media at Dustin P. E. A. D. Or you can email me D. P. At Dustin Pead dot com. I'm so glad that you are with me today. I hope you'll have an amazing week. Come back next week. We're going to talk about how to wrap up this quarter one and make quarter two the best quarter ever in our creative team. Can’t wait to talk to you then the creativity made easy podcast.

Ep 101: From Solo Creator to Creative Leader

Mastering the Transition to Leading Creative Teams

SUMMARY

In this episode, Dustin Pead explores the challenging but rewarding journey from being a solo creative professional to becoming a creative leader. Drawing insights from Jason Sperling's book "Creative Directions," Dustin discusses the mindset shifts needed, practical transition strategies, team-building approaches, and vision-setting techniques that can help creative professionals scale their business while maintaining their creative integrity. The episode offers valuable guidance for freelancers and solo creators who are ready to build something bigger than themselves.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ The transition from solo creator to creative leader begins with a fundamental mindset shift - changing your language from "I" to "We" and embracing your identity as a leader before you even build your team

• ⚡️ Know when it's time to expand by recognizing key indicators: reaching capacity thresholds, identifying skill gaps, evaluating ROI on new team members, increasing project complexity, evolving client needs, and assessing opportunity costs of handling lower-value tasks.

• ⚡️ When building your creative team, prioritize culture fit alongside skill set - hire people you'd actually want to spend time with outside of work, as shared values and compatibility often matter more long-term than technical skills alone.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "There has to be a point in your creativity, in your endeavor, that you have to shift your mindset. You have to go from this solo creator that everything begins and ends with me... to a leader."

• 💬 "Success is also going to come from having adaptable systems. You're going to have to have some structure, but the structure doesn't have to stifle innovation."

• 💬 "Are your projects managing you or are you managing your projects? There are some fundamentals that me and my team help go through."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Jason Sperling's book: Creative Directions: Mastering the Transition from Talent to Leader

• ⚡️ Dustin's eBook: "Using Asana for Creative Teams" available at DustinPead.com/store

• ⚡️ Learn about Dustin's creative services at DustinPead.com

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Okay, you've mastered your craft as a solo creative freelancer, but there's a nagging voice that keeps asking if you're ready to build something bigger than yourself, a team that can multiply your vision while allowing you to step into true creative leadership. Today, we're diving into the transition from solo creator to creative leader with insights from Jason Sperling's game changing book, Creative Directions.

Let's get into it. Creatives from chaos to clarity. Welcome back to creativity made easy. The podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. I'm your host, Dustin Pead creative coach and consultant. And I help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams that they can create with efficiency as they scale together. This podcast is for any creatives out there, whether you're just dabbling into what it means to be a creative or your full-fledged been doing it for a long time. Designers, photographers, writers, all creative entrepreneurs seeking some practical and actionable strategies to grow their creative business through efficiency. Right. That's what we're all about here is efficiency. That's what takes us from creative chaos into clarity. Today, I'm so very excited to dive into a topic that is near and dear to my heart from solo creator to creative leader.

But before we get into that, I want to remind you that you can find me online, Dustin Pead, P E A D dot com. There you can learn all about my creative services, coaching, consulting, and speaking as well. Got a couple of really cool speaking engagements coming up later this year. If you're interested in having me speak to your team, whether it be live in person or digital. You can go to that speaking page and fill out the form there and we can chat all about it. Would love to. You can find out all about me there and every way that I can help your team. All my free tools and resources all found right there on the website. You can follow me on social media at Dustin Pead, P-E-A-D, like I said. And if you're watching on YouTube, I'm glad that you're here. Would love for you to hit the thumbs up button to like it. Also subscribe and ring the bell while you're there as well. And you'll be notified every time we drop new content, just like this podcast every single week, you'll be the first to know about it.

All right, so let's get into today's episode. I want to just kind of set the tone a little bit. I was kind of thrusted into creative leadership without much preparation. So many of you know my story. You've read the book Growing Upward that I released last year. And I went to Liberty University to study worship music and ministry. Right. So there we learned a lot about how to lead worship, how to lead musical songs of praise in a church setting. Right. And so much of my leadership was about that. Those few moments each week, 20 minutes or so on stage and very little was taught to us at the time because the worship program was extremely new there about how to lead teams.

And so when I took my first job out of college at a church just south of Indianapolis, I immediately had a team of people that were looking to me. Now they were all volunteer, but still it was a team, right? That were looking to me for leadership. And I was like, I'm fresh out of college. don't, I mean, I can, I can tell you what I learned there, but I don't think y'all are ready for that. I like, I don't think we're there yet. And so it took me a few years to kind of trial by fire. And I wish I had this book back then. It came out in 2021. I have it right here. It's called a creative directions, mastering the transition from talent to leader right here. If you're watching on YouTube, I'll put the book up and let my camera do its focus thing. There's the book right there. I'm going to have a link to it in my show notes. Um, this is unofficially not, this is not sponsored by Jason. Um, in any way, but Jason, um, who I don't know, never met, um, but I've gleaned a lot from him over the years through this book. It really is a how to textbook from going from this solo creator to creative leader.

So we're going to reference it a lot in today's episode, but if you don't know about Jason, that name doesn't sound like a household name to you. Uh, Jason was a, uh, professional creative, uh, higher up in the ranks of Facebook and now owns his own agency and has worked with some of the top brands in the world. And so today we're going to dive into that journey that he kind of lays out in the book a little bit. And we're going to talk about leading a team a little bit, because next week we're going to talk about the art of creative leadership. So we'll, talk a little bit about leading a team here, but we're mostly going to be talking about strategies for transition, vision setting, growth management, things like that. So let's go ahead and dive deep in so that we can learn how to go from solo creative, solo creator, to a creative leader.

All right, so the first thing is pretty simple, right? It's a mindset shift, right? Before you can make any strategic changes, practical changes, hiring, onboarding, whatever, bringing in people to help, there has to be a point in your creativity, in your endeavor, that you have to shift your mindset. You have to go from this solo creator that everything begins and ends with me, solo creator to a leader. And I understand that there's a lot of fears involved in that. And Jason in the book lays out some of those fears. So there's fear of creative control, right? We want to have our hands on everything from beginning to end. There's anxiety about diluting the quality or the vision that made your work successful to begin with. There's imposter syndrome, which, newsflash, that doesn't ever really go away. We all, all deal with imposter syndrome, but it leads you to kind of feel unqualified to even lead other people to begin with, right?

There's concerns about managing interpersonal conflicts among team members. Like, I don't want to babysit adults here. don't, don't want to have to worry about this person, my designer getting my web designer getting along with my photographer or, know, all these things, right? There's resistance to giving up the identity of being the creator and becoming the leader. We don't want to necessarily give up the title of creator because that's what we got into this thing for in the beginning, right? Was to create. We're going to talk about how to hang on to some of that. There's also fear of spending more time managing than creating. And that's a real legitimate fear. But if we, if, if we really do feel this thing, welling up inside of us that says we need to, we need to grow this, this is, this needs to be more than just what little reach I can bring to the table. Then we're going to have to conquer some of that anxiety.

There's concern about building systems that enable creativity rather than stifling it, which we talk about on this podcast all the time. You can listen to any of the previous episodes. And there's then there's resistance to the administrative aspects of leadership, right? Budget schedules, performance reviews, all of which I would say doesn't necessarily have to be you. And we can talk more about that. So we have to identify, we have to shift our identity from the doer of all things to the leader of all things. So mental mindset shift first. And the way that you can do this immediately is very, simple. Immediately start to change your language, change your language from, uh, here's what I do. Here's my work. Here's my approach to, to this prop, to this problem. Here's how I would tackle, uh, this creative project. Here's how I would lead this creative project, right. And start moving it towards your team.

We do this. We work with efficiency. We have a system for that. We solve problems this way. And just by saying that, even if it's just you, and I know you're like, well, that sounds like schizophrenia, like there's a lot of people in my head, right? But if you begin to make that mind shift immediately before you even bring in any other help, you'll start to operate. It's kind of like putting on the big boy or your dad's uh, suit, right? When you were a little kid and you felt, even though it was like too long for, you know, it covering up your hands. was way longer than your arms, right? You had an opportunity to kind of feel what it's like to be big. I feel what it's like to be an adult. Right? And so this is what we're doing. We're, we're, moving the language in our mind from it being just us, the small focus to we, here's what we bring to the table. And, honestly, folks, the more I work in this business, the more I realized is that other businesses that are going to work with you are going to understand that in order for you, for you to deliver on the scale that they want you to deliver on, you better have a team because if it's just you, you're limiting your impact. And we'll talk about all that.

So here's some questions to consider as you focus on changing your mindset. Right? So questions to consider when, uh, when did you know that it was time for you to expand beyond the solo work? Go back to that moment and think for yourself. When was it that I was like, I've got to expand this? Constantly remind yourself of that feeling, of that emotion, of that connection, and that will propel you forward into becoming the creative leader that you need to be. What were your biggest fears about leading others? When you think about leading others, what are the fears that you have? Write them out, right? Because then you'll be able to see the problem for what it is and you can tackle it head on.

And then think about your own creative journey. How did your own creative identity evolve? What were some key milestones? Did people speak into your life? Was it exposure to some new creative tactic or method or art form? What were the moments that kind of allowed your creative identity to evolve along the timeline of your life so far? Because when you understand those moments, you'll understand that every single time it took a leap, it took a step and there was some fear involved and there was some unknown involved. But being able to do that every single time, you realize, man, I'm so glad I did that because when I opened up Adobe Creative Cloud for the first time, I didn't know what was going on there, right? But I did it. And I said, I can do this. And I told myself I could do it even before I could do it, right? You tell yourself it's we even before it's we.

So you told yourself you could do it and guess what? Now you do it. Now you actually make money doing this thing using a tool that when you first opened it, it looked like a foreign language to you. Right. All So let's get into the next step, which is a transition strategy. All right. So there's a couple of different approaches you can take here when you're making the transition from solo creator to creative leader. You can do a gradual approach, which is probably smart in some ways financially. Right.

or you can do a rapid team building approach where you're just like, I'm going to hire a whole team immediately right now to come in and help scale this thing. And in Jason's book, he lays out a framework of understanding when to expand your team. And these are conversations that we are having right now in my organization as we look to grow what we're doing here for professional creatives. And he says, number one, think about your capacity threshold constantly having to turn down work or delay projects because you can't handle all that people are asking you to do on your own, it's probably time to expand. Skill gaps. He talks about skill gaps. Are there areas where you are personally limited and you're holding back the growth of your company or the growth of what you're trying to do or a project quality you need to possibly consider hiring someone specifically to fill in those skills gap. You don't have to be excellent and perfect at everything. You can be perfect at your one or two things and then you can hire out the rest of the things, right?

ROI or return on investment evaluation. You need to be able to assess what bringing on team members would, if it would generate enough additional revenue to justify the investment while maintaining or improving profit margins. in a couple of episodes ago, we spoke with Christian Brim, Profit First for Creatives, that him and the core group would be really good to ask. These are questions that I'm asking them right now because I'm a client of the core group and they are my fractional CFOs and I ask them all my money questions. And so the money question I just asked them a couple of weeks ago is, hey, based on what I've got coming in right now and what the projections are over the next quarter, do we have enough to hire these positions that I would like to hire? So evaluate that, bring other people in to see that from a different perspective, because sometimes you're too close to it.

Jason also talks about when you're trying to expand your team, the project complexity indicators. If a project requires multiple specialized skill sets that you can't reasonably master on your own, then that should be a signal to you that it may be time for team expansion, right? Another one, client evolution. talks about how as you as clients grow or as your clients grow, the number of them and the size of their organizations, they grow and their needs become more complex. Your team structure should evolve accordingly, right? If you're, if you're, if you're, if you are helping your clients grow, which you should be through your creative endeavors, right? If you are helping your clients grow, then you're going to have to grow along with them to be able to keep up with their ever-changing needs, right?

Another one that he mentions is opportunity cost assessment. Again, this is where I bring in the core group. Calculate what you're losing by handling administrative or lower value tasks instead of focusing on high level creative direction. Are there opportunities that you're losing because you're spending too much time doing the administrative work? That's time for you to go, maybe I should hire somebody to do some of these administrative tasks that I can't do or that I don't that I can do, but I shouldn't be spending my time doing.

The last one that he mentions in the book is a sustainability check. Evaluate, look, if your current workload and schedule, are they sustainable for your wellbeing and creative energy in the long term? Have you ever, at the end of the day, asked yourself, How can I keep doing this? Or said to yourself, I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this. That's a sustainability check. And that's a flag that if you do truly desire to continue doing this, then you're going to have to bring on some help.

So there are some first higher considerations. Do you need administrative support, project management, bookkeeping, doing all that kind of admin junk that creatives hate, right? Or do you need additional creative support? Do you need, hey, I've got more design work than what I'm able to do right now. I need to bring somebody else in to help carry the load of the work. Those are the two kind of lanes you need to look at, Outsourcing versus employees. Again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but I do go to the core group for this and ask them, should I contract this or should I w two this person? Uh, and they can help you walk through that. But I would always say no matter what you do, be upfront about trying it for about 90 days or so. 90 days is a good long length of time where you can kind of be like, wow, this is actually worth the money that I'm spending on this person. Or honestly, it's not.

But we're going to talk about how to onboard those team members here in just a second. So it actually is worth your time. The systems that need to be in place before hiring. This is one that I really work with my clients a lot right now is how do we multiply you as this solo creative and we're bringing on additional editors, additional designers, additional cinematographers, photographers. How do we multiply what you're doing? We have to document those things, right? We have to have some systems in place before we hire. And that's really where I come in and help, specifically as well in the project management fundamentals.

Do you feel like your projects are managing you or are you managing your projects? I'll say it again. Are your projects managing you or are you managing your projects? There are some fundamentals that me and my team help go through in all the episodes. I'm not gonna get into it today all the episodes and all the blog posts on my website, they can speak to that. Is there a clear scope definition and delegation skills when you're, when you're bringing on somebody, is there a clear understanding? Is there a clear definition? Is there a job description? Is there a clear understanding of this is where I end and you begin. This is where I'm going to let go. And this is where you're going to pick up. Right.

So, uh, Jason and his book has many, many case studies of successful creative transitions. Again, pick up the book, read all about it, keep it on your desk. Honestly, it's what I do and refer to it often. Let's get into the next segment though. And how do we team build for creatives? All right. So we've identified that we need someone. We've identified what to consider before we bring them on. Now, how do we actually team build around us as the creative leader? And I think it starts with hiring, right? It starts with finding the team members who compliment your creative style, right? Are you really good at coloring, but you might need to bring somebody in who's really good at the audio side of video, right? Or you're really good at layout print design, but you need to bring somebody else in who's more of a digital mobile web designer, right? Find those things that compliment your, your creativity, your creative limitations, but also your style, right? Are you really into post-modernism style, right? Of what's like the most hip out there, right? Cutting edge. Are you more of a traditionalist? Find some, find a yin to your yang, if you will, right?

When hiring, this is something that we talk a lot about at the Culture Base, the other company that I help run, where we help creative, we help leaders know what they're about, their processes and all that stuff, right? So that they can scale their businesses, like from the from the lens of their culture, but hiring for a culture fit versus skill set. This is a tough one. I, my opinion, and I, and I would say Jason does a really good job at kind of balancing both in the book. Um, my opinion is that you should always hire for a culture fit. Me and, uh, my team members or my clients will often talk about the people that we want to work with. And we, we use this kind of internal measuring stick when it comes to if we want to work with them, whether it's clients or whether it's someone that we want to actually bring on to our team. And we just ask ourselves, is this someone that we would actually want to spend time with outside of the work? Is this someone that we would actually want to go to a sporting event with, have a beer with, go to a concert with, have a date night with as couples, right? Like are these people that we want to hang around? Those are probably going to be good culture fits for you.

And I think long-term that it's more important to get a good culture fit as it is a skill set. Now, obviously the more immediate side of that is you do need someone with the skill set. So I think it's both, but I'm going to lean more in the direction of a culture fit versus skill set more often than not. That's probably biased because I help run an organization called The Culture Base where we help organizations grow through their culture. Right? But there's a different communication frameworks for creative collaboration all in the book. He also discusses, uh, managing creative differences, which is a big deal. We've talked about that before here on this podcast, uh, resolving creative conflicts constructively. So it builds up and does a tear down. And I, and I know that sounds like babysitting, but trust me, it's an opportunity for you to cast vision in and, and, and carry your ideals and your creative style further throughout, uh, the your organization as you grow it. And he also talks about having some feedback systems that nurture rather than stifle creativity. We actually talk about this over on the culture based podcast just recently. So check that out. The culture based dot com.

One more aspect here on team building that I want to hit on before we move on to our final segment of today is mentoring some junior creatives. One of my clients that I work with right now, we've partnered up with an apprenticeship organization who basically has students that connects students to growing agencies like my client's agency. And we can get the work at a fraction of a cost while building somebody up. Now, the great part about this is, yes, it feels good to kind of teach others and teach younger creatives how to do what you do. That's a feel good part. But the cost benefit is we can get them on a fraction of the cost than what it would a professional. Now, it may take a little bit more time in the long run to bring them up to your standards, but they're usually a lot more available. They're usually a lot more affordable and you can grow them in a way that fits your culture and the way that you do things right out the gate. It's not like you're having to teach an old dog new trick. So I would highly consider mentoring some junior creators through apprenticeships or internships. And I know it sounds like I'm just me. I don't really know how to have an apprentice. Um, it's a really cool old school technique to help grow your organization from the inside out and nurture the talent, uh, from, the very beginning, all the way through your organization.

All right, let's get into the last segment. There's many parts of Jason's book, creative directions and how to master the transition from talent to leader. As we said, uh, what we're calling this podcast from solo creator to creative leader. But before we end today's episode, I do want to talk just for a moment about vision setting and creative direction. And this is where he really kind of spends the whole rest of the book. And this is really the main reason that I leave his book on my desk at all times. But you need to create, you need to craft, I would say, a compelling creative vision that inspires. Right. So in my, this podcast, for example, at beginning of every single podcast, I say the exact same thing, is that why I'm here is to help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams that they can create with efficiency as they scale together. What I'm doing in that moment every single time is I'm reiterating a creative vision that will hopefully inspire you to want to listen. And so as teams get together and we talk about the projects that are at hand, it's an opportunity when we're all around each other.

It's an opportunity to continually cast that vision over and over. It doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be, hey, reminder, this is what we're about. Let me tell you a 30 second story this week about how we saw that come into play and how we saw that executed with excellence, right? And then we move on. But communicating that vision effectively to different personality types is a part of it too. And this is stuff that we talk a lot about too at the Culture Base when we're talking just recently in an episode about generational differences. One of my partners over there, Blake Bayer, wrote a book called Uncultured, in which he spends a lot of time diving into the psychological approaches that you take with different generations within your workplace and different personality types as well. We talk a lot on this podcast about Enneagram types and how to be able to work with certain Enneagram types and knowing their core motivations and core fears will help kind of nurture them up to where you want to see them.

But learning how to communicate that vision effectively to different personality types, that's just a part of creative leadership. It's a part of vision setting, and it's a part of creative direction. Documentation and reference systems. This is an area where creative direction, think, a lot of times people think that that loses its luster, right? That I'm a creative director and I work with big top brands and I don't have time to document and reference systems. The reason why most people are successful in life, no matter what area of professionalism they find themselves in, is because they have figured out a way to do the same thing over and over and over again, right? It's that 10,000 hours to become a genius at something, right? That genius is 10,000 hours.

So the 10,000 hours is the same thing over and over again, right? Well, as you're growing your team, in order for them to do the same thing over and over again, you have to create systems that they can reference and documentation that they can reference throughout so they can have this, so they can approach it the same way every single time. It's consistency. Consistency breeds excellence every single time. And there's times when you need to hold firm to the vision. And there's times when you need to adapt the vision. And Jason talks about this in the book. He calls it creative elasticity and vision adaption. talks about distinguishing between core and peripheral elements, knowing which aspects of your vision are non-negotiable versus which can be modified without compromising the essence of that vision. He talks about responsive adaptation, being willing to incorporate valuable feedback and new information while you preserve the central creative intent. He also talks about contextual flexibility. And when we're talking about, we hold tight to this vision or not, or do we flex it a little bit and adjusting creative approaches based on shifting the client needs or the market conditions or team capabilities, that stuff is always going to be changing, right? But you can do it without abandoning the original purpose.

He also talks about principled compromise that there are some finding some middle ground solutions that both honor your creative standards and the practical limitations of what's in front of you, right? Sometimes there's just, it's impossible to hold these standards. And so being willing to flex those things and having some grace on yourself and grace on your organization, your team members will go a long way. And lastly, progressive iteration. This is where I talked about viewing the vision as evolving rather than it's static. Allow for growth, allow it to flex and bend over time. This is why I like 10 year goals are amazing. They're a great roadmap, but really like no more than three, because things change constantly for you to be able to say, is where I'm going to be in 10. You can kind of aim for that, but we know that over time you're going to shift. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see me kind of use my hand as like a rudder or an airplane direction, right? We're shifting it just a little bit of a shift here and there can change that long-term target drastically. So that is the episode for today.

Creative directions by Jason Sperling. One more time. I'll it up on here on YouTube for you to see, make sure it gets all in the frame there. Yep. Jason Sperling, creative directions, mastering the transition from talent to leader. Highly encourage you to pick that up again. This is not sponsored by him anyway. I don't know Jason. I've never spoke to him in my life, but I'm telling you it's worth it. So pick that up. Another simple little tool for you to pick up is my ebook using Asana for creative teams. Now know many of you may not use Asana and that's totally okay.

I often say in my speaking engagements, it doesn't matter if you're using a whiteboard or Post-it notes or Asana or Monday or Trello, but the stuff that we talk about in this book and the stuff that John talks about in his book, it's just simple practical ways for you to implement and reiterate and grow your team from the inside out by having a consistent project management tool and the way that you use that tool over and over and over again. so check that out on my website, dustinpead.com slash store. You can pick up Asana for creative teams. it's 10 bucks. It's an easy to read ebook. You can disperse it throughout your team, your organization, let everybody read it, reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns about it.

And so what I would just encourage you today as we wrap up this episode is to just to take one thing that we talked about today. Take one thing. If it's a mindset shift, if it's a, hiring consideration, it's an onboarding consideration, if it's a systems and processes or project management consideration, just take one thing this week and put an action plan in place of how you're going to go from this solo creator, right, to creative leader. What's one thing that you can do this week to do that? I'll put the link to Jason's book in the show notes and I would love to hear from you.

If you're reading through that, reach out to me on social media at Dustin Pead, P-E-A-D, but definitely pick up that book and also pick up Using Asana for Creative Teams. My ebook, it's 10 books, 10 books, not 10 books, it's one ebook. It's 10 bucks, $10 on my website, DustinPead.com slash store. Next week, we're going to dive a little bit further into this creative leadership topic. We're going to talk about the art of creative leadership today.

I want to remind you you can pick up my newsletter, you can get a free coaching call, all that stuff on my website. I would love for you to check that out. But until next time, have an amazing week. Get out there, create with efficiency, and scale your creative work. I love you guys. Cannot wait to talk with you again on Creativity Made Easy.

Ep 100: The Future of Creative Business

From Creative Chaos to Sustainable Success

SUMMARY

In this milestone 100th episode, Dustin Pead reflects on the journey of the Creativity Made Easy Podcast while looking ahead to the future of creative professionals. He discusses the challenges creatives face in today's rapidly changing landscape, including AI advancements, workforce changes, and the need to stay relevant. Dustin shares strategies for building sustainable creative businesses through systems and processes that scale without losing creative essence. He also announces a new service - the Project Management System Optimizer - designed to help creatives streamline their workflows and reclaim time for creative work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Today's creative professionals face unprecedented challenges with rapidly evolving technology, growing anxiety about staying relevant, and outdated feast-or-famine business models that aren't sustainable.

• ⚡️ Finding your unique creative voice is essential for differentiation in the marketplace. Excellence should be balanced with authenticity to remain true to who you are as a creative.

• ⚡️ Building community with other creative professionals is becoming increasingly important, especially as many work from home offices and maintain primarily digital client relationships.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "I believe that it's in our creative systems and processes that allow us to scale our creative work and make it more and more special for our clients."

• 💬 "Every creative has that unique voice because we're all made completely different so finding that unique voice is a key differentiator. You need to show your personality it's okay to be vulnerable a little bit it's okay to be authentic. I tell people all the time that I love authenticity I'm always trying to help people grow in their creativity with excellence and authenticity we want it to be excellent but we also want it to be true to who you are as well.

  I also think community is going to play a huge role in the next chapter of the creative professional’s landscape looks and many of us are sitting in home offices just like if you're watching on YouTube right now you see that I'm sitting in my home office, so finding that unique voice is a key differentiator."

• 💬 "Success is going to come from having adaptable systems. You're going to have to have some structure, but the structure doesn't have to stifle innovation."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Get 20% off the new Project Management System Optimizer with code EP10000 at dustinpead.com/store

• ⚡️ Visit the new service pages for speaking, coaching, and consulting at dustinpead.com

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

100 episodes ago, I set out to solve a problem that was plaguing creative professionals everywhere. The chaos of creativity was stopping brilliant people from building sustainable businesses and creative professions. Today are 100th episode. We're going to look at not just celebrating a milestone, but we're going to look forward to what's next for creative professionals. Let's get into it.

Taking creatives from chaos to clarity. Welcome back to the Creativity Made Easy Podcast. The podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. My name is Dustin Pead. Creative Coach and Consultant and I help creatives know themselves their process and their team so that they can create greater things together.

Y'all 100 episodes. I cannot believe it's finally here. I've been thinking about it. I've been dreaming about it and I am so pumped to get into today's episode with you. 100 episodes has been quite a journey. We've had some amazing conversations with all sorts of guests. We did an any-a-gram series. We spoke with creative coaches like Steven Brewster and Ben Armin's.

We've had a great time learning from countless creative visionaries. We've talked about client management, pricing strategies, workflow optimization, the whole due versus due, DO, DOE dates. We've talked about future you. We've talked about your messages and how to have review cycles in your creative process.

We've shared many transformation stories. All that to say, it's been an incredible journey. And I want to thank you specifically to everyone who has listened or watched or shared and implemented these strategies. It means the world to me. 2025 is going to be the best year yet for all that I have going on. We've already got two speaking engagements lined up already this year.

By the time this podcast comes out, I've already been a guest on a couple of podcasts as well. So tune in to my social media to catch those out. But we're going to be speaking at the salt conference in Nashville, Tennessee in early October of this year. And the other one I can't quite name yet, but I can tell you it's going to be in Oklahoma City in October as well.

So stay tuned for more information about that. We've got brand new service pages on my website service page for speaking service page for coaching and the other one for consulting. We are tightening up our processes and really kind of laying out. Here's what working with me looks like as a creative coach or consultant.

And if you're interested in having me come speak to your team, whether it be in person or digital, I would love to talk with you about that. Go to the aforementioned website, DustinPead.com. Click on the speaking tab and fill out that form. I would love the opportunity to speak some creative insight into the process and operations that you have on your creative team.

All right, let's look to the future on what creative professionals face today is a unprecedented time in today's creative landscape with things. Like AI, the growing and shrinking workforce. What does it look like for you and your creative endeavors as you begin to grow partnerships and opportunities in your own creative work?

There's like I said, the technology is growing rapidly. We're having to to to maintain our own education on what works and what doesn't. There's growing anxiety about staying relevant and maintaining the creative edge while also being profitable. There's the old feast or famine business models that just don't work anymore. They're not sustainable.

So how do we adopt losing what makes our creative work special? I believe it is within our systems and processes that allows us to scale those creative that scales are. I believe that it's in our creative systems and processes that allows us to scale our creative work and make it more and more special for our clients.

So some ways that we can do that number one future success. We always talk on here about future you right future you is simply just a mind. A mind approach, a mindset if you will of how you take notes when you're on a call with a client. When you find yourself need deep into situation and someone asked you to do something right future you is about having the opportunity to write that stuff down so that your future self will understand what you were asking it to do or what someone else was asking it to do when you come upon it.

We can leverage technology to enhance our human creativity and intuition and connection in that way by saying listen future self. I know you don't remember having this conversation but the client asked you for this very specific thing and if you want to wow them here's one quick idea that your past self lay down for you.

So let's let's go ahead and execute that now those are some ways that you can sustain and raise the level of your creative business here's what I think is going to have to happen in order for your creative business to grow in terms of your efficiency going along with it you're going to have to find your unique creative voice.

Every creative has that unique voice because we're all made completely different so finding that unique voice is a key differentiator. You need to show your personality it's okay to be vulnerable a little bit it's okay to be authentic. I tell the people all the time that I love authenticity I'm always trying to help people grow in their creativity with excellence and authenticity we want it to be excellent but we also want it to be true to who you are as well.

I also think community is going to play a huge role in the next chapter of the creative professionals landscape looks and many of us are sitting in home offices just like if you're watching on YouTube right now you see that I'm sitting in my home office.

And we're having these conversations with clients all digital and so having this community not only with your clients but with other creative professionals as well is going to make a huge difference and one thing that I'm committed to this year more than ever is to curate a creative community.

If that sounds like something you want to be a part of I'm still working out the kinks just shoot me an email dp@dustinpead.com tell me you want to be part of the community and I'll get you in right away we've been toying around with some digital community stuff already but especially are also I should say in the West Georgia area I'm working towards an event to build creative community that I cannot wait to announce later this year but you're going to need people you're going to need to surround yourself with people we've talked about partnerships.

On this podcast before we've talked about who you bring on your team all of that stuff is going to matter because it's going to take more than you at the end of the day in order to reach your desired creative dreams if you want to be able to build the business like you want to be able to build it if you want to be able to organize the structure of your creative team creative department or creative business is going to take some other people to come along side you success.

Will come but it's going to come from community as a big big part of it listen success is also going to come from having adaptable systems you're going to have to have some structure but the structure doesn't have to stifle innovation right we always laugh because creatives like to say well don't put me in a box when in fact creatives love to be put in a box they just don't want to admit it or label it as such

but if we can give some great parameters and say this is how I have met this clients needs time and time again I want to scale that to reach all the other clients as well it's going to come with some systems and processes for you to be able to organize that bring on more people to your team and scale that and I can help you do that we can help you do that

listen I'm not to into the weeds of the details to understand that every single creative person is unique in how they process their creativity how they structure it how they organize it or don't organize it

and I'm not here to say that that one size everything is going to fit everything you do that's why I want to come along side and work with you but I also understand that things evolve the things that I've brought my clients through a year ago look way different now

than they did a year ago because the landscape is changing the process is changing software is coming out new tools are at our disposal new education is at our disposal

there's all these things that are helping us grow at a rapid rate and so what me and my team are able to come alongside and do is to help navigate all of that organize it so that we can get it all together and basically free your time up to create because that's what you super love to do look

I'm committed to evolving this whole thing alongside you in this new era and with that comes a big announcement of a brand new product that I'm super excited to share with you it's what I call the project management system optimizer I know that's a lot of words going on I thought about a lot of words but listen to the end of the day

this is designed this product is designed to optimize your project management system and if you don't have a project management system I would argue that you probably do even if it's sticky notes or a mole skin you have some sort of project management system

and so with this optimizer does is it helps assess your workflow it helps identify bottlenecks where things are getting clogged up and not proceeding and it also helps to customize systems for your unique creative process and what you're going to get is you're going to get to work along with me and my team we're going to talk about client communication

we're going to talk about deadline management we're going to do a complete administrative overhaul to rid yourself of all the overwhelm that comes with the administrative of I got to keep up I got to keep up I got to keep up this client wants that client wants the deadlines are looming help me to maximize or I should say optimize your project management system by purchasing this kind of introduction package to what I can do for you the project management system

optimizer so here's where you can find that you can go to my store which is DustinPead.com slash store and you can click on the project management system optimizer right there and if you put in the promo code

episode 100 just EP one zero zero will be the code EP 100 if you're watching on YouTube right now I have it on your screen for you you put in that code I'm going to give you 20% off of this project management system optimizer

and I would love to get started with you on that we can expand that into our coaching program as well whatever you need I would love to set up a free consultation call you can use the link in the show notes for that

but I can tell you right now this project management system optimizer been testing it with some clients already and it's powerful stuff and I'm really convinced that if you give me an opportunity to work with you and your team in this that you're going to see a lot of gaps that are going to begin to close in a lot of hours that you're going to begin to buy back because you're using this optimizer

so some closing thoughts again I just want to thank everybody for listening and watching I'm going to remind you that I have a weekly newsletter that goes out every single Sunday a blog post that posts on my website and also gets emailed out every Tuesday

and of course the creativity made easy podcasts right here comes out every single Thursday on YouTube and wherever you can listen to podcasts I would love for you to share this with other creative professionals

and I'm not wait to be back with you in the coming episodes we've got some amazing episodes coming up I've got some guests coming up but specifically next week we're going to talk about how to go from this solo creator or this freelancer where you're kind of doing everything on your own to a creative leader

because as you're scaling your business and as you're scaling your creative process you're going to understand that you're going to have to go from the person that does it all to the person that leads some of it in cast vision

and go a little bit of leadership development specifically for someone who is used to being a solo creator of working on talk transition strategies

we're going to talk team building we're going to talk vision setting and we're going to talk growth management I cannot wait to talk to you about all that and all the future episodes

of the Creativity Made Easy Podcasts it's going to be a great time folks I'm so glad that you're with me let's continue the journey together we'll talk to you next week

Ep 99: Mastering Creative Business Finance

Profit First with Christian Brim

SUMMARY

In this essential episode for creative entrepreneurs, Christian Brim of Core Group breaks down the Profit First methodology specifically for creative businesses. Learn how to implement a five-account system for financial success, master value-based pricing, and transform your creative practice into a profitable enterprise. Perfect for freelancers, agency owners, and creative professionals looking to build sustainable creative businesses in 2025.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ The foundation of financial success isn't just tools—it's mindset. Creative professionals must first believe their work deserves profit before any system can work effectively.

• ⚡️ Financial clarity comes from strategic organization: Using five dedicated bank accounts (Deposit, Profit, Owner's Compensation, Taxes, and Operating Expenses) creates a simple but powerful system for managing creative business finances.

• ⚡️ Start small with profit: Begin with just 1% in your profit account. After 90 days, you'll be surprised by how much accumulates when you commit to the process.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Nobody buys what we do... What they're buying is a feeling. And the feeling is financial peace, financial clarity, peace of mind." - Christian Brim

• 💬 "You can do something you love that fills your soul, that scratches that itch, and make a profit at it." - Christian Brim

• 💬 "Creative work is generally not emphasized, prioritized, or celebrated as much as the analytical... but that doesn't mean it's not valuable." - Christian Brim

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Grab Christian Brim's book, "Profit First For Creatives" here

• ⚡️ Check out The Core Group here

• ⚡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase my first book, "Growing Upward: My Lifelong Journey with Mental Health" here

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

---

TRANSCRIPT

Do you find that when the money comes in from your jobs, you have no idea where it goes next or how to make it grow on its own? Today we're going to speak with Profit First Professional Christian Brim of the Core Group to get to the bottom of this issue once and for all.

Welcome to the Creativity Made Easy podcast, I'm your host, Dustin Pied, creative coach and consultant, helping you with your processes. I help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams so they can create greater things together. I'm very excited about today's episode, episode 99.

Before we get into that, I want to remind you that you can follow me on Instagram at Dustin Pied. You can find me online at DustinPied.com. While you're there, click on the tools page, DustinPied.com/tools. There will be many things for you there to peruse and download or link to Amazon and purchase on your own, including the book that we're going to get into today.

**Dustin:** Welcome Christian Brim to the Creativity Made Easy podcast. Christian, so glad to have you here.

**Christian:** Well, thank you for having me, Dustin. I'm excited to be here.

**Dustin:** Today we're gonna dive into this idea of Profit First planning. Should we talk about the Core Group first, or should we talk about what Profit First is?

**Christian:** Let's talk about Profit First. So Profit First was a method and a book published by Mike McCallewitz 11 years ago now, based upon his experience as an entrepreneur and how he had gone through three different iterations of businesses and ended up broke. He was like every entrepreneur - there's got to be a solution to this problem.

It's a fairly simple tool to implement, but I think the linchpin to Profit First is the intention, the mindset behind it. As a matter of fact, I start out in my book discussing that mindset first because the tool is just a tool. It will work or not work based upon what you are trying to do with it. Until you believe that your business should be profitable and that it can be profitable and you're committed to changing your behaviors to make it that way, the tool won't work.

**Dustin:** I love that because I'm reading a book right now that's speaking to the very same thing - that we have to have the right mindset before we can venture into anything with success. What you're saying is so true that we cannot pursue the thing with any level of success unless we can have the right mindset that the success can actually come, right?

**Christian:** Correct. And I think a lot of creatives struggle with that for a couple of reasons. Creative work is generally not emphasized, prioritized, or celebrated as much as the analytical. If you look around education, what do they emphasize? STEM - everything's gotta be science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. What are the first courses they cut? Music, art.

The whole idea of divergent thinking is not celebrated. Everything around the education system is about filling in the appropriate box. It's convergent thinking. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs with creative skill sets come to the table kind of thinking that what they do is not real work.

I think the other thing is it's really hard to grasp value around creative work. If you're doing something very technical like engineering or accounting, it lends itself to a more quantifiable value, but creativity is really hard to measure.

In my book, I use the example of the iPhone. When Steve Jobs created the iPhone, nothing like that ever existed. That was the ultimate in creativity - the idea of having this computer in your pocket that also functioned as a phone. And he was rewarded generously for that. The value of that was in the billions and tens of billions of dollars.

**Dustin:** Let's get practical here. I think at the end of the day, creatives just want someone to tell them what to do. What does revenue planning look like? We have the mindset now that we can profit from our creativity, our art can bring profit, we can have a sustainable and scalable business. What do we do when money starts coming in?

**Christian:** The core of the Profit First model that Mike developed is five bank accounts. You can think about it like how your grandparents used envelopes when payday came - they cashed their paycheck and put money in different envelopes for groceries, rent, etc. When that money was gone, it was gone.

It's a similar concept - you have one bank account that all your money goes into and that's all it's for is to deposit. It's like staging your money. A lot of creatives have project work and it can get uber confusing when they get big chunks of money at different times. The deposit account is your staging area. Then you have four other accounts that you allocate money to for specific purposes.

The four accounts are:

1. Profit Account - Set aside a portion (start with 1%) for profit

2. Owner's Compensation - How you pay yourself to run your family household

3. Tax Account - Set aside money for taxes

4. Operating Expenses (OPEX) - For paying your bills

The purpose of using these buckets is to give you a cash management way of running your business. It doesn't replace an accountant or tell you your annual income, but it allows you to spot red flags - like if you have to move money from your profit account to cover bills.

**Dustin:** For clarity, the profit and tax accounts are savings accounts that earn interest, while the others are checking accounts?

**Christian:** Correct. If you put a large amount in, that 1% of 1000 is more than 1% of 100, so you'll see that grow over time.

[Conversation continues about expense management, growth strategies, and value pricing...]

**Christian's Final Advice:**

Two key things:

1. You can do something you love that fills your soul and make a profit at it. If you're not making the profit you want, are you willing to do what you need to do to change it?

2. Start with that Profit account - put 1% in and wait 13 weeks. There's nothing better to prove a reality than cash in the bank.

Find Christian and Core Group online at CoreGroupUS.com and ChristianBrim.com. His book "Profit First for Creatives" is available in both print and audio formats.

Ep 98: The Balance of Creative Collaboration with PJ Towle

Leveraging Partnerships to Enhance Your Creative Process

SUMMARY

In this episode, host Dustin Pead speaks with PJ Towle of Forty: Three Creative about the power of creative collaboration and partnerships. They discuss how building genuine relationships with other creatives leads to better outcomes, happier clients, and a stronger creative industry. PJ shares insights on selecting the right partners, setting clear expectations, and maintaining healthy collaborative relationships throughout projects.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Partnership goes deeper than collaboration, speaking to longevity rather than just a moment. Building partnerships allows creatives to focus on their strengths while delegating tasks they don't enjoy or excel at.

• ⚡️ The creative industry thrives when we help each other win instead of competing. There's plenty of opportunity for everyone when we don't gatekeep and instead build each other up.

• ⚡️ Successful creative partnerships start with good communication. Before discussing any other expectations, establish how you'll communicate, what channels you'll use, and what language will mean what.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Partnership is a really fascinating word, even deeper than collaboration, because it speaks to longevity. It doesn't speak to just like a moment." - PJ Towle

• 💬 "We help each other win that way. It's not me versus you... There is plenty of opportunity out there for everybody in the creative space to make their money. We don't need to be in competition with each other." - PJ Towle

• 💬 "Continue building into our strengths and find people that are better at the things that we're weak at. If we can do that in relationship and in partnership and in collaboration creatively, I think that's a win-win-win for me, for my collaborator, and for the client." - PJ Towle

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Connect with PJ Towle at fortythreecreative.com or email him at pj@fortythreecreative.com

• ⚡️ Download Dustin's FREE DO vs. DUE dates framework

• ⚡️ Get Dustin's ebook "Using Asana for Creative Teams"

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you tired of feeling like you have to do it all? And every part of the project solely rests on you. Today, I have a very special guest, PJ Towle of 43 creatives, talk about the balance of creative collaboration. Let's get into it.

Back to the podcast, everybody. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I wanna remind you that I'm here to help creatives know themselves, their process, and their team so that they can create greater things together. We have a very special episode that I wanna dive right into. We're gonna have some resources for you at the end of it. So let's jump right in my conversation with PJ Towle of Forty:Three Creative.

So joining me now is Mr. PJ Towle of Forth:Three Creative. What up PJ? What's up guys? How are you? I'm good. I don't know how they're doing. They can't, I guess they can't hear me. It's not live. It's just you and me. It's just you and me right now, but later. Yeah. It's a bunch of us having this really awesome conversation. So PJ, great friend of mine, client of mine as well. Um, and, uh, I think PJ brings a unique perspective,

for a couple of reasons. Number one, um, it's another Enneagram four. So you don't just hear from this Enneagram for all the time. We're just going to say the same thing though. It's or probably, but you know how, like when your parents tell you the same thing over and over again, and then some other cool leader who's not your parents says this, says that same thing to you. You're like, Whoa, what? I've never heard that before. That's what today's going to be a lot like, or it's going to be like, this is the stuff that I say all the time, but now I got the cool.

like uncle coming in. Okay, okay. And he's gonna tell you the stuff and it's gonna be like, oh, wow, never thought about that way. I don't want to be like, yeah, see. Anyway, so today, we're gonna talk about the balance of creative collaboration. And we talked a little bit offline PJ about how we're going to use this phrase collaboration, kind of use it interchangeably with the phrase partnerships and you and I and some other creatives in our circle have been having conversations a lot about

partnerships, what does that just, let's just broadly start out there, what that means for, what that means to you and then why is it important for you to have partnerships when you're doing what you're doing? Yeah, I think partnership is a really fascinating word, even deeper than collaboration, because it speaks to longevity. It doesn't speak to just like a moment, you know?

I think we talked before about our similar backgrounds between being musicians and working for churches. And as a musician, you can collaborate with somebody on like a, you know, you can songwriter, you can collaborate in a moment or whatever, and do it as a one thing. But when you're making a commitment to somebody, you know, I wanna be in a band with you. I want to, I wanna.

date you and figure out if we're going to get married. You know, it's, it's a partnership where things start to build out that way. And it's not just a short term one-off project kind of situation, which collaboration can mean the depth of that partnership as well, but it doesn't necessarily always look at it that way. Right. And so you PJ and your work, just to backtrack a touch, cause I noticed I kind of jumped ahead. Cause I'm super excited to talk to you about this, but just to back up a touch.

Just give everybody just a brief elevator pitch about what you do. I tell everybody you're fractional CMO, but for those who don't know what that is or creatives are not quite in that marketing side of the circle, what is it that you do? Yeah. So as a fractional CMO, uh, I use the term creative director because it kind of lessens. Yeah. Everybody gets it. It lessens the hype behind it or the like,

pomp and circumstance, but being behind being a C level type of person or whatever. But yeah, so I take, I take on partnerships with my clients that are, my hope is to go deeper with those clients and do a lot for a few number of people versus doing, I'm sorry. Yes. I just said that right. It's doing a lot for a few people rather than doing a little bit for a lot of people. And so in that, my goal is to always build out long-term partnerships.

for creative direction, for strategy, for brand initiatives, for campaigns, for marketing, for video. We have partners for video. There's all those different kinds of moving parts. It's not just always the creative stuff, which is the stuff that we all like the best. Right. But when you get into those partnerships, you got to do the work. Yeah, and so I'd love to hear more about your heart behind.

like why other creatives should care about partnerships. I mean, you and I, and I think this conversation goes pretty kind of on point with the way we're all feeling post-COVID, no matter what age bracket or generation you find yourself in. But specifically in the way that we've been talking behind the scenes, PJ, about partnerships and

Oh, I know a person that can do this and you should talk to them and that kind of partnership and how we could all kind of be serving the same client from multiple different angles. Why is that important? Do you think for all of us to consider? I think the biggest reason that it's so important is because we help each other win that way. It's, it's not me versus you. It's not me versus another designer or another fractional CMO, because not every partnership is right. You know,

Um, not every, every relationship that you end up in in your life turns into a lifelong one. It might just be for a particular season. And so by recognizing that early in conversations, I can say to my buddy Josh, who's also a fractional CMO, Hey man, this might be a better fit for you than it is for me. Why don't you go talk to so and so, um, there is plenty, plenty of opportunity out there for everybody in the creative space to make their money.

Like we don't need to be in competition with each other. If we can help build each other up and not gatekeep, I think, I think we all end up winning. We all end up growing in the world looks better because of that. Right. It's, it's serving the industry as a whole, bypassing those things along. And what I want to clarify too here is that we're not just talking about partnerships in terms of like,

Hey, if you're a designer, find other designers that you can pass work along to that you don't want to do or doesn't fit for you. But it's also like, hey, if you're a layout designer and someone's asking you for web design work or print design work or things like that, like, can you like different types of, you know, avenues there? Can you recommend somebody else to come in or hey, I'd like to collaborate just to get back to the title of the podcast. I like to collaborate with this other person. It's like.

For example, I won't give the details, but PJ and I are collaborating right now on a client for a specific thing that I know that he knows better than me, but I know the client better than he does. And so we are collaborating right now on trying to get the biggest win for the client. It gives PJ a great introduction to the client. It helps me look good to the client because I'm bringing in experts and I'm coordinating the logistics and they don't have to worry about all those types of things. There's a benefit in that.

that type of collaboration. So let's kind of just go, okay, now that we've painted the why, let's talk about how do we get into these partnerships and collaborations, PJ. What qualities, when you're looking for somebody that you either want to recommend or partner with, what qualities make a great creative partner? Yeah, I think the thing that I jump to first is do I like spending time with this person, like being around them.

Are they somebody that I could go grab a beer and wings with and, and walk away feeling, not to use all the forwards, but you know, to, to, to walk away feeling heard and seen and it was a mutually beneficial experience. Right. And when we walk into all of the relationships that way at the beginning, to me, it sets a basis for we're friends first. Right. And I think sometimes we walk into it going.

Oh, this could benefit me financially. This could benefit them financially. And then we get stuck on a dollar amount or a bottom line or a revenue stream or something that becomes more of a problem. But if we're walking into it caring about the person first, caring about the relationship first, then I think a lot of that stuff gets easier down the road because we've built and established a relationship on trust. Got you. Yeah, I totally, totally agree. How.

We talked a little bit about kind of here are some scenarios where you could bring some partner in, but what are some, what are some potential areas that you've seen this as you're in the marketing space? I think of fractional CMOs and don't take this the wrong way, but I think of fractional CMOs is usually they're, they're great creative visionaries, but Jack of all trades, but usually master of very, very few, which if we're, if we're honest, that's a lot of us in the fields.

And if we're even more vulnerable, a lot of us, we talk about offline a lot, a lot of us that have come out of the church world, the ministry world have a lot of that experience too because we had to, it was out of necessity that we had to be a jack of all trades in the creative arts world, right? So, but what are potential collaborators in the creative space for you? Or how have you seen those things come together? Yeah, I have very quickly identified that I do not love

sometimes all of the detail that goes into editing video. So I can do it, but it takes me way longer than it takes my video guy, you know? So I can collaborate with him and hand things off to him and he can process through those things. One of the things that you and I have been talking through even specifically on that front is the proofing, the typos.

the, you know, like you noticed that in processes that I go through is all the number of reviews that are involved. Like let me give creative direction, let me hand it off. Let me QC quality check right at the very end and then we can move on. Those are ideal situations, but photography is another one. Web design is another one. Layout, you mentioned layout design.

I love branding, I love making logos, I love building culture with companies and working their internal language that then informs their external language. So if I can sit in that seat with people and then bring other people in to kind of backfill some of those other processes, I think that's the best, those are the best types of ways for me to do it. But that might not be the case for a video guy. Might not be the case for.

a strategy guy, you know, might be really great at strategy, but he might not be great at sales and client communication. So he might need a partner on that. Yeah, I think the thing that we talk a lot about in our sessions, PJ, and that I talk with a lot of my clients about in the coaching sessions is what are the things that only you can do and the things that have the most value. It's a little bit of that Dan Martell, time and energy audit, buy back your time book kind of situation where it's like,

things that you only you can do and the things that are your that bring you the greatest amount of energy and the greatest amount of joy those are the things that we want to develop your schedule and your kind of ideal week around and everything else are things that we or the conversations we're having right now is what can we put through the focus funnel which if you don't know the focus funnel it's very simple it's just stuff that all the tasks that are on your plate a lot of the things that

There are things that only you can do and you should do, but everything else you can either eliminate, automate, or delegate. And those are areas. I think you put all three of those words together to say, I did, I did. Autogate, autogate, autogate, I like it. Autoglate, maybe that was it. I like it, I like it. But you can eliminate, automate, or delegate these tasks. And so what are some opportunities there for you to do that, to free up your time, to do the things that only you can do and the things that bring you them.

bring you the most energy and then add the most value to your organization. A lot of business coaches will say like, Hey, once you got your business running the way you run it to want it to run, and you can be a solopreneur and still have it run this way. But essentially, at the end of the day, you should be you should be selling and innovating. Those are the two things that at the end of the day that really at the top of the

I, this is my business has got my name on it. These are the things that I can really bring to the table. I need to be selling it and I need to be innovating it so that can we always be growing. Let's move on to expectations. So we've brought some people into the mix now. We've kind of put them through the filter of, okay, yes, you're a good partner to work with. You said it, like we often say, I wanna work with people that I can enjoy a beer with, whether that's beer, coffee, whatever. Yeah, right. Great meal. It doesn't matter.

someone that you can hang out with and enjoy that time hanging out with them and not feel like it's an obligation to hang out with them. Right. But now that you've got that, you've got them as a part of the project, or you you've handed a project, probably, let's just say, this isn't something you're going to hand off. This is something that you're going to work together on. What are some, let's talk about some expectations. What are some clear conversations to have about these collaborations before you even get started on the work? Yeah, I think the first communication or the first conversation is about communication. You have to.

set expectations on what communication is going to look like. The way you just reacted, I think you've said that a few times. No, I haven't. I was like, it was a little bit of a proud coach moment, but also just like, man, that's so good. The first piece of communication is communication. Before all the other expectations, how are we going to be able to talk to each other? If I say this, are you going to understand what I mean? Yeah.

bringing them up to speed on the client, then bringing you up to speed on the client or the project at hand, right? All that stuff. Yeah, I think even all the way down to like, what channels are you gonna use? I am horrible with text messages when it comes to business stuff. I don't know why that is. I think I just think of my phone as more of a personal thing. And so when I'm not sitting at my computer, if a text message comes in that's work related, it's really hard for me to respond to that.

And most of the time, then I accidentally click on it, and then I come back to my computer and I forget to respond to it, and it gets lost, and it's a whole extra thing, right? So even all the way down into the channels of how you're gonna communicate, and the words that you're gonna use, and all of that, I think is so, so important. I think the next one after that is understanding responsibilities and roles. So, you know, my video partner is a perfect example. He knows I can do video, but.

I hired him to do video. Or I'm bringing him in to partner to do video, whatever that situation in a partnership looks like. So he can pick my brain, but I don't want to have to do it. And so we're clear about that up front. But then the same thing goes when he brings me in on a branding project or a website project. He has some of that same know-how as well. So understanding who is doing what, and then trying to stay clear with that.

all the way through, but again, comes back to communication and where we're talking and how we're talking. I think another one is how you, with all collaboration, with all partnerships, is how you handle disagreements, is a conversation to have upfront to set an expectation of that. So we're not always gonna like the same colors. We're not gonna always think that the words are.

uh, think we need to use the same words. We're going to have different ideas and different focuses and different plans. And so if we can discuss that upfront, um, then that's going to really, really help clarify things down the road. And then it's a continual conversation when we get to it of a, Hey, this isn't about you. This is about the product. This is about the project. This is about making sure that our client is getting what they want because it's their vision a lot of times. Right.

their vision, their product, their plan that we're trying to push out. So, and then I think boundaries is probably the other big one that sticks out in my brain of what things are on limits and off limits as far as time, as far as what can be spoken into by those certain people. But I think I also want somebody that's willing to call me on my stuff. Like. Yeah.

Like, oh, hey, I think you might be getting too into the weeds on that. Let's refocus. Oh, you're right. Have those kinds of conversations. And sometimes I think those are easier with business partners than they are with my wife. But I think when we go into everything with open-handed communication, I think that's the best way to set those expectations. Yeah, and just to wrap up the expectation topic as well, I think it's important that we talk

the timeframe, you know, we, we talk a lot about on this podcast and PJ is probably sick of hearing me say it, uh, now, but like, when is the D U E date versus the DO date? Right. So like, yes. When the client wants it March 31st. So then we're going to back up and we're going to give ourselves an internal deadline of let's say March 25th. That way we have some margin in there. Right. But then working with the other person too and going, Hey, they have their own set of.

ways of doing things, right? Maybe you're really productive in the morning and they're really productive in the evening and at night. And there's like, okay, when are we communicating about this thing? It's just finding that ebb and flow of that expectation of time, not only when is the whole thing DUE to the client, but also a time of like, hey, I'm gonna be working during these hours. I'm gonna be working during these hours. Great, so then in that case.

an instant chat situation is probably not going to work if there are two extremely different times a day. Maybe you'll just need to email me when I get back into the mode the next day, I'll hop in on the email and see. Now that's a long distance digital form of collaboration, which is mostly what we're talking about here today. But sometimes a collaboration is right there in the room in the moment together, which again, to honor everyone's time. Hey, this is going to be 90 minutes, we're gonna have a clear agenda up front.

We're going to know what next steps are on the other end of that. And we're going to take it from there. There there are there's time and space. I want to say this to the creative who's listening to this going like, Oh, man, you're putting too much structure around my collaboration. I like to get in there and feel it out and see what happens.

There is a time and a place for that. 100%. Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. You have to have it. It has to be a part of your regular kind of rhythm and grind to creating. What we're talking about here in this particular episode is when we're bringing in collaborations to execute the vision of one of our clients or execute the vision of this particular project that we have in front of us so that we can best serve the vision of that project. Not necessarily a creative.

kind of free for all jam session brainstorm situation, which again, very helpful, very much needed, but not what we're talking about here. Anything you would add to that, PJ? No, I think you hit it right on the head. The difference between a jam band and an orchestra is really, really different. And they all have their moments, they all have their placements, but figuring out how and when to notice those things is really important.

The jam band versus the orchestra. I'm going to have to make some, some products around that. So now we'll quickly go through this next part, part, because this is the part where I lean in the most typically the project management part of we're in, we're in it now. We've been collaborating on this thing. We're going back and forth. We got vision. We got, we got revisions.

We've got all those types of things. What are the kind of the key components for you PJ in this project management phase of collaboration that you've got to have? For me, it's having you on board and anybody that's listening should hire Dustin. I know it was not a setup, but it's so true. Even this morning, I was on a call with a client and putting him through the DUI and DO due dates frameworks in that conversation of.

This is, he's a, he's a coach as well and on something else. And so it's like, This is the day that this project needs to be delivered to your client. So when do you need to have your D O dates for all your pieces so that then I can take it and put it through my team situation and, you know, walking through all that, honestly, your process has helped me immensely in that. And so recognizing that upfront.

to establish workflows and processes and document everything moving forward is huge. I think the way to think about it, the visual I got when you were saying that, especially you quickly said like, hey, you do your part here so that I can do my part here. It's a bit of a handoff, a bit of a relay race. Absolutely. You know, or, you know, it's football handoff.

track and field relay race, just those analogies. If you think about it in that visual that we can't wait, if the project is due again, just go back to March 31st. I don't know why that day stands out in my head. It just does. It's the end of the quarter and I get a lot of stress around it. I don't know. But let's just say it's March 31st is when it's, we're supposed to hand this thing over to the client. If I, yeah, I, if, if you, if I can't do my part until you've done your part, right? Just in order of dependency, right? Like, hey,

this part is me and I can't do it until I have this thing from you, then we have, we have to be able to say, okay, well then I'm going to need that like before March 30th. So that I have more than a day before I have to give it to the client. Right. So it's, it's those types of, I say it all the time on here. It doesn't matter if you use sticky notes or a sauna or whiteboards or whatever this, the project management kind of system that you use.

It's just about a mentality shift of understanding that in order for all of us to get this done, then there are certain times when I'm going to need you to do this thing so that I can do this thing so that this next person on the list can do that thing long before it's DUE to the client. So that's all we'll say about project management. Let's get towards the end of this conversation and let me ask you, how do you know that it's been a success?

working with other creators and creatives in this kind of collaboration partnership model.

Well, you're asking another four. So how does everybody feel at the end of it? Everybody's like, what's the what's the general vibe? Are we happy? Are we? No, I think there's always a constant like I'm a I'm a tweaker. Like I love to like do something and then at the end of it, see what I can do better next time. And so I think.

Again, with the communication piece, I think that comes down to we can have that conversation with the client. Does the client feel like it was a successful launch of whatever product or piece that we're working on for them with their vision? That's a pretty good success or failure metric is if they're happy with it. If they're not happy with it, then okay, what do we need to do better to fix it so that we can relaunch it or so that next time we do something?

we do it right, you know? And that's thinking deeper on, you know, a partnership with a client type of level. But obviously there's financial metrics that you can pay attention to if that's what you're running after. But I think, to use a sports analogy, are we moving the ball down the field the same way? Right. With any project, with any situation? Is...

Was it a success? Would I want to do this project with someone else again, with the same person again? Would I need to bring someone else in for something else to make it run smoother? So it's constantly evaluating that, I think, is really important. The partnership health, you know, at the end of it, did I do 80% of the work, but I was only supposed to do 40% of the work? Right. Which again, comes back to expectations.

Yeah, I wanted to say there too on the partnership health, we talked in the beginning about kind of setting up those expectations with with each other as we're collaborating or with the group as we're collaborating, right. And just saying this is what I expect. This is what you expect. Let's lay it out on the table. You mentioned as we kind of wrapped up some of the project management piece, like it's just kind of cyclical, right. We constantly need to be going back and revisiting this. And I think going back and defining that relationship with with each other as collaborators.

Uh, post project is important as it is pre project pre project. There's a lot of logistics involved. Post project is, do we want to do this again? And what would we change differently if, if, and when that opportunity arises? Yeah. Way back in Oh seven, I was starting out in the design business, just freelance doing way back in Oh seven, it sounds so long ago, but, um, it was.

Yeah, so when I was, I was like three lifetimes ago, when I was starting out with that though, I fell into kind of a relationship with a friend that he was doing the same thing. He was freelancing at the same time. And I was like, Hey, will you look at this piece that I'm doing? And he asked me to do the same. We started brainstorming with each other, turned into a really great relationship to the point that we started a business together. Full on partnership. If you want to break it all down, it was an S corp, you know, that whole thing. But

Um, we did that for seven, eight years, something like that. And towards the end of it, he realized, because we were in constant communication, he realized he wanted to get out of the design phase, the design end of things where we were sharing some of that work. And, uh, he wanted to get into print, um, specifically school yearbook printing. Like apparently there's a really niche market for that and he figured it out and he liked it and so that's what he wanted it to do. And so.

Because we were constantly in those relationship conversations all the way through, there's no hard feelings. It's not like, hey, you're leaving me stranded. You're leaving me bankrupt or whatever. It was a complete open-ended evaluating that all the way through, even to the point that when we still talk now, he's like, man, I always felt bad because you were doing 80% of the work and I was doing 20% of the work. I was like, but that's how we figured it out. Like,

It's just what we did. It was part of it. It was constant communication, constant evaluation. So I think being open handed in that to just make such a huge difference to put people first rather than the business or the goals just helps a ton. Love it. Two things to close our conversation today. Number one, I want to ask if there's anything that we haven't talked about when this topic of collaboration or partnership.

I'd love for you to share that if you have anything else you want to share there. And then number two, what are some ways that we can encourage each other to start looking? What are some action steps that we can take to start looking for collaborators? Yeah. We've covered so much so fast, man. Like, I mean, I feel like you could do a whole series on this whole topic and break it all down. I think I don't think there's anything else to say, but just to reiterate, it all comes down to communication.

clarity of communication makes so much, so much of a difference all the way through in everything. Not just in business collaborations or partnerships or client relationships or your spouse or your kids or any of that, but it all connects. And then I think even too, and this ties into your second part of being honest with yourself on what you are.

good at what you like to do, what you don't like to do, what things you want to spend your time on. And if you are fooling yourself on any of that, it's gonna become pretty clear pretty quick. The second part of all that plays out into being just really in that being honest with yourself is taking, I think a really important next step would be take stock of what you're good at. What do you enjoy doing? What are things that you wish you could hand off?

It's some of the ideal week planning that we've been talking about. It's some of the moving parts of the focus funnel. But in those pieces, being able to say, yes, I can do this, but I really need to hand that off. And so I don't remember if it was John Maxwell or who it was, but we've always gotten told all the way along, work on your weaknesses.

Well, really what we need to do is continue building into our strengths and find people that are better at the things that we're weak at. And so if we can do that in relationship and in partnership and in collaboration creatively, I think that's a win-win-win for me, for my collaborator, and for the client.

Yeah, I'll just reiterate a point and extend further to PJ was saying is just kind of understanding what the what the gaps are. What do you really love doing? There's stuff that you have to do right now that you don't love doing that you can invite somebody else into that process. That's an area open for collaboration as well. I would say to to to just start looking around you in your community and where you're working at already.

to find those people, because you're like, I don't really even know where to find those people. I'm sure there are... They're everywhere. I'm sure there are online resources and chat rooms and Reddit threads and stuff like that, that you could hop on. But just start asking around in your community too, because more often than not, there's more in your community than you think that's there. It's one of the things I've learned in the last year, just kind of having conversations with different people. But great conversation, PJ. If someone wants to collaborate with you...

How do they reach out? Where can they find you at? You can find my website at 43creative.com. There's a contact form. My phone number is on there. You can get ahold of me that way. You can email me at PJ at 43creative.com. That's all spelled out, the word 43. 43 is spelled out, F-O-R-T-Y, right? Oh, yeah, because I forget we're not just video here. We're also people listening. Yeah, so PJ at F-O-R-T-Y.

T H R E E C R E A T I V E dot creative force. Dot com. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get real fancy. So yeah, I'm always happy to have those conversations because I think that, uh, the more that we can link arms and partner, not only do we help ourselves, but we help each other and we build a wall of creatives that way. That would be really hard to knock down when we're all working together that way.

Yeah, we build that we build the industry to and we said that towards the beginning, but just want to end with that as well. Like we don't it's not about competing. It's about building the industry. The industry is thriving that is good for everybody. So just remember that I want to just throw out a quick tool resource for those that are watching and listening. If there's some methods in here that we've talked about, especially around the the do versus due dates, the DO versus DUE dates, I have that free framework you can download

the tools button and free resources, all that stuff. You can find it there. But specifically, if you're just like, I don't really know how to kind of organize projects to begin with, much less breaking somebody else in to the process. I do have an ebook for 10 bucks. You can grab on the website. It's called Asana, Using Asana for Creative Teams. And again, I've saved this all the time. It doesn't matter if you're using Asana or Postnotes or a whiteboard. The concepts in it will teach you how to go from living in this marginless chaos

understanding some peace and margin and being able to get more done than you ever thought possible. So check that out. DustinPeed.com. PJ, thanks for being with us on this episode. I love it, man. Yeah, man. Glad to be here. Until next time. Until next time, we'll talk to you on Creativity Made Easy podcast. See y'all.

Ep 54: Helping Your Team Realize Their Full Potential

SUMMARY

Are you wondering what it's going to take for your team to realize their full creative potential? As a leader, you know that creativity isn't just about individual talent—it's about creating an environment where every team member can thrive. Today, I'm giving you five simple ways to raise the creative tide on your team.

When I was really young in my career (and yes, I know it seems like I'm really young, but I turned 40 this year), I didn't know what I didn't know. I knew I couldn't build and cultivate this culture of creativity that I wanted in my organization on my own. Despite being so naive that I forgot to get leadership on board with what I was doing, I set out to build my dream team of volunteers.

Along the way, I had to make some very difficult and often unpopular moves to shift people off the team. But I also learned not to judge a book by its cover. Some of my most dedicated and creative team members over the years have been the ones that I least suspected to be so creative.

The biggest impact on my team's potential was me speaking into all the potential that I saw in them and in the creative culture that we were trying to build. You can't be silent about it. You need to speak. You need to communicate about it constantly.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Confidence unlocks creativity. When you build confidence in your team members by reminding them of their importance, it builds their self-confidence—and when they have self-confidence, they're able to more freely be creative.

• ⚡️ Repeat your vision until you're sick of it—that's when your team just begins to hear it. Leaders often keep the vision between their ears, but you must repeat it out loud to your team ad nauseam. When you're sick of hearing yourself say it is exactly when your team is beginning to catch the vision.

• ⚡️ What gets celebrated gets repeated. Regularly celebrating wins shows your team that what they create makes a real difference. When they see their work creating impact, their potential skyrockets to new heights.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "The biggest impact on my team's potential was me speaking into all the potential that I saw in them and in the creative culture that we were trying to build. You can't be silent about it."

• 💬 "When you're sick of hearing yourself say the vision is when your team just begins to hear it."

• 💬 "From failure, we learn. From success, not so much." - Meet the Robinsons

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Meet the Robinsons - A powerful movie about celebrating failure as a learning opportunity

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you wondering what it's going to take for your team to realize their full creative potential? Today, I'm going to give you five simple ways to raise the creative tide on your team. Let's get into it.

Welcome back to the podcast everyone. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so glad that you're with me here today. Everything that I do is to help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams more so that they can create greater things together.

If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, thank you so much for listening. I would really appreciate a five-star rating and review. It helps get this content out to more people like yourself who could really benefit from it. If you're watching on YouTube, thank you for tuning in. Would love for you to like, subscribe, ring the bell so you're notified every time I drop new content. This podcast comes out every single Thursday on all those platforms.

You can also find me on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the places at dustinpead, P-E-A-D. And all my work is collectively held at dustinpead.com, including if anything that I'm talking about in these episodes rings true with you or feels like something that you need to really lean into more. I would love to talk to you about that. You can hop on my calendar for free at dustinpead.com. Just click on the Let's Chat button.

So today we're going to talk about helping your team realize their full potential. I did a blog post about this a few weeks back, but I wanted to kind of just dive into it a little bit more conversationally through this podcast platform.

When I was really young in my career—I know it seems like I'm really young, but I'm not, I turned 40 this year—so when I was young in my career, I didn't know what I didn't know, right? That's all of us when we're young in our career. I knew that I couldn't build and cultivate this culture of creativity that I wanted to in my organization on my own. And despite being so naive that I forgot to get leadership on board with what I was doing, I set out to build my dream team of volunteers.

And along the way, I had to make some very difficult and often unpopular moves to shift people off the team. But I also learned not to judge a book by its cover. Some of my most dedicated and creative team members over the years have been the ones that I have least suspected to be so creative.

The biggest impact on my team's potential was me speaking into all the potential that I saw in them and in the creative culture that we were trying to build. You can't be silent about it. You need to speak. You need to communicate about it constantly.

And so there are five things I want to share with you today that you can do to raise this creative tide on your team and allow them to really experience the full potential that may be hidden deep within themselves and maybe even deep inside you as well.

But here's what you need to do as a leader of this team or just someone on this team who's trying to rally everyone to a whole new level. You need to constantly remind your team of these five things.

One, constantly remind them of their importance. Their importance. Listen, each of them is a vital piece of the culture that you're trying to build. You need to remind them of this as often as possible to reinforce the confidence in them. And when you build the confidence in them, it builds their own self-confidence. And when they have their own self-confidence, they're able to more freely be creative.

You know, just like I know, that when you're really feeling it, when you get down in your studio and you get down into the space that you're going to create in, and you're really feeling it and you're full of confidence and you feel like I can create anything today, I can create something super amazing today—you know that that comes from a sense of self-confidence. So you want to build the creative potential in your team. The first thing you need to do is you need to constantly remind them of their importance and that'll build their self-confidence.

The second thing that you need to constantly remind your team of is the vision. The vision. And I know we talk a lot about this as leaders, but it's super important not to keep it just between our ears. You must repeat your vision out loud, not just to yourself, out loud to your team ad nauseam. Like the point where you're sick of hearing yourself say it. And if you hear yourself say it one more time, you just might not believe it.

Whatever the vision is for your team, for your organization, whatever you're shooting for, whatever you're moving towards, you have to say that until you're sick of it. Because when you're sick of it is when your team just begins to hear it. And when they begin to hear it, and they begin to catch the vision of where you're going, their creative potential will skyrocket.

The third thing you need to constantly remind your team of is your potential together. Together, that you're not alone in this thing. No creative person is greater than the sum of the creative team. You need to remind them of all the unseen results that could be seen together, dreams that could be realized, come true if we can work together. Collaboration is going to be a major key. Healthy collaboration is going to be a major key in your team realizing their full potential.

Just remember back to when you felt like you were stuck and someone came up to you and said, "Have you ever thought about it this way? Have you ever looked at it this way?" And even if you may have initially felt kind of, "Ah, this isn't your thing, you know, kind of back off, don't tell me what to do, don't tell me how to create"—when that pride settled and you were able to kind of go, "Huh, maybe they have a point," you realized the potential of what you were creating was so much greater because you let others into the process. And so you need to constantly remind your team of the potential that they have together, right?

The fourth thing that you need to constantly remind your team of is the wins. The wins. If you are leading your team with project after project after project and you're not sharing with them the wins of the projects that they've created, then eventually they're going to start to realize, "What are we even creating this stuff for? What's the point in all this if we're not making a difference?"

Did the client get to meet their goals because of something that we created? Did the organization grow to new heights because of something that we created? Was there really any difference made at all because of what we created? You need to verbalize and celebrate those wins as often as possible because you and I both know that what gets celebrated gets repeated and that's where potential comes in. That's where new heights of potential come in.

And when we can celebrate the wins on a regular basis—and look, do this authentically. Okay? Don't try to go out there and manufacture some mild, false win. Listen carefully to the results of what your team is creating and there will be wins, but don't manufacture it because there's nothing that a creative person hates more than some inauthentic, false, plastic celebration. They want real, genuine response to what they're building.

And so if you can give them that, you're going to see their potential skyrocket. Also, when you're reminding them of these wins—again, I put the word constantly, remind them of these things because this is something that you need to be doing regularly. You need to regularly celebrate the wins. I would say at least once a week, you need to share with your team about how something that they created made a difference, made someone else's life easier, made the organization better, made the client more successful. Whatever it is, you need to remind them of that.

The last thing that you need to constantly remind your team of is opportunities. Opportunities. Now, here's what I don't mean. I don't mean like opportunities that are out there far and beyond. Yeah, that's good to kind of strive for. What I'm really saying here is you need to remind them of how failures are just opportunities. Failures are just opportunities. You need to help them see that it's okay to fail because you're going to collectively learn to be better next time.

One of my favorite movies of all time, if you've ever heard me speak live, you've probably heard me bring this up, is a movie from Disney called Meet the Robinsons. And in this story, I won't blow the cover, but there's this family of entrepreneurs and inventors and they have this young kid sitting at their dinner table who is really excited to show them about an invention that he created. Well, it massively blows up in his face. It's a huge failure and he feels so terrible that he's failed so publicly in front of this family who is really awesome.

And instead of the family going like, "Man, that really stinks that you failed," they celebrated it as if it was the greatest thing that ever happened because they said, "From failure, we learn. From success, not so much." I love this line in the movie. And so there are learning opportunities in failure. You need to constantly remind your team of the opportunities before them in the lens of failure. It's okay to fail—it means you tried to do something. Create space for your team to fail and have those learning opportunities, and you will see their potential skyrocket.

So what do we do with all this? I think you need to put the five things on rotation. I think you need to remind them of their importance, the vision, your potential together, the wins and the opportunities—put them on a rotation. There's five days in a work week. Every single day of your work week, remind them.

Say, "Hey, every Monday, I'm going to remind them of their importance. Every Tuesday, I'm going to remind them of the vision. Every Wednesday, I'm going to remind them of our potential together. Every Thursday, we're going to celebrate wins together. And every Friday, we're going to look at different opportunities."

Now those days may not line up. You may want to start your week with vision or opportunities and end with wins, whatever. The point being is that you're going to have an opportunity there to do these things regularly. And after a few months, if you can commit to the discipline of doing this new habit, I can promise you, almost guarantee you, that after a few months of doing this, you're going to begin to feel the creative potential rising in your team. And you're going to see things coming out of your team that you never expected before.

So if there's any of these five that you need help incorporating into your team or into your own process and system, I would love to chat with you. Go to dustinpead.com, click on the Let's Chat button and hop on my calendar and let's talk about how we can help rise the potential of you and your team just by incorporating these five simple reminders at all times.

Listen, you can do this. It is not so big that you can't do it. Put it in front of you, write it down, write the process down, plan it out and work the process like we always say.

I cannot wait to be with you next time. We're going to talk about some keys to creative bravery. We have the potential now. Let's talk about some things that we can do to raise creative bravery in yourself and your team. I cannot wait to talk to you then. We'll talk to you next time on the Creativity Made Easy podcast.

Ep 53: From Chaos to Clarity

SUMMARY

Are the most creative people in the world just really lucky? You sit in your creative space, put the finishing touches on a masterpiece, and open up Instagram for a well-deserved mental break. A few scrolls later, you notice that the creative genius you follow just released yet another award-winning piece that makes your work look like child's play. How do they do it? Are they really that lucky?

I have a confession to make: I'm a very jealous creative. But what I've learned—even as recently as this morning while writing in my morning pages—is that comparison is the enemy of creativity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Comparison depletes gratitude, which is the fuel of abundance. When you focus on what others have that you don't, you lose sight of how far you've come and what you've already accomplished on your creative journey.

• ⚡️ Being "where your feet are" breaks the comparison cycle. Living fully in the present moment—not anxious about the future or dwelling on the past—frees you to create your best work without the weight of comparison.

• ⚡️ You are exactly where you need to be in your creative journey. You're not ahead, you're not behind. Everything you have today and the success you've achieved is exactly what you're supposed to have at this moment.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Comparison is the enemy of creativity."

• 💬 "External comparison keeps their eyes on their external situation... thus depleting their food source of gratitude, which is the fuel of abundance." - Blake

• 💬 "How you live is truly a choice. What you're going to do and who you're going to do it with. Those are choices only you can make." - Scott O'Neill, Be Where Your Feet Are

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Be Where Your Feet Are by Scott O'Neill - A powerful reminder about living fully in the present moment

• ⚡️ Morning Pages practice - A daily writing practice to process thoughts and emotions

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Are the most creative people in the world just really lucky? You sit in your creative space, you put the finishing touches on a masterpiece and you open up Instagram for a well-deserved mental break. A few scrolls later, you notice that the creative genius that you followed just released yet another award-winning piece that makes your work look like child's play. How do they do it? Are they really that lucky? Let's get into it today.

Welcome back to the podcast everyone. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so glad that you're joining us today. We're going to get into if the most creative people are really just that lucky. It seems like it sometimes. We'll get into it. But before we do, I want to remind you that I'm here and everything that I release content-wise is to help creatives know themselves better, their process and their teams so that they can create greater things together.

If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, thanks so much for listening. I would super appreciate a five-star rating and review. It helps take this content even further to people that are looking for it, just like yourself. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm so glad that you're with us. I would love for you to like, subscribe, ring the bell so that you are notified every time new content gets dropped for you. I release content several times throughout the week and podcast episodes every Thursday.

If anything I say today or any previous podcast episode is resonating with you and you would love to chat with me more about how it works in your unique life scenario, I would love for you to go to dustinpead.com—that's P-E-A-D—for a free consultation on your creative process or whatever it is that you're up against. You can go to dustinpead.com, click on the Let's Chat button and we can chat. You can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn at dustinpead. That's P-E-A-D. Dustinpead.com for your free consultation. Let's chat.

All right, so today I want to talk to you about something that I think we all face as creatives. I think all people in general face it, but today specifically we're going to talk about how it relates to creative people. And that is comparison.

I have a confession to make. I'm a very jealous creative, very jealous creative. But what I've learned, even as recently as this morning as I was writing in my morning pages, and then I'll share with you a note that a friend sent me this morning as well, is that comparison is the enemy of creativity. Comparison is the enemy of creativity.

My friend Blake texted me this morning about comparison. He said, "Hey, I'm kind of in a space this week where I'm thinking a lot about comparison and I wanted to share this note with you and see if it resonates with you at all." And I was like, yes, I actually just wrote in my morning pages this morning that I need to stop comparing my current place in my journey with everybody else's place in their timeline, because what I have today and what's before me today and what I own today and the success that I have today is everything that I'm supposed to have. So why be worried about what I don't have?

And he sent me this note that he wrote in his kind of morning thought time. And it rang so true. And I asked him, I said, "Can I share this? I'm actually recording a podcast episode today about this very topic. Could I share this with everybody?" He goes, "Oh yeah, absolutely."

So I'm going to share the second half of this note. And it rang so true with me. And I think it will to you as well. This is what he says about comparison:

He says, "External comparison keeps their eyes on their external situation. And it drives people to a conversation of haves and have nots, I deserves and it's not fairs. Thus depleting their food source of gratitude, which is the fuel of abundance. Comparison does not drive us to internal development as we are more persuaded to believe that it does, but rather it pushes us to run to the open arms of that most comfortable thing. When we sit, the comparison assures us that all will be well as they lay us down into our grave."

He's using this comparison as, or using this metaphor that comparison is a person and that as we kind of start to freak out, the comparison reaches out to us and goes, "No, it's going to be okay," as they calm us down and lie us into the grave.

Listen, I believe, like I said, that comparison is the enemy of creativity. I think comparison is the enemy of a lot of things, but specifically we're going to talk about today how it's the enemy of creativity. And there are three ways—there are multiple ways, just get that out there first of all—but this is just three ways that I want to share with you today to combat up against this comparison battle we face often as creatives.

First thing, I want you to think about this as like a linear timeline for these three things. So we're going to start on the left of the timeline. Put yourself in the middle of the timeline as the present, right? This is the ghost of Christmas present, right, in the middle of the timeline. On the left side of the timeline, we're going to have the past. On the right side of the timeline, we're going to have the future.

So let's start all the way to the left of that timeline. And I want you to just for a second—I want you to close your eyes. And I want, if you're not driving, don't do it if you're driving. I want you to close your eyes and I want you to remember how far you've come. Think about that for a second. How far have you come in your creative journey? Do you remember the first creative work that you produced and you released into the world? Do you remember how that was? Think about that over time and how you feel now when you release content. What's the difference?

Think about how far you've come in your success. Think about how far you've come in life. All the things that you've been through, the highs, the lows, all of it. And be grateful for it. We've talked on here before, thankfulness is the key, right? Thankfulness is the key to get yourself out of this comparison trap. So the first way to combat up against the comparison battle is to look at that left side of the timeline and remember how far you've come.

The second thing you need to do is you need to—I love this phrase, it came up earlier this week in a separate podcast I was recording with a business partner—and he said, "You need to be where your feet are." And I looked that up. It's actually from a book made famous by Scott O'Neill. It's actually called Be Where Your Feet Are. And in this book, he says this: "How you live is truly a choice. What you're going to do and who you're going to do it with. Those are choices only you can make." That was his aha moment when he realized he needed to be where his feet are. That's so powerful. So powerful.

What you do and who you're going to do it with are only choices that you can make. So in that moment, let's be fully in that moment. Not necessarily worrying about the past. We're going to remember it and be grateful for it. Not necessarily having anxiety about the future or what may or may not happen because that hasn't even happened yet, right? Right here today in this middle of the timeline present zone, we are going to be where our feet are. That will help us stop the comparison battle that goes on in our minds and it will release us to create our best work yet.

So you're going to remember how far you've come. You're going to be where your feet are. And number three, you're going to trust that the end result is going to be all that it needs to be and probably more, if we're honest. And as you look back in that first step and you look at how far you've come, I bet there are many times, multiple times throughout that left side of the timeline where you thought that things were going to turn out mediocre, seven out of ten, right? And you got to the end of it and you're like, "Huh, that actually turned out better than I thought."

It's because you learn eventually over time that the result will probably be better than you think. In your mind you've created this scenario where it's probably not going to be so good because you're comparing it to other people's success, but then when you get there you're like, "Wow, that was actually better than I thought. It turned out greater than I thought. It had a better impact than I thought it would." Now that's not going to be every time.

But I will say that I think as you look at and you step back and you look at the grand scheme of things and you look at the totality of the timeline of what has been your life so far, where you're at right now and the trajectory that it's headed, I think you'll understand that when you get there, it's going to be all that it needs to be. It's not going to be any more and it's not going to be any less. So trust the end result will be all that it needs to be and probably even a little bit more.

So our call to action today, the thing that I would encourage you to do, the thing I'm encouraging myself to do in this episode is to live and work in the confidence that today, right here in this timeline moment, you are exactly where you need to be on your creative journey. You're not ahead of it. You're not behind it. You're exactly where you need to be.

If you need help with this comparison battle and how you can live in the moment and be where your feet are, I would love to chat with you more. Head to dustinpead.com. That's P-E-A-D. Click on the Let's Chat button. Let's just have an honest conversation about where we're at. Just two creatives talking about where we're at and how we can move forward together.

Thank you so much for your time today. I cannot wait to be with you next week on Creativity Made Easy.

Ep 52: Are The Most Creative People Just Lucky?

SUMMARY

Have you ever scrolled through Instagram after finishing a creative project, only to see someone else's "award-winning" work that makes yours look like child's play? You're not alone. As creatives, we face a constant battle with comparison—and it's literally killing our creativity.

The Hidden Truth About Creative "Luck"

Are the most creative people in the world just really lucky? It might seem that way when you're constantly seeing other creators seemingly effortlessly produce masterpiece after masterpiece. But here's what I've learned: comparison is the enemy of creativity.

This truth hit me hard recently during my morning pages routine, and it was reinforced by a powerful message from my friend Blake about how comparison depletes our "food source of gratitude, which is the fuel of abundance."

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ — Your creative journey is unique, and looking back reveals just how much you've accomplished—be grateful for every step of the process.

• ⚡️ — Stay fully present in the moment instead of worrying about the past or having anxiety about an uncertain future—this releases you to create your best work yet.

• ⚡️ — Trust that your creative work will turn out better than you think, just as it has countless times before—the result will be exactly what it needs to be, and probably more.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 —"Comparison is the enemy of creativity."

• 💬 "External comparison keeps their eyes on their external situation and drives people to a conversation of haves and have nots, I deserves and it's not fairs, thus depleting their food source of gratitude, which is the fuel of abundance."

• 💬 "You are exactly where you need to be on your creative journey. You're not ahead of it. You're not behind it. You're exactly where you need to be."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Be Where Your Feet Are by Scott O'Neil

• ⚡️ Morning Pages Practice (Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way)

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Are the most creative people in the world just really lucky? Right? You sit in your creative space, you put the finishing touches on a masterpiece and you open up Instagram for a well-deserved mental break. A few scrolls later, you notice that the creative genius that you followed just released yet another award-winning piece that makes your work look like child's play. How do they do it? Are they really that lucky? Let's get into it today.

Welcome back to the podcast everyone. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so glad that you're joining us today. We're going to get into if the most creative people are really just that lucky. It seems like it sometimes, so we'll get into it. But before we do, I want to remind you that I'm here and everything that I release content-wise is to help creatives know themselves better, their process and their teams so that they can create greater things together.

If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, thanks so much for listening. I would super appreciate a five-star rating and review—it helps take this content even further to people that are looking for it, just like yourself. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm so glad that you're with us. I would love for you to like, subscribe, and ring the bell so that you are notified every time new content gets dropped for you. I release content several times throughout the week and podcast episodes every Thursday.

If anything I say today or any previous podcast episode is resonating with you and you would love to chat with me more about how it works in your unique life scenario, I would love for you to go to dustinpead.com—that's P-E-A-D—for a free consultation on your creative process or whatever it is that you're up against. You can go to dustinpead.com, click on the "Let's Chat" button and we can chat. You can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn at Dustin Pead. That's P-E-A-D. Dustinpead.com for your free consultation. Let's chat.

So today, I want to talk to you about something that I think we all face as creatives. I think all people in general face it, but today specifically we're going to talk about how it relates to creative people. And that is comparison.

I have a confession to make. I'm a very jealous creative—very jealous creative. But what I've learned, even as recently as this morning as I was writing in my morning pages, and then I'll share with you a note that a friend sent me this morning as well, is that comparison is the enemy of creativity. Comparison is the enemy of creativity.

My friend Blake texted me this morning about comparison. He's like, "Hey, I'm kind of in a space this week where I'm thinking a lot about comparison and I wanted to share this note with you and see if it resonates with you at all." And I was like, "Yes, I actually just wrote in my morning pages this morning that I need to stop comparing my current place in my journey with everybody else's place in their timeline, because what I have today and what's before me today and what I own today and the success that I have today is everything that I'm supposed to have. So why be worried about what I don't have?"

And he sent me this note that he wrote in his kind of morning thought time. And it rang so true. And I asked him, I said, "Can I share this? I'm actually recording a podcast episode today about this very topic. Could I share this with everybody?" He goes, "Oh yeah, absolutely."

So I'm going to share the second half of this note. And it rang so true with me. And I think it will to you as well. This is what he says about comparison: "External comparison keeps their eyes on their external situation. And it drives people to a conversation of haves and have nots, I deserves and it's not fairs, thus depleting their food source of gratitude, which is the fuel of abundance. Comparison does not drive us to internal development as we are more persuaded to believe that it does, but rather it pushes us to run to the open arms of that most comfortable thing. When we sit, it naturally assures us, the comparison assures us that all will be well as they lay us down into our grave."

He's using this comparison as, or using this metaphor that comparison is a person and that as we kind of start to freak out, the comparison reaches out to us and goes, "No, it's going to be okay" as they calm us down and lie us into the grave.

Listen, I believe, like I said, that comparison is the enemy of creativity. I think comparison is the enemy of a lot of things, but specifically we're going to talk about today how it's the enemy of creativity. And there are three ways—there are multiple ways, just get that out there first of all—but this is just three ways that I want to share with you today to combat up against this comparison battle we face often as creatives.

First thing. I want you to think about this as like a linear timeline for these three things. So we're going to start on the left of the timeline. Put yourself in the middle of the timeline as the present, right? This is the ghost of Christmas present, right? In the middle of the timeline, on the left side of the timeline, we're going to have the past. On the right side of the timeline, we're going to have the future.

So let's start all the way to the left of that timeline. And I want you to just for a second—I want you to close your eyes and I want (if you're not driving, don't do it if you're driving)—I want you to close your eyes and I want you to remember how far you've come. Think about that for a second. How far have you come in your creative journey? Do you remember the first creative work that you produced and you released into the world? Do you remember how that was? Think about that over time and how you feel now when you release content. What's the difference?

Think about how far you've come in your success. Think about how far you've come in life. All the things that you've been through, the highs, the lows, all of it. And be grateful for it. We've talked on here before, thankfulness is the key, right? Thankfulness is the key to get yourself out of this comparison trap. So the first way to combat up against the comparison battle is to look at that left side of the timeline and remember how far you've come.

The second thing you need to do is you need to—I love this phrase that came up earlier this week in a separate podcast I was recording with a business partner and he said, "You need to be where your feet are." And I looked that up. It's actually from a book made famous by Scott O'Neill. It's actually called "Be Where Your Feet Are." And in this book, he says this: "How you live is truly a choice. What you're going to do and who you're going to do it with. Those are choices only you can make." That was his aha moment when he realized he needed to be where his feet are. That's so powerful. So powerful. What you do and who you're gonna do it with are only choices that you can make.

So in that moment, let's be fully in that moment. Not necessarily worrying about the past. We're going to remember it and be grateful for it. Not necessarily having anxiety about the future or what may or may not happen because that hasn't even happened yet, right? Right here today in this middle of the timeline present zone, we are going to be where our feet are. That will help us stop the comparison battle that goes on in our minds and it will release us to create our best work yet.

So you're going to remember how far you've come. You're going to be where your feet are. And number three, you're going to trust that the end result, it's going to be all that it needs to be and probably more. If we're honest, and as you look back in that first step and you look at how far you've come, I bet there are many times, multiple times throughout that left side of the timeline where you thought that things were going to turn out mediocre, seven out of ten, right? And you got to the end of it and you're like, "Huh, that actually turned out better than I thought."

It's because you learn eventually over time that the result will probably be better than you think. In your mind you've created this scenario where it's probably not going to be so good because you're comparing it to other people's success, but then when you get there you're like, "Wow, that was actually better than I thought it was. It turned out greater than I thought it was. It had a better impact than I thought it would."

Now that's not going to be every time. But I will say that I think as you look at and you step back and you look at the grand scheme of things and you look at the totality of the timeline of what has been your life so far, where you're at right now and the trajectory that it's headed, I think you'll understand that when you get there, it's going to be all that it needs to be. It's not going to be any more and it's not going to be any less. So trust the end result will be all that it needs to be and probably even a little bit more.

So our call to action today, the thing that I would encourage you to do, the thing I'm encouraging myself to do in this episode is to live and work in the confidence that today, right here in this timeline moment, you are exactly where you need to be on your creative journey. You're not ahead of it. You're not behind it. You're exactly where you need to be.

If you need help with this comparison battle and how you can live in the moment and be where your feet are, I would love to chat with you more. Head to dustinpead.com. That's P-E-A-D. Click on the "Let's Chat" button. Let's just have an honest conversation about where we're at. Just two creatives talking about where we're at and how we can move forward together.

Thank you so much for your time today. I cannot wait to be with you next week on Creativity Made Easy.

Ep 51: The Silent Struggle:

Are You Overcommitted in Your Creative Journey?

SUMMARY

If we're honest, we love to say yes to things, right? It feels good. It gives us a sense that we're needed and wanted. But meanwhile, inside, we're slowly building to that inevitable panic attack or mental breakdown. Today we're diving into the silent struggle that's plaguing creative professionals everywhere: overcommitment.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ A healthy version of you creates better work than an unhealthy version of you - without mental margin, you'll never reach your creative potential.

• ⚡️ Every yes is automatically a no to something else - evaluate what you're saying no to just as carefully as what you're saying yes to.

• ⚡️ Graceful honesty about capacity serves everyone better - having honest conversations about your workload benefits you, your team, and your organization.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "A healthy version of me serves others better than an unhealthy version of me."

• 💬 "When you say yes to something, you're always saying no to something else."

• 💬 "If you say yes to everything, you're doing a disservice to all of the things and all of the people because you can't give them your best."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Free Resources

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Listen, if we're honest, we love to say yes to things, right? It feels good. It gives us a sense that we're needed and wanted. And we say yes, we can quiet down the lies in our minds that say we're not good enough because we said yes to something. Truthfully, it's easier to say yes. Saying yes makes other people happy. Saying no makes them disappointed. So we say yes, of course, not a problem.

Meanwhile inside, we're slowly building to that inevitable panic attack or mental breakdown. I've discussed many times here before about the importance of margin, but the place that is the most vulnerable is in between our ears. Today we're going to talk about the silent struggle. Are you over committed in your creative journey? Let's get into it.

Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm here and everything that I release is for creatives to know themselves, their process and their teams better so that they can create greater things together. If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, I want to say thank you so much for listening and I would really super love and appreciate if you were able to leave a five star review and rating for this podcast. It helps the algorithm get this content out further to people who are looking for similar content as you.

If you're watching on YouTube, thanks so much for watching. I would love for you to like, subscribe as well and ring that bell so that every time I drop new content you're notified or if I decide to go live sometime, which I have recently, and you'll be notified of that as well and you'll get to kind of see the live unedited version of whatever I'm about to release. You can follow me on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, all those things at DustinPead. That's P-E-A-D. And if anything that I'm saying today or any previous episode resonates with you and you would like some help implementing these processes, you can go to DustinPead.com. Click on the Let's Chat button and I would love to have a free 30 minute strategy session with you on how we can implement some of these processes in your world today. All right, on to the show.

Today is all about the silent struggle. Now we've talked about mental health on here many, many times, but I want to talk about this struggle of over committing ourselves. So full disclosure, I am a recovering people pleaser.

I am. I loved it. I was raised in a home that kind of taught if you can just please people, then everything will be hunky dory. Well, we all know that that doesn't last very long at the hunky doryness, right? Eventually it fades. And you're left wondering, well, I thought, what else do I need to do to make people happy? Because that's what I'm supposed to do, right? So as long as I please other people, as long as other people are happy. But listen, what we learned over the years and what studies and research and mental health discussions and things like that have taught us is that a healthy version of me serves others better than an unhealthy version of me.

So if I really do want to please people, which deep down I think we all do, I think we all would say I mean I would love to make another person happy. It feels really good right? It feels really good to give a gift, it feels really good to do a good deed, it feels really good to serve other people and to cheer them up when they're down. But you can't do that as effectively as you could if you're unhealthy and unhealthy and people pleasing will lead to unhealthiness.

You also, I want to tell you this, healthy you creates a greater work than an unhealthy you. A greater you creates a greater work than an unhealthy you. And so we have to learn to recognize what we're saying yes to and what we're saying no to. So without mental margin, you're never going to be able to create your best work.

When I was young in my career, right, I got into full time ministry when I was 22 years old and I thought I could do it all. I managed three departments of a small growing church and I managed this for a couple few years right but eventually I realized that if I wanted to create greater things then I'd have to start letting go and saying no to some things. There's only but so far I can go saying yes to everything. So I empowered other leaders around me, I delegated, I let go of perfection, big one there, and with it my influence and my work grew to new heights that I had never seen before.

You need to understand that when you say yes to something, you're always saying no to something else. That's not a brand new concept. That's not some big revelation. It is simply a reminder for you today that by you saying yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else. And what you're saying no to needs to be evaluated just as much as what you're saying yes to.

Now if you say yes to everything, you're doing a disservice to all of the things and all of the people that are associated with the things that you said yes to. Now I know you think you might be serving them by saying yes, but you're actually doing them a disservice because you can't give them your best. You can only give them what fractional percentage of yourself is left to give, which is not much because you said yes to everything. Right.

So if you can't give your best, which is what you desire to do when you're stretched too thin, right? You may be in a position where you can't make this decision on your own though. You may be in a position where it's like, well, I don't have control over what I get to say yes to in all areas of my life. I would be willing to bet there are definitely a portion of your life where you get to say yes to maybe a situation though, professionally at work where you're not able to and things are handed down to you and you're just do as you're told. Right. But listen, that's totally understandable.

But you can gracefully be honest with your boss and let them know that if they want greater work from you, you're going to have to let go of some things. You're going to have to let some ball drops. And I can promise you that your boss will appreciate that conversation far more than they will if you just say yes to everything and then drop the ball constantly. They want honesty just like you do at the end of the day.

So if you're going to shuffle some things around in the name of greater work, you're going to need to be prepared to deliver. So if you go to your boss and you say, listen, if I could just take an X, Y, and Z off my plate, then I could give you a B and C at a hundred percent, be prepared to deliver. Then if they're willing to work with you and give you that opportunity, you need to take it and you need to capitalize on it because those things are a moment for you to prove what you can do with that mental capacity. And I can promise you that if you, if you do what you said you're going to do, you will be happier for it. Your boss, your company, your organization will be happier for it. You'll have way more mental energy.

Now, if you're, so if you're going to shuffle things around, be prepared to deliver. The good news is that you will be able to deliver, like I said, due to all the mental margin that you just created. So this is not an excuse, right? You're gonna go to your boss and say, I just have too much on my plate. I don't know which way is up and down. And then they move some stuff off your plate and they give you some priority of some things. And they say, these things are priority. You can let these things fall a little bit. And then you just go back and you just kind of twiddle your thumbs at your desk because now you don't have the pressure of all the things. You only have the pressure of some of the things that will not pay off.

That doesn't serve yourself in the long run and doesn't serve your organization immediately. So if you're going to make some margin, if you're going to work with your boss, your leader, your team or whatever to create some margin and to create some things that you can say no to, you're going to have to be prepared to deliver those things, but you can because of the margin that you just created in your mind. It's a different mindset that we need to step into.

Ultimately, I know mindset is a buzzword right now, but the mindset here is that knowing when to say no and knowing that saying no is not a bad thing. It's rather a great thing for you and everyone around you. I think we so commonly associate the word no with a negative result, right? Which is so funny to me, right? Because I hear all the time in comedy or show that I'm watching or somebody like that. And they get test results back for what could be, you know, a really traumatizing disease or illness that they have been diagnosed with. Right. And they get the test result backs and the doctor comes in the room and he says, it's negative. And they're just like, negative is bad. Right. In that case, negative is good. You don't want that thing.

So it's the same mindset here. Think of the things that you get to say no to as the things that you don't need in your life right now. Maybe it's not for today. Maybe it's for tomorrow. Maybe it was a good opportunity for you three years ago but not so much now. Saying no can be just as much of a good thing as saying yes. It's all about your mindset moving forward.

So here's what we're going to do moving forward. You're going to be gracefully honest with yourself first and then gracefully honest with others. Notice I say gracefully honest because you're gonna have to have some grace, gonna have to have some patience, you're gonna have to have some tact when you say this. You can't just walk into your boss's office and say, I'm not doing all this anymore or walk into your home at dinner time and be like, I'm not fixing dinner tonight. That's not gonna go over well. You need to gracefully ask for some opportunities to say no to some things if it's out of your control. If it's in your control, then you need to with wisdom and grace and tact. Understand, be honest with yourself. This may not be for today. This may be a future me thing or this may have been something that yeah, probably would have been great a while back, but not for me right now. So be gracefully honest with yourself and with others.

If you need help kind of working through some of this stuff and what to say yes to and what to say no to, I would love to hop on a call with you. You can go to DustinPead.com, click on the let's chat button, get on my calendar and let's talk about your unique situation and how I can help you say yes to the right things and no to the right things so that you can gain the mental margin you need to create your best work ever.

Thank you all so much for joining me this week on Creativity Made Easy. We'll talk to you next week.

Ep 50: The Commonplace

SUMMARY

As creatives, we're constantly bombarded with ideas, feedback, and inspiration. But how often do those brilliant thoughts slip away because we didn't have a system to capture them? In this episode, I dive deep into the concept of the "commonplace" - a simple yet powerful tool that can transform your creative process from chaos to clarity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: Choose ONE capture tool and stick with it for at least 90 days to build the habit.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Categorize your captures to make weekly reviews more efficient and actionable.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Schedule a weekly review session to process your captures and move items into your planning system.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "We as creatives can be the most scatterbrained people on the planet. We have a plethora of ideas, feedback, social hangs, memos, briefings, all filling our minds on an endless cycle of information."

• 💬 "In order for a change to happen, a change must be made."

• 💬 "Your commonplace is no good if you don't return to it regularly."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Austin Kleon's Newsletter - Where I first learned about commonplace journals

• ⚡️Full Focus Planner - My weekly planning system

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone, I'm Dustin Pead and today I want to talk to you about the commonplace. Episode 50 of the Creativity Made Easy podcast. Let's face it, we as creatives can be the most scatterbrained people on the planet. We have a plethora of ideas, feedback, social hangs, memos, briefings, all filling our minds on an endless cycle of information. This ultimately leads to a mental breakdown or constantly dropping the ball. We need a tool that can help collect all of this data for the greater good of ourselves and those around us. Today we're going to talk about the commonplace. Let's get into it.

Welcome back to the podcast everyone. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I want to remind you before we get started that I'm here and all the content that I'm releasing throughout the week - I'm here to help creatives know themselves, their process, and their team so that they can create greater things together. If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, I would super appreciate a five-star rating and review. This really helps get the content out further on people's algorithms as they're searching for different ways to increase their creativity and process and productivity and all the things that we talk about here on the show.

If you're watching on YouTube, I'm so glad that you're here. I would love for you to hit the like button, the thumbs up, subscribe, ring the bell. Every time I drop new content, you'll be notified or in the case of recently, as a couple of weeks ago, if I go live, you'll also be notified. So from time to time, I'll do a live podcast recording on here and you get to see all the unedited raw version. Trust me folks, it ain't pretty.

You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, all the socials at Dustin Pead, P-E-A-D. And if you're interested in anything that I'm saying, and if you need some help, someone to come alongside you to coach or consult you in these processes with you or your team, I would love for you to visit dustinpead.com for a free consultation on your creative process and your work.

All right, on to the show. Today we're going to talk about the commonplace. I first discovered this term "the commonplace" or "commonplace journal" from Austin Kleon. Now if you've listened to my show or watched any of the content that I've put out before or follow me on social media, you know that I'm a huge Austin Kleon fan. Austin Kleon wrote the book and a series of books called "Steal Like an Artist," "Show Your Work," and then "Keep Going" were the three books, but "Steal Like an Artist" kind of changed the game for a lot of people. And he's pretty famous for that.

So I was following him and I subscribed to his Substack newsletter that he puts out every week, a lot of times during the week for some small stuff, but on Sunday he'll release a bigger version for everyone. I was listening or reading that and I noticed that he was talking about this commonplace journal a lot. And so I began to dig into it. I asked for one for Christmas. I got one because I'm a journal nerd, full confession. Journal nerd. If I had eight journals that would fill my soul. I also know that I can be a little bit too scatterbrained sometimes and eight journals may not be the best thing for me.

So recently in the last few months, I've began to kind of narrow down my eight journals and now I only use three real writing devices. I use my Full Focus planner, which we've talked about on here before. I use my Remarkable, which I just got turned on to at the end of last year for all my mind dump and note taking stuff, which we'll talk a little bit about today. But then I also use this little book called a commonplace journal.

Now for me, I use my commonplace journal as a place to kind of put one thought or one quote that I heard every day in there. Now the commonplace journal that I got is made for an entry a day every day for five years. And so I'll be able to kind of put that up on my shelf one day, hand it down to my kids, and they'll have a book of quotes and wisdom that I curated over a span of time in my life.

But today, more specifically, I want to talk to you about a commonplace for you to capture all your thoughts and capture all your ideas. A commonplace traditionally is some type of personal compilation of knowledge of ideas, quotations, observations collected by an individual, but it's also a place for you to kind of dump everything that comes into your head. Because if we keep it all between our ears, trust me, it's going to end in mass chaos and failure. And you're not going to know where it came from. You're not going to know which way is up.

So I was reading this morning, actually, in a different Substack newsletter, which if you're not reading some of these writings on Substack, there's some fantastic writers out there. I myself am on Substack. I release content on there a couple of times a week. Some extra content for paid subscribers and then a free newsletter that goes out every Sunday, kind of recapping all the content that I've released or curated throughout the week.

But I was reading one this morning from Nick Baker. Nick Baker has this fantastic newsletter that he releases every Tuesday and it's called Tuesday T-W-O-S-day because he covers kind of two topics in that newsletter every week when he releases it. And today he was talking about this kind of place, these lists for people to kind of, and why he uses lists and why he loves lists so much and kind of encouraging people as a way to like, hey, you kind of need some lists to create some order in your life, which we'll talk about in a second.

But he says this in his write at the top of his newsletter today and it stood out to me and I was like, I have to share this on the podcast with y'all. He says, "I have to-do's, gratitude list, even friends list. My lists sometimes have lists. They help me visualize order amid chaos. They also give me a mental framework for making decisions." I want to say that again. "They help me visualize order amid chaos." That's what lists do for him. "And they also give me a mental framework for making decisions."

Listen, I know as a creative you love to kind of live in the free spirit world, but order will always trump chaos. If you're a believer like me, you know that our God is a God of order, right? He's not a God of confusion. So if you are kind of fed up living in this constant mental chaos of like, I just don't even know which way is up. I don't - I'm constantly dropping balls. I'm constantly forgetting things. I had an idea. I don't remember what it was. It could have been life changing. Who knows? I didn't write it down.

Listen, in order for a change to happen, a change must be made. I heard a pastor that I worked under for several years say this many years ago and it kind of blew me away. It sounds so simple, right? Obviously in order for a change to happen a change must be made. But for me something clicked in my mind and it was a mental kind of awakening of like oh yeah, if I don't want to live like this anymore - fill in the blank whatever it is for you - I have to change what I'm doing. Otherwise, it's going to continue to be the same thing over and over again and that stuck with me for many years. So in order for a change to happen a change must be made.

Listen, in order to recognize the constant feed that's coming your way, you need to have one consistent place where you can jot down ideas and return to that place regularly. I suggest once a week and I would say schedule time to review this place of notes, this place of ideas.

I've gone back and forth over the years on different types of tools. This could be as simple as an iPhone notes app. Or it could be Evernote if you're still using Evernote. God bless you. It could be a field guide that fits in your pocket. I did that for a while. It could be sticky notes. I worked with a person who had sticky notes all over the wall of their desk area and it worked for them. They didn't forget anything. And that was what worked for them. So sticky notes, journals, Remarkables, Full Focus planners, whatever it is, you have to find one place to mind dump all of these things, one common place to put everything and then you, secondly, you have to return to it.

Using just this tool only, right? So this one place, you may have a place for work stuff, you may have a place for personal stuff, a place for family stuff, a place for side hustle stuff. You need to kind of bring all of those things into one place so that when you're dumping the idea, you're dumping the thought down, you're dumping the thing that you know you need to do later. It can all live in one place so that when you go to review it, because that's the part of remembering it, right? When you go to review it, you don't need to spend mental energy trying to figure out now where did I write that down at? Right? How many times have we said that? Now, where did I write that down? Now, where did I put my keys? Right? It's because we didn't put them in a common place. If you put it in a common place then when you return to it you can know exactly where it's at and you can get to the business of remembering what it was that you want to do.

Your common place is no good if you don't return to it regularly. That's why it's called a common place right. We've had areas like when I was in college there was a place called the Commons right. It was the area that everybody knew if you wanted to go hang out that's where you went. There's a common place for things in your life, right? There's a common place that you park your car at your house. There's a common place where you sleep at night. So why not have a common place for you to put down all of your thoughts and all your ideas, return to that place at least once a week, if not at the end of every day, review what you have there. And then from there, you can put it into your processes and systems that we've talked about before, or that you have that work for you and go from there.

Now, this may be a brand new kind of concept or habit for you. Or maybe you heard about it before and you've tried it for a couple of days and it didn't work. Let me just tell you, research shows for the most part, habits take anywhere from 60 to 120 days to really take hold. That means doing that one thing every single day for at least two to four months. So if we meet in the middle, we're going to say 90 days. You need to practice this daily seven days a week for 90 days. Put yourself a little hash mark somewhere so that you can remember yesterday I did it yesterday I did it. You do that every day for 90 days if you consistently use this commonplace and return to it each day for 90 days I can 100% guarantee that you'll have increased creativity, increased productivity and increased mental capacity and energy in every area of your life.

Now what I would also encourage because you're bringing all these things into one place, let's not just throw it in a big pile like someone who's really bad at keeping receipts and just go, okay, somewhere in here is the receipt for that one thing that I bought for my business and somewhere in here is that one receipt that I bought for that thing that I need to return to Lowe's. You're going to want to categorize this list a little bit.

So what I'm currently back to using, what's worked for me, I keep coming back to it every time because it works for me more than anything else. The one thing that I have with me all the time no matter where I'm at is my phone. Unfortunately it is what it is. It may not be the greatest habit in the world but I always have my phone with me. Right now it's right here. You can't see it on the screen if you're watching but I have my phone right here and so if I have an idea in the middle of this you won't know it because you'll see the edited version afterwards but I'm going to pause it. I'm going to open up my notes app where I have pinned to the top of it a commonplace kind of mental note right there and I'm going to go to the category of whatever the idea is if it has to do with business I'm going to go to my business category and just add it as a bullet a bulleted item and I'm going to go from there.

Now I use in that like a checklist situation so that as I'm dumping things in there it's creating new checklist items for me. Then when I review it at the end of the week or at the end of the day, usually for me, I review it every Sunday night when I'm doing my Full Focus planner weekly preview. And when I review it, then I have an opportunity then to add those things that I need to add. Say this is something that needs to happen this week, like the upcoming, as I'm planning out my week, then I'll go ahead and move it to my Full Focus planner, make sure it gets done. And then as I moved it to the planner, I'll check it off of that commonplace list so that I know, okay, it's in a safe place now. It's in a better place. It's in my Full Focus planner. It's going to get done now. And now I've taken the idea from who knows where I've put it in my commonplace, right? Then I reviewed in a categorized commonplace and then I reviewed it at the end of the week. And then I put that item into my Full Focus planner, which I know for me and my disciplines, if it goes into my Full Focus planner, it will get done. If it doesn't, it won't.

So that's my kind of ebb and flow. So categorize it. You may have a family section. You may have a relationship section, a personal section. You may have a business section. You may have a section of habits that you want to form one day. Go ahead and jot it down. You may have like, hey, you know what? I need to call my guy at Edward Jones and see how my 401K is doing. Just jot it down. Hey, this week I said, hey, I need to open up this account at this place. So I'm going to go ahead and jot that down. I put it in my commonplace. It made its way to my Full Focus. And yesterday, I got it done.

So there's a process here of taking the idea, putting it in the place, the one place that you're going to review constantly and go from there. So what do you need to do next? Here's what you need to do. You need to find this one place or this one tool that works best for you. For me, it's iPhone app. Like I said, it could be sticky notes, could be a journal, could be a Remarkable, could be a tablet, could be anything, any sort of device that gets you to write it down, whether it be digitally or physically, just get the thing captured, just get it down. And then you're going to return to it daily or weekly. Weekly at the most. Don't go more than seven days without returning to this list because if you do, you'll lose it as a habit. Your mind will forget, oh no, that's the place we go to dump ideas at. That's the place that we go to kind of drop this in. If you don't do it at least every seven days, you're going to forget it.

So find yourself the one tool, go to it at least every week as you're planning out your week. I promise you, you'll have way more mental energy clarity. So if you would like help with this, I would love to hop on a call with you, a free 30 minute session with me. You go to dustinpead.com, click on the let's chat button, hop on my calendar, and I would be happy to walk through this and how it could work for you personally.

I cannot wait to talk to you next week on another episode of Creativity Made Easy. We'll see you then.

Ep 49: BEHIND THE SCENES

Your Ideal Week with ‪@darrenandrewcooper‬ of 1898 Creative

SUMMARY

Ever feel like you're constantly switching between tasks without making real progress? In this special behind-the-scenes episode of Creativity Made Easy, I sit down with my friend Darren Cooper, owner of 1898 Creative in Indianapolis, to coach him through creating his ideal weekly schedule using energy zone optimization.

This isn't your typical podcast episode—it's an actual coaching session that Darren generously allowed me to share because the insights were too valuable to keep private. If you've ever struggled with time management, energy depletion, or feeling scattered throughout your workday, this episode will give you a practical framework to transform how you structure your week.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: Identify your natural energy zones and protect your Green zone time for high-value activities that only you can do.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Batch similar types of mental work together to minimize context switching and maximize deep focus periods.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Use tools and boundaries to protect your most productive time, treating it as non-negotiable for business growth activities.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "80% of your time, if you can afford it, needs to be up here [high-value activities]. 20% of your time you can afford being down here to keep you connected to what the real work looks like, to keep you humble, to keep you hungry."

• 💬 "You're not planning. You're setting boundaries for yourself. That's what you're doing. You're setting boundaries."

• 💬 "By you not doing [the low-value tasks], you're denying [your team the opportunity to grow]. So don't feel bad about it."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Asana - For project management and task batching

• ⚡️Calendly - For protecting your schedule boundaries

• ⚡️"At Your Best" by Carey Nieuwhof - For understanding energy zones and optimization

• ⚡️"Buy Back Your Time" by Dan Martell - For the delegation framework and time auditing

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

You have one... let me go on video. You have 100% permission to use this to scale your content creation to millions of people. Awesome, I'm gonna use it.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant, and I'm very excited today to bring to you a special episode—a little bit of a peek behind the curtain in one of my coaching sessions, consultation sessions with a good friend of mine, Darren Cooper. He's the owner of 1898 Creative out of Indianapolis doing incredible video work, sharing different stories of brands through video.

I've known Darren for a long time and I was super excited to sit down with him recently to kind of help coach him through some organizational processes around his ideal week and really help him get the most out of his time as we entered into 2024. We recorded this back in December over what at the time was just a private Zoom conversation between the two of us. But as you already heard right here in the beginning, Darren was like, "We need to share this with people." And so I'm super excited to share that with you. I'm so thankful for Darren being willing to kind of share and open up this learning process for all of you.

If this is something as you're listening to this that you would love for me to come alongside and help you with, you can go to dustinpead.com, click on the "let's chat" button, and I would love to walk through this process with you as well.

So today's gonna be a little bit longer of an episode. If you're watching on YouTube, I want to thank you for doing that. I want to encourage you to subscribe, like, ring the bell. Every time we drop this content, you'll be notified. If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, thank you for listening. I would love for you to leave a five-star review as it helps get this content out even further.

Because it's a little bit longer of an episode, I'm just going to go ahead and jump right into it. Here is my session with 1898 Creative's Darren Cooper.

Let's talk ideal week.

We do, man. Let's talk it, man. I've been on the phone all day today, so it'd be good to talk this stuff so that I plan things like this where it's done in a legit succinct way. This made sense. I had back to back calls today. It was like, "Oh, this is nice. I should tell Dustin I should do it this way."

Right, or it's like when do you take calls and when do you set up meetings and that type of thing? Have you read, listened to, or watched a YouTube video or anything like that on Carey Newhoff's "At Your Best"?

I have not, no.

Pull that up. It would be worth a YouTube watch if I'm sure there's something out there whether it's him or someone else, but I'm gonna break it down for you here. Carey Newhoff's "At Your Best" talks about—it's very similar to kind of what you did already with your energy audit, but "At Your Best" talks about energy zones.

It says that everybody has a certain amount of hours of these three energy zones. Typically you only have two to four really green zone hours a day, and then you'll probably have three to four red zone hours during the day while you're awake. And then the rest will be yellow.

So he says in your green zone, this is where you want to do the heaviest thought type stuff. If you happen to write a script or storyboard, or if it's an edit that's gonna take you some really deep thought, this is where you want to do it in that green zone.

Yellow zone is more meant for things that you can either do on autopilot or have minimal brain interaction. So these might be for a lot of people their meetings, their calls, their admin type stuff usually falls in yellow zone.

Red zone, he says, is the only thing you're good for here is if it requires zero thought whatsoever.

Now I will tell you the standard that probably 99% of the people in the world, their zones look like this: They're typically green sometime between like 7 and 11 AM. They're typically yellow then for a couple of hours from like 11 to 2, then they might get a little bit more burst of green from like 2 to 3, and then they're red from like 3 to 6 or 7, and then they may be yellow until bedtime. This is typical.

But what the book asks, what the book kind of designs, is a way for you to be able to evaluate and determine the schedule for yourself. When looking at your ideal week, I think it's important to look at the stuff that Dan Martell had you do, but I also think it's important to look at your energy zones, which you could probably—what I just did, what I just showed you is probably all you're going to see in a YouTube video. He may talk about how to determine your energy zones a little bit better, but most of us, as you get to understand what these three zones are, then you get to understand you'll start seeing where you fall in at.

So this is the reason. This is pretty much me.

Yeah, I would echo that. Yeah, 99% of people would. The only people that won't are people that are extremely not morning people. Most of those people don't have kids, and theirs might be flip-flopped. Theirs might be flip-flopped where they're heavy green zones would start to kind of hit right around in here. Rather than a true musician—I mean, you know what I mean? Like the ones that are just like, "I was up until 2 in the studio and then I slept till 11 and then I'm just getting my day started by noon or 1." Like those types of people still have similar breakdowns, it just moves. It just flip flops.

Now he probably has findings—now since he released this book a couple of years ago, he's probably seeing similar results, but for the most part, this is everybody's zones.

So with this in mind, I try to look at building my days and my weeks out with these things in mind. As much as I have control, where this really comes into play is with my calendar and my meetings. I will typically protect—and he'll tell you this too—you want to protect at least the bulk of your green zone. You might have a little green zone here, but you really want to protect the bulk of your green zone as much as possible because that's where you're going to get 80% of your work done for the day is going to be in that zone right there.

So when for you in particular, I would look at yes, Calendly, yes meetings, but I would also look at shoots as much as in your control. I know things like an Early Wine or a Stone Table breakfast, like those things are kind of out of your control, but as much as you can control, if you can get shoots to live in these zones right here, you'll be way more productive because you've completely opened up that time right there.

Yeah, and that's where you're going to get the majority of your stuff done. So when I'm looking at your thing and you've got eight edits to do that day, you could probably knock out at least six of them right around in here if it was blocked out and didn't have any of these things over here blocking that up.

Right, or you might look at an admin thing and you go, "Oh well, that's easy. I'm going to start the day with an easy win." That's the easy trap, right? Because what happens is you'll start doing this admin thing and this admin thing and this admin thing, and next thing you know, it's 10 AM and you've wasted half of this time up here.

This also speaks to just even like starting work because normally I'll come down in the mornings and help some with the kids and then do that, and then all of a sudden it's 9 o'clock and it's probably a conversation of, in '24, I have to start work at at least 8.

Yeah, and it's all rhythms too. I will tell you that for me, I do seasonal rhythms. A lot of people call them routines. We call them rhythms in our house. This comes from my wife because she's smarter than me, but we do seasonal rhythms because they're more flexible than routines. Routines are more rigid.

So literally every time the seasons change—winter to spring, spring to summer, summer to fall—I have a running note on my phone that lists out, "This is going to be my flow for my kind of what my mornings will look like, what my midday will look like, what my evenings will look like." And that's how I'll run it because like you're saying right now, "Oh yeah, well then this makes sense. I need to sit down with my wife and just tell her what's what and tell her I'm coming downstairs at 7 o'clock and it doesn't matter if she needs my help or not."

That's probably not going to fly. You know what I mean? I did not say that. It would be great if we could start working at 7 AM when we had our green zone, but that's not realistic for either one of us in this season. But it might be in a different season. It might be by the time you get to spring, things have changed, different people have different schedules in your house, and you have different things going on. Or summer—if your kids go to public school, summer rhythms are different than other rhythms. So that might open itself up more and you just kind of have to be willing to give and take a little bit.

I use probably really 7 to 8:30—so I'm using about an hour and a half of my green zone every day not working, but with my family. Because right now, what my rhythm looks like is if my wife can wake me up in time, I'm up by 6 and I'm trying anyway. So 6:30, some kind of physical activity, some kind of workout, Peloton, something or other. And then I'm praying, reading scripture, doing my morning pages, which has been amazing, especially with the Remarkable. It's been really, really great.

I'm doing all that, then by 7 o'clock-ish Sarah and I are going for a walk together because our kids are old enough now where we can leave them at home for 15 minutes alone without having to worry about them killing themselves. And then we'll come back.

What's that like?

It is refreshing, but I will tell you I do miss the early days. It was easier. Every parent has said that.

Well, I'm just telling you, my boy turned 13 this year and I died a little bit inside. So don't wish the time away.

So we walk together and then we'll come back and we'll do some coffee. We'll read or talk depending on if we have anything to continue talking about from our walk. And then at 8 o'clock I'm reading with my daughter because I'm trying to get her in the habit of reading her Bible every day. Right now she won't do it unless I do it with her. And then my goal is to do my workday startup by 8:30.

Now my workday startup is something from the Full Focus and what they'll tell you—and the workday startup, they basically say you need to have an intentional kind of ease into your workday. Like what gets your brain firing on it? My buddy Blake, he spends on his workday startup—I just talked to him about this yesterday. He spends his workday startup doing 20 minutes of like creative thinking on anything. He'll pick a topic that he's got a project in front of him or something like that, and he'll just pull out his Remarkable and he'll just write ideas down and stuff like that for 20 minutes to get himself cranked into the day.

Me, I check email, confirm calendar things. Now that I've got Slack with you and another organization, I'm checking Slack, responding to things that I might've missed overnight. That type of thing. And then I'm usually reading something called The Pour Over, which is like a nonbiased global news email that I get twice a week kind of thing. So I'm doing this and then by 9 o'clock I'm hitting the first thing on my list.

Now you might look at that and go, "Well, you just wasted two hours of your green zone," but it's about priorities, right? These things are priority to me right now. Do I want to—that's why the book is called "At Your Best." Do I want to give my best to these things? Yeah, I do. Because to this point, 3 PM to 7 PM, I am pretty shot. Especially 5 to 7. And I'm the one that does a lot of the cooking. I usually walk upstairs right into the kitchen and it's like, dude, I—and you've been talking about like work cool downs or whatever you call it where they shut down. I would really love to do the Peloton there rather than the morning. I was just telling Sarah that.

We were talking about that recently, but I just know in my season right now, it doesn't work for me because I have to take Aubrey to gym on Mondays and Thursdays. Wednesdays we have to have an early dinner because Ethan has students that really only on Fridays is our pizza and movie night. And I'm usually, I end my day a little earlier on Fridays. That really only leaves Tuesday for me to actually do what I want to do on a workday shutdown.

Right, so normally I'm even thinking like, you know, workday shutdown of like just go walk outside for a second.

I've done that and it's great. I have not—I've done that maybe seven times this year. It's like every time I do it, I'm like, "That was the best decision I've ever made."

An easy thing there is tell your family, "No one gets to check the mail but me." And when you end your work day, just go walk to the mailbox.

That's a good one. You have a purpose. You're out there. It's not like, "What am I even doing? I need to be starting dinner," you know, something to do. Or if you have a dog, go take it out in the backyard, whatever. Those are really great things. And in the summer, get barefoot with it and step in the grass, get in them. You know what I mean? It sounds kind of new agey, but it really doesn't. I've been watching those videos where they have like the electrical pulse and stuff where you—I don't get it. And when you take it off, you do like weird wild stuff. I mean, you think the creator of the universe is pretty epic. You think he figured out stuff like that.

Well, dude, I echo that. And what's funny to me is as I'm hearing you say this, these are things I'm already practicing subconsciously in some way, shape, or form. But now it is that intentional and it's hilarious because I feel like I'm very—you said 99% of the world's like this anyway, but this is very much me. And what I'm trying to do is I've actually been trying to get up at 5:30. I've failed this last week, but I'm up by 6, I'm trying to beat my kids awake. I just like, if I could do some like coffee reading and prayer and some stretching before they wake up, I am golden.

That's why Sarah would get up at 4 if it didn't mean that she would be crashing by 7:30 or 8, but she's like—she's the one that's kind of taught me how to like, if we can get up before the kids get up, then we can actually have a minute to ourselves with the Lord, with each other. Those types of things and like I say seasonal and I am an external—this is learning Enneagram stuff and learning all that. I am an external motivator. I need external things. So like if I knew that you were gonna be on Zoom at 4:30 in the morning, you know where I'd be? I'd be on Zoom before 4:30 in the morning because that is my—that's the way that I do it.

So maybe it's that'll help me if I go, "Hey, Lauren, let's get up together." And then we can kind of maybe, you know, motivate each other. She's not as much of a morning person as I am. So it would be—there's always one, right? Like Sarah's more of a morning person than I am. Like right now in the winter, it is way, way harder for me to get up than in the summertime when the sun's coming through the windows. It's a lot easier for me to get up. Getting up while it's still dark outside, I think, is a bit of a—and winter should be banished back to hell where it belongs.

Maybe part of this then is even though you're not a morning—dude, I'm up for any of that stuff. It's way easier for me to get up in the summertime than it is right now. But that's why I say it's seasonal rhythms. You're going to—especially, this is one of those things where you're going to look at it and you're going to plan your quote unquote ideal week and you're going to get to April and you're going to be like, "Why did I even spend time doing this? This isn't working." It's because a lot has changed between now and April. Your life will look a whole lot different in April than it does right now in December. It's just the way it goes.

So that's why I force myself to do it every three months. I have an Asana task that goes off every three months that says "rework your morning and evening rhythms."

Let's just add that to mine.

Does this help at all? Are we getting off topic?

No, no, no, no. This is all foundational pieces.

And I think what's nice about this foundation is now we can go, let's time block. Let's block it out. By the way, I just want you to know that I really like Asana and I really—it's one of those things that people kind of go, "Do I have to?" And then everyone that I've ever walked through and they're like, "You know what? It actually works." I'm like, "You know what? It doesn't—it could be anything. It could be Post-it notes. It doesn't matter." It's just easy for me because I know it really well and I know how to manipulate it.

But like the whole thing is just like, you just set your future you up for success. That's all it is. Like this stuff, like the three month thing you just said—you're not going to remember that in three months. It's going to go off and you're like, "Man, Darren from December was awesome. Thank you, Darren from December." You're just going to forget it.

I'm going to assign that to myself. I'm going to do that at the end of March, leading into April. And then is it under—set to repeat. Do a custom or do monthly and then do every three months. Boom. Look at us already taking it next level.

As far as my ideal day, like what that looks like, I have it on a note on my iPhone, which obviously you can open up on your desktop as well. Let me actually, let me share this with you. I'll show this with you so you can kind of see exactly what that looks like for me from a day perspective, because when I know the days, it helps me know the—the other thing because it's really about boundaries. You're just setting boundaries for yourself. You're not planning.

I don't have terrible boundaries. You know what I mean? Like that's what you're doing. You're setting boundaries. You're not adding things to your calendar. That's why I don't really particularly love the whole calendar aspect. Here it is, winter rhythms. You're going to see how far off I am.

What I want to do, whether you do it on here or not, you just want to have it somewhere that you can quickly reference so that when the arrows of life start being shot in your direction, you know what target to put up. Well, that was a weird analogy, but you understand what I'm saying.

I'm 100%. I got you.

That's where I would look at it. And so what I would consider—the reason I started with the energy zone stuff is because I think in order for you to build your ideal week, you have to kind of build your ideal day. That makes sense.

So this is an ideal day for me. Really, I'm really only focused on from like 6 to 9. This stuff over here, whatever. But I do know like, because I've gotten the boundary stuck in my head at this point of, I try not to take meetings before 11. Now there are exceptions, right? Like we have our meeting at 9 o'clock on Mondays because that's the beginning of the work week. I'm not going to ask people to work half a day and then we have a launch meeting for the week—that's ridiculous. So like we're going to—that's what we're going to do.

So there are those times, but literally on my Calendly, it's impossible for any of my meeting types. I've blocked off anytime before 11 for people to choose that time. You can't go on my calendar. Like when you booked this, you couldn't have chose a time prior to 11. It wouldn't have let you. It would say I'm not available. Because I set that boundary in place.

So there are certain boundaries that you're going to be hard and fast with. Again, they're going to be exceptions, right? But for the most part, just say like, "Hey, I'm protecting my green zone."

So I think what you need to start with is thinking through seasonally. What does your green zone look like right now? And that'll take you all the way to 11, which is past half your day. And then once you kind of know that, like I hardly ever do a walk or a meditation at noon. I'm usually heads down in whatever I was doing at 11 and I'm still rolling and I look up and it's 2 o'clock. And I know it's 2 o'clock.

So I think you figure that this out and then the rest of your day will come. You need to ask yourself—so this is the time where you can look back on your time and energy audit that you did, where you go, "Okay, if it gives me energy, then maybe that's something, if it doesn't take too much brain power, maybe that's something I need to put in more of a yellow zone because my energy is starting to fade a little bit."

Just because it gives you energy doesn't mean you have to have a ton of energy to do it. This conversation right here gives me a ton of energy, but I'm in my yellow zone right now and I'm only 20 minutes away from my red zone, but it's giving me energy. So I'm going to end this call going, "I feel like I'm in my green zone right now." You're kind of working against that. You know what I mean? A little bit.

Totally. But sometimes it's okay to let a red zone be a red zone. When you're talking about transitioning and you're going upstairs and having to jump right into making dinner, like maybe you need to work on ending your workday at 4:30 so that you have a moment to walk.

With that said, I would look at your time and energy audit and I would go, "Okay, these things suck the life out of me, but they also take a ton of brain power." Then you're probably going to have to put them in your green zones and you're going to have to protect them. If it is important, that's where the value thing comes in with Dan Martell. How much value is this adding?

So like on mine—did I send you my template for this for the time energy?

Yes. Yeah. So you know how there's—I haven't moved mine over yet, right. But how I had those different dollar signs, that was the part that I struggled with the most. I was asking Will a ton, like how do I know what to assign value to when right now most of everything I'm doing is for a future ROI, not a today, you know?

And he's like, "Well, I think there's some things that only you can do. Those are the high dollar values and the things that you can delegate to others are the low dollar values." So that's when we look at your ideal week and we look at your energy zones and we look at your time and energy audit and all these things we're looking at. Okay. What can we give Emma? Those $1 to $2 signs are the ones that you can be like, "I can show her how to do this. She doesn't know how to do it," which by the way, I've Loomed how I do all of Early Wine's posting, put it into Cipher, titling, all that, turned it over to her yesterday. She walked through and did all the next three weeks, all cut up. She did it all day yesterday while I was doing the things that I needed to do. I was not overwhelmed by yesterday, but was just walking through doing the stuff that I needed to do. And I was like, "This is golden."

Right. So posting videos is at least a $4 sign task because the value is that you're—to use a Dan Martell term—you're buying back your time. It might seem like this is a little ticky-tack kind of thing, but the point of it is that you never have to do it again because you're handing it to somebody else.

And I'm struggling with the "buy back your time" because I hate to ask people to do things like that. Like the typical struggle with, "Oh, Emma, I hate to have you schedule all of these." Emma's a different situation because it's not like I'm paying her physically to do this. You know what I mean? So that's where some of the struggle comes in, but I have this fantastic asset that's basically like, I've got an assistant without having an assistant. And I'm not using it to the full capacity because I'm nervous about using it to the full capacity. You know what I mean?

So there are some things in that book that I'm like, I have to get better at doing that. Even like the first thing he tells you to do is to have somebody take over your calendar. I'm like, "Yeah, that's scary." But he even says it in the book, "This is going to be scary for you." And I'm like, "Oh God, you're reading my mail."

If you have the ability to do that relationally and financially, he's right. But that's where I use Calendly. When someone asks me, "What does my calendar look like?" I'm not spending the next 30 minutes trying to figure out what works for both of us. I'm just sending them a link and saying, "You know what works for you. You can see what works for me. Do the math. I'll see you when I see you." Like it's the whole back and forth of "When are you free? No, I can't. Well, do you have this? No, I can't do that. I can't. Well, I'll have to get back to you."

Ep 48: New Opportunities

SUMMARY

Are you stuck waiting for opportunities to come your way? As creatives, we often fall into the trap of believing that if we just create the right environment, opportunities will magically appear when the universe decides we're ready. But what if I told you that's not how successful creatives build their careers?

In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, we're diving deep into a simple but powerful framework that will transform how you approach new opportunities in your creative business. Whether you're a designer, photographer, writer, or any type of creative entrepreneur, this method will help you stop waiting and start creating the opportunities you deserve.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Opportunity is created, not waited for – Stop believing the universe will deliver opportunities when you're ready. You create opportunities through intentional preparation, execution, and repetition.

• ⚡️ The time to act is now – Execution requires taking action today, not tomorrow. Overthinking and waiting for the "perfect moment" will keep you stuck in creative paralysis.

• ⚡️ Consistency beats perfection – Building a library of consistent execution over time creates trust and confidence that leads to bigger and better opportunities.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Nothing of significance comes from a lack of preparation. If you desire new opportunities to come your way, you must prepare. There's no magic sauce. The magic is the hard work."

• 💬 "The time to execute is today, right now, not later today, not after you get back from lunch, not tomorrow when things may or may not be a little more clear on your calendar."

• 💬 "Creativity is a marathon, not a sprint. To get opportunities that you crave, you gotta show some sort of consistency if you want to play the long game."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Learn the DO vs DUE Framework that works with any project management system

• ⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Creativity Made Easy Podcast - Episode 48: New Opportunities

Welcome back, everyone, to the Creativity Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. So very excited to be with you today for episode 48. We're going to talk about new opportunities. We're a full week now into the new year. So what new opportunities have you already begun creating for yourself?

I think oftentimes, if we're honest as creatives, we kind of get stuck in a mindset that if we're faithful to just kind of create things in the right environment for an opportunity to come, then it will come when the universe is ready for us to have it, right? I don't really believe that. I believe that opportunity comes per, I'm going to put emphasis on that word we're gonna talk about in a second. I believe that opportunity becomes per what we prepare, execute, and repeat.

A couple of announcers before we get into today's episode. I want to remind you that I'm here to help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams so that they can create greater things together. Y'all today, when this comes out on Thursday, January 11th, we are only one week away from our online workshop, Increase Your Creative Output. It's an online workshop I'm doing January 18th, 2024 on how to use the DO versus DUE framework, the DO versus the DUE framework in any creative context, no matter what project management system you may or may not be using.

In just one short hour, I'm gonna help you transform your creative flow like never before with a simple shift in your approach. The online workshop will be available on demand after the live event to those who are registered. So register now at dustinpead.com. You should see a pop-up ad when you go there, but if you don't, you can click on the store button and register there.

If you're listening on an audio podcast platform, thank you so much for doing that. Really appreciate it. We release a new content every Thursday. Would love for you to leave a five-star review. Super helps get this content out even further. If you are watching on YouTube, I'm so glad that you're here with us as well. Would love for you to like, subscribe, ring the bell, all those types of things to be notified whenever we drop these things. Or in this case, if you were perusing YouTube, by the time this comes out, if you were perusing it last night, you saw that I decided to just go live with this recording and see if anybody hops on and says anything while I'm talking. And if they do, I will chime that in as appropriate.

Last thing, DustinPead.com for a free consultation on your creative process and work. I would love to help you or your team take their creative output to the next level. So check that out today.

All right, onto the show for today, new opportunities. I remember when I took my first full-time creative job, it was a position at a church and the entire creative department was under my purview. It was very exciting, but I was also extremely overwhelmed. I had no idea where to start.

You ever had that before where you're on the precipice of something amazing and you know you need to take the first step, but you're kind of paralyzed by the overwhelming nature of what may or may not be ahead of you. Maybe the fear of failure, it may be the weight of the project, whatever it is. You ever been there before where you're just kind of frozen in time for a second because you're not quite sure what to do first. It's kind of overwhelming, right? Kind of like taking an IKEA furniture item out of a box and going, I don't know what to do first.

Well, let me just share with you today a simple word that you can use to remember what to do when you don't know what to do. And the word is per, P-E-R. Now look at the definition for per and it says it means for each. Like if you were gonna get gas today, you would say it costs $3 and whatever cents per gallon, for every gallon it's gonna cost you that amount of money. So for each is what it means. But I love that it means for each because this is to be used for each time you feel stuck.

So for each time that you feel stuck, I want you to think of that word per. And obviously it's an acronym, right? I'm a church guy, been doing church ministry for a long time. So it's gonna be an acronym. Just gonna go ahead tell you that right now. P-E-R is what we're gonna be into.

So the first thing you need to do to get into some new opportunities or as you approach new opportunities is you need to prepare. Nothing, I believe this, nothing of significance comes from a lack of preparation. If you desire new opportunities to come your way, you must prepare. There's no magic sauce. The magic is the hard work. We always say plan the work and work the plan. So if you're going to be successful in this new opportunity, you have to prepare.

All right, the second letter in the word per is E, so P-E-R, first is prepare. The second is this, execute. Execute. Planning is certainly vital, but without action steps in the right direction, the plans are all done in vain. Execution comes from discipline, heads down, focused, intentional priorities, accountability, boundaries. You've got to get it done. The time is now, not tomorrow. I'm gonna say that again, creative. The time to execute is today, right now, not later today, not after you get back from lunch, not tomorrow when things may or may not be a little more clear on your calendar. The time to create is right now.

I love one of my partners, Blake Baer always says to create quick because you don't second guess yourself. So the time to create is now. First thing you need to do when you're approaching new opportunities is you need to prepare and then it's time to execute. P-E-R.

The R is simple. Repeat it. Repeat it. It's the rinse and repeat cycle. Consistency and repetition is key here. You can't do this once a week and expect many results. Okay? You must rinse and repeat this. Prepare, execute, prepare, execute, prepare, execute constantly. You gotta rinse and repeat daily. It's a marathon. Creativity is a marathon, not a sprint.

Okay. To get opportunities that you crave, you gotta show some sort of consistency if you want to play the long game. Once that library of trust is stocked full of execution, you're able to step back and you're able to see your results after, after all this time that you constantly prepared and executed, prepared and executed. It's going to be amazing. You're going to have so much more confidence. The results are going to come.

Listen, even if it's not the way that you originally envisioned it, I know you as well as I know myself as a creative that the way that we often envision the thing coming out hardly ever comes out that way. A lot of times it comes out better. Sometimes it comes out worse, but listen, the results are going to come. If you can put in the exit, put in this exercise every single time you have new opportunities put in front of you. If you prepare, execute, repeat, prepare, execute, repeat every single time. You will crush your creative process. It is as simple as that.

All right, so start today, prepare, execute, repeat. Listen, if you are afraid to take this journey on your own or you have got a little bit more to it than that, I'm all ears. I'm here to help. So I would ask you to reach out to me at DustinPead.com. Book a free call, let's talk, let's see how we can help you prepare, execute and repeat for what fits your culture best, all right?

So one last reminder before we wrap up today's episode, I wanna remind you one week from today in the afternoon of January 18th, we are going to have an Increase Your Creativity Output Workshop. Right, it'll be a private link sent directly to you. There is on-demand feature. Afterwards, you did register for the workshop, can register at dustinpead.com. Should be a pop-up ad that comes up. If you don't see that, just go to dustinpead.com slash store and you'll see it right there under the events section.

Let's make 2024 the year that we execute great ideas. I'm so excited to be with you in this year and this journey. Let's keep going, folks. Let's keep creating the things we need you to keep creating. Don't give up, prepare, execute, repeat. We'll talk to you next week on Creativity Made Easy.

Ep 47: My Favorite Podcast Moments of 2023

A Year of Creative Conversations

SUMMARY

As we wrap up 2023, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the most impactful conversations that happened on the Creativity Made Easy podcast this year. From deep dives into the Enneagram to practical discussions about creative processes and organizational culture, this year has been filled with insights that can help you create your best work.

In this special year-end episode, I've compiled clips from my favorite moments throughout 2023. These conversations have shaped my thinking and hopefully yours as well. Let's revisit some of the wisdom shared by creative minds and culture experts who joined me this year.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: Everyone is Creative, But Not Everyone is an Artist - Steven Brewster provided a brilliant distinction between being creative and being an artist. He explained that creativity at its baseline is about problem-solving and idea generation. "If you've ever solved a problem or had an idea, congratulations, you're creative," he shared. Artistry takes that further by expressing solutions in unique ways or addressing problems others don't even recognize. This perspective helps us understand that creativity isn't reserved for a select few—it's an inherent human capability.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Great Culture Produces Great Work - Caleb Campbell offered three compelling reasons why organizational culture matters: it attracts great people, provides a great experience, and produces great work. As he pointed out, "One of the things people are looking for right now is to go somewhere where they can be part of a team they're proud of, part of an organization where they like what they stand for, and can do great meaningful work." In today's competitive environment, culture becomes a key differentiator for attracting and retaining talent.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Awareness is the Key to Growth - Jackie Brewster shared profound insights about the Enneagram and personal growth. She emphasized that the path to growth begins with awareness: "Awareness is the key to change." She highlighted a three-step process: become aware of your patterns, acknowledge your role in your own story, and then pivot toward growth. This framework applies not just to Enneagram work but to any personal development journey.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Not everyone's an artist, but I think everyone is creative... Creative at baseline level is solving a problem or coming up with a solution." - Steven Brewster - This quote reframes our understanding of creativity, making it accessible to everyone while honoring the unique contributions of those who take creativity to the level of artistry.

• 💬 "Great culture attracts great people, provides a great experience, and produces great work." - Caleb Campbell - Caleb distilled the value of organizational culture into this simple but powerful statement that explains why leaders should prioritize culture-building.

• 💬 "Awareness is the key to change. And so we have to go slow. Awareness takes time." - Jackie Brewster -Jackie's insight reminds us that personal growth isn't instantaneous—it's a process that begins with self-awareness and requires patience and intentional practice.

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Full Focus Planner - The planning system discussed with Blake Baer

• ⚡️ Explore the Enneagram - Learn more about the Enneagram personality system

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome everyone to the final episode of 2023 of Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead and it's been an incredible year of sharing content with each of you each and every week. And so this episode I wanted to take a look back on some of my favorite podcast moments of the year. Let's get into it.

All right, so 2023 started off with a series of guest episodes that I called Five Questions. It was super fun. I got to just sit people down that I found really interesting or in my circle and just incredible people. And I got to ask them five questions only. And I wanted to share with you a couple of my favorite moments from these episodes this year. The first one you're gonna see is from creative guru, Steven Brewster. Then you're gonna hear from the culture guy, Caleb Campbell. And then finally, you're going to hear from Jackie Brewster, who will lead us into our second set of clips. So let's take a look at some of the best moments with them this year.

Now, not everyone's an artist, but I think everyone is creative. This is a free question. Can you just maybe distinct that for a second between artists and creative? Yeah. So creative at baseline level is solving a problem or coming up with a solution, having an idea, right? So if you've ever solved a problem or had an idea, congratulations, you're creative. Now, what an artist takes that idea and expounds it to a level or maybe solves a problem that other people don't even see as a problem. That's when you start to drift into artistry or expression of personal expression of how they solve that problem or come up with that idea. And so not everyone's designed for that, but everyone is designed to have ideas and solve problems.

Obviously we're going to channel our inner Simon Sinek, like I often do on this. And we're going to start with why I'm going to ask Caleb, why is the culture of your team so important? Why is culture important? There's a lot of things you could say. I like to give three quick answers. Great culture attracts great people. It provides a great experience and it produces great work. So on the people side, doesn't matter what industry you're in, nonprofit, healthcare, corporate world, whatever it is, the organizations that succeed and win are the organizations that get the best people. That's almost without exception. You get the right people, you're gonna find success, you don't get the right people, somebody else is gonna beat you at what you do.

Now, when it comes to getting people in today's world, right, everybody's going after talent, so how do you appeal to them? There's always gonna be somebody who can pay more than you can. There's always going to be somebody who can offer perks that are more than what you can do. There's a lot of things that companies can throw at people to get the best. One of the things people are looking for right now though, is I want to go somewhere where I can be part of part of a team. I'm proud of part of an organization where I like what we stand for and I can do great meaningful work. So if you can offer organizations or people rather that culture that they're looking for, you're going to attract the best of the best.

Second part on the great experience. Studies say we spend about a third of our lifetimes at work. And if you're right in the middle of your forties, like I was gonna say we are like I am and will be soon right like I am a destined will be soon. Then you're spending a lot more than a third of your life at work right now. Why not give the people who are putting themselves into your organization an enjoyable experience, right? We don't live in the industrial age anymore. Why not give people somewhere where they can go? They can be happy. They can enjoy what they're doing. So you're providing a great experience.

And then the third one that I think is maybe most important is great culture produces great work. One of the organizations I was at a little while back, we had a CFO, great guy, shout out Tom, if you ever hear this. And he'd been at the organization for about a year. And he came to me and he said, you know, when I first joined here, I didn't get the culture thing. Like, I don't know why you guys talked about it all the time. I don't know why we had a team dedicated to it. I just, I just thought, okay, that's great, right? It's sunshine and rainbows. And he said, but now I've been here several months and I get it. And he said, because we've gotten people to buy into who we want to be. That's what actually leads us to doing great work. We enjoy each other's company. We take care of our customers. We hit the bottom line that I want to, because we've created the right kind of environment. I often talk about a best place to work and a place to do your best work. And I think that's another reason that culture is so important. So you want great people, you want a great experience, you want great results. Culture is the key to all three of those things.

The person who's just beginning to kind of explore and understand what this Enneagram thing is, where can the Enneagram knowledge best be applied? That's good. Okay, so this is my passion. This is my passion around the Enneagram. I want you to become aware. I want you to acknowledge and I want you to make decisions around pivot toward growth. Okay. So when we're looking at this, the awareness piece, what do you do with this information? You start to become aware of how these patterns are showing up in your life. So if you look at an Enneagram one and that you find that there's a lot of perfection inside of your story and you really hold people to high standards and you find yourself judging people very quickly or getting really frustrated. You might even not recognize it as judgment, but you're getting really frustrated that people are doing it differently or see things differently. It's like right there, you wanna pause, like, okay, what about this is making me feel this way? What about this is causing me distress? Am I putting my expectations on other people and I've never voiced it to them?

Or I have voiced it to them and they don't agree and they're not gonna, they don't care that I think that, because they're not gonna live by that. So I think it's the awareness. We start to really recognize patterns of behavior within the Enneagram system. That is what I'm looking at, you guys. All day long, all I'm looking at is patterns. I'm trying to figure out and hear and listen and decipher through patterns, patterns, patterns, patterns, because these patterns of behavior we have used as coping strategies to get our needs met, to keep ourselves safe and to get love in our life.

And so as you become aware, you can then acknowledge your own story. So this is not acknowledging how somebody else treated you or how somebody else talked to you or how somebody else did whatever. I want you to acknowledge the role you're playing in your own story. So acknowledging your own part of this, like, okay, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? Did I have any part in the situation that would make me feel this way? So you're starting to acknowledge, okay, my own role in this. I can see how this went sideways, whatever, you know. And then from there, you have an opportunity to pivot towards growth, or you have an opportunity to stay, or you have an opportunity to slip back towards unhealth. But it's really paying attention to what's going on in your own story. The only way we can do this is awareness. Awareness is the key to change. And so we have to go slow. Awareness takes time. I always say it takes about three months of you recognizing patterns. And then over the course of the next three months, about six months, we might be able to stop before we act.

And then after that, typically we can kind of harness them. We can grab ahold of them and begin to really understand where they're coming from, why they're happening, what's causing me to react this way. And, you know, real, like a real example, because sometimes this feels like, what are you talking about? You know, but a real example is in my own life. So my kids were, I was like doing a video shoot here last year and Steven was traveling and so the twins were, they're 13, they're joking around, acting a fool, whatever. And I was super stressed and I reacted. I was like, that's enough. And I just kind of, I just yelled at them. I was like, that is enough. I can't take it anymore. And they were like, what are we doing? And I was like, I kind of grabbed it and I was like, y'all aren't doing anything. I don't like the way that this is making me feel. I feel stressed. You guys are being silly and goofy and loud. It's causing me to like kind of not hear what's happening in my head. So I reacted to them and then quickly pulled it back and said, you know what, I'm gonna eat my dinner in my room because you guys are not doing anything. I'm overstimulated and I need to take a break. And so that was like the awareness of what was happening. Cause typically I would have made it their fault that I felt stressed if that makes sense. So that's kind of real talk around the work that the Enneagram does offer around awareness.

Man, as we heard some really great stuff about the Enneagram from Jackie Brewster earlier this year, it got me thinking, wouldn't it be really neat to have a series on the Enneagram where we were able to kind of hear some true, vulnerable confessions from each Enneagram number. so by far it was the most popular podcast series that we did this year on the Enneagram numbers, the confession of each Enneagram numbers. And I set the tone uh, by sharing my own confessions as an Enneagram for, and after that it was game on.

Listen, I believe, um, it's only on the altar of vulnerability. Like I said already that we can begin to understand ourselves and understand others. And because of the, you know, kind of unsolved mystery that Enneagram for is going to be, thought I would just go ahead and make a list, uh, confessional, if you will, of what it's like to be me. So the first thing I want to confess is that I love to create. I've been doing this thing since the beginning of the year where I'm creating new content every single week and I'm releasing content most every single day, whether it's on social media or the blog or the newsletter or the YouTube or podcast or whatever. I love to create. I love to create something from nothing. It's one of my favorite things to do. one of the highest amounts of joy that I can get in my life.

My second confession is that I desire to be wanted and needed. And you might think, well, that's everybody, right? Maybe I think the Enneagram fours, me as Enneagram four, I'm way more in tune with that desire to be wanted and needed because those are very strong feelings. And as you'll come to learn that Enneagram fours are very strong feelers. In fact, most people would say they have the strongest feelers out of all of the Enneagram types.

I like to be pursued more than pursuing others. I think this is very stereotypical, very cliche of an Enneagram four that we would much rather be pursued than pursue. But as a wing three, I do often pursue others as well. But if I had my preference, I would much rather be pursued than pursuing others. Again, so far, nothing crazy out of the box. But here's where we start to get a little different. My next confession is that I love my feelings, but I really hate how quickly they can ruin a moment or even a whole day. I love my feelings. You'll often hear Enneagrams, Enneagram fours describe their feelings as a warm, cozy blanket that they get to cuddle up with. It's like their blankie or their favorite stuffed animal. It's theirs. The blanket or the stuffed animal is the only one that really understands them. The only one that really brings them comfort. I love my feelings. So the worst thing you can do to an Enneagram four is to ask them to not feel a certain way.

So let's ask it this way then this is a little bit off the cuff, but let how how does someone then best get along with you as an Enneagram one? Like what are the things that you're like if these are the type of people that when I'm around we seem to click and the vice and the opposite of that like what the type of people that you're around and you're like I need to get away from that type of person. Yeah, so I'll start with the people that I would need to get away from okay, if I am continuously called out or criticized in front of other people. Told that my ideas are not good. Just kind of I Don't need everybody to agree, You're already critical enough of yourself right need someone else. Yeah, I'm gonna be verbally overly critical right and if they do need to talk to me about something I would hope that they would do it in a private manner and not in front of a bunch of people. Cause that's just embarrassing to me.

The type of people that I really enjoy being around and like, I get that was the question, right? Just the ones who just will let me be myself. They'll let me talk about my crazy chickens and how we homeschool our kids. you know, just that I just get to be me and I don't feel like I have to put on this face. Yeah. I can imagine that Scott, I have a lot of just fulfillment at the end of the day and kind of build up your own self-worth. you find, this is not one of the questions, this is just me listening to you talk. Do you find that your self-worth is defined a lot by what you're able to do for other people? Yes, yeah.

How does that play out? What's that look like for you in your daily life, finding that self-worth? I mean, honestly, so I have health problems, get migraines, I've endometriosis. So on a day when I am in bed because I can't get out of bed, those are my hardest days because I'm not helping my family. I'm not making breakfast for them. I'm not meeting anybody's needs except for my own. And those are the days where I have to remind myself it's okay to have grace for yourself. It's like, this is out of my control. There's nothing I've done what I can do. But I really, those are the days where Blake has to be like, it's okay that you're in bed. This is just life. That's why we're married because we're partners and I can help you and the kids are really helpful. But those are the days where I feel like, oh, well, I have nothing to offer. So are they still going to love me?

Well, I guess before we close our time, is there anything else that you'd like to get off your chest about being an Enneagram 3? There's a lot of things to say here Enneagram, all of them, we've all got our pros, we've all got our cons. As an Enneagram 3, it is... It's a challenge. Some days I've referenced it a little bit ago and a couple of different ways, right? You know, being my authentic self in all settings. That's tough. The overly competitive nature of being an Enneagram three. You know, I know everyone has experienced this at some point in their life, but the game of monopoly, right? Let's just use that as a great example, right? No one wants to play monopoly with an Enneagram three. I promise you, you're not going to want to play with me. The overly competitive nature of that.

You know, I can talk my way into and out of deals and succeed at the game of monopoly. But if you don't want a boardwalk, everybody's walking on it. It's crowded. Yeah. I mean, everybody's going to be there. They're going to look at you. They're going to be staring at your business, right? It's all those things. And so eventually I will win the game, but, there are times where if the dice don't roll my way, man, I am not fun to be around on the game of monopoly. It's not so much that I will flip the board on the table, but I definitely have a feeling like I want to. Yeah. Right. Uh, you know, I become a real sore loser, uh, in a lot of ways. And so like, you know, as an Enneagram three, right. Uh, I'm sure almost everyone's experienced somebody like that.

And the one thing I would say is give that person some grace because they're going to need it. Uh, and so if you experience people that are, are just so driven to succeed, uh, you'll lean into the things that they actually need, which is somebody to allow them to be vulnerable, to be real, uh, authentic and, and, you know, just being a judgment free, you know, safe space. Uh, so it's more of a, I'd almost say a PSA for everybody out there that has any gram threes in their life. Um, know that, you know, we struggle just like everybody else. We just struggle in a different way, and being our vulnerable true selves is in the area where most of us are gonna struggle. So allowing us to be that, be authentic and not be judged for it is gonna help us be the healthiest version of ourselves.

Let's put on the Enneagram five colored glasses for a second and help us understand how you as a five view the world around you. If I had a pair of glasses that if I magically put them on, then all of a sudden I see the world like an Enneagram five. What would that look like? How do you see the world? I feel like we, the color of the lens would be the word why. Like why is this the way it is? Why is this happening? Why does this cause this? We're constantly asking why of the world. I'm constantly trying to break things apart into smaller and smaller chunks of information that we can understand and then like almost reassemble into something usable in our everyday lives. And that's kind of like our constant search is more and more information and figuring out why things are the way they are, why things work the way they do so that we can better operate in the world.

I do kind of wing seven as a six. So like I can have that introverted time that we're talking about, but I love being like a wingman to some with someone. And like, just like, like, like the bro, like just, I don't have to lead the situation, but I love just being able there to support you and whatnot. So that's one thing I definitely do love. One thing I really hate about being a six is the anxiety part. Like I was referring to earlier about stage managing is there it's not every show. It's probably one out of eight shows where I'll get so anxious about a given situation, whether it be, you know, what's Mitchell doing? You know, on stage, do I need to be on, you know, on guard? Or do I just need to be at the ready for something to hit the fan? And like, I get so anxious and, you know, my I have the biggest goal of getting off stage under 10 minutes and we have a lot of gear with a little crew to get everything off stage. So like my anxiety is just through the roof and I overthink the the the loadout of all that.

So that's the biggest thing like quick example last week. I had anxiety pretty much post soundcheck until the end of our set and through loadout. So a good six, five to six hours of just I didn't really want to be with people. I chose to be with some people, but they could just tell like, what is wrong. And then the show happens, the loadout happens. And everyone's like, dude, you were, why were you so worried? Like, everything was fine. Like we did such a good job. You know, why are you beating yourself up about, you know, what just went on? And I'm like, well, I just feel like we could have done better, which is a good thing. But it's also because you always want to progress. But for me, like it was just anxiety driven the whole time and I feel like I lost five years of my life and my heart rate was like sky high the whole time. So yeah, anxiety is my least favorite part.

But I think in general, I see the world. I know I'm wearing my yellow today, but I'm, I feel like Enneagram sevens are like affiliated with like yellow and like happy and joy. And I feel like for the most of the time I see the world that way, through like kind of yellow colored glasses instead of rose. But it's like, I look for the positive, but I think I'm, I know there's going to be like negative things happening. So I think it's kind of like I prepare myself. So I'm not like thrown off by the negativity, but I'm also like hopeful that there won't be any this day or whatever.

Sure. So I'll give you an example for a four. The most important thing to me is authenticity. So I guess characteristic, what's the most important characteristic to you as an intergrate mate? Or what's the most important thing in life? Is family the most important thing to you? Is your relationship with God the most important thing to you? Is your job the most important thing to you? Is your self worth the most important thing to you? You get, one of those open-ended questions.

I'll say it in the form of a movie quote by the most reputable of all actors, Russell Crowe. it is. In the movie Gladiator, he says, what we do in this life echoes an eternity. And I think that's it. And so to say one thing matters over others is hard for me because I think it all matters. And that's why like there's not a work me, there's not a family me, there's not a, you know, friendship, social me. I am what you get wherever you get it. And so that's the thing is like, can't fake. I'm horrible at faking. I'm horrible. You want to play poker with me? Enjoy my money because not good, not good at that. I feel like sometimes it's like, there's a difference between being shrewd and lying. I don't know. It's really hard for me. Yeah.

And so that's, yeah, I think that's it. I think you have to deeply be involved and care about every aspect of life. Family matters because of what a mat means and the depth of it and how my kids grow up matters. And doesn't just matter by things I say to them. I need to be in it, you know? So it's, know, my faith is just, gets my greenest of green zones. The time of day I wake up early, I'm very disciplined about waking up. I do need help at times, i.e. I hit Dustin up and I'm like, check on me, make sure I wake up at this time. But, you know, I get up first thing and I'm just in prayer and reading the word and memorizing scripture because I just want it so much and it matters. But it all matters. Like to be like, tell me the one thing that matters to you most. Can't get it to you.

All right. So how do you... This is probably the most nine question ever. But how do you best get along with people? how, when you're interacting with people and you're in those social settings and you love being around people, how do you best interact with them? Are you just kind of like, I'm just happy that everyone's here and it's a warm blanket to my soul and I can cross my arms and sit back and hide behind my drink? Or are you just like seeking out the people that you want to have conversations with and going from one place to the next? You straight up one-on-one, let's dive into a subject over, you know, over a drink for a couple hours. Like what, how, what's the best thing for you, for Grant to interact with people?

I think it's changed a lot over the years. Um, I think for the longest time because of my social anxiety, I wanted to be like, I wanted everybody there and I wanted to like, Hey, these people are my friends and like, kind of feel that comfort and then just kind of sit back and, um, kind of be silent because I'm in my own head about like, they don't want to talk to me. But I really love like deep conversations and getting to know people and like really knowing like like how they're doing. And like, I like to ask lots of questions and kind of like get people to like understand like themselves and like to understand people. I'm very, I'm a very empathetic person. Yeah. Empathetic. Empathy. Yeah. So yeah, I really do like those conversations and I think that's where I'm at now as a healthier version of myself.

Man, what a response we got from that Enneagram series. big moment for me this year was being able to share with you all my 4D creative process, a bit of a foundational framework to everything that I've been sharing with you thus far this year. Let's take a clip and a listen back on that episode. 4D creative process. Look, if you're like me when you were a kid, any opportunity you got a chance to see a movie in 3D, you took it. It didn't matter what it was. It could be the worst movie. If you were a boy, it could have been some Barbie or horsey or pony movie or whatever. If there was an opportunity for you to see that thing in 3D, to go to the actual theater, put on those paper glasses and watch that thing in 3D, you were all in.

Now, as we get older and we start going to theme parks and they start offering us these 4D experiences, right? If you go to Disney, there's a four four D experiences there for you to be able to make you feel like you're in it. So not only are the things popping out at you, but they're also spraying water and blowing wind and things like that all around you so that you can feel it as well. And so I've been working on this creative process for almost 20 years to help feel our way through this thing called creativity. Right. There's always different stages of creativity, even if you're like, I'm just an Enneagram seven and just kind of whatever comes up in my mind. That's when I know I need to create and that's how I create. Listen, that's fantastic. But I promise you that if you are able to put a process around yourself that works for you, that you will be much more creative.

We closed the year recently towards the end of this year in 2023 ending with a popular episode in which I got to nerd out a little bit with my buddy Blake Baer on the full focus planner. Let's take a look at that. For me, the biggest impact has been I've always had these goals, but never been able to do anything with it. And now I have goals in front of me every single week. And even more so, like we'll talk about here in a second, I have them in front of me every single day. And so that's really changed the game for me to be and I might not hit I have 10 goals this year and he'll tell you not to go past 10 even in the book there's only a space enough for 10 of them. I have 10 goals this year and some life things have happened. I'm probably only gonna hit between seven and eight of those goals. But if you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would hit, know, 70 % 80 % of my goals for this year, I'd be like, you're crazy. Because by March, I'm not even gonna remember what they are. But it's just been a great, it's, every time someone asks me, what do you get out of it? I'm like, I know it sounds cliche, but it's focus. It's focus. What about you?

Yeah, that's good. I think one thing I would say before I kind of jump into that is it doesn't mean you don't put other things around you like a sauna or like your Google calendar. I think the mindset is the full focus planner is not supplemental to those things. Those things are supplemental to the planner. The planner for me is the fuel and it is the motivation and is the connection to staying with your goals. So many people get so far from their goals because they lose connection to their goals. I love the full focus planner because weekly I am re-establishing my connection to that goal. And even in like an emotional way, right? Okay, so it is so important to have emotional and intrinsic motivation to hit your goals.

Otherwise, when you get into the rough aspect of your goals, you will just drop them. It's so easy. This is why the majority of people never make it past January or February with their goals is because life sets in and it's not easy. And yes, you've got to be able to have something that's deeper than I just want it. You know, you got to have something deeper. So for me, you know why or the biggest impact this has had on my life has been the ability to take vision to action.

Wow. As you can see, 2023 has been just an incredible year for me and the content that I've been able to share with you. And I am just getting started. I cannot wait to experience what 2024 has for each of us as I aim to help you know yourself, know your team and know your process so that you can create your best work yet. Thanks for watching, listening, and supporting me. And as I heard in a toast recently at the NASCAR Awards banquet, that's right, I love NASCAR. Here's an ending cheers for all of us. Here's to us and those like us. Happy New Year everyone.

Ep 46: The Creatives Gift Guide Pt 3

The Eisenhower Matrix

SUMMARY

In the final installment of our three-part Creatives Gift Guide series, Dustin Pead explores an almost century-old concept made popular by a former US President that can revolutionize your creative productivity in 2024. This powerful time management technique helps you separate truly important work from the noise and distractions that constantly vie for your attention.

As the holiday season approaches and we look toward a new year of creative possibilities, implementing this system could be the most valuable gift you give your creativity. By distinguishing between what's urgent and what's important, you can finally focus on the work that truly matters to your creative journey.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ The Eisenhower Matrix divides tasks into four categories based on urgency and importance: do first (urgent/important), schedule (important/not urgent), delegate (urgent/not important), and delete/procrastinate (neither urgent nor important).

• ⚡️ Implement a weekly brain dump to capture all tasks, ideas, and opportunities vying for your attention, then honestly evaluate each item on the Eisenhower Matrix to determine its true priority.

• ⚡️ Keep your completed matrix visible as you work to stay focused on your priorities and quickly categorize new opportunities or tasks that arrive throughout the week.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "The 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoted an unnamed university president when he said, 'have two kinds of problems, the urgent kind and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent.'"

• 💬 "There's so many things vying for our attention... so many opportunities that are constantly put in front of us that if we don't empty out the old ticker once a week on a legal pad, a note on your iPhone, whatever it is that you use, it can be really congested and things will get lost in there."

• 💬 "I really don't think our brains are designed to hold in today's world more than about three months worth of information and things that we have ingested without jotting it down somewhere."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Using Asana for Creative Teams eBook - A practical guide to enhance your creative productivity, whether you use Asana or not

• ⚡️The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey - Book that popularized the Eisenhower Matrix concept

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. Today we're going to conclude a three week podcast series in this spirit of giving season called the Creatives Gift Guide in which we'll discuss some gifts that you can begin to give your own creativity for the holiday season this year and take your creativity to the next level in 2024. This week I want to share with you an almost century old concept made popular by a former US President. Let's get into it.

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. Everything that I do put out into the world, all the ways that I can help you or your team or your organization, you can find at DustinPead.com. That's P-E-A-D. You can follow me on all social media platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all the fun ones, at DustinPead.

If you're listening to this, would really love and appreciate a five star review as it helps get this content out even further to those who need it like yourself. If you're watching on YouTube, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. I invite you to just kind of take a poke around after you watch this short podcast episode and look at all the other amazing pieces of content that we've been able to put together this year in 2023. It's been an incredible year.

And I'm so very excited to share this stuff with you. I would love for you to hit the like button, subscribe and ring the bell every time I post any pieces of new content to YouTube, you will get a notification about it, which I dropped this podcast every single week on Thursdays. There are clips and shorts and reels and all that fun stuff that hop out throughout the week. But the bulk of our content is on Thursdays for you. Before also we get into it, I want to remind you my new ebook is now out.

You can actually order it on my website, dustinpead.com/store. The ebook is called using Asana for creative teams. And I want to tell you that even though you may not use Asana or you may not be on a creative team, this is very applicable to yourself as a solo creative or a solopreneur. It's also not specifically tied into Asana.

I use that verbiage in the book because that's what I'm used to. It's what I've been teaching and coaching and consulting with creatives and creative agencies with for many years now. But it's not something that you have to have. You could use Post-it notes for all I care and this book will still help you take your creativity to the next level. So you can go and purchase that. You'll immediately get it in your inbox as soon as you do it. And you can have it for yourself. Gift that to your creativity in 2024.

or you can gift it as a little digital stocking stuffer for the creatives in your life and help them accomplish things that they've never thought possible in the new year. So let's get to today's episode. The 34th president of the United States. Do you know who that is? If I just said that off the top of your head, are you one of those history buffs? I'll give you a second to think about it. 34th president. Answer in three, two, one. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower. That's right.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States and a five-star general during World War II, he presented an idea that would later lead to what we know as the Eisenhower Matrix. In a 1954 speech, Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president when he said, have two kinds of problems, the urgent kind and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of

highly effective people took Eisenhower's words and then used them to develop what is now a popular task management tool known as the Eisenhower Matrix. The Eisenhower Matrix is also known as the Time Management Matrix or the Eisenhower Box or the Urgent and Important Matrix. This tool helps you divide your tasks into four categories. The task that you'll do first, the task that you'll schedule for later,

the task that you'll delegate and the task that you may delete or procrastinate on. Now I was first introduced to this concept by a former boss of mine and it has really changed the way that I lead teams and the way that I coach and consult creatives as well. Here's my recommendation on how you can implement this gift to your creativity in 2024. Number one, you need to do a weekly brain dump at minimum

weekly. There's so many things vying for our attention. So many projects that come across our desk, so many opportunities that are constantly put in front of us that if we don't empty out the old ticker once a week on a legal pad, a note on your iPhone, whatever it is that you use, it can be really congested and things will get lost in there. Once you do that weekly brain dump, I want you to evaluate each one of those items on

the Eisenhower matrix. And I want you to be honest in your evaluation. There's a lot of things that come across our desk that we would really love to make urgent and important, but if we're honest with ourselves, it's really neither one of those. It's neither important nor urgent in the grand scheme of things. And so as you look at these four quadrants on your paper, you're going to see these categories of urgent, urgent and important, urgent, but not important, not important.

not urgent. You're going to see these things. So let's talk about what is urgent and important. This gets bumped into the top priority for you for that week or for that month or for that term or whatever length of time you have. This will be top priority for you. If it's both urgent, meaning it's, it's D U E it's, it's do really quickly and it's super important, then nothing else gets above these items.

in your week and there could be multiple items but realistically there's probably only going to be one to two items in your urgent and important list. The things that are urgent but are not super important things that are very shortly time sensitive but they don't really add a ton of value those are things that you can either automate or you can even delegate something that's important but not urgent gets delegated to someone else or gets saved.

for later, it doesn't get to be at the top of your to-do list. And listen, if it's not important or it's not urgent, either needs to be deleted or heavily procrastinated on. And so I encourage you, when you're feeling overwhelmed, use this tool. I think it's a really great thing to introduce into your weekly preview if you're doing something like on sunny nights or whenever the beginning of your week is and you're kind of forecasting out what the week is gonna look like. I think going through this Eisenhower Matrix is

really great way for you to be able to kind of separate the the facts from fiction and and be able to truly understand what the most important thing is that you need to go after that we can clear out all the clutter and clear out all the mess and when you've done that mind dump now you have the brain capacity to take on the some things that are very important and very urgent so I suggest you do this no more than weekly

But I would say no less than quarterly. I really don't think our brains are designed to hold in today's world more than about three months worth of information and things that we have ingested without jotting it down somewhere. To me, weekly is more appropriate, monthly it can be appropriate for you, quarterly can be done if you have a really good system in place. But I would say

Make sure you're doing this mind up and getting things onto your Eisenhower matrix. And then you keep that matrix on your desk in front of you attached to your computer monitor, wherever you sit and work at. You're to want to keep that in front of you so that when you feel yourself beginning to get swayed off the path by the other continual things that are coming across your plate, it's a new week. There's new opportunities. There's new problems to solve. There's new fires to put out. Then you can ask yourself as those things come across your desk, you can begin to think.

proactively and say, is this urgent and important? Is this urgent but not important? Is it important but not that urgent? Is it neither important or urgent? And then from there, you can evaluate immediately and know exactly where to send those tasks. Urgent and important gets your top priority for you today until it's done. And then from there, you can go onto the urgent but not important stuff. And then from there, you can get into the important but not urgent things.

But you can automate things, can eliminate things, you can delegate things, you can procrastinate things, all the things that are in the focus funnel. If you know what I'm talking about, run it through that system after you've put it on the Eisenhower matrix. Listen, it's been an incredible 2023 with you. I thank you so much for listening to this podcast series on the creative gift guide and being able to gift your creativity some very strong productivity in 2024. There's some amazing things coming.

your way from me in 2024. cannot wait to share with you. I'm hoping next week to drop a best of 2023 episode, but if I don't, look forward to seeing you in the new year. And so if we do get that episode out next week, it's going to be some of our favorite things that happened in 2023 on this podcast that I'm going to cut up and share with y'all. But like said, if we don't get to it, it's not a big deal. You know why? Because it's really not urgent and it's really not all that important to me. Like I would love to be able to share it with you.

At the end of the day, what matters to me most is that I'm sharing today's episode with you and I'm going to do the next right thing and I'm going to share it with you before the end of the year. So January comes around. We're going to have a whole new set of fun adventures together on creativity made easy. Happy new year, everyone.

Ep 45: The Creatives Gift Guide: Master Your 12-Month Rhythm

Planning for Creative Success in 2024

SUMMARY

Are you tired of feeling surprised when busy seasons return annually? Do you find yourself behind schedule on projects that happen every year? In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, Dustin Pead explores how creative professionals can escape the cycle of seasonal stress by implementing a 12-month rhythm approach to their work.

This episode is part of our special three-week "Creatives Gift Guide" series designed to help you give meaningful gifts to your own creativity as we approach 2024. By understanding and planning for your annual creative cycles, you can transform overwhelming busy periods into manageable, productive seasons that allow your creativity to flourish.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: Identify Your Cyclical Patterns. Too often, creatives are surprised when busy seasons return, acting as if these predictable cycles are completely new or out of our control. Take a day with yourself or your team to review the past year and identify trends. Look for patterns in your successes, failures, and periods of stress. By recognizing these cycles, you can begin planning for them rather than reacting to them.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Implement the 4D Creative Process with Margin. The 4D Creative Process—Define, Dream, Design, and Develop—works best when stretched out over time rather than compressed into a stress-filled rush. For recurring annual projects, start the definition and dreaming phases months before the actual busy season. If March is traditionally hectic, begin your creative process in December or January, giving yourself ample margin for each phase.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Plan the Work, Then Work the Plan. Once you've mapped your 12-month rhythm and allocated appropriate time for each phase of the creative process, stick to the timeline. By planning with intention and foresight, you transform the chaotic reactive mode of creativity into a structured, proactive approach that reduces stress and improves outcomes.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Too often we as creatives seem to be surprised when these busy seasons return annually as if they're new to the world or things just kind of happen to us completely out of our control."

• 💬 "If you can plan the work, then you can work the plan and you can succeed at some really big, amazing things."

• 💬 "Your brainstorm session is not the place for you to edit the ideas. It is not the place for someone to go, 'We tried that before. That's never going to work because of our budget.' That is not this meeting."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️The 12-Month Outlook

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone. Welcome to creativity made easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead creative coaching consultant. And today we're going to continue a three week podcast series to close out the year in the spirit of giving called the creatives gift guide in which we're going to discuss some gifts that you can begin to give to your own creativity to take it to the next level in 2024 this week. Let's take a step back and look at something I call 12 month rhythms. Let's get into it.

Welcome everyone to the show. My name is Dustin Pead creative coach and consultant you can find me and everything that I've got going on all the content that we release at DustinPead.com P-E-A-D you can follow me on Instagram Facebook LinkedIn all the social media platforms at Dustin Pead if you're listening to this I would highly encourage you to leave a five-star review that would really help get this content out to more people who need it and benefit from it if you're watching on YouTube I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for joining me today I would love for you to hit the like button the thumbs up hit subscribe and ring the bell so every time I release new content you get notified about it now before we dive into today I want to remind you I talked a little bit about it last week if you're on my newsletter you've seen it if you're on my socials you've seen it but my first ever ebook comes out tomorrow. Y'all I'm so so excited. So today is the last day to preorder this book for 50% off and it's all about using Asana for creative teams. Now I want to say this too even though it says using Asana for creative teams I need you to understand that this framework is designed for any creative whether they're solo or within a team and no matter what software you're using.

I speak Asana language because it's what I've been leading creative teams through for a long, long time. And so it's easy for me to kind of speak that language, but this book in no way is dependent on you having to use Asana. You could use Basecamp, you could use Post-It notes for all I care, whatever it is, this book will help you take your creativity to the next level by getting things done in 2024. Enough talking, enough daydreaming, enough what ifs.

Now it's time to get the work done. So go to dustinpead.com slash store. You can preorder that book today for the last time at 50% off for only $5. it, get one for you, get one for any creative in your life as a last minute digital stocking stuffer. I know that the creatives in your life or you will greatly benefit from it as it's something that I've been building towards for a long, long time. Listen, we're going to get into this thing today in the creatives gifts guide about 12 months rhythms and this is something that I've kind of dawned on me in the later half of my creative career that there are these ebbs and flows that happen to us. too often we as creatives seem to be surprised when these busy seasons return annually as if they're new to the world or things just kind of happen to us completely out of our control.

Have you ever been in this situation before you're sitting in a creative briefing meeting and suddenly it dawns on you that you and your team are already behind the eight ball on this project. You should have had this meeting months ago, even before you begin. feels impossible to even begin because you already fear, feel paralyzed by no margin and the inevitable long days and late nights ahead in order to accomplish this project.

Listen, I've been there. I know you've been there too. You know, the immense amount of stress of this adds to you and your team. If only there were a way to get out in front of these mountains that seem to pop up around this time every year. And it could be any time of year, no matter when you're listening to this podcast episode. So if you've been there, you know that immense stress. I want you to just kind of lean in with me over the next few minutes as we talk about these 12 month rhythms.

See, sometimes we get so stuck in the weeds of day to day survival that we miss the bigger picture. We miss the reality that there are busy seasons in our work, whether it be intentional or not. Lots of our work is cyclical. So why do we act like it isn't? Listen, it's been said by many people before me, but it's something that I stick to. If you can plan the work, then you can work the plan and you can succeed at some really big, amazing things. So here's my tips on your 12 month rhythms and how you can avoid this seasonally recurring frustration in 2024. First thing, take a day either by yourself or with your team, set it aside and review the past year. When you review this past year, you're gonna look for trends. You could do this in July, you could do it during any downtime that you normally have, but take a day, set it aside, review the last 12 months and look for trends.

Look for the things that you see kind of popping up time and time again. When you're successful, when you're least successful, when you're caught off guard, when you're not caught off guard. If you've been around for a while, these might be a little more obvious to you. You're like, oh, well, in our company, every March is this big push. And so we know every March is going to get crazy. Set your rhythms up with margin filled timelines. So if you know March is a busy season for you, then why wait until March to gear up for that busy season? Why not start thinking about it in January or December? Give yourself and your team some margin to really dive into the full functioning 4D creative process. Now 4D creative process is something that I've talked about on this podcast and my blog before and the four D's are define, dream, design, develop. And that is a long scale creative process. You can do it in a very short amount of time. It works better if you can stretch it out. So as you're thinking over these stressful times and these clumps throughout the year, what's the right time to start setting goals for that project that come up on these busy seasons? That would be the defined part, right?

What's the right time to sit there and start defining out the goals for that particular project? Even if it's something that you do every single year, maybe your company has a Christmas initiative like I did for so long in local church ministry. You know Christmas is coming. It's the same message every single year, right? But we're going to package it differently. And so we're going to start thinking about how do we package that differently this year? What are some things that we can do? We don't want to define what our goals are for that, which leads us right into the next D is the dream. This is the brainstorm. This is the fun stuff. This is where you get to come in a room with a bunch of knickknacks and cool music playlists and great environment and lots of people. And you can just dream until your little creative heart is content, right? But when should you begin that brainstorming about the project? If your busy season is in March, you should not begin dreaming about that in March. You need to be dreaming about that no later than January, if not December or earlier depending on how big and massive this undertaking can be for you. Set aside no, okay, I see that rhythm coming. So I know that we're gonna, we're gonna dream about it here so that when we get into March, for example, we're not overwhelmed with the thing. Now, next thing is design. That's the third D and the four D process. What's the right time to refine all of those ideas that you got from your brainstorm? Now, a lot of people will love to sit into a, in a brainstorm and immediately refine all the ideas. Can I just strongly encourage you not to do that? Your brainstorm session is not the place for you to edit the ideas. It is not the place for someone to go, we tried that before. That's never going to work because of our budget. That is not this meeting. And if you have people in the room that are contributing to the meeting in that way, you need to kindly ask them to wait for the next meeting because you're really going to want them. And that's this meeting that we're talking about here. It's the design meeting. This is when you're going to refine those ideas into a cohesive designed production, a pitch, a package, a concept, whatever it is. You're gonna take the three to 500 ideas that you came up with in your brainstorm and you're gonna distill them down into the things that work for you, that are within your timeline, that are within your budget, that hit the goals that you're looking for more accurately.

And you have those because you have all these ideas to choose from and you have the margin to choose from them because you brainstormed or you dreamed at the appropriate time in your 12 month rhythm. Now that you know what you're going to do, you've designed it, now it's time to get the work done. How long is it going to take you to develop this? If your initiative is in March every year and you know it's going to take you at least eight weeks to pump this out, then you know that by the time you get to January, if you're not already starting the work. you don't already have that thing defined, dreamed and designed and ready to start development by January, then you're already behind the eight ball. So look at that from a 12 month timeline and lay it out. I have a template for you at dustinpead.com. You can click around and find it. Look for the 12 month rhythm timeline. And now that you have that, you're going to plan those things out based on the 4d creative process, which you'll see on the timeline at dustinpead.com. Now that you have that, you're going to work the plan, right? You've planned the work. Now it's time to work the plan. So as I close this with you, something to think about before you get into 2024, these 12 month rhythms, how can I help you implement the 12 month rhythm? Sometimes it helps to have an external eye and see the things that you're going to miss. So let's chat, go to dustinpead.com, click on the let's chat button. I would love to have a free 30 minute conversation with you and how I can help implement this 12 month rhythm into your personal or team creative environment in 2024. It's going to be an amazing year. You're to get all sorts of things done. Let's just take a minute and plan the work and work to plan. We'll talk to you next time. Next week, we're going to wrap up this whole creative gift side, some gifts that you can give to yourself with a little thing called the Eisenhower matrix. It's something that blew my mind a few years ago and I can't wait to share it with you. We'll talk to you next week on creativity made easy.

Ep 44: The Creatives Gift Guide: Goal Setting

Transform Your Creative Goals from Dreams to Reality in 2024

SUMMARY

In this first installment of The Creatives Gift Guide series, creative coach Dustin Pead breaks down practical goal-setting frameworks specifically designed for creative professionals. Discover how to transform abstract creative aspirations into achievable goals using both SMART and CLEAR methodologies, while maintaining the flexibility that creative work demands. Learn a balanced approach to goal setting that spans nine essential life categories, ensuring your creative goals align with overall life satisfaction and professional growth.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) provides structure for creative goals.

• ⚡️ Michael Hyatt's SMARTER approach adds Exciting and Risky elements for enhanced motivation

• ⚡️ The CLEAR method (Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, Refinable) offers flexibility crucial for creative work

• ⚡️ Setting goals across nine life categories ensures balanced creative and personal growth

• ⚡️ Breaking goals into daily tasks and weekly reviews significantly increases achievement rates

• ⚡️ According to Dominican University research, people who set goals are 43% more likely to achieve them

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible." - Tony Robbins (quoted in the episode)

• 💬 "You can do hard things. Let's make it a little bit risky." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "Future you is not created in the future. It's created in the present." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "It doesn't matter how big or little the progress is, as long as it's progress. Just do the next right thing." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️”ASANA for Creative Teams” ebook

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead. Today we're gonna start a three-week podcast series on the spirit of gift giving called the Creatives Gift Guide in which we're gonna discuss some gifts that you can begin to give your creativity to take it to the next level in 2024. And we're gonna start off with the big G goal setting.

My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so glad that you're here today to join us. We're going to talk about this big G goal setting. I know that so many people are talking about goal setting right now, and I might just be adding to that chaos and noise, but I really hope that today's episode relieves some tension for you when you're thinking about 2024 and your creative goals.

I want to share a cool announcement about a new ebook that I put out into the metaverse about using Asana for creative teams. Now, I've gotten some feedback so far and some people are like, "Well I don't use Asana" or "I'm an individual creative and I don't have a team." Listen, this book is for any creative professional or hobbyist looking to take their creativity to the next level by organizing it and putting it into a process and system that works for them. This is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. This is something that fits you individually and your team as well.

Let's talk about goals. How do you set goals? Are you a person that actually does set goals? If not, why not? I know they can be intimidating. I'm speaking with a couple people this week that said goals have always been super intimidating to me, and so I find it's easier not to set them and then I'm not let down. There is that little bit of "if I don't set a benchmark, then when I don't hit it, I won't be upset."

But I think goals are vastly important to getting the life and the career that you desire. You need to have something that you're striving for or else you're just kind of going with emotions and whatever comes day by day. In the words of Tony Robbins, "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible."

And I'm a living testament this year in 2023 to tell you that that is so very true. There was also a study done by Dominican University recently that found that people who set goals are 43% more likely to achieve them. So if you have something in your mind that would be nice, if you were to just set a targeted goal towards that, then you're almost 50% more likely to achieve that goal just by setting that specific goal.

What I want to get into today is the different ways to set goals. You've probably heard these acronyms before. At least one of them you've probably heard before. There's a system out there called SMART goals. It's an acronym S.M.A.R.T., and it walks you through the things that you need to remember when you're setting goals.

If you just say "Oh, I want to be healthier in 2024," that's great, but the problem is that it's not specific, and that's the first S of SMART goals. I didn't come up with this. This has been around for a long, long time. This is just me breaking it down and explaining it to you on a short podcast form so that you can take it and start thinking about your goals for 2024 if you haven't already.

Your goals need to be SMART. The S is specific. You need to get more specific. Instead of getting healthy in 2024, "I want to lose 30 pounds by July 1st." Which takes us to the next letter M - measurable. You want these things to be measurable. You want to have some kind of a number attached to it or some sort of way that you can measure whether you actually achieved this goal. Just getting healthier, how do I know if I achieved that? But if I say I want to lose 30 pounds by July 1st, then I know that when I get to July 1st and I haven't dropped 30 pounds from what I was at the beginning of the year, then I can measure the success of that goal.

You also want them to be achievable. That's the A in SMART. Is this actually achievable? I love to play golf, but I'm not going to get out there and play as good as Tiger Woods. So a goal of becoming a PGA pro for me in 2024 is not achievable.

Also relevant - that's the R in SMART. Is that goal relevant to your current life situation and scenario? Is it something that will increase the overall well-being of your career or your livelihood or your personal life or your spiritual life or your financial life in the situation that you're in right now?

And the last letter of SMART is T, and that means time-bound. Taking it back to my original illustration of losing 30 pounds by July 1st, that's time-bound, it's locked in. July 1st is when I'm going to achieve this goal. I recommend that your goals are spread throughout the year. Many people recommend this, and I'm not the first one to recommend it, I'm just passing along what I've learned. If you have goals that are spread throughout the year as far as being due, we talk about DUE dates and DO dates. If you have certain goals that are DUE at certain times of the year, then you're more likely to hit them rather than all of your goals being due on December 31st.

Now, Michael Hyatt, who I talked about last week on the podcast in our episode on how full focus can change the game for you, would take SMART goals and add two letters to the end of that, turning them from just SMART to SMARTER goals. He would add the E and the R at the end of SMART goals. The E would be, make sure that your goals are exciting. Make sure it's something that you can actually get excited about, cause if you're not excited about it, you're probably not going to pursue it with much gusto. And I would even say make sure that the end goal is what's exciting, not the process. Usually the process to achieve a goal isn't all that exciting, but the end goal is what needs to be exciting.

And the last thing he would say with the extra two letters on SMART goals is that the R here is that you need to have it be a little bit risky. Have it be a little bit risky. Don't make it too easy on yourself. Make it something that's a little bit hard to achieve. Yes, we want to make it achievable, but we don't want to make it so easy that it's like "I want to wake up by noon one day a week." You can do hard things, and so let's make it a little bit risky.

There's another acronym that I came across earlier this year when it comes to setting goals that I really love. I haven't dug too deep into it yet, but I am fascinated by the concept. It's called CLEAR goals. I love that acronym just right out the gate because it's one that I want to embody, I want my goals to be super clear.

The C stands for collaborative - this is a type of goal that encourages teams to work together collaboratively. You're not going to get this goal on your own. You're going to bring other people in, whether it's your team, your friends, your family, your coaches, your mentors, your mentees, whoever it may be.

The L here is very similar to time-bound, but it's limited. You're gonna limit the duration of time. The next one is emotional, which you kind of hit a little bit with Michael Hyatt's SMARTER on the E where he says make it exciting. But I like it, it takes it one step further - make it emotional, makes it personal. It's something that brings out some sense of emotion in you.

Now, the next one is appreciable. This is obviously like a more financial term, right, are your assets appreciating in value or depreciating in value? What they say here is that you want to break down your goals so that you can accomplish them quicker. It's kind of that snowball effect. If you ever heard Dave Ramsey talk about the debt snowball, how you want to tackle your smallest amount of debt first and then your next largest and then your next largest and you keep rolling it over.

The last thing in CLEAR goals is the R and that's refinable. You're setting a clear objective, but you're being flexible with the situation as new information changes the goal. You can embrace, refine, and modify the goals. This is not an excuse to bow out - you're not gonna get two weeks into January and say "well, you know what, I wasn't really feeling it anyway." But you're gonna say, "You know what, situations change. My job situation changed. We added a family member who lives in our home now. We have taken on new debt. We have new financial freedom that we weren't planning on." Things happen, things change, life is going to happen.

Here's something that I wish someone had told me a long time ago about setting goals. You need to consider some well-rounded categories. I love the Full Focus planner so much because Michael Hyatt encourages you to consider these different life aspects when you're considering your goals, so that all your goals aren't just work-centric or just hobby-centric or just money-centric.

Here's what I recommend before we end today's episode. No matter what categories you choose, no matter what acronym you may or may not use to come up with your goals, I highly encourage you to find a system that works for you that breaks these goals down into weekly or daily tasks that inches you closer to the goal with regularity.

Remember, you don't need to get obsessed about the thing that's way out in front of you for three to 12 months from now. You need to just know that the next right thing is what you need to do. Break it down into chunks, the appreciable part that we talked about in CLEAR goals. Break that down into little bitty chunks that you can make progress on one day at a time.

It doesn't matter how big or little the progress is, as long as it's progress. Just do the next right thing, make that progress, check it off. Then do the next right thing, accomplish it. And if you do those bite-sized chunks all throughout the year, or throughout the time length of your goal, you're going to look up one day and realize you're way closer to your goal than you ever thought possible.

I cannot wait to continue this series with you next week. We're going to continue the Creative Gift Guide series by talking about 12-month rhythms. It's a really big picture framework that I think will set your new year into a whole new level of expectation and a whole new level of accomplishment.

I cannot wait to talk to you about that. Check out the ebook at DustinPead.com/store. Preorder that now before December 14th. You'll get 50% off. It's only $5 and it'll help you, your team, or maybe even somebody you know that needs it going into 2024. You can give that to them as well.

I cannot wait to talk to you next time on the Creativity Made Easy podcast.