#289 – The Truth About Creativity And Why Everyone Is Creative With Jeffrey Madoff
In episode 289 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim and Jeffrey discuss:
- 02:40 – Jeff Madoff Shares His Story
- 09:00 – Moving To New York From Wisconsin
- 10:50 – Have A Criteria For Risk Assessment
- 13:00 – What Is Creativity Or What Is A Creative Act?
- 17:30 – Your Creativity Is Your Fall Back Position
- 19:30 – The Myths Of Creativity
- 23:30 – How To Monetize Creativity
- 30:00 – “Sell It To Yourself”
- 31:30 – How Do You Define Success For Yourself?
- 35:30 – Breaking The Myths About Creativity
- 38:00 – Creating A Business Is A Creative Act
- 41:00 – Jeffrey Madoff’s Quote From His Book
- 42:30 – Curiosity Is The Fuel For Creativity
Transcript
Tim Jordan:
I am not creative or at least I don’t think I am, but many of you listeners are. And a lot of you listeners probably struggle to figure out how to use that creativity to actually create a business or create some sort of revenue. This week’s episode. We have a guy that is a professional creative guy. I don’t know if that’s his exact title, but I know that he’s been able to learn a lot from his experience. We’ll get into his career in just a second. He’s even been able to interview some of, I don’t know, the world’s most well known, I don’t know, business gurus, right? I’m looking at my list like Daymond John, Tim Ferris, Randy Zuckerberg, and others to help collaborate on his education and his own book. So it’s gonna be a great episode if you are creative. Listen, if you think you’re not creative, listen, because you might find out that you actually are. Listen to the end, it’s gonna be a great episode. Here we go. Hi, I’m Tim Jordan and in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk takers, the adventurous, and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life, fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.
Tim Jordan:
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the AM/PM Podcast, I’m your host, Tim Jordan. And today, of course, we’re talking about businessy stuff. Now, when I think about my skills as a struggling business owner, right? I don’t think of myself as a graphic designer. I don’t think of myself as a video producer. I don’t even think of myself as a very creative copywriter. So when I list those skills or lack of skills, I think it’s easy to identify myself as a non-creative person on the surface. Now, deep down, I know that there are a lot of different ways to be creative, and I couldn’t tell you what they are. Luckily, our guest today knows the answers to those questions. We’re gonna talk about creativity and how creativity, not only can be identified and categorized but also how it can be monetized. So Jeff, welcome to the podcast.
Jeff:
Thanks for having me on Tim.
Tim Jordan:
So Jeff Madoff has a pretty, I don’t know, solid resume. I’m looking right here. If you guys can see the video, it’s like a whole list of hype sheets of everything that he’s done, everything he’s accomplished, everything he’s got going on. And we love folks like this with a lot of experience. So, Jeff, I know that as we alluded to, or as we kind of gave the prequel to. We’re gonna talk a lot about creativity and how that pertains to businesses and maybe some self-identification exercises you can walk through us with, but how did you get to the spot I’d like to hear, you know, maybe a five minute story of why you are now the guy that gets to interview people like Daymond John talking specifically about creativity and business.
Jeff:
Well, you know it’s a long journey. That started when I had dark hair and a full head of it.
Tim Jordan:
And for those of you that can’t see the video, Jeff definitely has white hair and not a lot of it. So it’s been a while.
Jeff:
Well, thanks a lot, Tim. You could have told them something different if they can’t see me. Be creative on that description
Tim Jordan:
It’s a full head of hair but it’s white.
Jeff:
And thank you very much for having me on Tim. Nice talking to you. So I’ve always been seduced by ideas and ideas have always meant more to me and had more currency than money. And I guess that’s because fortunately, I’ve been able to figure out ways to make money with those ideas. So I’ve been fortunate in that realm. And you know, when you look at life through the rearview mirror, you can start seeing patterns and things that sort of let us here, cuz we all create our own narratives. So whether those are accurate or not, is another question. But you know, the things that I did and the steps that I took, I didn’t have a conscious master plan of anything. When I started my first business as an adult, I started a clothing company. I knew nothing about starting a clothing company. Other than I worked in a boutique when I was in college at the University of Wisconsin, I had a double major in philosophy in psychology, cuz I wanted to choose two majors that guaranteed I could make no income or get hired, no place.
Jeff:
And a friend of mine called me up and said, Hey, can you think of a gig that would earn more than bank interest? And since I was a buyer for this little boutique and sold on the floor there I said, well, I see what we sell and I could always draw, I’ll start a clothing company. And my dear friend, lifelong friend Ken Merman said, okay. And before I knew it, I had a check for more money than I had ever had at one time. So for those of you who don’t have video, Tim is sitting otherwise I would’ve said, sit down, Tim. So this amounts of money doesn’t knock you off. It’s 2,500 bucks. So the staggering pile of money almost infinite finances. And I sketched up some clothes, and had things made by the people that did the alterations for the clothing in the store.
Jeff:
And by the way, this store was a little boutique in Madison, the college town. So, you know, we sold rolling papers at the checkout. So, and I don’t want you to think this is like some kind of a fancy store. It wasn’t but it was a cool place. It was a cool place. And so I had some of my designs made and I was very naive when I went to the store and I saw fabrics on the bolt. I thought that was wholesale cuz it hadn’t been made into anything yet. So I was really ignorant. Now there’s a big difference between being ignorant and being stupid. And fortunately, I wasn’t stupid. Ignorant, you can learn, stupids forever. And so I quickly learned and I learned probably in the best way you can, which is by having to figure things out and do things in order to survive.
Jeff:
So that gave me a lot of real-life lessons that I have sort of learned as I went and that helped me do different kinds of things because I really learned the ins and outs of not just business but survival. And it was great lessons because I have always been an entrepreneur and that’s essentially because I’m unemployable. and you know, the other part of that is my parents were entrepreneurs. My mom and dad had their own business. My sister has her own business. So we grew up in a very entrepreneurial atmosphere. I grew my clothing company pretty quickly. We were doubling every four months and I had pretty quickly 120 employees, two factories, and an office in New York. I was living in Wisconsin at that time and I was chosen one of the top 10 young designers in United States.
Jeff:
Now that is more impressive than it sounds. Cause I think there were only eight of us. You know, who are we gonna get to fill the top 10? I dunno, Tim’s not born yet. We can’t call him. So I built up that business and it got to the point where I wanted to move to New York. And my backer had always been clear with me that he was not going to continue to back me if I ever moved to New York. Cuz part of the reason he invested in me is he owned banks in Wisconsin. And he, by the way, this is a typical sound you hear in New York City I’ll justify. Yeah. We’re
Tim Jordan:
Not even gonna edit that out. You’re sitting in New York. We’re gonna hear the fire truck. It’s cool.
Jeff:
That’s right. As long as you’re not coming to this building.
Tim Jordan:
Yes.
Jeff:
Otherwise, I gotta go tell me, you know so anyhow you know, the business grew, I wanted to move to New York, my backer who had made it clear that he backed me because I hired Wisconsinite. They banked in his bank. And I thought, you know, money comes and goes, but time only goes. And I learned that from my dad. And so I made the decision to move to New York and I had, which meant I had to close the business. And that was a big thing that I had to face too, in terms of closing the business, you know what was I gonna do next? And people said to me, wow do you have a job lined up in New York? I said, no. Do you have a place to live lined up?
Jeff:
No. Do you know people there? No. He said, why aren’t you afraid of what’s gonna happen when you move? I said, actually I’m afraid of what would happen if I stayed because I have unbounded curiosity about so many things. And what I wanted to do is learn more and do more, and New York work is one of these frontiers without limits in terms of what you can do. And as the song goes, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And I think that that’s true because it is tough here. It is competitive, but there’s also a stimulus and I am a stimulus junkie. I love, love being in New York and I love all the energy here and that people come here to make it. And so I’ve moved here in 1974 and absolutely have loved every second of it. Not that there haven’t been tough times. I’ve loved every second of it.
Tim Jordan:
Well, I love what you just said. I feel like there’s a life lesson in there. You said you weren’t necessarily, if afraid about making the change, you’re scared of what would happen if you didn’t make a change. Of course, you’re talking about moving, but man, that can apply to so many people that are terrified to make a change, you know, in anything that’s where they live, what, what they’re doing in life, you know, all of that thing, relationships, I feel like there’s a lot of deep wisdom in there so.
Jeff:
Well, and I’ll build off of that for a moment because one of the things that you have to do in business, but you also have to do in life is kind of a have criteria for risk assessment, right? You know you have to determine, am I doing something that is could cause catastrophic unchanged damage to my life, or is it really not that big a deal? And if you look at, you know, from one to 10, 10 being catastrophic damage to your life or a number one, which is nothing, no real effect, most of the things we confront in life on a day to day basis are like twos, threes. You know, when you’re making business decisions, they’re not huge. And especially when you’re young and you make decisions to do things that are riskier. You’ve got lots of time to correct the course and undo. I think, you know, as people get older, they often get more risk-averse because they sort of have less time to undo the damage. Yeah. They also may have families and expenses that they didn’t have before.
Tim Jordan:
So what’s interesting is you’re talking about your history of really being a creative person, right? You’re literally designing clothes, but you’re also talking about risk assessment. And when I think of like super creative people, like my sister, she would never use the words, risk assessment, which is great because as we’ve alluded to getting into this episode, we were gonna talk about maybe some of those areas where creativity and monetization and business mix. So my suspicion is that this whole risk assessment met probably wasn’t in your vocabulary in 1974 when you move. But it’s probably something that you’ve learned as you’ve continued to build businesses. So if we look further at your resume, we’re gonna skip ahead a little bit. You have, since you moved to New York, you’ve produced things, you’ve written things, you’ve directed plays, you’ve done all sorts of creative stuff, right?
Jeff:
Yes.
Tim Jordan:
And you’ve dealt with a lot of people, obviously in business yourself, you’ve, you’ve worked with bankers. So I think you probably have a good holistic view of what creativity is and that’s what I wanna jump into. So what is creativity? Let’s talk about what it is. And then let’s talk about some of the myths of creativity. So I started off this episode talking about graphic design, video production, you know, writing. And I know that skipping ahead, that I’m probably wrong here by assuming that that is all that creativity is. So tell us what creativity actually is.
Jeff:
I think creativity is a compelling need to bring about a change. And as a result, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business and I don’t care what the business is. You’re taking an idea that started in your head from some desire to do something, to bring about some kind of a change to solve some kind of a problem. And that’s a creative act. So I think that it’s important to widen a perimeter of what creativity is. And I think that creativity if you are a dentist and you can come up with a fast, inexpensive, painless cavity prevention or tooth whitener, you know, you’ve created something. That’s not to say it’s the same as writing the great American novel or making a movie, but it is a creative act. And any idea that you have that ends up being something and that something doesn’t mean just articulating a thought. It means that you have created a product or a service that you’re then able to sell to somebody else, I think that that’s a creative act. Now, a lot of people have hobbies and their hobby might be painting or their hobby might be sculpting or their hobby might be writing or whatever it is. And that they’re very happy for it to be a hobby. And then they have their job that pays their bills. I will wanted to be able to have the things that I really enjoy doing creatively pay my bills.
Tim Jordan:
So I just had a giant aha moment. And this is my ignorance. All right. I don’t think I’m stupid, but I just realized how ignorant I am. Because in my mind, I’ve always equated this word, creative or creativity with art. So creatives are artists or artists are creative. Anybody else is not. So a businessman is not creative, but what you just said, and I wrote it down, creativity is a compelling need to bring about change, and entrepreneurs could take an idea and turn it into something, even a business idea. So if you look at just the base root of the word creativity, it’s just created, it’s not art. It’s not designed. It’s not something crazy. It is literally just create. So you can have zero artistic bones in your body like I do, but I can still be creative.
Jeff:
Yeah. And I don’t think that it’s about the artistic bone that you have. And actually, the root term of create is Greek is create, which is an agricultural term, which is to grow.
Tim Jordan:
Oh my goodness.
Jeff:
So if you take it further. And you think of the seed being an agricultural term that you plant that seed is an idea. No matter of, for, for an idea. And to grow that seed means to bring your creative idea to fruition. And that can be a business that can be a podcast that could be any number of things. And what I think you’re clicking into, because most people on the surface would agree with you in terms of, well, you know, there’s dance and writing and film and all of that kind thing. And those are creative pursuits and these other things aren’t, and I don’t think that’s correct.
Tim Jordan:
It’s like English has screwed this word up.
Jeff:
No, our culture has.
Tim Jordan:
Yeah. I shouldn’t say English, but yeah, our culture has mislabeled this word and, or not mislabeled it, but misdefined this word, right? Because we think of creative arts and we think of creative passions and we tie too much to art. But what you’re saying is that’s wrong. Like creativity is broader than that.
Jeff:
Yeah. It’s limiting. So I guess you have to be creative to think of it that way. You know, it’s, it’s very limiting to think of it that way. You know, if you say to somebody, oh, I’m gonna be an accountant or a lawyer or a doctor nobody ever says, well, what’s your backup position if that doesn’t work out, but if you’re gonna be an actor or a painter or a writer, then you’re asked, well, what’s your backup position? What’s your fallback. And to me, your fallback position is your cleverness, your resourcefulness your creativity to figure out. Because creativity, it has a lot to do with problem-solving. It’s to figure out how do you solve that problem? And that goes back by the way to I called it risk assessment, but there’s something else that’s really important. And that is having a proof of concept. You know, what is that? And you know, when I started designing and I mentioned that I had some clothing made and put it in a store where I worked, it sold out immediately, we made more, it sold out immediately again, and then I had more stuff put together, strapped it on the back of my motorcycle, drove from Madison, Wisconsin to Chicago, went to a bunch of boutiques. And all of a sudden, in the course of two days, I had like $55,000 worth of orders.
Tim Jordan:
So your creativity was not necessarily your artistic ability to design clothes, your true creative strength in that first business was figuring out how to create it into a business, how to create a business out of it.
Jeff:
Well, yeah. How to turn it into a business. So that’s right. So one could say that, or I could say that you know, designing a close that’s a creative act that come up with an idea. I sketch it and work out all the specs with the sewers and so on. And have it made the fact that it’s sold, that becomes the proof of concept. And by the way, that’s no different than what I’m going through with my play, which we just finished our first commercial run of the play. And it was fortunately very successful. So we had ticket sales, we had positive audience responses and we had good, critical responses. That’s proof of concept. There are people out there that are willing to pay to engage in that particular entertainment, the play that I wrote. So, you know, I think that that goes, that’s true in any business.
Tim Jordan:
So we’ve talked about kind of what creativity is, and we’ve talked a bit about the myths of creativity. Let’s make sure that we’re not leaving any on the table, that we haven’t talked about, those myths. And then I do want to work. We’re kind of sneaking that way anyways, but I want to hear your advice on how to take creativity and make it into an enterprise, how to monetize on creativity. Cause that’s a really, really important thing. And for those of you that are listening, the reason I think that’s important is I run into creative people all the time in this world of like, especially e-commerce, whether it’s creating the coolest product to having the greatest software tool idea, to creating a specific or aggregating a specific set of talents into an agency like understanding the next step of how to actually monetize that and build that into a business is always the hardest thing for people. There’s a lot of people with great ideas, but very few people have actually capitalized on ’em including myself. So we’ll get into that in just a second, but let’s go back to these myths of creativity. One of the myths is that I think we could say that creativity is art, and now we’ve learned big aha moment for me in here that creativity and art are not necessarily the same thing. What’s another myth of this word creativity.
Jeff:
Well, first of all, I think that creativity is oftentimes thought of in books and in movies like this lightning bolt where there’s the lone genius in this lightning bolt of a night idea happens. And from that spuse forth all of this creative expression, but that’s not how your brain works and that’s not how it works. The more you expose yourself to ideas, whether you go to museums, movies, read books, just be observant as you walk around, talk to people you might not normally talk to, but all of these different things feed you and they create these little dots in your brain is kind of little neural firings that the more things you learn, the more you expose yourself to the more possibility there is for that ricocheting around to create a new idea. So it’s not a lightning bolt, it’s the culmination of a lot of those different influences that an idea may come from. So, you know, in your case, for instance, and obviously we don’t know each other, Tim, but you started a podcast, you get 20,000 downloads on each of your podcasts who came up with the idea of the podcast.
Tim Jordan:
Well, I’m gonna ruin your example here. Cause it wasn’t me. Actually, another guy started this podcast and then I took over. But I think your point remains the same.
Jeff:
Yes, it does. Because you’re seeking out people that you’ve got an idea of what this podcast should be, the kind of information that it imparts, the kind of audience that you have that you want to build. And all of those things, that’s all a creative endeavor. Yeah.
Tim Jordan:
The podcast has substantially changed since I became the host of it two years ago, right. So like we’ve actually took something that was created and recreated it into something else.
Jeff:
Right. So, you know, and creativity has its own form of evolution. Right. You know, that you can start off with an idea, but as you learn more and do more, what that is changes, you know, and there are so many businesses, I mean, Facebook started as, you know, a dating app, you know trying to find girls to go out with, I mean, that’s what Facebook was, who knew it would become what it has become. You know, Google was a college project who knew what that would become and you go down the line in terms of ideas and look at the roots of those ideas. You know, Apple didn’t start off being Apple, the gigantic company that it is, it’s two guys in a garage, you know, Jobs and Wozniak. So I think that ideas that are vital are constantly evolving and that goes down to things like what I do or what you do, a podcast it’s changing and bringing your own sensibility to it, making it into something different.
Tim Jordan:
I love it. So how do you begin to monetize this? Because people have these creative, I almost said creative sparks, but like you just said, they’re not necessarily sparks they’re creative fires that have grown into something that is tangible, that’s feasible that you can actually create a plan off of this, but how do you actually get your mindset, right. To begin to think about this as a business and not just an idea.
Jeff:
Well, if your goal is to turn an idea into a business, then what you have to do is your due diligence. And what I mean by that is if you’re offering a product or a service, what’s the competitive landscape out there. Is there anybody else doing it? How are they doing it? How much are they charging? If you want to contract with them or buy their service or buy their product and get a real sense of what’s the arena that you’re entering into, cuz it’s going to be competitive. So what you wanna do is arm yourself. And by the way, I didn’t do this when I started my clothing company or my video company or anything. But what you wanna know is what else is out there and what else, who else is trying to do kind of what I’m doing, what can I learn from them?
Jeff:
And a good example, again, is Apple, you know, Apple did not originate the graphical user interface that they claimed to originate. They appropriated that from Xerox when park closed down. And so that’s really interesting. So they saw the value in it. Xerox park was closing down. They took what was called the GUI graphical user interface. And they created their interface out of that. So it’s also if you’re going to steal from the best and real stand on the shoulders of the giants who have done things before so that you have an idea of what you’re competing against, what is the arena that you’re entering into. So if you were locked in a basement somewhere and you came up the idea with this little portable wireless phone that could somehow connect you to the rest of the world, and then you realize, oh, well there’s already Android out there.
Jeff:
There’s already Apple out there. I guess that’s not really a new idea, but then what can I do to make a different, maybe Google has finally got it right with their Pixel six. But their first efforts at that, the gigantic company that were even then failed. But they knew the competitive landscape, they knew cameras were becoming more important. So they put a fantastic camera into it. They knew what the price ranges were and they could afford to underprice other phones. So they did that. So they’re finally gaining traction with their smartphone. If they didn’t know the competitive landscape, they could have never done that. And that’s true even if you’re selling paintings that you do, you know, what is it, that’ll help you get it out there and establish the value for it. And again, that proof of concept so that, you know, there’s a market for your ideas. That’s the only way you can market and sell anything or to use the term monetize. That the only way you can do that is to prove that there’s a market for it.
Tim Jordan:
So that’s step one, right? I assume there’s a few other things taking creativity into a business is doing your due diligence and figuring out is this feasible, right? Because just cuz you’re in love with it just cuz you think it’s amazing. Doesn’t mean it’s going to be amazing. Right?
Jeff:
And just because your parents tell you that it’s great or your boyfriend or girlfriend or friend say, listen, that’s really cool until somebody is willing to actually take out their credit card, hand you some cash, write a check. It doesn’t mean anything. Its nice to hear support, but it doesn’t mean anything until you’re able to make it a transactional thing, which proves that somebody’s willing to pay for it.
Tim Jordan:
All right. Next big step. We’ve done our due diligence. We have this creative idea, at least in your experience, what’s been the next big hurdle that you had to overcome.
Jeff:
So how do I make it? You know, like I mentioned earlier that all a sudden I had $55,000 worth of sales and I had to figure out, so how am I actually going to deliver, you know, what that is and how do I establish a price for what I’m doing? You know? Because in order to establish a viable price, especially if you’re a startup, and a solo entre, no what you’ve gotta do is figure out a way that you can sell it for more than what it cost you to make because volume doesn’t help you make up the sales. We just saw that with WeWork didn’t we? You know, a gigantic company that was basically a con job, but it was this gigantic company that built this reputation. That was all based on a house of mirrors.
Tim Jordan:
And when you say make something, you’re not just talking about a physical product, this could be a service you’re talking about that’s right. It costs you less than you bring in. I see people all the time with service based companies that when they actually look at their P and L it’s costing them more employees than they’re bringing in, or it costs them more services, you know, contracted they’re bringing in. So make sure it’s profitable. If you’re what’s, there’s an expression. Volume is vanity, profit insanity. Something like that.
Jeff:
San makes sense. Yeah. It’s yeah, there is this old family lo of my great-grandfather and he would buy socks wholesale and sell them retail. And so he would come back and my great-grandmother would say to him, so how was businesses today? And he said it’s fantastic. I sold out again. And she said, how much are you paying per dozen for the socks $3. And how much are you selling ’em for a dollar 50? And she said, well, how do you expect to make any money if you’re selling it for half of what you paid for it? And he said, well, volume, you know, doesn’t work.
Tim Jordan:
No, it doesn’t. Math does not compute. Right. Do your due diligence, do your homework. You gotta figure out how to make money. Otherwise, the whole thing is a hobby right. That leaves you depressed and broken. Give me one more. Action. Step. One of the biggest hurdles, one of the biggest things you had to figure out was important in taking a creative idea and turning it into business.
Jeff:
Well, you have to always be able to sell it to somebody, right? So the first thing you have to do is sell it to yourself. You know, what is your compelling reason for doing this? And what is it that excites you about it? What is it that somehow makes your life better as a result of that? Because if you can talk about what it is you do with enthusiasm, with passion, that’s contagious because people register how you make them feel. So the idea that you first are selling yourself on it. So when you present that product or service for sale, you’re conveying it with an enthusiasm based on the confidence of how this works and how this can be better. So you’re excited about it. And so that’s really critical, cuz then you can sell somebody else. And until you’re able to sell somebody else, you don’t have a business, but that first somebody else you have to sell is yourself.
Jeff:
So you gotta know all the business underpinnings. How much it’s gonna cost you to make? How long is it gonna take to make it? How can I deliver it? Is there an opportunity to actually grow this business? Or is it they say scale? And that brings in one more critical question. And that critical question is, well, how do you define success for yourself in business? You know, what does that mean? Because you don’t have to scale a business. You can make a really good living on a, not very big business. And you know, what is this supposed to be? What part of your life is your business and what do you want it to be? And how do you define success for yourself? And a lot of people don’t ask themselves that ever or they ask it when they’re well into middle age and they feel it’s too late to make any changes. And it’s never too late to make changes.
Tim Jordan:
I was asking, well, talking to a good friend of mine in this business world yesterday, and she was talking about maybe making some changes. And I said, well, what do you want? And she started to tell me her business plan. Like, this is what I want to happen to my business. I said, stop. I didn’t ask you what you want for your business? Like, what do you want? And she honestly looked at me, she said through the camera and she said, you know, I’ve never thought about that. I was like, well, you’re trying to build this business in what it should become, but you’re not actually even figuring for yourself out, like what you want. And it turns out maybe what she needs is a job. She may just need a salary and a cushy job. And then she can take her passion and turn that into a hobby. Like maybe that’s how she lives the most comfortably. But I do think that a lot of us are so dead set on what we think success is or what we think we should do with our ideas. And we don’t actually ask ourselves like, is this what we want in life? Or is this the right way of doing this use a little bit of common sense and take a step back because we get so excited about it?
Jeff:
Well, you are right. And you know, the thing is that’s doing some deep personal work. And that’s not something that a lot of people are disposed to do, but it’s really important to do. Because I can tell you that I know some in terms of material wealth, people that are fantastically wealthy, but they’re at this point in their life and have been for a while now, which is so is this it? You know, because they don’t feel fulfilled from what they’re doing. That’s true. And I think fulfillment is a huge aspect in terms of my success. Cause I’ve, I’ve done well financially. I’ve done poorly financially. I’ve been on a rollercoaster as most entrepreneurs have been, but do I feel fulfilled in what I do? The answer is yes. Am I engaged in what I do answer is yes. And I think that that’s so critical and you know, as you get older, it becomes more so. Because time seems to travel so much faster and that fulfillment, I think if you ask yourself, when you were young enough, doesn’t mean you don’t 10 and change on your journey, but at least you have some kind of a roadmap in terms of what you want to do, you know?
Tim Jordan:
Yeah. And I think that that idea of like deep, personal exploration, trying to figure out, you know, are we gonna be fulfilled, is something that isn’t talked about enough. But I think that everybody listening to this podcast can probably agree that what they want is some sort of success, whether it’s financial success, family success, or personal success like we’re talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs that are ambitious. They want something they’re trying to chase it. Now, if we kind of go backward in what we’ve talked about this at the episode, we’ve talked about this concept of potentially being able to succeed with our creativity, whatever that is creating more money, creating more free time, creating more job opportunities for others, whatever. We’ve talked about, how creativity can be so valuable for that. But I know there are people listening to this right now that are claiming they’re not creative enough. They’re saying, well, I can’t do this cuz I’m not a creative person. I’m too right-brained and not left-brained. Right? So can we talk briefly about maybe some of the excuses that even some of our listeners right now are making themselves about why this podcast episode is stupid because they’re not a creative person and can you maybe fix some of this myths of this? I’m right brained. I can’t be creative crap that people like.
Jeff:
So let me tell you where that myth started. Back in the sixties, when there was the early work being done on the Bicameral brain and left and right brain hemispheres by Roger Sperry, who won a Nobel prize for his left brain, right brain research work and he won it in the early seventies. And that became like a thing in terms of you know, vernacular. Even now you can go on to Google, if you do light left brain, right brain quiz, what kind of person are you? Are you creative? Are you more organized and spatial and all of that? Well, that’s not how your brain works. And when brain imaging got more sophisticated by quantum leaps, by the nineties, what was seen was that there’s tremendous crosstalk between the two hemispheres of the brain. And there was no discernible difference between somebody who did a very banal job or somebody who did something considered highly creative.
Jeff:
There’s just lots of crosstalk between the hemisphere of the brain. But that had become so embedded in our popular culture that people thought, well, you know, I’m a left brain, I’m very spatial and organized, but I’m not creative or the converse, which is I’m really creative, but I just am not good at math or business. And so that became an easy out, you know, one of the things humans love is excuses for not doing things. And so you think of those excuses by ruling things out while I’m not creative, I could this, I’m not creative or, you know, I’m not any good at business, but you know, I’m good at it. Well, do you pay your bills? You know, then you need to know something about business, right? Do you have a credit card that you gotta pay every month? Do you have rent? Do you go buy groceries?
Jeff:
You know, I mean life involves all of these parts of our brain and there’s always those easy outs and easy excuses, but the scientific merit of that notion of the left brain, right, brain evaporated, once brain imaging got sophisticated, they could actually map brain activity and saw that no, that’s actually not how our brain functions. So now just become a rationalization as opposed to a fact. And I would say that if people are listening to your podcast, you cater towards people that are entrepreneurs that want to do their own business. And again, creating a business is a creative act. I don’t care what that business is. It’s a creative act. You have an idea and you’re trying to figure out how do I realize this idea and bring it to market. That’s a creative act. So I again think that we need to widen that perimeter, that playground that we call creative, cuz there’s a lot more, that’s creative than one thinks. Because most people, as you said earlier, that it just has to do with the arts and it doesn’t. And by the way, my, you know, being a playwright, that’s in the arts, but I also recognize how valuable all of these other talents are and frankly how creative they are too.
Tim Jordan:
Yeah. I think one of the big takeaways from this is that we can’t make excuses for ourselves and claim we’re not creative enough to do something because you know, you’ve basically helped me redefine this word. One thing I love about doing this podcast is I learned so much doing it. Like even if people weren’t actually listening to this, I would pretend they were listening. So I could get really smart folks like you to come on an interview just for myself. So, I think that this word creativity’s definitely been redefined. And I think when you do that and we all understand that creativity can be monetized, we reduce or eliminate that excuse of we can’t monetize on creativity because we’re not creative.
Jeff:
Well, and there’s one, one thing I’d like to throw into that too, Tim. And, and that is if you put the energy that you put into creating excuses into actually creating something to move yourself and your life forward, you’re gonna be a lot better off,
Tim Jordan:
Oh man, I have to write that down.
Jeff:
So you, you know, it takes a lot of energy to figure out all the reasons why you can’t do something and you know, to come up with those excuses, that’s a creative exercise too. So why don’t you put that energy into doing something that moves you in the direction you actually want to go in? And I would also say that you want to be around people who foster creative thinking and you foster creative thinking by challenging yourself and listening to somebody, deliver their excuses for not doing things, and not to say there’s never legitimate excuses.
Tim Jordan:
There are reasons. Yeah. There are reasons
Jeff:
That’s right. And that’s different than excuses. Good distinction. That’s right. But I think that that’s really important to realize it takes creative energy to come up with all the reasons you can’t do something. And I think that it’s important in business actually in life in general, don’t say to yourself about those ideas, because there’s gonna be people out there who are gonna say, no, you’re gonna face much more rejection than being embraced. So don’t be afraid to put your ideas out there and discover and put ’em to the test. Whether it’s something that you can build on or not.
Tim Jordan:
As we wrap up, I want to quote you on something here. So you were teaching at Parson school of design and I have here in quotes, a line that you gave them said, “most of us have had the feeling of, I could have done that. Whether an art gallery watching a performance, finding a new product or even a new business idea. But what’s the difference between you and them. They actually did it. And you didn’t.” I love that. And you talk about that in your book and this book called Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas. You talk about things like determining your value, being smart about your hustle, editing down your creative projects to I assume, focus on overcoming fear and doubt, and creating a successful long-lasting career on your own terms. And in this you bring in a lot of folks. I think I read here about 50 collaborators some of the best business minds in the space, well known, and kind of stack those on top of your own personal knowledge. So yeah. Anybody that’s listening, check that out. They can get that book, Creative Careers probably anywhere on Amazon. I’m sure.
Jeff:
Yes, Amazon. And I like to say this and offline booksellers.
Tim Jordan:
Offline booksellers. That sounds so bougie. Most people can’t say that anymore. And if they wanted to find out just more about you, I’m sure you’ve got a website somewhere. You’ve got blog content, all that good stuff.
Jeff:
Yes. A good place to connect is on LinkedIn B. Jeffery Madoff. And I also post things from my class, which are those kinds of insights and opinions from accomplished people who talk very candidly about the obstacles they’ve had to overcome the struggles they’ve had to overcome the successes they’ve had, how they view creativity and the thing about it is they don’t necessarily agree with each other. So it gives you more to think about which I think is always valuable, is always having more to think about. Curiosity to me is the fuel for creativity.
Tim Jordan:
I love that the whole iron sharpens iron thing right. Like we have to have some conflicting ideas and different opinions to figure out how to challenge ourselves to question what we think to be our truths, and to make ourselves sharper. So, Jeff, it’s been a great interview. I know we’re out of time, but any other final lasts Sage of wisdom. You wanna drop on everybody before we sign off here?
Jeff:
Stay curious, keep learning,
Tim Jordan:
Love it. Couldn’t end it better. Thank y’all for listening to the episode. Make sure to check out Jeff’s book again. It’s Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas and we will see all of you on the next episode.
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The post #289 – The Truth About Creativity And Why Everyone Is Creative With Jeffrey Madoff appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.
