Live Blissed Out

058 - The Creator Mindset

October 13, 2020 Marisa Huston & Nir Bashan Episode 58
Live Blissed Out
058 - The Creator Mindset
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Joining me is Nir Bashan.

From working with Hollywood and music stars like Woody Harrelson and Rod Stewart, Nir discovered something that may shock you: These creative superstars aren't all that different from you or I! It's just that they have mastered a method of repeatable and predictable creativity -- a type of creativity that anyone can learn. And it turns out that's the same type of creativity can be used in businesses and careers everywhere!

Nir has taught thousands of leaders and individuals around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, boost customer service and ultimately create more meaning in their work. Working with clients such as AT&T, Microsoft, Ace Hardware, NFL Network, EA Sports, Suzuki, Activision and jetBlue, Nir has spent the last two decades working on a formula to codify creativity for business. That formula is found in 'The Creator Mindset', a book which has been translated into two languages and released worldwide by McGraw/Hill business in August of 2020.

To learn more visit www.nirbashan.com and www.thecreatormindset.com

In this episode we will cover:

  • What Is The Creator Mindset?
  • What Does Creativity In Business Mean?
  • Change
  • The Little Victory
  • Asking Big Questions
  • Complacency
  • A Consistent Process 

Thanks so much for tuning in again this week. I appreciate you :)

Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the Feedback section.

Special thanks to Nir Bashan for being on the show.

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So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!

Marisa Huston  0:00  
Welcome to Episode 58 on The Live Blissed Out podcast. Did you know that complacency is a hurdle that can stifle an organization's ability to achieve greatness? Hello action takers! Welcome to Live Blissed Out! A podcast where I have inspirational and informational conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help us get the scoop and the lowdown on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston. Helping achieve bliss through awareness and action. Thanks for joining me. The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only. And any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. Joining me is Nir Bashan. From working with Hollywood and music stars like Woody Harrelson and Rod Stewart, Nir discovered something that may shock you. These creative superstars aren't all that different from you or I. It's just that they have mastered a method of repeatable and predictable creativity, a type of creativity that anyone can learn. And it turns out that's the same type of creativity that can be used in businesses and careers everywhere. Nir has taught thousands of leaders and individuals around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, boost customer service, and ultimately create more meaning in their work. Working with clients such as AT&T, Microsoft, Ace Hardware, NFL Network, EA Sports, Suzuki, Activision and JetBlue, Nir has spent the last two decades working on a formula to codify creativity for business. That formula is found in The Creator Mindset, a book which has been translated into two languages and released worldwide by McGraw Hill business in August of 2020. To learn more, visit www.nirbashan.com or www.thecreatormindset.com. Do you have a lamp or lighting fixture that needs service? Mark Collins at Lamp Restorations is a dependable appliance repair expert. He has been repairing and restoring lamps and lighting fixtures in the Centennial Colorado area for over 10 years. He offers quick and reliable service. All work is done on site out of his tiny solar powered shed. Most work is completed within a few days and special consideration can be given to critical rush lamp repairs. For hours, location and customer testimonials, click the link in the show notes or visit www.lamprestorations.com. It's wonderful to have you here today.

Nir Bashan  2:43  
Thank you, Marisa. Thanks for having me.

Marisa Huston  2:45  
I am interested in this conversation on the topic that we're going to have today on your book. And it's about the creator mindset. And I think it's a very relevant topic to talk about. We have a lot of listeners who are business owners, and they are always looking for new ways to achieve the goals that they're trying to achieve in a more effective way. And I was very intrigued when I read about this topic that you created here because I think you're onto something I think that there is an element of creativity that is necessary in order for us to be able to think outside the box and catapult ourselves to the next level. So I think it's important to start the conversation by first informing our listeners about what we mean when we say creator mindset. What exactly is that?

Nir Bashan  3:32  
The creator mindset is a series of tools and tips and tricks that I've created to help anybody become more creative at work. So no matter what you do, no matter who you are from medicine to manufacturing, there is a system that anybody can learn to become more creative. It just takes the wheel to do it. And so I wrote down a manual of the how of creativity that anybody can follow to become more creative.

Marisa Huston  4:01  
When we say creativity, what exactly do you mean? Are you talking about going into a room and making paintings and drawings? What exactly are you referring to when you're saying creative in business, particularly.

Nir Bashan  4:13  
Most people think of creativity as art or music or painting or sculpture or dance or something like that. They think creativity has to do with that. But it does not. It is only a very, very small portion of the potential of creativity. So if you think of like a big pie chart in your mind, Marisa and your listeners. If you guys think of a big pie chart. In your mind, take one like tiny percent of it, just 1% of that pie chart and that's music and art and that kind of stuff. The other whole 99% is creativity, innovation, ingenuity and all of those wonderful, amazing tools that we tend not to use in businessm, because we use analytics instead. We're in love with numbers, we're in love with quantification, we're in love with our spreadsheets and our quarterly report and our p&l sheets. Everybody loves that stuff. And that's okay. It's very valuable information. But unless we learn to combine both sides of the mind, the creative and the analytical side together, we're forever operating on a half tank of gas, wondering why we can't get ahead in our business. Wondering why we can't expand to that new market. Wondering why we can't raise our prices, or whatever else we want to do.

Marisa Huston  5:35  
Yeah, and don't you think it seems counterintuitive? Many of us are not just business owners, but have gone to business classes and training and that sort of thing. And we're always told, look at the numbers, look at the facts. What kind of percentages are you dealing with? We're trained to do that. And now we're saying wait a minute, there's another element that we have overlooked, that we really can use. Another tool in our toolbox to help us even do better with those numbers. Because like you said, it's important to know the data, but there's more to it. Why do you feel it is so crucial in our businesses? What happens when we don't implement this type of mindset into our business and use it to enhance what we're already doing today?

Nir Bashan  6:15  
You look at COVID, right? And that's a very, very important sort of case study. We're going through it now, but tomorrow, it will be something else, right? It's always something. And for me, creativity is a tool that enables you and your business, whether you're in a career or your product or service, to deal with change. Because change is imminent, and it is always coming. And the businesses that are creative, are able to deal with changes way better than the companies that are not creative, and same with people's careers. So what I advise people to do is to start looking beyond the numbers, and to start looking at their company, their product or service in a new and a different way that will allow for continual evolution of that product, whether it's in the marketplace, whether it's in research and development, so that when a crisis comes, it's not if but when, some crisis sort of happens, you're able to ride out the wave of uncertainty in a bit of a better and more effective way. So creativity is really all about problem solving in a business in a way that analytics will not allow you to do.

Marisa Huston  7:28  
Yes! And in fact, I was thinking about the situation we're all in today. Many of us never had a plan B for doing things from home. We never looked at our businesses from that perspective. We did it the same way we always had. And then when COVID hit, everybody had to start to figure out okay, that direction doesn't work anymore. How do I shift gears? How do I offer my services in a different way so that I can continue to move forward with my plans. In a sense, this thing pushed you against the wall, so to speak. You're now backed up and saying, I don't have a choice. I've got to do this or my business will not survive. Whereas in the past, it was more of a choice, because everything they were doing was still working. Are you then saying that we should be looking a step ahead? Not waiting for that moment when we have no choice, but really trying to make these decisions before that happens?

Nir Bashan  8:20  
Yes, absolutely. We have to constantly change and adapt and be willing to look at every piece of the business, leave no stone unturned and look for creative potential creative opportunity there. What has worked yesterday is no guarantee of what will work tomorrow. Yet, in businesses, we tend to get really complacent And we tend to get really comfortable in our successes. And let's face it, if there is a success at some point, you know, we made some money from a product or service or whatnot and, you know, we feel like, Oh, we must be doing something right. But unless you're continually changing and continually tweaking and embedding creativity into that process, then you can get in very bad shape if something were to hit. Like another COVID. Maybe it's a health crisis, maybe it's a terror crisis, maybe it'll be an economic crisis next. The only way to keep up with this change and to stay relevant is to stay continually creative. 

Marisa Huston  9:27  
Nir, this is so informative, and I think it's so important. But at the same time, I'm sure there are people listening, that are thinking to themselves. First of all, I don't think that I'm creative. And second of all, how can I anticipate these sort of things? I mean, if we talked about COVID, a year ago, everybody would have thought you were fear mongering or that you were coming up with some nonsense that just is not possible. And now here we are living it. And so how do we anticipate some of these things? How do we get our minds to think in a creative way so that we don't get stuck in the way things are?

Nir Bashan  10:00  
I have a book out, it's called The Creator Mindset. There's 92 tools in there, 92 things that you can do to not get stuck. But one of them that I really like that your listeners can do today is called The Little Victory, right? It's looking at those little victories as they occur and seeing what creative potential comes out of them. Now, I've been a serial entrepreneur, I've run companies with half a billion dollars of revenue and basically, what I ended up doing way too much was I set goals, right, I set a one year, three year five year. I made sure everybody's on track for that goal and I didn't stop until I got there. But what I missed was amazing, creative potential of the little victories that happened along the way, and the breadcrumbs that might put you on a slightly different direction. So I'll give you an example. There was a ice cream salesman many years ago, and his construct was volume. That's an analytical construct, he wanted to sell a bunch of ice cream machines. So he got listed in hit the sales circuit and did that kind of thing. And they sold some machines. But then like every analytical business, they got stuck. And he noticed there was a restaurant in California that kept ordering machines over and over, because they were making milkshakes. So he went down there. And he saw that there was a line out the door, a 45 minute wait. And so he stood in line and had the best cheeseburger he's had in his entire life. Best cheese burger ever! And that guy was Ray Kroc, and the restaurant was McDonalds. 

Marisa Huston  11:34  
Yeah! 

Nir Bashan  11:35  
Isn't that amazing? So if he would have just kept like selling ice cream machines, who knows what would have happened, right?  His three year, like ours is such and such goal. But because he was able to look at those little victories along the way, he realized those little victories, were telling him something far greater than what his main target was. And that's something your listeners can do now. What in your business? What in your offering or even in your career are you just plowing through because you're trying to make your one year or your three year or some sales goal or some market saturation, percentage or whatnot? What is right in front of you that maybe it's trying to take you in a slightly different direction, or trying to enhance that decision making process? That's creativity. And it's up to us to listen to it and see where it takes us?

Marisa Huston  12:25  
Yeah, and looking for opportunities to shift gears. And sometimes they're right in front of you, Nir. Sometimes they're just there, and you can't see them. And so it's just being open minded? 

Nir Bashan  12:36  
Isn't that something? 

Marisa Huston  12:37  
Yeah. Absolutely! I mean, there are things that fall in your lap. And sometimes they even come full circle afterwards. Like they're, they're you ignored it, years go by, and then you end up applying it later on and then you look at yourself and go, I should have done that several years ago, and I missed it. It's that open mindedness to say, look, there's something here, why don't I explore it? And then it's also I think, looking at things from a different perspective. You know, one thing I noticed with a lot of entrepreneurs is that we look at things internally. So we're looking at things from how do we become more efficient in our businesses? How do we do this better, whatever. But oftentimes, we miss how other people experience us. So maybe we think that, hey, you know, I've got my accounting thing, right? I've got everything, right. But the customer is having to go through hoops to do business with you and it's so inconvenient. And that might be the reason why you're not attracting the right customers or getting as much business as you want. So shifting gears and looking at things from a different perspective, and asking the questions will help you then open your eyes in a different way that perhaps you never considered before. Right?

Nir Bashan  13:41  
Yes, no doubt. And I do a fair amount of consulting, I do workshops and keynotes for companies. I did a consulting for a manufacturing company, and I was called in to help with efficiency, because that's a very popular thing in manufacturing. How do we get point .003% more effective with this particular machine? Because down the line that adds up, and all of a sudden, we're looking at more profitable margin. But for me, looking at efficiencies isn't always asking the big question. And just like you said, Marisa, it's really, really about asking bigger, bigger questions. Not the types of questions like how do I get point .003% of efficiency. So I work with this company for several months, and we were able to uncover that they were not so much in the business of making efficient products. They were in the business of building trust. All their contrary aviation defense contractors, and they needed parts made for tolerances that were wildly high. And those parts were life or death type things and over several years, built a certain amount of trust with their clients. Yet, all the leadership team was really trying to get things to be more efficient, the best way that they could. And we were not looking at the right problem and we were not asking the right questions. So what that turned into was a look at how to build the business to be more trust centered, and less about efficiency and those types of things. I think that we spend a lot of time trying to get the output of our company higher, when, in fact, we should be looking at other things. And in this particular case, for this particular company, building trust became a far more profitable entity than looking at how we can get the machines and the operators to work a bit more efficient. It really is about asking big questions and coming up with incredibly creative solutions.

Marisa Huston  14:37  
And I don't think we do enough of that, to be honest. And I think part of it is because we feel alone. We don't really know who to ask questions to. And I think we can even just start with asking people that have worked with us before and doing more of that. Like reaching out to people and saying, what is your true perspective? People that are not necessarily close to you, but are going to give you the honest feedback that you need. Because sometimes when we reach out to people that we think are not going to hurt our feelings. Well, that's not going to help because we really need a true perspective, in order for us to then be able to make the changes and adjustments that we need. People love comfort. When we know something's working, and we're comfortable in our little spot, and it's doing all right, we tend to just wanna let that happen. You know that saying if it's not broke, why fix it? 

Nir Bashan  16:26  
Yup.

Marisa Huston  16:26  
That then leads to complacency. So how do we avoid complacency so that we can push ourselves just a little bit more to get to that next step?

Nir Bashan  16:35  
Yeah, definitely. So for me, complacency comes in three different flavors of why they happen. But really, it's identifying which flavor particular complacency that we have. Sometimes it's a paralysis of choice. Sometimes it's a bad exploited sales model. It can be a bunch of different things. But basically, it's analyzing why we've gotten complacent and then reversing that fact. It really is about looking at ourselves seriously and honestly and saying, can we be doing better? Can we be doing something different? And why have we gotten so comfortable? Sometimes we over rely on technology and under rely on ourselves to come up with solutions. So it can be a combination of a lot of things. But one thing your listeners can do today, if they would like to say, Hey, you know, maybe I'm getting a little bit too complacent at work, or in my business, is to really ask yourself, what would happen if another crisis would hit? And when it would hit? And if it's financial, what would it do? If it's a recession, or a depression or something like that? Or if it's a terror related event? Or if it's a medical related event? or whatever, fill in the blank. So for your business, what if that would happen? And what am I doing today, to insulate myself from something like that? And for me, that answer is almost always going to be something creative, and something different and fresh and interesting. And that's something that you guys can do today to realize, and to analyze what the plan is. It's not something that you need to do after the crisis, it's something you need to do know.

Marisa Huston  18:17  
Yes. And the thing about it is, it's evolving. And as you said previously, don't think of it as such a big thing. I think that's what holds us back a lot of times and why we procrastinate or just don't even want to address it is because it seems insurmountable. And so if you just take baby steps and say, Okay, this one thing, what can I do about that? And then keep adding to that until you get moving. That's really all you can do. You're not trying to solve all the problems of the world, and you're probably never going to figure everything out. But at least you're moving the needle. At least you're putting yourself in a situation where you're always taking that extra step that you need to take so that you're not just doing the same thing day in and day out without ever making adjustments, right?

Nir Bashan  19:02  
That's absolutely true. And it's not that hard. It really is about looking at a particular sort of construct, and then coming up with a plan around what you should do. You come up with plans every day on other things, you know? But this sometimes we don't want to come up with a plan about crisis and what we're going to do and how we're going to deal with it when something happens. But it's a necessity, just like making payroll and all the other things we do every day. I suggest that we add this to our list.

Marisa Huston  19:30  
How do we sustain something like this? Obviously, it takes a lot of thought and work. Is this something that you recommend doing on a continual basis? And if so, how often? If you could share some tips on how we can apply this as a habit in our businesses.

Nir Bashan  19:46  
It's really a process that needs to be repeated. There is no get rich, quick or easy sort of solution. There's thousands of books and people out there who will sort of push that agenda but that's not my thing. I can't tell em, Oh, if you were just to do this you would get rich by the end of the week. It really is a process of doing and through that doing and that repeatable process, you then get a lot of creative potential out of it. And sustaining it is really about doing the work. I talk in the book about how to make creativity charts and organize creative ideas and how to enact them in your business. But you actually have to do the work in order to become more creative at work. 

Marisa Huston  19:52  
The book sounds amazing. Obviously, the book is going to have way more details about what can be done. Some best practices that we can apply in our businesses. What I'd love for you to do is to share with our listeners more information about your book and how they can learn more about what you do and get more information.

Nir Bashan  20:47  
Definitely. My website is my name www.nirbashan.com. You can buy the book at Barnes and Noble or Amazon or anywhere you like to buy books. And I would love to hear from your listeners and see if some of these things are helping you and are working for you.

Marisa Huston  21:05  
You have to apply it and it takes time and there is no quick fix. But you gotta start somewhere and you got to start with the awareness. And that's what these wonderful books with writers like you help us do. They give us a foundation, some ideas and things that we can start to implement. And even if you take just a few of those things and start to utilize them, we will tend to start to see some very positive outcomes from that. I can't thank you enough for being on the show and sharing this with us Nir. Thank you.

Nir Bashan  21:33  
Thanks Marisa. Thank you for having me. This has been really fun.

Marisa Huston  21:35  
That's all for this episode of Live Blissed Out. Thanks for listening and thanks to Nir Bashan for being my guest. If you have a question or comment for a future episode, all you have to do is go to www.speakpipe.com/lbovm, or click the link in the show notes to leave a brief audio message. If you find value in our show, please visit www.liveblissed out.com to reach out, subscribe and share on social media. This show is made possible through listeners like you. Thank you. So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!



What Is The Creator Mindset?
What Does Creativity In Business Mean?
Change
The Little Victory
Asking Big Questions
Complacency
A Consistent Process