Release Your Creativity

Feeling stuck, struggling to bring your creative ideas to life? Well, today we're going to explore just how to unlock your creativity, overcome those frustrating blocks, and maintain the momentum to keep your creative juices flowing. Let's talk about adding just a little more creativity to your life. I'm joe, and my colorful creative pal over there is Kurt. Izejdehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe and we are dudes in progress. Hey, kurt.

Hey, joe. You know what? If you can't get it right, just keep trying over and over again. Joe. That's right.

That's right. So that cold opening was a little rough on me. What happened is not what you got. Let's just put it that way.

Well, I think it's a big part of creativity to keep trying.

Are you a creative person? Do you think you consider yourself a creative person?

I would not. I think I lean towards more analytical. What's that? Left and right side of the brain. I should have looked it up. Whatever.

I think left side is creative and right side is analytical.

I think you're right.

We have a 50 50 chance of getting that one right.

So I think I lean more towards the non creative side. But I've learned, you know, I try to improve, and I think about these things, and I've noticed myself as, what would a way be that I'm creative, of course, with the content we create in podcasting. Been doing that for ten years. That's a really creative endeavor. And investigating all kinds of tools. We've been doing a lot of creativity in terms of looking at artificial intelligence tools, spending a lot of time in that area, learning how to do video editing. And I think that I really struggle with art, I guess, or design has always been a piece that I felt is difficult for me. When you think of a creative person, I always think of music, of course, and someone who writes songs a little more in tune to those things than I am. But when I think of my work, even my day to day job, I think I get creative with solutions that I create for the work that I do. I think a big part of creativity is this is something that I have. This is almost back, going back to our emotional conversation where I didn't think I was an emotional person, and the deeper I look in, I noticed I was more emotional. This is the same kind of thing. I don't consider myself a creative person, but the deeper I look, the more creativity, things I find. But curiosity, I think, is a huge thing, and, boy, that's something. All of the creative people, anything that's ever discovered, built things. Curiosity is a huge part of that, and I am a very curious person.

I would agree. You are a very curious person. And I would also agree that curiosity plays an important role, and curiosity can be manifest. Right? It can be. You can. You can bring curiosity out. You can just decide to be curious. It just means asking more questions and trying to understand situations. What comes to mind when you think about creative people or creativity?

Well, I just gave you one curiosity. People that just keep trying different things till they. Till they get to that feeling that they've created something that they were thinking about or a feeling that they had.

I don't know who said it, but when some master sculptor was asked, how did you create this beautiful sculpture? How did you create this just out of a single block of marble? He said, well, I looked at the block of marble, and I took away everything that didn't look like the man.

Yeah.

It does sound simple. Right? Now we know it's not as simple as that.

I'm thinking of courage also.

Yeah.

You gotta be a little vulnerable. You have to go in a certain direction. Maybe other people don't really see where you're going with that particular creativity. It was fun. That Broadway play that we recently saw, my daughter and I called stereophonic. The creative process of creating an album in the seventies in the studio, and the creative differences of bands that wanted someone to do one way. Isn't that what breaks up every seventies rock band that we knew?

So we've all heard of the term writer's block, right? You know what I find interesting about the term writer's block? We never hear about something called plumbers block or police officers block, or it guys block. You know, these are people who have to use creativity in their life. They have to problem solve. They have to just kind of get in there and. And do it. Every single one of those roles and many other roles that we could name, they have to look at a problem. They have to creatively solve that problem. They have to understand the situation. They may have, you know, a plumber may have to design a whole pipework. Right. Whatever that means. But you never hear about plumbers block and Fireman's block or it guys block. What do you think the difference is there?

I'm thinking of one thing is, when you compare a plumber or a police officer, an it guy, there is a sense of urgency for the problems that they come across. In terms of a plumber. Their water could be. Joe, you ever have any experience with water in your little bit? There's a sense of urgency when water's pouring out. I know, that happened to me when I forgot that I didn't shut off the water downstairs and I was taking off the shutoff valve in my bathroom and the water started flying at me. You get real creative fast in that kind of situation. Obviously a police officer, an emergency situation, you got to think fast and you got to take care of that situation quickly and sometimes be creative. But it same way you always got somebody who's got an urgent problem that needs to be resolved and you got to keep looking for that answer til you can resolve it or move in another direction. But if your goal is to write a book, unless you've signed a contract, there's no real urgency. Some of these creative endeavors, there's no urgency for me to create a podcast there or even just sit down and say, hey, I want to learn painting.

You know what I think is the common theme between plumbers block or police officers? It guys, all that stuff is they have a, for the most part, they have a pre planned structure in place where they kind of know that they have to do certain things in a certain way in, within a certain period of time or whatever it might be. And they have a, they have the structure in place where their creativity thrives within that structure. And I think that's what people, what, what professional creatives have, and that's what makes them successful. I remember hearing three things stand out to me is one by Stephen Kingdom, very likely the most prolific author of our time. And Stephen King has a structure in place. I don't know exactly what it is, but he, he sits down every morning and he writes x number of words or something like that, or, but he writes every single day. And he doesn't let himself move forward until he writes a certain amount. It doesn't matter whether it's good or bad or ugly or, or whatever it might be. I think about Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld writes a joke a day. That's his thing. He writes a joke a day. Now, most of them are terrible. Most of them are terrible, but he writes a joke a day. And he's arguably the most successful comedian of our time.

Well, they don't even know when they create something, if it's any good until they put it in front of an audience. Right there. There are so many creative examples of music, made jokes, movies. When they think one thing is good, but the audience finds something else and leads them into the, the best of what they've created. So many examples of that.

There's a, there's a podcaster and entrepreneur. He starts a lot of businesses, and he's tried a lot of stuff. His name's James Altrature, and he has a really good podcast. Kind of an odd guy, but I really invite you to listen to his podcast if you get a chance. He writes ten new business ideas a day. A day.

Wow.

And he says most of them are absolutely terrible. Yeah, right. Garbage. 99.9% of them. But every once in a while, something will stick out and says, oh, that's pretty good. And he'll go find somebody to maybe engage that business with, and he might own a little bit of it, or he's just giving it away as a. As a gift to the universe.

I don't know if anyone would be interested in this. My daughter and I went on a, what we called our wizard of Oz weekend to New York City on Broadway. We saw the whiz, and on a Friday night and Saturday we saw wicked. But, oh, cool. When we were in the hotel room, my daughter says, you ever see this documentary about the making of the wizard of Oz? Fascinating. There's probably never been a movie with more problems in creating that film and the amount of directors they went through and screenplays. But one of the things, many things I found interesting about that back in the thirties, there was no television, of course, and they were going down the road. They had different directors with different ideas. Dorothy was dolled up, like lots of makeup in one part of it. And this new director came in. He was, matter of fact, working on gone with the wind at the same time, but he had a little break in between, so they got him as a loan, and he tried some things, did a lot of filming. They spent a lot of. I can't believe the money they threw away in creating all these scenes, filming everything, going downtown in Los Angeles and one of these theaters and showing it to an audience before it was complete and getting the reaction from the audience. And they tested that at least two times, two different times, and that proved to be a winner because there were many failures in trying to recreate the Wizards of Oz on screen and in plays that they go through quite meticulously. And you all know what ended up with the wizard of Oz and its tremendous success. It actually lost money when it hit the. Because of all the money they spent going into it, they ended up losing money at the box office, but, of course, made it all back with television. So you think of all the creative directions that they went and how they pivoted and ended up pivoting, or finding out again through testing. This is the right way to go for this scene or this character. But really, if you love the wizard of Oz, go on YouTube and find that documentary.

And that speaks to the creative process probably more than anything. And we weaved that theme so far in this conversation is you just got to keep trying stuff. Right. Thomas Edison is is famous for saying he didn't, he didn't invent the light bulb. He just found out 10,000 ways not to do it.

I have borrowed that in my own way. Someone will say, hey, talking about a project, a project manager come up to me, how's this project going? I'll say, well, I found three or four ways that don't work.

Right.

Right.

And that's a good thing right now, you know, never to use those things.

We're on our way.

So as we move forward, I want to talk about three things, Kurt. I want to talk about recognizing that everybody's creative and they have a creative side, understanding creative blocks. And finally, what I feel is the best strategy for kicking off your creative project and whatever that might be. And I use this strategy a lot, and it's the simplest of strategies, and I call it defeating the blank page. I'm sure I didn't make it up, but it's rattled around my head there. But defeating the blank page. But I do believe that everybody's creative and much more creative than what they probably think they are. There are many people like yourself who probably are more creative than they are anything else.

Yeah.

Creativity is not just limited to artists. That's the important thing. It's not just limited to artists or I, musicians or writers or painters or sculptors or designers. It's not limited to just what we think traditionally as creative careers or everybody has a creative side that can be developed.

I do believe it. Now, again, I got, I got to dig deep and look and try and do before I can be sold myself as being creative.

The American Psychological association did a big study on creativity. And put simply, creativity is a universal trait. It's about how much we harness it and develop it. Engaging in creative activities can improve every aspect of our life. Relationship, work, performance, personal fulfillment. Creativity is a benchmark that I use at work when I am doing evaluations, when were setting our goals and trying to work on strengths and weaknesses. Creativity are one of those things that I use. How creative are you? What kind of creative solutions did you bring? Not did they work? Thats not the measurement, but how many creative ideas did you bring to the table? Are you consistently saying, hey, lets try this or lets try that? Trey, why do you think so many people think that they aren't creative.

I think they don't really understand that where, what parts of their life are really creative? Again, if you go with the premise that I did, where only musicians or artists, people in that line of work, those are the creative people, designers. And you realize you're not really your strong suit. That's where you write yourself off as being a creative.

And so we have to realize that everybody is creative. You've probably used creative processes in your life, inside work or outside work. Can you think of any examples that you've used creativity?

Yeah, if before I answer that, I just want to add, I think you're doing a deep look into my life a little bit. As you were talking, you don't even know it. I was thinking of back in grade school, art class or music class that I was horrible in. I remember just being really frustrated with the music program, trying to learn an instrument. I quit really fast. I don't know if it's an instructor. I've never had great success there. I'm a stick figure guy. I don't have. I can't draw. Like, I'm so amazed by that talent. That's probably where my sense of being a non creative came from. Those early failures in my life really, I think, led to that way of thinking. But in my adulthood, I can think of lots of ways we're creative outside of work. And, you know, I'm going to talk about my podcast, which was a very intentional thing to do, something creative and positive impact. Oh, my gosh, it's been just a work of love for ten years. And all the people that I've met and impacted and all the fun and enjoyment that I've gotten out of that by pursuing creative things, putting yourself out there to be criticized, put your ideas forward and let people hear them and listen back to the feedback. But it's been quite interesting. And now, as I pursue looking at video creation, my gosh, so much goes into that. There's so much to learn. There's so much creativity involved in producing even a short video. So I'm really, I'm really enjoying that. You know, when you do things that are hard, you can get a lot of joy and, and fun out of those things.

You talk about learning video production, and you talk about podcasting, and you've had, you had to learn those things, and I had to learn those things. I'm a fairly decent podcaster myself, and I have some skills and design, and I have some, I have some proficiency in that world. But we all had to learn, and we all had to learn from somebody that has been there before us. Austin Kleon wrote a really good book, and we're going to hear about him here in a minute. He wrote a really good book called steal like an artist. Steal like an artist. That's a part of the process, is stealing other people's ideas and stealing other people's works and gleaning inspiration from that. Now, there's a difference between out and out copying, right. And stealing themes and ideas and. And direction and inspiration and all those things. But real artists steal.

I learned that as I was learning computer programming. I always felt a little bad taking a little piece of code from here, a little piece of code from there off the Internet. But then I had an instructor, I remember who totally encouraged it, and that's. And explained that's how everybody does it. It had to be created somewhere, especially in programming. Yes, there are a couple of different ways, maybe, to write your code, but at the end of the day, you got to learn from the people who wrote the code, how to do it, how the syntax goes. You can't feel guilty. You're borrowing that ingenuity.

So whenever I work with new podcasters, I give them a template to follow, for all intents and purposes, a template to steal. So you do, you take this stuff and you steal it. You make it your own, and you learn from it, and you take inspiration from it, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. And any artist who says that their work is 100% completely original is lying to you.

Yeah.

Other than that very first caveman that somehow got color on the cave wall. Wow, that looks kind of cool, right? Oh, and someone else came and looked color or something. Yeah.

How do you do that? Color.

All right.

Someone invented it, for sure.

Why do you think people have creative blocks? What do you think stops them from moving forward with creative endeavors? Or they know they have a creative thing that they have to do, but they just can't get beyond this quote unquote creative threshold or this creative block.

There could be several things, I'm going to start with, and you can add to it, but that feeling that you got to get it perfect the first time.

Yeah, boy, that's it, man.

You're afraid to make a mistake or go in the wrong direction or do the wrong thing. You want to get it right first, which is rarely, unless you wake up with it. Unless you have a dream, like Paul McCartney of the song yesterday and the melody in your head, and you wake up with and go, what is this?

Right.

But other than that, you've got to really, as you were talking about your examples with Jerry Seinfeld and Stephen King, you just got to start doing and see where it goes and just follow that path, because you're right. You can get blocked real fast if you're a perfectionist.

And I think a lot of that comes from a lack of confidence. A lot of confidence that you're doing the quote unquote right thing. Right?

Yeah, that's it.

And I think some of that lack of confidence might come. Might come from our. Our personal history of being judged. Judged. Right. The fear of judgment, the fear that people are going to think this is a bad idea, or if I. If I just throw out ideas, they're going to think I'm stupid.

That's why I say courage is so.

Important, but courage can be developed as well. You know, Steven Pressfield wrote a really good book called the War of Art, and he taught. In his book, he talks about the resistance, and that's. It's that internal force that stops us from achieving our creative potential and recognizing this resistance exists. And he. He frames it like it's a real universal force that is working against you. And that's kind of his mindset. You know, if he knows, he kind of feels like if he has an enemy to fight, hence the. Hence the name of his book, the War of Art, if he has an enemy to fight, he can recognize the enemy and defeat that enemy. So he calls it the resistance. And I get that, man. I kind of like that, Kurt. And it's these pesky barriers that stop us from getting our ideas out. And once we recognize that it's there and that it's the enemy and we have to fight through that, the easier it is to put together a plan to defeat this enemy called the resistance. But recognizing it is the very first step to overcoming the resistance.

I got a good example of this, Joe. You know, I got into woodworking a few years ago, and YouTube, of course, is a great resource for learning techniques, looking at designs, when you got an idea of what you want to build. I always wanted a corner desk, and I was working with pallets, and I saw this guy building a table, an outdoor table with a pattern, what you call a herringbone pattern for the table. And I really like that. So I combined really that concept, and I felt it was easy to do, and it looked good to create my corner desk. I combined that idea with someone that showed me how to build a corner desk. So the tabletop looks like that outdoor table that he built, but everything underneath is, came from another idea. So it's a unique design combining two separate things. Maybe probably more, but it worked.

Yeah. And you know that. And I'm sure that, that you had a period of time where you were fighting the resistance. You knew kind of what you wanted, but you didn't know how to get there. And you were, and I remember this time, you were frustrated, and you had some frustration, and you have some inspiration, and then more frustration and then more inspiration, and you learned. You learned a little bit from this video and a little bit from that guy, and you developed a relationship with a. With a good pallet supplier, and that, that gave you some confidence that you would have the materials you needed to, and you just kind of incrementally kept, kept moving forward. And you have a. I've seen. I've seen your work with these palace, and it pallets, and it's. It's pretty daggone cool, dude. So we have this thing. It's a real thing. Stephen Pressfield calls it the resistance. We call it writer's block or artist block or whatever it is, it's. It's definitely there. So once we recognize that you're creative, everybody has a creative side. That is proven by clinical studies from the American Psychological association. We talked about that earlier. And creativity is not just limited to artists. Everybody in their world has a creative aspect of what they're doing, either professionally or as hobbies or even running your family in a creative way. Right. Everybody uses their creative mind and creative aspects of their life. So everybody is an artist at some level, everybody's an artist. But we do have these things, these things called creative blocks. And like I said, Steven Pressfield calls him the resistance. Calls it the resistance. And he's identified the enemy, and his job is to defeat that enemy. So let's talk about how to get over these creative blocks, because now that we know that everybody's creative and creative, creativity helps every part of our life. Relationships, work, performance, personal fulfillment. How do we get over this creative block? The single best tool that I know of, and it's as simple as it gets, is called defeating the blank page. Begin with something. Ugly, sloppy, awkward. Just begin with something. I use a lot of PowerPoint in my work. I give a lot of sales presentations and sales reporting and so forth. It's one thing to just put figures and numbers up on a slide, and it's another thing to make it engaging and interesting. And some of that is done with color. Some of it is done with pictures. Some of it is done with light, very light animation. But I have a, I have a certain structure. But every single time I go to create a presentation, I'm starting with an idea in my head, but I still have to defeat that blank page and I just have to throw words up there. Are they words that I like? If not, then I change them. But I've started something. You talked about this earlier. Just begin. But don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of ugly and sloppy and awkward. The key is just to get something down on the page. Now the page is just a metaphor for any creative project. No matter what you're doing, whether you need some creativity in it, whether you're creating a presentation or you are actually sculpting something or painting, or you're creating a website, or you're trying to build a business, the key is you got to defeat the blank page. Get something down on the page. And again, the page is just a metaphor for any creative project. This really helps you break through that initial resistance and gets those creative juices flowing. Here's the thing. It works every single time. When I've been willing to defeat the blank page with ugly, sloppy, awkward work, I always come out on the other end with something pretty daggone good.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, people talk about the word flow when you, you feel like you're really cruising. You're almost on auto cruise of creativity. But it didn't start that way. I think it most often starts with the ugly, sloppy, awkward work that you're doing before, you know, you look up in 2 hours have gone by.

Right.

And I think, and this is so, this is such a good conversation to have right now as I'm going through a creative project trying to create videos for YouTube, there are just so it, I have a blank screen that I'm looking at.

Mm hmm.

And I'm doing a lot of research. The thing you got to be careful of too. Now this is why I like ugly, sloppy, awkward. And I'm probably going to be there very quickly as I go through this process because you can't learn unless you do it and get something out there and then you can improve on it later. I mean, you talk to any podcaster or youtuber, they're going to tell you your first stuff that you put out there. You might be embarrassed about it looking back years after if you keep improving and getting better. But it's, it's just part of the process. Don't be afraid to get junk out there, even produce it. Let people see it?

Don't be afraid to be embarrassed. And that goes back to the word that you used earlier, courage, for sure. Don't be afraid to be embarrassed. You're going to be embarrassed. Just accept it. Let it happen.

Right?

Get over yourself. Yeah, get over yourself, man.

They're, they're criticizing you. You're doing something right.

Amen. Amen. Let's talk about brainstorming for a second, because brainstorming is a form of defeating the blank page, right? But it's defeating that blank page with a group. With a group of people. You know, you gather all these, all these geniuses in a room together, and it could be something like you're trying to figure out how to correct a waning market. You're losing market share on a certain product or a certain territory. It could be something that you want to start a business or you want to do a new, a new business segment, or it could be, hey, how do we build the best pallets? How do we build the best tables out of pallets, whatever it might be? Everybody's been through a brainstorming session, right? What is the number one rule? And you hear it before every brainstorming session, what is the number one rule for brainstorming?

No idea is a bad idea.

Absolutely. That's the number one rule. And then you get people that have, for some reason, want to be heard. They want to sound smart, they want to be smart. Or they just have a critical nature, and somebody starts throwing out ideas. Then all of a sudden, you see somebody's face wince, right? Crinkle up, or their eyes start to squeeze together and they huff and puff, or they just out and out say, ah, we've done that already, or that's never going to work, or whatever it might be, and that will squelch a brainstorming session, it'll destroy it right then. Because what will happen is now that you've allowed that to happen, you've allowed that, that negative element to come into the brainstorming session. Nobody will really, if they're not just super current courageous, right. Nobody's going, is willing to show their soft underbelly and maybe throw out some ideas that, that may not be great, but it could be a nugget, or it could learn, it could lead into something learned, it could lead to something else. And that really, really bad idea could have one or two words in it that prompted somebody else to think about something, and that gets those creative juices flowing. But unless they're allowed to, and they're allowed to throw out bad ideas. And that rule is really followed. No idea is a bad idea. Uh, you gotta get rid of those people who squelch brainstorming sessions if you're going to have a good brain brainstorming session. And that goes along with defeating the blank page. So if you're having a brainstorming session, you better make sure, and I've been in a lot of brainstorming sessions, you better make sure that that rule is followed, because everything else cascades from there.

Yeah. And as a facilitator, of course you're watching for that. Even body language you mentioned a little bit, there is 70% of the message, so the body language you have to watch as a facilitator. And great ideas come from quiet people. As an introvert, I'm going to cheer for that. And I remember facilitating these. Wherever you had to go around in a circle, very methodically, everyone come up with an idea, get it on paper, on the wall, and then the next person. And if you don't have an idea, you had to say the word pass. You had to get words out of your mouth, and until everyone went around that circle and everyone said pass, then the session was over.

That's a great strategy.

If you went around the circle, you might have passed one time, but you heard someone say something, and then you had a little more time to think about it, and then you had an idea, and you got it out there. But you want to try to draw out from the quieter people their ideas, too.

I love the post it note, the post it note technique, where you just start writing ideas and you throw them on the table. Everybody is in their own little world for five minutes writing ideas, and they're just throwing post it notes out, and then you gather up all the post it notes, and then you hang them up on the wall, and then you segment them into the theme of the idea, or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And, wow. So much comes with that. And that kind of takes the pressure off the people who may not feel like speaking out loud. Right. That's a, that's a great technique as well. But whatever technique you use and brainstorming is definitely a. A form of defeating the blank page. Whatever idea you use, you gotta follow the rule. No idea is a bad idea. Just get it out there. So the next tool, I have three tools that, to help defeat the blank page. The next one is to set a timer. Now, I have my little timer that I use for a couple different things, but set a timer, if you're trying to, if you're trying to just move forward with an idea or move forward with a project. Give yourself three minutes. Give yourself five minutes and just start jotting down ideas without worrying about structure, without worrying about grammar, without worrying about spelling, without worrying about anything. Just start writing stuff down, no matter what it is, whatever's in your head. This can really help kickstart your creativity and reduce the pressure of perfectionism. Because you because you're just getting all the crap out right now, right? All that ugly, messy, nasty stuff.

Giving yourself permission.

Brainstorming is a great idea, either in a group or personal brainstorming. Set a timer for short bursts of creativity and let yourself get the ugly stuff out in a short period of time. Now, this last trick, this last creative strategy is brand new and I think it's the best of all. Use AI like chat GPT for a creative kick and this is how you do it. Let's say you want to paint your bedroom wall, okay? You can go into chat GPT or any AI of your choice and tell them what you're generally thinking. Hey, I have a bedroom. I have wood. I have wood headboard and a wood footboard. I have a mahogany dresser. My carpet is lime green and I have a purple ceiling fan. Please give me ten color palettes that I can use to paint my room and it'll give you ten color palettes to paint in your room. Now, do you have to use any of them? Nope. But you can look at them and you can say, oh, I never thought about that. But what if I mix that with that and all of a sudden those creative juices start flowing? Using AI to give yourself a creative kick to help defeat the blank page is probably the best tool we have right now.

It's mind blowing what we're finding. We're just at the infancy of this. I was telling Joe this past weekend I had an idea. I want to change up my podcast, intros, for example, or titles. I took all the notes that I did of the content of the podcast, of which, let's say, there were 15 bullet points and I asked it to write a couple of paragraphs for an intro based on this content and I just load it. The more you load up in there, the better answer you're going to get from chat GPT. I said, do it in the style of an eleven year old. Meaning I wanted it simple. It gave me something back. I looked at it and said, I kind of like that. Let me try something else. I want to have a little comedy in it. I think maybe the first one did a little bit I don't know why the first name that popped in my head was David Letterman, but I said instead of doing as eleven year old in that style, try it in the style of David Letterman. And what surprised me about the answer, and I did this with Claude, also the AI from Claude and the AI from chat GPT. I did them both and both of them, even though I wasn't thinking this at the time, but it's actually Washington. Spot on. Gave me a top ten list like Dave Lederman used to do.

That's awesome.

That's perfect. That's just what that's like. That's better than what I would have, I would never have thought of that.

Right?

And you can get creative with that. I didn't take. So anyone who's listening to my podcast this week, middle of July, that top ten list was inspired by chat, GP and T and Claude.

And you're right, we're just scratching the power of AI for creativity. And I don't think AI will ever replace the human creative spirit. But boy, I think it can certainly help us take some shortcuts and help us defeat the blank page and help us to move and give us some directional choices that we may not have thought about. When I think about using chat gdp very similarly. I mean, this is, you know, we may write an article at work for a marketing campaign and you load up the, you load up the, the general idea of the article and you tell AI to produce a, you know, produce an outline for the article and then you tell AI to give me some, some, some ideas for each section of the article. And then you take that and you look at it as a human being and you switch stuff around and you delete words and you, I wouldn't use that word or I wouldn't say it that way, but it's, it's, it's helped you get over that creative block, that writer's block, whatever, whatever it might be. It's, it's the number one tool I use to defeat the blank page. And I use it an awful lot, Kurt, and I know you do too.

I love exploring it in so many different ways. I really enjoy this conversation, Joe. Thank you. Again, an area I wouldn't normally think I am good at. But the more I explore it, the more you do it, the better you get. So I appreciate you going down the creative path this week.

You're going to experience the resistance. It's real, it's out there. It's going to happen to you. And I think the number one way to get over that resistance is just to defeat the blank page. Figure out a way to get all that ugly, sloppy, awkward work out of the way and use some strategies to do it. Use a timer, use chat, GPT, or AI, you know, maybe get together with and do some brainstorming with some people you trust. But defeat that blank page. Once you defeat that blank page, man, it feels downhill from there.

Yeah. Getting a groove.

What about your win for the week?

Last week I told you I adopted a dog, but I didn't. I did all the paperwork, everything set up, all the arrangements were made, and I took the day off this past Friday, my wife and I, he was about 40 minutes late than we expected. He came about quarter to eight to a park and ride off of Route 84 in Southington in Connecticut. There were some other families. It was pretty cute, that were really excited and emotional. The RV pulled up and my dog Sawyer walked out. And everyone had more younger dogs. Let's call them puppy for the lack of better. They were all smaller. And my big old five year old, Sawyer, walked out and he, Joe, he's huge. He's a big yellow. Lab pictures did not do him justice. They say a photo takes 20 pounds off. Not in his case. I'm like, holy cow, he's huge. And not. I wasn't scared about it at all. I knew he knew his weight and he'd be a little bit overweight. We're working on that. But I, from right, right away, he was really good getting home. He's, he's really smart. He already has a lot of training. He does the basic commands. Some of the things my labs were not good at were walking with a loose leash. He's really good at that. He's potty trained. He'll bark if he's got to go out. I'm taking him out and spend a lot of time. He just likes playing with toys. He went into the family room, found this box of old dog toys and picked one out. This big, huge, clunky ball that's got a noise. And he's been playing with that like crazy. Although he's picked out other ones too. He's just been a real joy for us this weekend. One bad thing, the cat introduction did not go well. No, we are still working on that one. But hopefully that wasn't easy with our other dogs either. They, my daughter reminded me it took three years before they ever became really comfortable with each other. But we're gonna expedite that process. But yet, I took him out for a walk this morning. He was fantastic. And everyone knows when you come to my house now, there's a big old dog in there because he's got a big wolf.

That's awesome.

Really enjoying.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I'm glad for you, man. I'm really happy for you, dude. Because, you know, when we. When we lose a pet, it can. It can leave a real void in our life. And pets do something special for us. I mean, it gives us a sense of camaraderie, right?

Yeah.

Especially dogs. I'm definitely a dog person. I'm not so much a cat person. But cats can give you a sense of camaraderie if. If you. If you have their permission to do that. But. But dogs especially, man. I mean, a sense of camaraderie, a sense of. Of responsibility. Now, that may sound funny, that coming from an adult, right. But it is something that you have to take care of.

Yeah. You miss it. Kids have grown.

Yeah. If you have to take care of it and it's your responsibility, it almost gives you a reason. If you don't feel like getting up in the morning, it gives you a reason to get up in the morning. Right?

Yeah. And I was thinking of that bumper sticker. I wish I was as good as my dog thinks I am.

That's awesome.

He's already. My wife says you went outside to get the mail. Do something in the garage. Do you realize Sawyer waited at that door till you walked back in already?

That's so cute, man.

It's amazing their resilience, too. He wasn't a mistreated dog.

Well, my win for the week is a kind of an interesting, odd win, but I am notorious for submitting reports at the end of the month or the month, or the reports for the previous month. Sales reports, successes, wins, state of the market, how our sales were, where we were, we lost where we won. Those types of reports. Right. Also, we have expense reports and employee reports and all of that stuff. I am notorious, Kurt, and I'm not sure this is, this is. I wouldn't call this a. A personality defect, but it might be. But I'm notorious for coming in wheels of squealing at the very last minute, man. If it's due, if it's due Friday at 05:00 459 59, I'm coming in, and I'm hitting Sandra at that time. And I've kind of always been that way. But a couple weeks back, I said, you know what? I have to stop doing that because it just puts too much pressure on me to get that stuff done. It makes my Fridays miserable because these are always due on Friday, right? Makes my Fridays miserable. And I can't have the, the sense of planning for the next week, preparing for the next week that I really want if I have these reports hanging over my head. So I decided I'm not doing it anymore. I moved up my, my deadline and put it in my head that these are due two days before. And it's, of course, the little mind trick we play on ourselves. But my win for the week is last Friday or last week. I got my end of the month reports in on Wednesday.

Wow.

Friday.

That's a great feeling, isn't it?

It is a great feeling, man.

I know.

I mean, I felt, now I worked all day Friday, but I felt, I kind of felt like it was a day off bonus because I was able to do some of the creative things that I, I need to do to plan for the next week.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, that's a big win for me because I am notorious for 459 59. If you tell me, like, if somebody tells me it's, it's, it's due by the end of the day. My question is always by the end of whose day? Right? Because if it's the end of my day, that means I may be, I may be swinging that sucker in at 1159 59. Right? So, yeah. Early submittal of my monthly reports. How about your resource?

I'm gonna go extreme yard. I've used it before. It's been a few years. I've been seeing live broadcasts I did on Facebook when that was a beginner thing. And I remember Streamyard being a part of that using the free version. But our good friend Clay and I were working together and I said, you know, let's go check out streamyard. He had mentioned it a while ago. I have some podcasting friends that use it. So here's some things that are pretty cool about streamyard. You can get high quality video and audio even if you're doing recording. Gives you an option to record locally on each other's machines and bring in multiple people. You can do multi streaming, so you can stream to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter. So some of those features are really fun. If you're doing live streams, screen sharing and overlays, you can put your own custom branding in there and you can even engage with chats on these live streams streaming. So it's pretty full featured product if you're into any of those things I just mentioned. So we'll see. We may be using it in the future, but it just has some fun researching it. This week.

Yeah. I really look forward to your work with the several tools that. That you have that you're using for video production and so forth. And this is a part of that process. Right. Just finding different tools and different ways to get the job done. My resource is a book called steal like an artist by Austin Kleon. I referenced it earlier. It's a really good book. It's an easy read. He has a real comedic feel, big printhead illustrations, a really neat book called steal like an artist by Austin Kleon. And the title explains exactly what the book is about that teaches you how to steal like an artist. Why? To steal like an artist. And that you should steal like an artist. Austin Kleon is. Is renown in the entrepreneurial world for. For helping people create those or bring forth those creative juices, and he's really good at it, and he's a successful entrepreneur and creative, creative guy in his own right. So check out steal like an artist by Austin Kleon. I really invite you to do that.

Might as well get a creative quote from Walt Disney. We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things, because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. That's why I was able to say curiosity was important to being creative, Joe, because I read this quote before we.

Started, and it is important, man, curiosity. There could not be a better quote from a better resource than Walt Disney because he has created. Whether you're a Disney fan or not, you have to. You have to give that to Walt Disney because he has created an empire based on making people happy. Right. And I love this. Moving forward, opening new doors, doing new things, and you got to be curious. Mine's actually very similar. It comes from. It comes from Austin Kleon, of course, the artist, the author of steal like an artist. Don't wait until you know who you are to get started. The way to find your voice is to use it. It's hardwired, built into you. Talk about the things you love. Your voice will follow.

Yeah. So we were saying that you want to learn how to be creative. Just do stuff.

Yep. Do stuff.

So true.

Defeat the blank page.

Love it.

Do it. You just got to get that. Get out there. Understand you're going to hit the resistance, defeat the blank page, and just. Just do it. So, Kurt, as we wrap up, let's remember our website is dudesinprogress.com. dudesinprogress.com. And our email address is dudesinprogress.com dot. You can reach out to us regarding our coaching services, you can reach out to us regarding show ideas, things that you'd like to hear us talk about. We'll certainly entertain all of that. Remember, progress is better than perfection. You gotta just keep moving forward.

This conversation really helped me this week. I got a lot of creative things I want to work on in the coming week, Joe, so thank you for bringing this. Really enjoyed it and I'm feeling better about it already.

Awesome. Talk to you soon.