IDL107 Season 3: The Laws of Creativity with Joey Cofone

Do you consider yourself to be a creative person? What is true creativity? How are courage and collaboration vital key points to fostering successful creativity in your business?

It’s great to share this conversation with Joey Cofone with you. He is the founder of Baronfig, as well as the author of The Laws of Creativity. I reached out to Joey in part because I don’t feel as though I am a particularly creative or artistic person. But, through this conversation, I realized that the ability to see problems and solutions from other people’s perspectives is a mark of creativity! Joey expands upon this idea, and we ask ourselves, “how do you foster creativity as a leader?”

Meet Joey Cofone

Joey Cofone is the Founder & CEO of Baronfig, an award-winning designer and entrepreneur, and author of #1 bestselling The Laws of Creativity.

Joey has designed and art directed over 100 products from zero to launch. His work has been featured in Fast Company, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Bon Appétit, Quartz, Mashable, Print, and more. Joey was named a New Visual Artist and, separately, Wunderkind designer, by Print magazine. He is also a 1st place winner of the American Institute of Graphic Arts design competition, Command X.

Joey strives to make work that appeals to curious minds—work that’s beautiful, smart, and communicative. He believes that design is the least of a designer’s worries, that story is at the heart of all tasks, and jumping off cliffs is the only way to grow.

He lives in New York City with his wife, Ariana, and his dog (and writing buddy), Luigi.

Visit Joey Cofone’s website, Baronfig, and connect on Instagram and Twitter.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Creativity is not exclusive to art 05:16

• How parents can accidentally inhibit their kids’ creativity 11:09

• The paradox of originality 17:06

• The courage to be curious 28:01

• Collaborate for success 37:00

Creativity is not exclusive to art

People often falsely equate creativity solely with art. Sure, creativity is present in art, but it extends much further beyond it.

You are probably a very creative person already – especially as a leader, entrepreneur, and business owner.

Why not sharpen the tool of your mind to hone in on all the daily thoughts and ideas that you have?

How parents can accidentally inhibit their kids’ creativity

1 – Authority is unquestionable: this belief is used in schools and by most parents, and it can severely impair a child’s creativity because their new ideas are stamped out if they stand in opposition to the authority figure or the authoritative norm.

2 – Man-made rules must be followed to a fault: even if rules don’t make sense, forcing kids to follow them also ruins a child’s developing creativity.

3 – Kids are taught that the end is visible from the start: always knowing where you are headed, in terms of work, allows for almost no problem-solving, so no creative thinking.

The paradox of originality

Everybody wants to fit in to some extent because, as human beings, we desire community, connection, and to feel accepted.

However, we know that originality is powerful and makes us stand out in the best ways. To get there, to bridge from confirming to proudly being original, you have to allow yourself to go through the “weird” phase.

The courage to be curious

Ask questions. Ask open questions yourself, lead the way, and show others that they are welcome and encouraged to ask questions as well.

Do not worship authority or force your employees to worship your word as an authority either. If you want to develop your business, develop your employees, and increase your chances of success, make intentional space for people to offer up their thoughts.

Collaborate for success

When you don’t share things, nothing is lost but nothing is gained. If you want connection and creativity within your company, then you must encourage and model collaboration.

You cannot tell people things without showing them how to do it, so you must be the catalyst for the collaboration that you want to see in your business. Start the conversation, invite ideas, and lead the way.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Joey Cofone – The Laws of Creativity: Unlock Your Originality and Awaken Your Creative Genius

BOOK | Joe Sanok – Thursday is the New Friday: How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Love

Visit Joey Cofone’s website, Baronfig, and connect on Instagram and Twitter.

Sign up for the roundtable at: hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com

Check out the Practice Of the Practice

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About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

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A problem, by nature, is an issue that doesn’t have a solution and you need to solve it. that’s the crux of creativity.

Joey Cofone

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host Tyler Dickerhoof. Man, it's so good to be here with you today. I am excited to share this conversation with you. I actually, as the anticipation, the time to have this conversation came, I got more and more excited, one, because of the depth and the curiosity and the intrigue that I had to chat with Joey Cofone. Joey is the founder of Baronfig, which is a manufacturer of notebooks, pens, a lot of other implements that, as their, Baronfig, their mission is to champion thinkers through inspiration and imagination. Joey also is the author of this book, The Laws of Creativity. I picked this up earlier, this actually last year, I learned about Baronfig because I got a pen. I got a pen because it was the Atomic Habits pen. I love the pen, great pens, and so I reached out to Joey. I said, man, I'd love to have a conversation about creativity. See, I've been noted as not being a creative person. I was bad at art. I failed second grade art. Mr. Dillard didn't like me. But as I've learned, the ability to see solutions from problems that other people can't is marker creativity. Now, Joey goes into great more depth about creativity, what it looks like. We have a conversation that really then gets to this point, and this is what I want you to stick around and get all the background to understand. How do you foster creativity for those that you lead? Or how do you cr foster creativity in your world? I think that's imperative in the world we are now. We have problems today that two years ago we didn't even realize would be a problem. So to find a solution that works for people, we have to look at creativity. Creativity in leadership is essential. Can't wait to follow up with you at the end of this episode. Make sure you get a notebook. If you don't have a notebook, go to baronfig.com. You can grab it. I am not, there is no paid advertising here, I don't do that, but it's just, they have good stuff. So I'll see you at the end. [TYLER] Joey, thanks so much for joining us. Man, I'm excited for this. [JOEY COFONE] Tyler, what's up, man? Hello, everybody out there. [TYLER] I said this in the introduction, I wanted to save it till now, how I learned about yourself, Baronfig, the company that you started now, decade ago, and your latest, the book, we're going to talk about The Laws of creativity but I got an email from James Clear, I'm a subscriber to his newsletter. It was about, "Hey, buy these pens, the Baronfig pens," and so I bought it. Love it. Enjoy the pen. But this is what blew me away and what, even, as I got a copy of your book and a few things, I've read a few books, I get a few books, the attention to experience is something that really stuck out to me. I want to one commend you for that, just the part of reading the book and feeling the book and just the feel of a book. But one of the things that told me that you are looking for everyone that you interact with to have an amazing experience was at the bottom of each page in each chapter where you write in this chapter, it's create for yourself, five pages left. I want to start there. Why did you do that? [JOEY COFONE] So, exactly, well described. Just like a Kindle, digital reading, it tells you how many pages are left. I think it's critical because I moved from physical to digital a little while ago to check that out and I loved knowing where I was and how much I had left in my session. So I did this whole research to say, okay, who's done this physically because I can't be the only person to have made this? Well, as it turns out, I actually paid someone, when I couldn't find it, I paid someone else to go out there and search the world, because in all the years of books, you would think that someone had simply put on the bottom right of every page how many pages are left in the section. It's never been done before, which blows my mind. So I actually I went through this legal process. I was like, let me patent this and see if I can, what does that look like, a patent in exploring that whole thing? The patent officer is like this is too obvious. My argument is, if it's so obvious, books have been around for literal centuries, and there is no proof that it's ever been done. So we're in this interesting legal thing where it's like, well, this dude's right, and it is obvious, but no one's done it. What do we do? So I'm glad you appreciate it. It's my favorite little part of the design to let people know where they are. [TYLER] I mean, that goes into everything that I've really experienced thus far with Baronfig. But it also, to me, and that's a great segue into this idea of creativity and why is it exciting to me, and I want to layer this into you, I've been a not an artistic person. I don't consider myself an artistic person. So because of that, I've often been indicted to say I'm not creative and yet I fought that because one of the elements that I truly believe in, and you bring it out, creativity is not necessarily being a great illustrator or having a keen eye for photography, all those other things. It's being able to see what others can't see and make something of it. I believe there's an element of that. You can digest, obviously you wrote the book, The Laws of Creativity so much more, but one of my experiences there is I love to see a box, and this is the way it's always been done in figuring out ways outside of that. That's what you just described and say, oh, I love this. Why not put this here? So just take and run with that in regards to creativity. [JOEY] Yeah, man, great, great, there's no way to say this, great discerning between artistic and creative. I think the big fallacy is that we associate those as synonymous, and they're not. Artistic is of the arts, which is painting and drawing and I don't know, poetry or whatever it is. I am not speaking about that. Actually, in this book, even, there's 38 chapters, each has a law that has a story and I made a purposeful effort not to feature artists. There's literally no stories about artists it featured. It's all like Thomas Edison or Heti Lamar, or people who are doing incredible things in the world of science and business and all these other things that we are all more familiar with. But let's jump into the word creativity then. If we know that it's not art artistic, what is it then? Good question. Creativity is simply the practice of ideas. When you take and use them, that's self-expression. So whether you like it or not, you are creative because you have ideas. In fact, you have like some supposedly 6,000 ideas and thoughts every single day. So my book is like, hey, if you've got these and you're running on autopilot, why not sharpen the tool of your mind that you use, whether you are conscious of its improvement or not, and let's jump in with a few tweaks. You can shift your mindset to automatically take those thoughts and put them to good use. So I wrote the book, the Laws of Creativity, to basically say, hey, I can help you take your ideas and make them super valuable, super useful to you by looking at things a little differently. Then of course, there's the whole, I mean, I'm sure you've got questions left and right. The book is divided into the three sections and all the stuff that went there. [TYLER] I think to take that a step further is, even in my experience and having this idea for me, again, struggling as a child because I wasn't artistic, but yet one of the things that I realized later in life, I grew up on a farm and part of surviving that was figuring out how to get things done when there were no other options. As I look back now, and that was extreme creativity, all right, how do I make this happen? Our society, at a certain point, especially in that industry, didn't applaud that. Some of our most creative, innovative people are in agriculture and yet, from my experience there, they were often looked as, oh they're less than, they're not able to, they're not the artists, they're not the whatever leading people. But it's like, hey, they had to figure out how to create a solution and take and conveying these, combine these ideas and be very far forward. So going back to that is, why do we struggle with seeing creativity for what it really is? [JOEY] It's a great question and one that really powered my desire to write this book. I remember the first time I actually got pissed off that witnessing this is, I go to a buddy's house, and it was like, probably my last year of college and this dude --- [TYLER] Which time? [JOEY] The first round of college, so I was like, probably 21, 22. I drive like an hour and a half to visit him, and I come in and he's beaming. He's like, "Dude, you got to check this out." I go inside and he steps to the left and he puts his arm out and he goes, check this out. He had built from scratch an entire TV entertainment unit right where the TV's on top, and he had built all the shelving, but he went so far to not just build straight up left and right shelving. He actually made crisscrosses so that it was, the books could go on an angle, and it was really a wonderful piece. I was like, wow, man. I said, at the time didn't know, I go, "Where'd you get it?" He said, "I made it." I was like, "Wow, did you build that off of some schematic or see it somewhere?" He is like, "Nah, man, I just was, here's what I got to put away in this thing. So here's how I'm going to make it." Later in that weekend when I was visiting him, we got on the conversation of creativity, and I was like, "Hey man, you're creative, for sure. He was like, "Nah, man, absolutely not." Are you kidding? I flipped out on him and I was like what the heck are you thinking, man? Like, do you see this thing that you've built? Don't give me this BS. That anger stuck with me for quite a long time. So fast forward to when I started writing the book, actually during the beginning of the pandemic, I looked deeply into what is the source? Your question is where does this come from? I uncovered through a lot of conversation and introspection and research that there are three primary issues that we instill in our kids. First of all, to get us started and anchored in a point, NASA did a study, and this is right in the intro, so I'm sure you hit that point where NASA did a study and found that 98% of five year olds are ranked at a creative genius level, but by adulthood, that number dwindles to 2%. So right away, I'm looking at that like, wow, number one, okay, awesome. We are right that children are just wizards of the mind. Then second to see that it goes from 98% to two, that's not an accident. That's like a systemic reliable action at that point. So I wanted to uncover it, and I found that when we used to go to school is when it starts, and the three things that we are taught that really contribute to this is first, that authority is unquestionable. Your teachers, it doesn't matter if your teacher is wrong, and we've all been there where the teacher's like blatantly wrong about something, we can't say it. Second, manmade rules must be followed to a fault, even when we know the rules are stupid. And again, I'm going back to school, sometimes the workplace, when you get older, even though rules don't make sense anymore, or the person making them wasn't the best to make them to begin with, we've got to follow them. Then third, and what I always say is the most damaging of all is that we are taught that the end is visible from the start. I'm going to bring that from the sky down to planet Earth simply by explaining, imagine in school you're handed, it's third grade, you're handed a book to read, let's say Fahrenheit 451, and the teacher says, three weeks from now, we've all got, we've probably all been there, three weeks from now, I want a two-page paper. Tell me the plot and summarize the thesis of this book. Cool. So before picking up the book or opening page one, I know where I'm going to be three weeks from now, and what I'm going to output. And it's the same in math or science or whatever class. We always know where we're headed. Then you go to high school and it's the same, and college is the same, then you get a job and your bosses tell you what is due and when. So you always see the end before you start. That is the exact opposite of problem solving. The problem by nature is an issue that doesn't have a solution, and you need to solve it. So that's the crux of creativity, and this is what the book primarily addresses. Those are the three causes by which you end up with that attitude of, I'm not creative. [TYLER] You mentioned that there's 38 laws, I believe. Obviously, you file them into sections between mindset, action, and greatness. One thing that that really stuck out as I was reviewing those and going through that, and again, is where does this, I guess, regression from 98% to 2%? Is it linear or is it accelerated at a point? If I come back and I think, okay, I doubt it's linear because very little in our existence is linear. It's probably, there's an acceleration at some point. To me, if I go back in these ideas of leadership and mindset and why people end up where they're at, I speculate, and I'm going to throw it out, that that happens at some point, whether it's by authority or the rules where seeking perfection limits creative expression. I had several laws that, I toggled where was about perfection, whether it was the law of beginning, the law of ideation, the law of good enough, or the law of the finish line, and those were just the ones that I caught. But it's like each one of those, at some point you're like, ooh, unless it's perfect, don't even bring it to me. [JOEY] Yeah, there is, it's not linear. You're definitely, it accelerates as you get older. And Tyler, it's no wonder that at five years old you max out, and it's the same age you start school. As you're going through school, you are slowly shown the way that you operate naturally is not the way that people want you to operate in society or in education system. That's not to, I just want to, as an aside, send some love to teachers out there. I'm certainly not crapping on your profession. One of my best friends is a teacher and it's more, teachers are champs in my mind. It's more just about the way the whole situation is structured. So anyway, yeah, perfection, perfection is one of the things that really gets us, as we get older, we start to get more self-conscious. When we're a kid, we don't think about that at all. So that's one of the layers. The other layer is about fitting in and the bubbles that we exist in, this actually isn't in the book, I wish I thought of this while I was writing that. Maybe the next edition. [TYLER] The stuff that didn't make it in the book is the best stuff. [JOEY] Yeah, because in talking about it on the podcast, I realized that there was a very clear description of how this all works. So when we're young, fitting in and being self-conscious is just not a thing. That's like a learned experience, and it's learned when we do something, and then other people around us, probably kids laugh or call us weird or ostracize us. As we get older that happens more and more often and so we are taught, if I want to be accepted, I need to be like the other folks around me. But here's the paradox. This is the wild, wild thing, is that in our bubble, in our daily lives, as we grow, we want, we try to fit in and we try to bang other people into fitting into the malt, okay? You've heard it probably in school, hey, don't sit with that weird kid at lunch or at the office. Hey, don't mingle with the weird guy. We don't like him that much or something. So weird has been weaponized, this weird, but all it means really is weird, is that you're different and different means you are unique and unique means you're original. At the end of the day, everybody wants to be original. I'm not even being hyperbolic here. Look, people literally worship originality. So within our bubble, we don't like it but outside of our bubble and the places that we don't go and the people that we don't see personally, we worship it. So just think about, and I'm going to just throw some names out here. These are not necessarily people that I'm fans of, but they're great examples. Lady Gaga, this is coming to mind. Michael Jackson, Elon Musk. These are all really unique individuals, and they are all superstars in their realms. I mean, Elon Musk is a business dude. He has no, most business folks have no penetration into the mainstream consciousness, but there he is, and he's just weird and weird gets worshiped when it's outside our bubble and not in. So to answer your question is that there's a parabolic experience that's happening here where the first thing we realize is, oh my goodness, what does it mean to be accepted with the people around me? That is often, unfortunately, the answer is to hide some of the things that make me different and then as you get older and you start to still create expressions in some regard, then you get perfectionism coming in because now you're self-conscious of failing in front of others. So when you combine these, by the time you are a young adult crossing 20 you've got a lot of insecurities and a lot of doubts, and you are really, your spirit's been muffled quite often. [TYLER] Well, and I think that's an experience that I think anyone, you get to a certain point in adulthood. They say, by the time you get to your 40s, you just don't care anymore., and I think it's the undoing of that, but the plight there is you start not caring, but you just go through the hamster wheel of life saying, all right, this is just the way it is. This is the way I'm going to grind it out until there's something different. Instead of having, say, a rebirth or a fostering of, hey, how can you express your creativity? How can you choose to look and look around the world and say, all right, why does it have to be like that? It doesn't have to be, it doesn't mean that I need to blow up and throw a bomb into everything and destroy it all. But I can also start moving slowly to a different tune to where it's like, oh, I can create more out of this. [JOEY] Oftentimes, this earlier in your life that you have catastrophic failures, the better off you are. Because what usually happens is you realize that life goes on. When you're shielded from that, either by parents or people around you or through your own efforts it takes a lot longer for you to get to that place if you even do where you are so concerned with the idea of failing publicly or being laughed at. My wife interviewed me actually in, I guess six months ago when I was preparing for all these interviews, and she was like, I'm going to throw some hard ones. I was like, yeah, you do it. She did, she comes from an acting background, she did a great job and every question she thought was hard, I nailed it, nailed it, nailed it, nailed it. Then she asked me one question was like, okay, hot shot, well, why do you think you didn't grow up that way? I didn't have an answer genuinely and it took me a while to come up with a hypothesis and I can't prove this. I'm 6'3. Are you tall? You look like a tall dude. [TYLER] 5'11 [JOEY] Okay, yeah, you're right there. I'm 6'3 [TYLER] I will remind my daughter of that who tells me that I'm this short, bald guy, so it's okay. [JOEY] What? No way, man. Unless you have a family full of very tall people, 5'11 is not short. [TYLER] No, no. But I mean, she also, like, she's 16 and she likes boys that are 6'5 and above [JOEY] Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, understood. It's all relative. She asked me this question, "Joey, why did you never care that people laughed at you? Why did you care that you stuck out? Why didn't that bother you?" And I realized that the reason I think is because I grew, I was 6'3 by the time I was 13 so I grew like super quickly, and then, basically, I stood out all the time. No matter what I did, I was the tallest by like shoulders, like everyone's head was at my shoulders. So my hypothesis is that this catastrophic failure in a sense of, I didn't want to stick out, but I had to and it was, at the time I probably complained to my mom, like, oh man, everybody's always looking at me and I can't hide, and I feel everything I do is watched. Well, I think that that had contributed to it, the experience of saying I can't hide and then getting over it. Like you said, that happens at different stages in people's lives often, 30, 40, 50, whenever it is. So I was a curious to look at my own life. [TYLER] I think that's an interesting, I mean, as I said, this is a conversation that's a conversation that I want to dip into. Because for me, it was quite opposite. I grew nine inches in high school. I was one of the shortest up until I grew four inches my freshman year of high school. I think the difference there was never fitting in, trying to find a way to fit in and I was always the smallest, unique, different, all the other things. So I hold that, and then I have a son who's our oldest son, who has always been one of the tall kids. I remember a few years ago him saying, I don't want to be the taller kid. He's already, he's 14, he's over six foot, he's probably going to end up as tall as you and expect that, and yet he's now come to grips with it where, he is athletic, he's able to be that where people want him to be around because of his attributes. I think it took me much longer to appreciate that where people wanted me around and I had to get over my own insecurities so those could actually be exposed and not masked. [JOEY] It's interesting because that late development also probably gave you some gifts. It's because, I have a cousin who also, who didn't grow, he was like 5"5, 5"4, and all through high school and then grew to 6"2 his freshman year of college. So he became this like really jolly loving kid as a way to stick out because of size or whatever it is. Then he kept that as he got taller so now he has both things, and he's like such a well-equipped dude. So you look at our, I don't want to call it weaknesses, it's not necessarily weakness, but the things that we maybe wish changed are also the same things that give us extra abilities, let's say. [TYLER] I think these are tied in part, they really are, I mean, tied this together is that the creativity that we're unique at having, the skillset that you're able to have as an artist, as being able to draw and your ability there and to create, and from that design point of view is the uniqueness that helps you see from a perspective different than me. However, where we can compliment those are saying, hey, how can I match my strengths, my creativeness with yours and therefore we create a solution that actually solves a problem because we can work together at it. I think that's something we learned later in life, and astute leaders understand instead of saying, well, this is the only way everyone has to fit into the system because we don't know how to account for those differences, even though it's those differences that actually allow us to have success, to do something different. [JOEY] Absolutely, absolutely. And at Baronfig I did a great, I've been running Baronfig for 10 years now, and I learned a lot through mistakes during that time. But one thing I did write early on was create a handbook. One of the tenets in the handbook for everybody was that good ideas come from anywhere and that it's important that you invite people who don't know your vertical in a problem that you can't solve. So we have these things called high councils at Baronfig, and it's a fun way to name a meaning. So you call a high council, and you can call it at any time, and they get a gavel and everything, and they lead the meeting. A high council is essentially like, hey, I'm having a problem here that I can't solve and even though I'm an engineer and you are marketing and you are design, I am going to share my problem and through your non-expertise, you are going to ask me questions and shine light on things that I probably didn't think about. These have been incredibly useful. I encourage anyone out there who has a team to make sure that you're not sequestering knowledge and sequestering problems within a silo that is actually you would probably think, oh, this is an engineering problem, engineers will solve it, when actually more often than not, when you get a problem that big, it just takes a lot of heads to actually chat through it and come up with solutions. It's been an incredible tool for us over the years. [TYLER] I think that from a leadership perspective, the courage to be curious and invite curiosity and ask questions in that case is like, that's where I think creativity comes from. It really comes from courageous curiosity to say, why is it like that? I don't have a background or understanding, so help me understand why it is that way. I think that's how some of the greatest innovations have occurred, is this idea of like, well, that doesn't make sense to me, but that's the pattern that's always been followed. Oh, is that the way it is? Absolutely. Or can we iterate it differently to be more effective, to be more efficient If we can embrace that, like the idea of bringing everyone in to say, I have a problem. What do you see from your point of view because I can't see it, or I'm not finding the solution. [JOEY] Encouraging creativity, sorry, encouraging curiosity is a hell of a thing because how you react is critical. We have, just think of like being in school and you ask a "dumb question" and how a teacher responds can change your life trajectory. If a teacher laughs and says that makes no sense, which unfortunately some teachers do --- [TYLER] Or leaders. [JOEY] Incredible teachers, or leaders, if you laugh at someone just offering up a thought, you are teaching people not to offer up their thoughts. Thank you for turning into leadership because it's exactly something that I had to work on early on. I wasn't bad at it, but I wanted to be very good at it where always answer in a positive. Like, hey, that's curious. Tell me more. Even if, like there are plenty of times where I think, man, this is an idea that's not worth chasing, but that's okay. Like, give me 30 seconds, tell me a little bit more and then we'll move on. The team, because we've gotten so good at it now, because I've worked with these folks for quite a long time, now, I can say, I like what you're thinking. I know that it isn't going to help us because of these couple of reasons, but I appreciate it. Let's keep moving on. The team is incredibly open and we get challenged quite a bit by everyone, which I like. [TYLER] Do you see that challenge being in an exercise of a creativeness to where it's like now we're being challenged to solve problems that we had no idea we would ever get into and that brings in a lot of fun or is it like, okay, where do we take this creativity charge to say, how can we serve people better by it? [JOEY] Well, it is actually, I actually put together a literal exercise, which I think we've all probably heard a form of this, which is I love list-making. So I'm going to give you guys a one of my favorite nuggets in the whole book, which is, we've all heard the phrase quality over quantity. That's absolutely true. I prefer something nice than a bunch of mediocre things. However, the problem with that phrase, it doesn't tell you how to get there. That's like me saying, hey Tyler, go be strong. You're like, cool, yeah, good idea, but how? It's like, well, I should say like, hey man, go to the gym, do this routine three times a week or whatever it is. So the actual phrase, quality over quantity is accurate, but I prefer it's sibling, which is quality over quantity and quantity begets quality. So the more you do, and the more you try, the better you get. Now bringing it back to the exercise, we do lists at Barron Fig. So we will sit down at the table and if we have a problem or we're looking to face, we're looking to come up with a new idea, let's say for a limited edition because the way I describe creativity is it's not just problem-solving, it's also concept expressing. It's not always solving a problem, for example. And we will do list of 10, 25, 50, or 100 where the idea is only quantity, not quality. So there's no filtering. For example, let's say you mentioned the pen at the top of our conversation. Well, let's say I wanted to do a limited edition. I'm sitting here right now and I'm going to give you five ideas. Okay, a lamp limited edition, it somehow glows. Oh, here's one with glasses. I don't know. There's one where it's an eye test. Okay, there's one where I'm going to put my wife on it. There's a dinosaur limited edition that's going to be a bunch of pens that have bones on them, and you put them together. How about a sparkling water limited edition? None of these ideas I think could sell, although perhaps I like the lamp idea a little bit, something glowing, but the exercise that we do is you don't filter early on. You let everything out. So your curiosity comes into play or you just want to say, hey, what if, what if, what if? Then we talked about fitting in and self-acceptance versus self-consciousness. Being able to share those crappy ideas, even when they're crappy, also allows the conversation to go in places you just couldn't expect, because who is going to talk about a sparkling water limited edition, if not in a comfortable place because you already know it's a terrible idea? But when you bring it up, people laugh and they say, what about a coffee edition, they're like, oh, hey man, what about a collaboration with Starbucks or with a New York City exclusive brewer? Next thing you know you've got, like, I'm coming up with this on the fly. You have an energy edition that celebrates like the ways that we supply energy, and then you go into a bit of the ethos around the positive energy, and all of a sudden you've got the coffee edition and it just goes from there but it started with sparkling water, which was an exceptionally poor idea to begin with. That exercise, making lists of 10, 25, 50, or a hundred together as a group is a powerful tool as well. [TYLER] What hearkens me is it invites collaboration because then no idea is superior, but layering those ideas together is what actually results in something monumental. It's that collaboration and that collectiveness and it's really saying, all right, well take this and run with it. Where can you go? It's interesting to me that that's a very difficult skill for organizations to embrace. [JOEY] Yeah, it is. It has to start at the top. So it has to start with the leader and if the leader's not like that, and I've seen way too many organizations where that is the truth, it doesn't manifest in the team in the dynamics by which they ideate and problem-solve. [TYLER] Well, I think there's two parts to that. It takes a leader that's saying, here's my idea. Take and change it and evolve it into something different and I'm not going to take a offense when you say, my idea is just the seed. Instead, there's that leader that's like, well, my ideas are always going to be the best idea and so therefore, everyone just needs to enact my ideas and never come to me with an iteration. That's one thing but the difference is like, I'm going to share my idea, but I'm not confident enough that you can make something more of it. That happens in the, I wouldn't say rank and file is the right, but too often people like, oh, I don't want to share my ideas, someone's going to steal it. [JOEY] Interesting. Then you're getting into politics of the office. [TYLER] Yeah, I mean, I had a friend --- [JOEY] Yeah, tell me more. [TYLER] I had a friend, he shared this with me, and it's so good. He goes, there's three types of ideas, one's to give to someone else, one to collaborate with someone else or one to do on your own. It's that idea that, okay, when we collaborate and when we give, it actually invites the creativity for more ideas for us to do on our own because you take from that experience something bigger and better. I can imagine if you're going through the extent of like, all right, we're going to make a limited edition notebook, or we're going to decide to publish another different book, but how are we going to do this? I would imagine that process of making the lists keeps you from being pigeonholed. Well, this is all we're ever going to be. [JOEY] Absolutely. There's actually, in the book, there's a law of collaboration, which is to, I'll briefly read it, it says, join forces with others to maximize knowledge, speed up ideation, and minimize wheel spinning. Share what you know and you will in turn have others share with you. Multiple heads truly are better than one. So that all says it. Is there, is that when you have these silos and then you don't share, knowledge is separate, perspective, let's say take standing at a corner. Say I'm at the corner of a street and there's left, one down the street, and then at a 90 degree angle on the right to the other side, and I've got my team on the left, and I have a really interesting thing over there on the right. Perspective, literally is I am the only one at the corner who can see that thing over there and if I am not telling the team, even though I don't know what it is, if I am not telling the team on the left what I'm seeing on the right, it doesn't matter how smart they are. Knowledge is fuel to ideate and if I don't provide it from where I am, even though I don't know what it is or how to use it, I am holding everyone back. So collaboration, I mean, is absolutely necessary, which is why as a tangent, I am so excited for virtual reality in the age of work from home because I believe we'll be able to get the benefits of, I know I'm going off. We'll be no, no, get the benefit. I love VR man. We'll be able to get the benefits of being together in the same room with, of course, the benefits of working from home, being able to live in all sorts of places. So I'm just tossing that in there because I think we are right on a turning point of all this coming together. [TYLER] Well, I think the, you share in the book one exercise when you were doing some drawing and you go to the studio and they tell you to just draw what you see. You got 10 seconds, don't draw what you can't see. What you just shared there from the street corner to the virtual reality really informs that whole process and if I'm a leader and I'm telling you Joey, you're with me and I'm describing this and you are drawing what I describe, and I look at it's like, no, no, no, that what isn't what it was, I'm like, well, then you didn't properly communicate it. Or actually what you were describing is what it was, but you couldn't see that because you were lost in the situation. How connects that to virtual reality is, I think as we go through the process of trying to build and then create what does virtual reality look like, how do our workplaces look like will inform the perspective everyone has. From that perspective really lends to what we're able to accomplish. [JOEY] I have a question for you in relation to the workplace if you're open to it. What are your thoughts on a four-day work week? [TYLER] I have a friend who wrote that book Thursday is the New Friday, Joe Sanok. I think part of that is four-day work weeks have been very popular in different industries. You work four tens, you have a different, what does a work week look like? Even Joe goes into it in his book and this idea of how did the work week start and where did that come from? Again, my background, I came from agriculture. There is no absence of work week. It's all you figure out and get the work done. But moving to a four-day work week, the two things that I think it commands leaders to understand and appreciate. You need more people, not less and that's going to require you to communicate better, collaborate better, and inform better. Think about it, okay, we have a five-day work week. We're going to accomplish our work in five days. You can't do more with, you only have 24 hours, but you can split up your hours. Therefore, it creates it to be different and how that's split. You go to different parts of the world that is actually more normal than abnormal and so they have a greater workforce because they're actually working more days, less days, but you have more people. You got to fulfill that work. Where I think the challenge and I think about this idea of, I think it could be very beneficial because now those three days that you're not working, if you're able to get away from it, you're able to exercise and experience and see a much bigger perspective. If you're encouraged to bring that back to the workplace, you're actually going to see progressive movement forward rather than less. [JOEY] Yes, 1000%. I should have said this to you before I ask, because now I feel like I was all of a sudden setting you up. So, we at Baronfig do a four-day work week and everything you said is spot on. We started a four-day work week in September of 2021 so we've been doing it now for a year and three, four months and it's, everything you said is true. These are three days off. People are revitalized by Monday. There's no hump day, there's no middle day. It happens overnight between tunes Tuesday and Wednesday. You go from the first half of the week to the latter half of the week overnight, which is psychologically fascinating. The reason we did this, one of the many reasons, one of my most prominent curiosities is there's something called Parkinson's Law. Are you familiar with it, where work expands to fill the time allotted. [TYLER] Absolutely. [JOEY] So that got me thinking what if we are actually not, we don't need the fifth day. Like what if we do the same work but in four days? I told everyone up front all about Parkinson's Law, I explained it, I wasn't trying to hide anything, and I also said, we're going to to use the 80/20 principle. Focus on the 20% that gives us the 80%. However, we're not going to immediately change the way we're doing anything. We're just going to have conversations every Monday, how did last week go, what do we need to adjust? We actually haven't adjusted anything. We do our top three things every Monday morning. We get them done every week. It seems that because people are more revitalized over the three day weekend, they come in with more gusto and energy. There's no hump day. When you hit Wednesday you're thinking, wow, tomorrow and I'm off, I guess. It's been fascinating. I brought this up because this is leadership podcast and I do want leaders out there to start taking it more seriously. In addition, if you do this now, leaders, it's a benefit that very few people can, are offering and it's an extremely valuable benefit to an employee. So if you're out there thinking about retention or ways to offer things that Google and Facebook and Nike and the biggest players in the game are not, this is one of them. Because unless those big guys say you're only working four days a week there's not many things that are more valuable than giving people their time back. [TYLER] I think the biggest challenge and that's what I aim to help empower and inform our leaders in through this podcast, is just because that's the way it was done doesn't mean that's the best way to do it. And I think as you just, you made a pivot during the middle of Covid where some people did, not necessarily by choice, but they had no other option and now they're going back to say, you have to be in the office, you have to work more hours because a generation gauged work completion by butts in seats. Or if you're not, it is the whole idea that, oh, remote work can't work. If you're remote, it can't work. Well, there's a lot of people I know that have never, ever, ever sat in an office, and that is their profession. If you think about contractors that work with you, your third party that you contract out with to do design work for you guys or copywriting or whatever it may be, they may be working wherever in the world. They're not in your office. I come from a background of consulting and sales and it's like, that's normal. Get the work done. So this paradigm shift, and I think to tie to the book, there's a lot of creativity in saying, we're going to enter into this. I don't have all these solutions and ideas, but if we all throw it into a pot and are willing to sort it and sift it and come up with the best solution, we will come up with the best solution. And it's not framework box. It has to be this way. Because if that's the case, I believe you're always going to lose. [JOEY] I agree completely. You nailed it on the head earlier where just because that's the way it's done doesn't mean that's the way it needs to. It's such an, I mean, such an important idea that it's chapter two in the book, it's the law of disruption, where you have every right to challenge question, improve the ideas that are handed to you, because at some point they evolve from what came before them. It's a thing that so many folks unfortunately forget that they can do. [TYLER] So I want to ask, you mentioned this in regards to list, creating list, the quantity of the list before you discern it down and really hone in the quality. What would you encourage someone listening in and they're like, all right, I get it, Tyler, I understand and appreciate why you brought this creativity conversation to a leadership space. But what would you say is the best encouragement to facilitate creativity on a team or in a workplace or as a leader? What can you do to facilitate additive creativity? [JOEY] Great question. I think it starts, I said this earlier, I think it starts with the leaders. I think it starts with all of you folks listening. You need to set the examples. What can you do, is in your next meeting where you're trying to solve problems, throw out some terrible ideas, throw out some things that are funny, call on, make sure you call on people and make sure you are taking a look at your response. If there's anyone in the office who scoffs or shoots things down too quickly, it's also your job to call that person out and tell them, hold on. That's not how we do things here. This is an open discussion. There are no wrong answers because, let me end with this, a really important thought, that folks, it's another one of those paradoxes where people know it, but they just don't get it in day-to-day life, which is, if I, did you watch the movie The Matrix by chance? [TYLER] Yeah, of course. [JOEY] One of my favorite movies of all time. Neo's on the Roof and they're all like, oh my goodness, he's going to jump. Is he going to do it the first time. Another one goes, no one does it the first time. Sure enough, even though all that tense music comes, he does not succeed the first time. I love that he fell, because in reality, we all know that you cannot succeed on the first time. Who the heck are you to think you're going to get it right out of the gate? Yet that is the very thing separately, it's like we psychologically partition our beliefs from our actions, yet separately, we are often held back because we are afraid of getting it right on the first time yet we know that that's ridiculous. So I encourage people who are leaders out there, so when a bad idea comes across your desk, don't shoot it down because that person who put it there don't expect them to get it right on the first try. It's those initial tries that lead to the successful jump from building to building. It's the crappy ideas that you allow to flow that give you the great ideas. [TYLER] That is a element, and it's something that I'm seeing a need to talk about more is, and we talked about psychological safety organizationally, but trust. That is one of the best ways that you can build creative trust. Hey, bring all your ideas and how can I encourage it and let's run with it and let's give it to other people on the team and just, all right, like you did with the example of the sparkling water, which turned into a limited-edition coffee, there is many, many millions of people that will buy that pen right now. I mean, there are people, you know that industry better than I do, of course, but I just would believe that is something that is not so far fled. There might be even people that would buy a Perrier pen that love Perrier sparkling water. And I think that too often, and you talk about this in the book and just as a finish that leaders fall into the, well, it's not magnificent enough, so therefore it's not viable enough. Instead of saying there is the right people, and if we do it right, like I believe this, the way that you put together, publish, manufacture books, you have an absolute ability to be one of the most unique and or value-added publishers because of that care. To me, if I'm going to buy a book, in my experience, that's a fun experience. I want to do that. That to me is, again, coming back to the experience I've had with yourself and Baronfig already is creatively, no, we're not going to just do it like everyone else. We're going to ask questions and say, hmm, how can we make this experience better? [JOEY] It's interesting to wrap up on that thought is, the most mundane thing was the thing that you brought up, like you're saying in, when you're talking magnificent versus mundane. I didn't make any magnificent changes to a book, but I made a very tiny change and that was the first thing you brought up. It's fascinating because small things tell big stories. If we can do the small things right, we can get those big results that we're looking for and people like yourself who are paying attention notice and then share it, and then it grows from there. So it doesn't have to be these monumental successes in terms of like moving mountains. [TYLER] I think that's a key to creativity. It doesn't have to be monumental, it's just willing to think, hmm, what would that be like? [JOEY] Well said. [TYLER] Joey, thanks a lot, man. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you. [JOEY] Tyler, thank you man. I appreciate it. Everyone out there, thank you for listening. I hope some of that was interesting and perhaps even useful. I'm here to help. I'm sure there'll be links, I'm here to help. If there's any questions hit me up. [TYLER] Yep, absolutely. Show links, links to the show, to Baronfig, to Lost Creativity, all be in the show notes. Thanks for joining me. [JOEY] Awesome. Thanks Tyler. [TYLER] As Joey, it is simple, simple exercise, how to foster creativity. Encourage people to share their ideas, don't shoot them down. I think about how that can happen. Hey, I think about my kids. I think about their sporting teams, their solutions to problems. Five-year-olds are creative geniuses and we slowly rob that from them unless we give them an outlet, unless we give them an opportunity. I grew up on a farm. I had opportunities to be creative. I didn't have another way around it. I had to be creative. I had to find a solution. I remember one day creating this mechanism with ropes and pieces of metal because I had to figure out how to pull down the clutch on a tractor when I wasn't on that tractor. Yeah, it sounds strange, different, weird, whatever, but I had to use what was at my disposal to figure it out. That's creativity as I've learned. Creativity has a place everywhere, everywhere for everything. If it's making a list of ideas and then approaching them, and there's no bad idea, and layering those ideas, layering that on top of each other, that's creativity, collaborating. I encourage you, if you want to have a book that just gives an amazing experience, The Laws of Creativity, go check out in the show notes, Baronfig, more about Joey. Excited to have Joey. Here's what I want to also set you up for. In the next couple weeks, I'm going to be sharing some more information. I've done this a couple times to awaken the leader within workshop. We have another one coming April 3rd and 4th. If it's after that, man, go to theimpactdrivenleader.com. You can register for the next one. If it's before April 3rd and 4th, go there so you can register to make sure that you can attend that event. I am going to be doing a special training the week before. I'll share more about that in the future. Yeah, trust me, I will. Thanks for being here. Thanks for joining. If you're not a subscriber, hit subscribe on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, have a good one.