Month: November 2020

Why right now is the perfect time to create outside the lines.

If you want to develop as a creative thinker you have to color outside the lines. I don’t mean the way a young kid does when they have no sense of how to stop themselves when they get to a delineating line on a piece of paper.

What I mean is that creative thinking can not and should not be contained. To improve your creative thinking don’t simply create when and where you are told to create. Don’t create only when a teacher gives you a creative project. Don’t create only when a boss says they want you to help develop a new idea for the summer picnic (which was a fun event we used to have pre-covid, or what I am now calling PC).

As a creative thinker, you should create all the time, because you can’t help thinking, creating and making stuff. And we should all see ourselves as creative thinkers.

Since the initial covid lockdown back in March, I have written over 80 blog posts. I started an illustrated cartoon series called Kirky. I have written the manuscript for a book, which I am deep into the second draft of right now. I am working on bringing a new brand to life in my spare time with my son Magnus and friend Dan Koel. And I have been using Moleskin notebooks the way most people use mousetraps to catch my ideas and make sure they don’t get away.

I always ask people interviewing for creative jobs what they do creatively in their spare time. This isn’t just a curiosity. It helps me tell if you are a true creative thinker who can’t help but develop ideas and bring them to life. Or if you are someone who wants a fun job. But if they tell me they like to make furniture and lampshades out of human remains I know not to hire them. #SorryNotSorryEdGein

One of the women who freelances for The Weaponry (whom I hope to hire full time) is regularly sharing her extracurricular creative projects on social media. I love that. It shows me that she is really a creative thinker at her core. Those kinds of thinkers don’t have to be spurred into action. They can’t stop the thinking and the valuable actions that follow even if they wanted to. Those are the most valuable thinkers to have on your team. And they can’t be replaced by an app or a monkey, or automated by a machine. #JobSecurity

My great friend Betty Garrot, who lived across the street from me in Atlanta, is a Pediatrician by day. But Mrs. Dr. Garrot as we call her at our house, because her husband Crain is an Oncologist, paints a lot. Her home is full of beautiful paintings she has created of scenes she has witnessed around the world. But she paints so much that I expect she has a secret self-storage space stuffed full of paintings that she doesn’t have wall space for in her home. Betty is an amazing painter. But she rarely paints for money. Because it removes the joy of creating. Which is why she does it.

However, I have recognized that some people simply don’t know that they can think and act creatively when they aren’t asked to. They don’t realize that they can create their own assignments and deliver their own ideas.

So here is your reminder to create. Write, paint, photograph, draw, bake, cook, brew, garden, dance, make music, design, develop a business idea, host, decorate, or whatever you like to do to tap into and express your own ideas. Do it even if no one asks you to. Even if no one is watching. Even if you are not getting paid. Even if you are not great at it at first. Because it is great for your brain and your mental health.

Key Takeaway

When I visited Iceland several years ago I met a man named Sven (of course), who told me that Icelanders embrace the short and dark days of winter to engage in their creative activities. Now that we are to our short days and long nights in the Northern Hemisphere, I encourage you to do as the Icelanders do. And make the darkest days of the year the brightest days for thinking and creating.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

Everything there is to know about me in 52 minutes.

Everyone has a story. I recently sat down with Dave Molenda on the Positive Polarity Podcast to tell my story. Ok, so it was more like a series of stories. Kind of like Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Which makes my episode the Podcast of a Wimpy Adult.

If you want to skip the backstory and go straight to the podcast click here.

That’s a lot of hair in one square.

Dave Molenda

Dave is a successful entrepreneur who grew a baby startup business into a $10 million beast. Then Dave wrote a book that became a #1 Amazon Best Seller called Growing On Purpose: The Formula to Strengthen Your Team AND Improve Your Customer Experience.

Dave is a really positive guy who is looking to find more positive people with positive ideas to share with the world. (I’m positive about that.) Which is why my friend and public relations expert Monica Baer connected us. Dave is also a great podcast host and found valuable topics to discuss.

Dave is also a member of the Long Hair Boys Club. Which is a club I made up. (But there are real shirts and real stickers coming soon.) In fact, Dave’s flow is so good it makes me look like Telly Savalas.

Why Listen

If you are looking for insights on how to start or grow a business, I share my approach here. If you want to know how to write a blog, it’s in there. If you ever wanted to pick my brain (hopefully not with an ice pick), the insights you are looking for are probably in here. And if you would like to get away from the election and Covid-19 for a while, there is no mention of either of those 2 topics in the podcast.

Topics Dave and I talked about:

  • The process I used to discover my career passion
  • How I got my first job in advertising
  • How I started my own business
  • Where the name The Weaponry came from.
  • How I develop new business opportunities
  • Why I give away the goods for free (like a crack dealer)
  • How I built my blog (which now has 515 posts)
  • How I find time to write
  • Where my ideas come from
  • My favorite blogging topic
  • My goals
  • Positivity
  • My tip of the week.
  • The Weaponry’s fake website we had for 3 years.
  • Why Laverne & Shirley are part of The Weaponry
  • How I applied my athletic background to business.
  • The strength of a good name
  • Being a dude with long hair.

If you want to hear the podcast click on the link below. And don’t miss my Tip Of The Week at 46:40.

The link to hear Adam Albrecht sharing everything he knows with Dave Molenda

Thanks for having me Dave! (And thanks for the introduction Monica.)

What happens if your candidate doesn’t win?

Today is the big day! Election Day 2020. Today, one way or the other, the political ads will be over, and we can finally get back to more important commercials about beer, incontinence, and flex tape.

If you pay attention to the political ads you may believe that the outcome of the election will mark the end of days if it doesn’t go your way. The messages from the candidates’ campaigns are ominous. They all paint a stark win or lose, do or die, fail or thrive future. It is as if our very existence rests on the outcome of this election.

But none of that is true. Whatever happens, we will be fine. We can and will survive anything that comes our way. We have endured the Civil War, The Great Depression, and the Disco era. They all did their best to sink us. But America is the Molly Brown of countries.

I have voted in every presidential election since I turned 18. I carefully studied the candidates and how their beliefs aligned with mine. I looked at how their policies would impact me financially and how they would act to help others in my community and country. I always asked myself, would they have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky? Then I carefully voted for what I believed to be the best candidate. Just like a good American should.

However, the candidate I voted for has only won half of the elections. Which means that, in theory, the person who wanted the opposite of what I wanted won the other half of the contests. Yet, ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life has gone on.

It is easy to get caught up in the hype and extremism of a political election and think that there are clear winning and losing scenarios for the masses. But history would indicated otherwise. You will naturally lose roughly half the elections you vote in. And when you lose America will still be full of moms, baseball and apple pie. And you can still share all of those things on Facebook. Plus, you will still get to vote again in 4 years. And the pendulum always swings. Like Benny Goodman.

So today as the last of us vote, and tonight as you watch the results come rolling in, remember, it will all be ok. There is more than one way to lead our country. There are pros and cons to each style, and each belief system. It’s why roughly half the country agrees with your thinking and half the country doesn’t understand you.

I respect that political positioning forces the campaigns to market the candidates ideas and ideals as diametrically opposed. But at the end of the day, both sides want to continue developing a great America. They just have different ways of going about it. Which means they are focused on pulling different levers, and pushing different buttons on the Wonkivator to get the machine to perform its best.

America is a great country. Because it was founded by rebellious people who believed there was a better way of country-ing. And America has attracted great and rebellious people ever since (think David Bowie and Billy Idol) who have continued to bring new and better ways of country-ing.

Sure, we have unsolved problems. And we always will. Because life is one long problem solving adventure. We will continue to work towards better approaches to equality, security, safety, prosperity, health and peace. We just have different beliefs in how it is done. Neither approach is 100% right. And neither approach is 100% wrong. There ain’t no good guy. There ain’t no bad guy. There’s only Americans, and we just disagree. But that’s ultimately what makes the system work.

Key Takeaway

Things are going to be okay. There will be a lot of drama beginning tonight. It may last for months. But we will all be okay. Both candidates approaches generally work. We will find a vaccine for Covid-19. We will continue to improve our country and our economy no matter who is in the White House. Because ultimately, it all comes down to what we the people do.

If you like pro-American, independent thinking you may also like Why today is such a big F-ing day.