BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT Banana Ball How Jesse Cole went from being a "bored out of his mind" baseball coach to creating one of the most epic shows in sports, with a little inspiration from Walt Disney. What if you could transform routine work into something... unforgettable? Most creative pros know the grind—the endless emails, the methodical process, the struggle to inspire not just clients, but even ourselves. But what if you scrapped the rulebook, let go of “professional,” and decided...
18 days ago • 3 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT How To Think In Systems In the face of uncertainty, understanding how systems work can unlock pathways you couldn't previously see. In this week's podcast episode, Robert Siegel and Seth Godin offer advice for standing firm in times of change. The world is moving faster than ever, with tectonic shifts in technology, culture, and business happening seemingly overnight. Old rules no longer apply, leaving creative pros to carve new paths amid the chaos. In this week's...
25 days ago • 3 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT Simplify Learning To Think More Strategically What if you could shift your learning from "just in case" to "just in time"? On this week's Daily Creative episode, Pat Flynn teaches the art of lean learning. It's too easy to find yourself overwhelmed with information, advice, and endless to-do lists, hoping that the next resource will finally unlock clarity in your work. What if the solution to doing your best, most impactful work isn’t about learning more—but...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT Working With Complicated People This week's podcast featured some great advice from Ryan Leak and James Kimmel about how to manage workplace conflicts and grievances. Ever fantasized about sending a scorched-earth resignation email or confronting that “complicated” colleague head-on? In this week's Daily Creative episode, we explore the messy realities and hidden costs of revenge in the workplace—and uncover healthier, more powerful strategies for navigating...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT Ideas Are Easy, Making Them Great Is What Matters Brilliant, impactful ideas are more like to be forged over time than to emerge in a flash of spontaneous inspiration. Are you dedicating the time and energy necessary to give your ideas their best chance at success? In the late 1980’s, a graduate student named Thomas Knoll was working on his PhD thesis at the University of Michigan when he faced a simple but frustrating problem: he needed a better way to display...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT How To Stay Optimistic Optimism isn't "wishful thinking." It's a practical, necessary, forward-looking element of doing brilliant, brave work. And if you lead others, it's a critical part of getting others to follow you. In my most recent book The Brave Habit, I wrote about the two qualities that tend to be present when brave decisions are made: Perceived Agency, and Optimistic Vision. It can be difficult to maintain optimistic vision in the midst of uncertain...
2 months ago • 3 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT Why You Get Stuck: Definition, Motivation, Systems Getting stuck when doing difficult, creative work is normal. However, staying stuck is a choice. There are three common, though not intuitive, places where you might be digging yourself into a rut. “Stuckness” is just a part of doing hard things. However, simply plowing through the work is not necessarily the answer. Creative paralysis, or “creative block”, is often the result of inattention to a few key areas....
2 months ago • 4 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT Don’t Be a Collector, Be a Curator Simply collecting interesting sparks is useless if you fail to deploy those insights in your leadership and creating. Here is a simple method for turning ephemera into creative gold. In the digital age, we’ve become expert collectors of information. Devices overflow with saved articles, bookmarked websites, screenshots of inspiring quotes, and countless other digital ephemera. We hoard information at an unprecedented rate, saving...
3 months ago • 4 min read
BRAVE • FOCUSED • BRILLIANT How To Thrive In Uncertain Times In uncertain times, the temptation is to seek certainty. Instead, you should focus on building rituals that help you find clarity. In the depths of the 2009 recession, a San Francisco based publishing company called Chronicle Books made a decision that seemed counterintuitive at the time. While other publishers were slashing budgets and playing it safe with celebrity memoirs, Chronicle doubled down on innovative design and...
3 months ago • 5 min read
