Start with the Customer: Interview with Author Becky Blades
I recently went one on one with Becky Blades, author of Start More Than You Can Finish: A Creative Permission Slip to Unleash Your Best Ideas.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Becky: I studied journalism in college and thought my career was decided. But when I entered the real world, I quickly lost passion for reporting and fell in love with business and marketing. That’s what sparked my curiosity, and I didn’t want to just write about it. I also loved art and design and wanted to be in the room where it happened, so I naturally found my way to working ad agencies and marketing departments.
I worked for seven very different creative organizations before I started my own company, a marketing communications firm.
After I sold that business in my 40s, I took time to make art, dive into civic work, and explore new business ventures. One day during this glorious but chaotic time, my 12-year-old daughter came home from school and asked me “what are you now, Mom? Are you a businesswoman or an artist?” I cringed a bit learning that a label for my work was so important to my daughter. I responded that I did lots of things — that I was doing art projects, starting another small company, writing articles, and mentoring someone launching a business. Unsatisfied, she probed again. Then, from another room, my older daughter called out an answer “she’s a stARTist!”
The term she concocted seemed to fit. And as I embraced it, the title became a permission slip to live the creative life I was craving.
This was the beginning of a sometimes whimsical, sometimes intense, exploration of my creative process—and eventually, the inspiration for writing the book, START MORE THAN YOU CAN FINISH.
Over a few years, I interviewed hundreds of innovators, entrepreneurs, and artists to ask them about acting on their ideas. I discovered that like me, the most creative people start a lot of things and that they don’t finish them all as planned.
I also learned from talking to so many successful creators that I had developed a skill that was perhaps underappreciated, even by me. I was good at starting things.
I’ve started thousands of things, and I have scores of unfinished projects. I’ve also finished some things:
I’ve launched companies—a communications firm, a publishing company, a real estate company, a fashion accessories line, a travel company, and a tech company.
I’ve created more than a thousand artworks. Most are mixed media wall-mounted art, which have been sold by galleries into collections from Paris to L.A. to White Fish, Montana.
I’ve written and published. After twenty years essentially ghostwriting for clients in my public relations work, I’ve lately published articles, books, and poetry. My first book, Do Your Laundry or You’ll Die Alone: Advice Your Mom Would Give If She Thought You Were Listening (2016 Sourcebooks) is a surprise 7-year bestseller. And I’ve had fun writing for Oprah.com, The Huffington Post, Live Happy, and McSweeneys.
I’ve made textiles, including accessories, garments, and the world’s biggest piece of fringe (it’s more interesting than it sounds).
I’ve produced events: a sold-out comedy show, fundraisers, presentations, and training programs. I’ve even co-written and produced a song.
Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?
Becky: I want people to read this book and begin things. I know this will happen because during the time I was writing it and letting friends and editors review it, four people started books, one started a business and one started a neighborhood organization, crediting the book’s concepts.
Most people have ideas perched on their imaginations and just need permission to begin. I hope that readers feel a gust of permission and creative courage wash over them – that they will have epiphanies of their own making and know without question that acting on their ideas is the way to flourish.
I want people to put down this book and start a book club, or a book, or a donkey rescue, and feel it is their first step of something bigger.
The ultimate finish will be an empowered ecosystem of creativity. Expressing and creating have given people meaning since the beginning of time. It’s where we find our joy, our power, and our goodness. We can’t have too much of it.
Adam: How can anyone unleash their best ideas?
Becky: We unleash our best ideas by acting on the ideas we have. The first step sets in motion the creative process and unlocks places in our brains to expand our imaginations.
It’s a different experience for everyone, but we can all learn to start more, better and faster. When we start more, we finish more. Before we know it, ideas start showing up bigger, with better odds for success.
As we act on ideas with small stakes, we get better at selecting and refining ideas. This is how we grow our appetite for risk. It’s how we build creative courage.
Adam: How can leaders foster environments that fuel creativity?
Becky: We fuel creativity when we invest in people’s ideas – big, small, and half-baked. Leaders invest by listening, responding productively, and committing resources to explore the possibilities.
Of course, all this must be done within the context of strategic objectives, but good leaders know how to guide these conversations.
If an employee has an idea to redesign a process, a good response is to ask what inspired the idea. Let them walk you through it. Take the time to get into their head. Then, even if you’re not bowled over, help them explore first steps. Let them see their idea try to come to life, and let them be the one to call early pauses, pivots, and restarts.
When people know their ideas might go someplace, they ideate more expansively and practically. More important, they become better at curating and sharing their ideas.
We also nourish the creative environment by spotlighting learnings from ideas that don’t finish as envisioned. When an innovation yields a tiny impact instead of the paradigm shift we hoped for, creative environments celebrate the tiny progress. We shift the focus away from failure or lost resources to the value of the learning – and without skipping a beat, to next ideas.
Startistic leaders live the truth that “with innovation, not finishing is not failure. Only not starting is.”
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Becky: I once heard someone say “being listened to feels so much like love that most people can’t tell the difference.” I believe this. Being heard feels like being trusted, being valued, and belonging. Masterful, visionary leaders use listening to help people be inspired by their own best ideas. When people feel safe in expressing ideas, they are motivated to align their creativity with the organization’s vision.
To me, the defining qualities of a leader are the ability to listen, inspire, and persuade, each with honesty. When these three actions blend, people believe come to believe that their ideas are one with the organization’s ideas. They believe in their work and that their initiative matters. They believe that their ideas will align with the organization. The outcome is that individuals believe they are not alone but joined with collaborators in an inspiring miss
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Becky: We take our leadership skills to the next level by leading next-level people.
We must work to attract the best of the best and humbly bring them along on our journey. This requires leading people that may seem “ahead of us.” Sure, it’s a challenge, but we must learn, with our own authentic style, to inspire people smarter, older, and faster than us…to motivate people more educated, skilled, and driven than us.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Becky:
Honor all ideas. Ideas are not born of nothingness. Each is a response to a gap, a problem, an opportunity, or a longing. Rather than judging the idea not worthy, explore what inspired it and whether that response or another, is worth an investment.
Create a lightning-fast decision model – for yourself and your organization. Which ideas will you take action on? What does that look like? Example: “If an idea is on strategy and has potential to improve the customer experience, we will explore it by ___.”
Rethink your planning process. Rather than planning only with dates and deliverables, plan also with learnings and decisions. As soon as we know X, we will decide X. This is the creative process.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?
Becky: Start with the customer. Each customer and their decision processes are worthy of as much study as we can give them.
For example, I did p.r. and marketing campaigns for Gulfstream jets and Hallmark greeting cards. A Gulfstream jet has a 5-year sales cycle and lots of people in on the decision. Compare this to greeting cards, which is a personal purchase decision made in a few minutes.
Both companies have impeccable brands, but the path to getting the sale could not be more different. We can form strategy only by talking to the customer early and often – by knowing what the buyer and their influencers need to make a decision.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Becky: The best advice I’ve received was channeled to me while listing advice for my daughter heading off to college.
“Never promise a kidney to someone you met in a bar after 2 a.m.”
Timeless wisdom, if you ask me.
Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.
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