The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Patrick Williams, Founder & President of Satori Innovation on How Developing Creativity and Art Can Help Inspire Business Innovation & Employees

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Patrick Williams, Founder & President of Satori Innovation on How Developing Creativity and Art Can Help Inspire Business Innovation & Employees Patrickwilliamsstaycreative.com Biography Patrick Williams is a passionate and inspiring public speaker, consultant, writer, artist, independent scholar, and visionary educator. Patrick has 0ver 4 decades of experience teaching and facilitating deep learning to a wide range of audiences. He is a TEDx speaker and an award winning artist. Patrick has exhibited throughout the USA, Japan, and China. His art is in public and private collections. He has been represented by galleries in Chicago, Seattle, Omaha, and Albuquerque. Patrick holds black belts in Karate-Dō and Aikidō with decades of experience training and teaching Budō. Patrick's comprehension, experience, expertise, and synthesis of creativity and innovation is unparalleled. Patrick is the founder and president of Satori Innovation: A Consulting and Ideation Accelerator.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss.

Hi, folks. Chris Voss from the Chris Voss Show. Welcome to the great show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Thanks for coming in here. I know when we started out the ramble was something random. I was drinking my

little mug of beverage, my water here, but it's also mixed with lemon, limes, and something else, and just blew out my voice right as we were going to the show. So there you go there's a fun little uh improv ramble there note to self don't mix lemon lime and uh apple cider vinegar in your intermittent fasting in

the morning uh hopefully you guys are all intermittent fasting welcome to the show my family friends we certainly appreciate you guys being here. The Chris Voss Show family that loves you but doesn't judge you. At least unless you're some idiot drinking lemon, lime, apple cider vinegar on his intermittent fast in the morning. We have an amazing, fun show for you. I think you're going to enjoy it as well. We've got a brilliant gentleman on the show. He's going to be sharing his insights and everything else. But until we get to that, we're going to hold him hostage and that data hostage on what he does.

It's a hostage guilt and shaming plug show. As always, refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Because you know what? You want them to be smarter when you're sitting around that Thanksgiving dinner this year. So tell them to subscribe. Say, damn it, John, Bob, Mary, Moonbeam, whatever. It's a joke. Tell them to subscribe to the Chris Foss Show.

Go to iTunes.com. You can't do that. You just go to iTunes. Go to Goodreads.com for Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com for Chris Foss. YouTube.com for Chris Foss. And see us over there on the TikTok. We need older people following us over there.

Damn it. It's like all 13 to 17 year olds. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show. We always have amazing gentle people on the show, both men and women. And we're very inclusive that way. In fact, if you don't even know what you are, you're welcome to come on the show. I don't know who I am anymore. But clearly I'm an alien from another planet or I'm adopted. I don't know who i am anymore uh i'm but clearly i'm an alien from another planet

or i'm adopted i don't know which you just pick spin the wheel pick your thing um but uh we have an amazing gentleman on the show patrick williams joins us on the show today he is a passionate and inspiring public speaker he is a creativity consultant, writer, artist, independent scholar, and visionary educator. Patrick has over four decades of experience teaching and facilitating deep learning to a wide range of audiences. He's also a TEDx speaker and an award-winning artist. He has exhibited throughout the USA, Japan, and China. His art is in public and private collections, and he's represented by galleries in Chicago, Seattle, Omaha, and Albuquerque. He holds black belts in karate do.

Did I get that right? You got that right. Oh, wow. See, I learn stuff on this show all the time. So does my audience. Akito, as well, with decades of experience, training and teaching Budo. Was it Budo?

Budo. Budo. Correct. I knew that. Patrick's comprehensive experience, expertise, and synthesis of creativity and innovation is unparalleled. Damn it. This is what we tune into the show for.

We get people, guests that are unparalleled. He is this is what we tune into the show for we get people guests that are unparalleled he is the founder and president of satori innovation creative creativity consulting and ideation is that ideation accelerator there see i'm learning so many big words today i'm going to be smarter patrick thanks for coming on the show welcome you're welcome very much i'm glad to be here chris there you go and that was the best intro ever thank you thank you well we're going to put that on the tiktok and we'll uh save that for that um we kind of went down a meandering thing there i do intermittent fasting and so uh it's very good for you it's very healthy huh it's great for you yeah i highly recommend it but uh maybe mixing the lemon lime with the apple cider at the same time. I usually keep those separate.

And then now I see why. So give us a.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Sure. Excellent. So toriinnovation.com. And it can also be patrickwilliamsstaycreative.com. So both of those will go to the same website, which is my business site.

And then I have a couple other sites, which are my art sites, PatrickWilliams.com and CelebrationFlowerPaintings.com, which is not only flowers, but also nature paintings, so to speak. So in those two, those several places, you can find a lot about me. And I have two Instagram sites, PMW Creativity and at PMW under slash camera so one is a drawing uh site and one is a photograph photography site there you go i think i'm going to sell this drink as a as a the official chris voss energy drink

how to choke yourself on the thing uh so uh you've got i think some of your uh wonderful art behind you is that correct correct? Yes, I do. My wife and I just had a show here in my studio about two weeks ago. It was her first two-dimensional art show. So it was a big celebration. And she sold a whole bunch of work. So it was well-received and well-liked. Congratulations. We should encourage our

audience to you know most people pick this up on audio but uh check out the videos on all our different video formats and websites uh to see his artwork behind him as as we shot so uh patrick give us a 30 000 overview synopsis of who you are and what you do in your words sure i am an artist i've been an artist since i was 10 ish and uh have taught art uh taught martial arts that's what budo translates as i've been in uh school systems as a visiting artist and a uh artist in residence and throughout all that time I gathered a lot of understanding and information about how children but also how adults learn and express and about I don't maybe six or seven years ago I started contemplating how I could help people other than just making art and teaching how I

could help people with their creativity and at the time I was living in Boulder Colorado which is a a hotbed of entrepreneurship so to speak and I had a lot of friends in those areas, and they encouraged me to do a deep dive into the business world to kind of evaluate if I had anything to give. And the more I dug into it, the more I realized that, yeah, there's a lot of need for the kind of the special areas that I am very familiar with, creativity. And that's what I started to develop. I have two manuscripts that I'm working on. One is for educators and one is for business folks, entrepreneurs and corporations. And they're both centered around my philosophy of creativity, which is what I've been developing for quite a few years,

just mentally, but then the last five or six years, putting it down on paper and getting a more of a coherent sense of it and then being able to teach people that. So the overview, the nutshell of all that is that I assist people in restoring their innate creativity. So when, when we're children, we're super creative and often we tend to lose that. And I have a lot of ways in which I talk about how that loss happens, but then I also have ways in which I both speak about, but also demonstrate and help people

with exercises and trainings to get them back into their creativity. There you go. So you offer speaking workshops, consulting and mentoring. Why is it important for people to get back to their creative selves and whether it's from business or life, you know, if they're a CEO, they're executive, an entrepreneur like myself, why is it important for us to get back in touch with that creative side? Good question. I believe that all innovation comes from creativity. So if you are in a business and you want to design a widget and you get a team together,

everything that leads to that innovation is going to come from the team's creativity. And I believe that it seems in my analysis that a lot of people are somewhat distant from their natural abilities to be creative. So it's important for people to learn what it takes to be creative and to start having that as a as an ongoing process how to maintain that and sustain it in their life I believe being connected to creativity adds to a person's life in general but it certainly adds to your business life your business culture your your whether you even if you're not, if, if you're not a

business that's attempting to innovate, but I think that's, I think all business are, are attempting to innovate. They're, they're, they should be focused on trying to make their businesses better and better and better. And to do that, I think the basis of that comes out of creativity. There you go. And it really does. I mean, when you have to innovate, you've got to create, you've got to have out of the box thinking, you've got to have original sort of type of thinking, or, you know, we do a lot of creative swiping in corporate world, but you've got to be able to take someone else's widget and improve on it and all that good stuff. So what's your origin story?

What's your hero's journey? How did you grow up? Did you always know that you were, you're kind of had that artist flair or was it something developed? Yeah, I always knew. I was always drawing and painting. My mom was really good at giving me a bit of supplies that I could use, little watercolor sets, for sure, pencils and paper. And in my TEDx talk, I talk about kind of a major event in my life that sparked, literally sparked a devotion to teaching myself to draw.

And that started when I was about 10. And it just snowballed, basically. And I knew I was an artist. And I just latched a hold of that and kept teaching myself. In junior high, I took one art class. And just after that, I started to teach myself to paint, to act using oil paints and brushes, not just watercolors. Not to dismiss watercolors, but this was a step up from,

in a way, taking myself more seriously and jumping into a concept that was, it's still, painting is very, very complex. But I taught myself to paint. And then eventually, in high school, I took one art class, I did probably 25, 30 stretched canvases in high school, which, and they were large, you know, some were six feet by three feet, some 30 by 40 inches. So they weren't, you know, a typical beginning painter paints on eight and a half by 11 size little canvases. So I was, my, my thinking was big and without limit in a way. And then I decided to major in art rather than physics in college, basically on the way down driving from Omaha to Lincoln, Nebraska. So on the way down, I thought, you know what, I'll go for art rather than physics, which was a good idea.

That sounds like it turned out to be a good idea. Yeah. Much better life path fit. I think so. And some people do that. You know, I've met people that went to college for ballet, and now they're CEO of a major, you know, multi-billion dollar company, you know. You're just like, wow, that was a turn.

But you try different things on, and you see what fits, and hopefully if you're lucky enough, wow, you, that, that, that was a turn, but you try stuff, different things on and you see what fits. And hopefully if you're lucky enough, you find what fits. Absolutely. There you go. I'm still trying to go down to Ross and find what fits for me, but that's another story. Um, so it's a wonderful journey you've been on. Um, like you say, and like we've talked about being a CEO, being an innovator, being an entrepreneur, even just being a mother or a father, trying to be creative with your kids, kind of see that great creative mind. It's sad that we lose that sort of, we kind of close that off.

We get busy in the mundane, I suppose, and social constructs that tell us, okay, well, you got to go to do this. You got to do that. You got to do this. And most people don't think outside of the box and think maybe there's a different way to do it. For sure. And then I think the other thing about art is art is really kind of, this just kind of came to me, so tell me if I'm right. But art is kind of a way of almost being present and having some gratitude and seeing the real beauty of the world. And sometimes that's what we lose as adults. We get lost in all the rigmarole and making money and doing all the things we chase around in life. We don't ever stop to see the sceneries that go by. For sure. see the uh the sceneries that goes by for sure and in a way that that's a that's a great description

of what often especially i'm a visual artist so it speaks to me deeply of taking time to look taking time to and not only look but to see which is sort of different we we look at a lot of things but but when do we have the chance to really see what we're looking at? And then once we see it, what is the next step for me as an artist to pick that as something that I want other people to see, which is a big decision. There are so many things in the world to look at, and there are so many things that people have painted, and you get to the point where you have to look at the thing and say, all right, there's something important about that, and I want to make a painting of it.

Just as I think in a business, someone's business, they think, I want to do this service. I want to design this new service software or whatever it might be to help people or a new widget to help people or whatever it might be. But it's taking all the things that people have invented and all the innovation that has happened. It's amazing there are still things to offer people that people are are envisioning and that to me the envisioning part is a creative

process and i just am passionate about helping people to get back into that there there's a what you just said about the how people sort of lose track of being able to look and see i call that creative colonization and i believe when people are young all of us from birth until four five, seven years old are just wildly creative. You look at a bunch of four-year-olds, they're doing things. They're playing, they're learning, they're using their imaginations. You can get 24 or five-year-olds together

from 20 different countries that they speak none of their languages and they will invent a game. Wow. They will just begin to play. Some, they may not all play together, but they might. Some, maybe 10 will play with 10 others or whatever it might be, but they will instantly start playing. If you take 12-year-olds, that probably isn't going to happen. If you take 20-year-olds, definitely not going to happen. If you take a bunch of 40-year-olds, it's going to be a mess, right? Nothing playful or creative probably will come out of that. But so this is part of my philosophy of creativity, is that as we get older, we've all experienced this.

And I know from my experience growing up and all the people that I've communicated with and spoken to and the stories that I hear, that at some point, children just run out of time. And especially nowadays when there's not only there are extracurricular activities, but there are screens that take people away from their play. So play is adamantly connected to learning. We learn as children and even as adults through our play. So play and imagination and creativity i i kind of put all together in sort of one thing it's hard to tease them apart you can but it's not necessary so we have to reconnect to that play part of our brain of of trying to find that enjoyment and that liveliness? For sure, yeah. It's a little picky, but I would say our mind because I think

there's more to us than... Our brains are awesome. I love that I have a brain. We can do this right now. But I feel like my mind has much more going on than just my brain. So minds gather information. You talk about the experience of getting an idea. And so often people say, I have no idea where that came from. I've experienced it.

I'm sure you've experienced it. And I'm not talking the invention of the light bulb kind of idea. Sometimes that happens. But I'm talking about ideas that are just like, wow, that's a really good idea. I should do that. That's a great idea. Yeah. Where did that come from? And I believe it comes from mind with a capital M that's whatever we call that, you know, God or a spirit or whatever, the all that exists. We, we tune into something in just the right way at just the right time. And, and that's where the idea comes from. So is that the, is that the creative colonization well the creative colonization comes when when someone at home someone out in the world or someone at school and often sadly and sometimes mostly unintentionally, but sometimes intentionally, teachers will say things that will stifle or shut down a child's creativity. And that's what I describe as creative colonization. So it's just like the millennia of years of other cultures going into

another culture and colonizing. They take away their traditions. They take away their religion. They take away their language. And that's what I chose the word specifically because I believe it is really intense for children to lose that connection to their creativity because it's directly related to how they learn. They learn through their play, imagination, and creativity.

So it's almost as if the colonization has taken away our original language of how we put the world together. It kind of becomes a brain, a group think maybe? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, it is because everybody, all the kids are experiencing comments or experiences, events that it's like, ooh, I shouldn't dance anymore because the teacher and four of the kids made fun of me and I'm not going to do that anymore.

It's kind of self-preservation. So the colonization can happen in all these really subtle different ways. Kids are super sensitive and they're still learning. I mean, we're all learning about the world. That never ends, but kids are kids are super sensitive and they're still learning i mean we're all learning about the world that never ends but kids are sponges so every little tiny nuance makes makes a impression on them and impacts them yeah so so when when the it it's just that there's less and less time basically for children to be in their play, in their creativity and in their imagination.

So that's kind of the slow attrition of how creativity gets colonized. And then I describe creative collapse. And that's either because of the slow chipping away of children's creativity or it's an event. And you may have had an event in your life as a child. I've talked to lots of people who say that this third grade teacher, we were doing this drawing exercise and she took my paper up to the front and showed the class and said, this is not how you do it. This drawing isn't good at all. I've had somebody tell me this story and she didn't draw. That was third grade and she didn't draw until we had a meeting. And she showed me a drawing of a plant the next day that she sent me. And that was the first time in 20 plus years that she hadn't hadn't drawn and it was just a

matter of basically giving her permission to go back in time in a way to reconnect with herself that knew it was a good drawing but but the teacher just happened to say nah nah, that's not what I... Teach is one of the dumb art critics. I'm just kidding, people. And what is the thing about art and beauty and everything else? It's perspective. So it's subjective and perspective.

But if you love doing something, I love doing certain things like my podcast. Sometimes I walk off a show and I'm like, I don't care if anybody listens to that show. I love that show. I had fun. I learned a lot of shit.

I had an amazing, fun conversation. I don't really care. It's a great show. I don't care if anybody listens to it. Fortunately, people do listens to it. And, you know, the fortunate people do listen to it, but having that perspective where you enjoy your art, you enjoy your work. And, uh, you know, usually if you're good enough, you work hard enough and master it, it'll be there.

Do you find that? What do you, what do you think about kids? One of the things that kids nowadays are, are really challenged by is, is they've cut a lot about a lot, what they're available. I think they've cut our classes. I know they've cut like a play time, you know, recess and stuff. Uh, no, they've cut a lot of creative stuff like music and things like that. And then, you know, now we have these devices that instead of like sitting around, like you and I probably did as kids and we're like, uh, Hey, let's go, you you know do something or make something or play with

legos or you know play in the dirt with our tonka trucks you know they're basically kind of zombified where they're looking at their their computers going out the side of their mouth and their creativity is stunted maybe because instead of coming up with stuff to do they're just being programmed and fed totally yes and the the actually there are studies that go all the way back to the 50s with respect to television and and the detriment of television hours watched by children and how that affects all levels of cognition and interaction, communication. So on one level, in a way, academics and teachers have known, you know, that was 70 years ago, that that screen was detrimental. But then the development of these smaller and smaller screens are certainly detrimental.

For children, speaking to that positive part of having a brain one to the outside world, but also unconnecting them to their inside world is detrimental. I think it's unavoidable for children today to not have some level of connection to a screen but i think that that connection should be very very uh limited and and and and shifted from into minutes rather than hours or or tens of hours however many hours the average is which is probably scary to both of us if we knew yeah most definitely the uh uh you know one of the uh things is is is is these kids um we've had some people that are like brain people scientists and they've said one of the problems that we have with their screens is it we see two-dimensional and we're still not formatted as a species to see that and understand that we're used to sitting

across from each other and a human basis touching shaking hands uh you know hugging uh seeing facial expressions reading them body language and stuff like that absolutely and we lose a lot of that in the td screen 2d screens on our brains really struggle with the functionality of that in in development so i think that's a big thing too yeah i just did a a workshop uh in i was here at home it was a workshop on zoom with an audience mainly in Australia, but all over the world. And it was incredibly challenging. It was a good workshop.

But the challenge was that I could see people, but I couldn't see everybody. But in a room, I can feel the energy for better term I can see people's facial expressions as we do in a room of people if we're discussing things with folks you can read their body language much better you can sense if they are paying attention much better in a room with 10 or 100 people so it was it it it was

uh much more exhausting to do that workshop than a workshop with people with people i get energized but i was putting so much in a way I was putting so much energy into the screen, so to speak, but without being able to read it. Yeah. Yeah. Like with you, I do a bunch of podcasts and I, this is,

even if it's only audio when it's put online, I much more enjoy being able to see you right now. Yeah. Because I can read you. I can read you i can see i can see that you just smiled you know that that changes every if if i didn't see you at all i wouldn't know how you took that so so the the the i totally agree with this the sense of the two-dimensionality of the screen and how we we need that three-dimensional interaction and i don't yeah and i don't think it who knows the you know it's just in the beginning even though it's been around for 30 years the vr is an interesting quality that is a faux three-dimensional reality.

So at some level in our minds, we know that it's not real, but we suspend that. But how does that still almost translate as a two-dimensional experience, possibly? Or one-dimensional, I think. I don't know. There you go. So, so you know unlocking the ability

to be creative be innovative one of the challenges you get into when you own companies you're a ceo or you're an entrepreneur is you get locked in the whole mba mbaism of it you know the data the numbers yeah the charts the surveys you know and then you try and innovate and you're trying to like how can i create uh and etc etc tell us how you help open up that mind you know as here as a side to you know one of the problems i always have had in business was i could think from a business format but all my offices have white walls uh you know i don't and and so when I walk into like some nice restaurant, like PF chains or something, um, you know, and you see the artwork and the

beauty and the, you know, somebody, you know, thought out how, you know, everything is arranged and how it looks and, and how it appeals to the eye. I don't have that quality. I know how to build you a widget and a black and white and all that good stuff. Tell us how you help entrepreneurs and CEOs and people break out of that and more into where they can be more creative. Sure. That's a super question. And the beginning of it is where it's the most challenging part with respect to the intangibleness of creativity and and the the point that i i thought of a a few minutes ago to and this was a great segue into that is that what

i'm doing is not teaching people how to make art i'm teaching people how to restore their connection to their creativity, which is two different things. If, if let's say I'm meeting with 10 CEOs and, and one of them, they all get something out of the workshop or the training with respect to restoring their creativity. And one of them comes back to me, sends me an email six months later and says, Patrick, I'm writing poetry. Holy crap. And,

and I would do the same thing. I'd be like, Oh, that's awesome. And it wasn't my intention, but what I'm doing opens up that, uh, that possibility, that valve, so to speak. And basically that's a good analogy. Our valves through creative colonization and creative collapse get shut.

And I just help people nudge it open a little bit and hopefully they'll turn it on full force. So if somebody calls back and says you know i'm writing poetry i started a dance class i'm i picked up my guitar after 40 years that's those are all icing on the cake right but my focus is to assist them into rediscovering their creative energies, their creative sparks inside. And so one of the ways, or there are many ways that I approach this, but one of the ways you kind of touched on it, that you have a white room that's, you know, nothing's on the wall,

and you go out to a restaurant, and they're like, wow, this is cool. You know, there's plants, there a restaurant, and they're like, wow, this is cool. There's plants. There's paintings. There's cool lighting, fixtures. All of that exactly is designed, and it's designed from someone's creative energy. They have an ability to picture this space and say, you know what? We need this kind of lighting here. We need these kinds of plants, whatever it might be, the color scheme, all that goes into their creative sparks that, that happen in a space. One of the things I

help people with is that they, they don't necessarily have to redesign their, their office, their cubicle or whatever, but they need to bring something into their space or a number of things that connect them to their sense of creativity so this may mean this this pushes people to to reach back into their memory and say wow when i was four years old what did I like to play with? You know, was it, it could have been matchbox cars or, you know, this would date me of course. But yeah. So whatever it might be, just if you have one still or just go out and get one, get on eBay

and buy a matchbook car that you had possibly, you know, whatever, however many hundreds of decades ago it was, bring that into your office or you set it on your desk, but also have a few more things that are as different as possible. So I talk about the necessity, me as a visual artist, of having a studio that has stuff in it that makes no sense to anybody. And sometimes it doesn't make any sense to me, but I need it. For whatever reason, I need this shell or this...

I've collected a bunch of the the the well there's the outer shells of locust right i had one on my my studio step the other day i took it's on my instagram and i saw it coming out in the morning i sit and i i write in my journal i do a morning meditation drawing and and i saw it it was just start the wings were like this long at first and then like an hour and a half later the wings were all the way out i took a photo of it and but i kept that little the little husk of of what it was before so you you collect things that have an interest to you that spark something. I encourage people to make a little pile of those things. So when you're needing to go into another space, if you can't make a whole room, your creative room, look at that pile of interesting, wacky things, and it will help you get into

the framework because mindset is a huge part of creativity. You have to have ways to get into these mindsets that are outside of your normal way of doing routines. The creative essence happens in those other mindsets. I also encourage people to do what I call domain shifting. So there's a team of 10 people you have. Let's say you have a team and you're going to design a widget or you're going to design a new, you're going to design the new look for the Chris Voss show for 2024. So what I would assign you is for the next four months in September, you're going to

take your team and all the team's going to have a team journal individually. You're going to have one as the team leader, and you're going to go to a jazz club and listen to jazz. And you're going to have your journals with you. And at some time during the evening, I encourage all of you to think about the project as you're listening to whoever's playing. Let's say it's a trio. Some guy's just riffing on the sax, going just an amazing solo that lasts for like four minutes. to kind of sink into your project. And it will allow thoughts that are from all over the place to coalesce. And you can jot some ideas down, whatever they might be.

It could seem like gibberish. And it may always seem like gibberish. But it might spark something. And if you put all 11 of you together, the 10 team members and you, then there's going to be a lot of thoughts that happen during the jazz concert that are going to be helpful to envision the new look of your show. Then the next month, I want you all to go to a museum. If you have a museum in town, if you have a gallery, either of those are fine, but use the time to walk through the gallery together with your notebook and

jot little things down that just pop in. So this is cross domain shifting. So you're going into, you're not going to go, your team isn't going to go to the Patrick Williams show, you know, and, and look at it. You could get information if I had a show like yours from sitting in on my show, of course, you might get some ideas, but this shifts your mind into a whole new set of, of, uh, information that's coming at you. Then the next month in November, go to a poetry evening or even a poetry slam or even a hip hop slam, whatever, just to experience poetry.

Same thing. Sit down at your tables, have a libration, write down in your journal things that come to you then the next month and this is this one i really like is that that all of you you find out what the what the four most interesting buildings are in your city and you go visit them ah like those old cool looking buildings oh yeah oh yeah So you spend time outside, you spend time inside and you just allow, because when you're in a space like that, you can feel how much attention was given to the construction,

the design, the why the doors are the way the doors look. That was, that was thought out. There was a very specific reason why the door looks like that, but why all the doors look like they do. Because they all reflect all the doors and what the windows look like and how the windows reflect how all the windows look. They may change, but there is some kind of relationship that the architect, hopefully, if they're any good, had the windows on the first floor are this shape and this dimension. The windows on the second floor are half that shape and half that dimension. On the third floor, they're a third, something like that. So there's always something going on that you can

pick out that is specific to the architect and the architecture that will also inform you just like jazz will inform you and poetry will inform you there you go and i i love how uh opening up that valve as you said it uh basically creates a spillway to to other things and i wrote about this in my book be beacons leadership about how, uh, I would use getting away for the weekend with your yellow pad and just getting out of the environment. Cause sometimes you, you sit in that office,

man, and you just, you got no new ideas, right? Getting out of, into a new environment, being present in the world is, is super important.

The, uh, uh, the thing I was going to ask you is one of the things about being creative, is it like a muscle where like, you know, like with comedy, you have to keep writing jokes. If you want to keep being funny, you have to keep practicing. If you want to write stuff, whether it's for a book or whether it's from just writing articles or poetry, you've got to keep writing. Is it like a muscle where you've got to keep writing is it like a muscle where

you've got to you know keep feeding that and keep working it out like the gym absolutely for sure and and i believe that the the as an example the my instagram pmw creativity is six and a half years plus of basically drawing two circles and making marks. This year is a little different. 2023, I'm drawing three circles and making marks. In the year 2020, I drew the entire year, I drew everything with my non-dominant hand I used my left hand to make all the drawings and that started out the first four weeks was really clunky and really really challenging for me because it wasn't it wasn't up to my the feel that I wanted but it it became better and better and better as the year went on so so the the concept is is taking something and turning it into instead of just a practice turning it with a lowercase p turning

it into a practice with a capital p so a practice with a capital p is how we exercise if we think of it this way, the muscle of our creativity. Lowercase practices are not as focused or they don't have the commitment that's necessary to create something that begins to be meaningful to you on all levels so when when you're when i'm when i'm doing the morning meditation drawing it it is both a practice and as the name implies it's a meditation it allows me to just not be concerned with what I'm drawing, but still make a drawing that is surprising to me. That's what I'm interested in. So you do a morning meditation drawing? Is that every morning?

Is that a pattern? Yeah. Every morning for like six and a half years. And it's one of the exercises that I do with people is that I have them draw two circles and make marks and then do it again and then do it again and do it again and do it again and do it again. So when that happens, it gets people to loosen up physically. It gets people to loosen up mind-wise and it allows just like going to see the poetry or the architecture or the jazz it it softens your uh intensity of trying to get something to happen right part of part of what we're doing is and you you mentioned this a couple times is that you you're going to have a meeting

next week for the chris voss show to redo 2024 and that meeting is we're going to have a meeting next week for the Chris Voss Show to redo 2024. And that meeting is we're going to design everything that's going to be different. And it's like, no, you're not. It's a great idea. It looks great on paper, but it probably is not going to work. It's a process. You have to build up to exercising those creative muscles, so to work. It's a process you have to build up to, uh, exercising those creative muscles, so to speak. There you go. You know, I, I, I love this idea, um, because I'm always trying to innovate. You

know, if you run a company, if you're a business entrepreneur, or you're just running your life, you've always got to be improving. You always got to be getting better. You always got to be seeking out, you know, no matter how many times you innovate that widget, there's still more room for innovation. If you don't, your competitors will. For sure.

And they'll meet you, they'll be the market. But having these sort of concepts like you do, you know, recently I was suffering from a little bit of burnout. And I think it was, I think it was last week. I just felt kind of beat up and run down and we were pushing really hard for the end of the final fiscal year to get everything published. And, um, I was feeling really burnout.

And so I did something that I used to do when I was a photographer for a while where I used to go on day Johns and I would just drive up the coast of California. Nothing really, you know, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just like, just drive until you stop and see something and photograph it. And I would just, I would call it my wandering. What are you going to do today, Chris? I'm going to wander around. I'll go down to Venice beach, which you've probably been to and it's a great place for artists and uh there's a lot of interesting people there um it's you know it's just it's it's so rich for art and interesting people and photography because if you like weird people that uh are you know sometimes a little bit strange it's a great place to go people watching yeah and so i would just sit on the i get a, one of the restaurants where I could shoot

my long 200 lens down. So, you know, people didn't really wouldn't pick up that I was photographing them and, you know, you're shooting down the boardwalk and, and I would just shoot people and, and it was just wild. Some of the picture you get and how people are sometimes their own thing, or if they're funky, very artist sort of people and they're moving. You just see all sorts of stuff in a speech.

And then what I did last week was I've gotten back into records. Metallica, this new album, brought me back into records. And I have a huge record collection in the storage thing of a bunch of Rush collectibles. I'm a big fan of theirs and other bands. And it turns out LPs and records are back. Even tapes. They're making tapes now, cassette tapes again.

And so I've started collecting stuff. And so I went and said, you know what? I'm going to go to record stores. I don't know about you, but in the old days, we used to go to record stores and spend four or six hours on a weekend looking at stuff, going through the other thing. And I'm like, screw it. And there's actually some old ones that I used to go to like 20, 30 years ago. They're still open.

Nice. It's like, I'm just going to go record store hopping. And that's just what I did. I just went, just like, screw it. And I'm not really going to look for any sort of record. I'm just going to see what there is. Perfect. And it was that old beautiful smell of old records oh yeah and stuff and so sometimes just doing that where you're in that creative process like you've talked about where there's really no agenda but it's a just agenda to be creative absolutely yeah you were

domain shifting ah yeah yeah you were shifting out of your regular world. And one of the definitions of play, of true play, comes as a spontaneous and undirected process. So that's exactly what you just described you were like you had the idea the creative spark it's like you know what i'm gonna visit some record shops and that was spontaneous and undirected and you didn't have you didn't have a a goal like i'm gonna get 100 albums or i'm gonna get 10 or whatever you know you were just like that was play that was pure raw childlike play which is highly uh valuable it's a gift yeah and and then i got hungry and so i i kind of have this thing where I love trying new places to eat. I get tired of going to the same place.

I know the menu. Some people like it and it's comforting, but I get tired of it. This is probably why I'm still single. And so, uh, and so I just put into Yelp and I look for some places. Turns out it's right around the corner from this old, like 1800s building. It still had, it used, it was an old market store and it still had these old thick rails that you would slide the meat on. Yeah. Right.

From, and these rails are like from the 1800s. They're so old. The whole place was older than hell. And, uh, uh, and, and it was a barbecue place and it purported to have Texas barbecue, which in Utah, where I'm at right now, you know, they don't, if they say barbecue, you're like, yeah, right, man. But it's got a pickles and, and bread, uh, white bread. And so I went in and sure enough, they had, they were bringing wood from Texas. They had all the Texas set up. Wow.

And I had this great meal and I discovered on Yelp and it was just total improv, total improv. Just like, I'm just going to go eat at a cool place, try something I've tried before. Fabulous. And, uh, so I highly recommend what you recommend and, and doing more of it. And maybe I need to do that morning meditation thing. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and so swinging back just a little bit to your experience tell me what how did that affect your where you started you said you were feeling super stressed pretty burnout and yeah just kind of fried right like just fried like i'm tired of thinking about everything i'm tired of having to do everything. I'm trying to beef everything for everybody and, you know, be the boss. I mean, that's one of the things that run you down as a CEO. You're like, you know, the buck stops here. You're like, I want to go someplace where there's no bucks to stop anywhere. There's no one coming at me going, hey, we got to have this right now.

You know, you're not performing for people. You know, we do a lot of that here on the show or, you know, it's a show. You come on, you perform for people. You try to make people laugh, trying to entertain them. You know, you just kind of, it's a bit selfish. You're kind of just kind of doing something for yourself. Yeah. Just the wandering.

Yeah. So, so what did you feel like, what did you feel like during the wandering? And then after. I felt good and it reset me. It refilled my cup and I was able to come back and be like, hey, I feel good again. And you just feel refilled. And then I had a sense of fun and I probably felt creative, as we've talked about and, uh, an adventure. And now I want to go do it again.

Good. I think that should be it. I think that's a great, if you're, if you're okay for, you know, I'd love to use that both the story, but also the, the, the title, the wandering. Yeah. That's perfect. It's a perfect, a perfect way to describe it. And that's, that's how you a perfect way to describe it and that's that's how you bring things into your your existence there's a there's a great book book that i i i it's just a

really fun book and i and i just discovered that this guy has published a few more his name is uh mason curry and the book is called daily Rituals, How Artists Work so in a way it gives you an insight into both painters, writers, scientists musicians and he goes way

I don't know how far back he goes maybe to the 1500s, maybe further I can't remember, but one of the things that most everybody did, especially before 1900, was take walks. Just go outside. Who the hell outside people? Who would have thunk it, right? It's like, come on.

Just walk outside. Just stand there, at least. You don't even have to walk anywhere. But just get outside and stand in the sunshine you know you don't even have to walk anywhere but just get outside and stand in the sunshine or stand in the rain take your shoes and socks off and put your feet in the grass that's gonna that's gonna if that energizes your body beyond belief but just that tweak to go out you know sure if you're in new york city it's it's a it's a bit of an issue but you can get to central park and and take a walk and that's that's your best option but but it is

nature so so take advantage of that but but taking a walk you know just like you know the wander i love that and and you're looking you're you, you're, you're not really looking for something, but if you see something, you do what you do in art, you appreciate it. And you, you, you, uh, you create a memory point for it and stuff. But yeah, I love wandering. And one of the, one of the important aspects of that is, you know, not really having an agenda. So my, you know, my whole life is agenda. And at one time we had multiple companies and, you know, my whole life is agenda. And at one time we had multiple companies and, you know, it was, it was a lot of work. And the only time I could really vacation

was to get away for weekends. So I'd fly out to Catalina Island or, or, you know, go, go someplace that you could do in a quick John, or you can even go local and just run a, you know, a bed and breakfast, meet, meet the people who run it, you know, go find someplace. I like to go someplace that's kind of off the city base. Although there are cool things in the city too. Like we talked about, um, when I went to the record store and buildings and stuff, but, um, you know, God bless him. I, sometimes I'd have a girlfriend. I'm like, we have to have agenda. We have to have a, we got to do this, this, this, where are we going for dinner? And you're like hey no no no you don't understand that's my whole life right now right right nine to five it's it didn't end

at five but you know i just want to go wander and sometimes it would make them mental which is fine and sometimes i just go on my own because i'm like i'm just gonna do what i want and so i used to love to go to catalina and they're like what what are you going to do? I don't know. It's going to walk, walk around the beach. And I go out on Catalina and I'd sit at 3am in the morning, in the middle of the night. And like you say, put my feet in the sand and just hear the waves, see the lights and think of all the people that have been there. And I love doing things that are, are, are kind of solitary too.

Like I, last night i was at the gym i think about three or four a.m there was almost nobody in it it was just so nice just to be able to walk around and kind of do whatever i wanted look what i wanted right i have to wait for machine nobody's watching yeah nobody you know he's watching you know i don't have to i don't have to look at all the chicks and go hi i should ask her out um so uh anything our final words as we go out anything you want to pitch or uh any final thoughts you have i i have a few final thoughts but a short story okay about wandering when my wife and i went on our honeymoon we flew into merida in the yucatan and I said let's rent a car and we rented this little red beetle bug vw bug and she said well where are we going all kinds of stuff and we eventually drove kind of west

until we got to the caribbean and we had reservations a week later but that week in between we just we did what you were the wanderer we just wandered around from city to city and discovered things and it was it was quite remarkable. You almost just flip a coin, you know, should we go left or should we go right? Exactly. And, and you will, you will discover things. Oh yeah. I mean, the first time I discovered Caprese

was on that fourth street walk, I think in, in Santa Monica, is it the fourth street walk? Um, but they have all these great restaurants and they have a thorough put where everyone can walk through between all these great food and buildings and shops and stuff 4th Street Promenade there's one in Denver too

I might be confusing it with 16th Street in Denver 16th Street is so awesome and even then I've had different just wandering through there I've had different amazing places I eat and I discovered Caprese salads one time, one of

those great place. And they're like, uh, I was like, let's try this Buffalo Caprese salad thing. And I've been in love with them ever since, but I remember that moment to this day. And I was like, wow, what if I turn left instead of right? Right.

You know, you just never know where life's going to take you. You just never know. Yeah. So give us your final thoughts and plugs as we go on in the show, please. Sure. Well, I just really enjoyed our conversation, Chris. Thank you.

Yeah, it was great. Final plugs. I just, I'm available for people who are interested in taking their innovation to the next level. And I can be reached. My email is Patrick at PatrickWilliams.com. I bought the domain in 1997. PatrickWilliams.com. So it has been with me all these years.

You can look me up on SatoriInnovation.com, PatrickWilliams.com, CelebrationFlowerPaintings.com, and I'd be happy to help whoever is out there and interested in learning more about their creativity. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful and very insightful. I've learned a lot, Patrick, to have you on the show. And you've given me some tools that I can use as a CEO to, you know,

go out, get out of my little four walls, out of my box, and go focus on some beauty. And I'm going to go do more wandering. More wandering is absolutely awesome. Yeah, because eventually, the older I get, the more I'm absolutely awesome. Yeah. Cause eventually the older I get, the more I'm probably going to wander, but mostly we'll be coming down the same road. Where am I?

Don't get hit by a bus. Yeah. Don't get hit by a bus. That's bad. I'm almost there now. Anyway, thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com,

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Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And there you go, man.