The Jordan Harbinger Show - 67: Allen Gannett | You Don't Have to Be a Genius to Be Creative

Episode Date: July 12, 2018

Allen Gannett (@allen) is the founder and CEO of TrackMaven, a placeholder on the 30 under 30 lists for both Forbes and Inc., and the author of The Creative Curve: How To Develop The Right Idea, At The Right Time. What We Discuss with Allen Gannett: Creativity isn't innate to a lucky few geniuses; it's a quality that anyone can learn to develop. Why many stories about so-called geniuses are embellished to sell an inaccurate idea of what creativity is and where this quality comes from. What various fields of study have known -- for years -- about the relationship between intelligence and creativity and how this is at odds with popular belief. Steps that show us how we can cultivate the right qualities and environment so that episodes of creative genius are more likely to strike us when we need it. The four laws of the creative curve that, if followed, will endow anyone with creative prowess. And much more... Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. Today, we're talking with Alan Gannett. He's the founder and CEO of Trackmaven and the author of The Creative Curve, how to develop the right idea at the right time. He's also on the 30 under 30 lists for both ink and forums, which I will admit, stings a little. I wasn't doing anything by age 30. That was even remotely noteworthy. I'll admit it. And today, it's going to be an interesting one. We live in a world where most people idolize the creative greats of today, such as Elon Musk and Zuckerberg and all those guys and gals. These creative heavyweights are revered, right? Most of us are just positive.

We could never reach similar creative heights. It's never going to happen. These people are geniuses. They're one in a million. And maybe to a degree that's true. However, today we'll discuss some of the science behind creativity and see if it can be learned by just about anyone. In fact, that's a spoiler alert. That's what we're going to show.

And we'll also discover that anyone can achieve moments of creative genius and we'll see some steps that show us how we can cultivate the right qualities and environment so that this is more likely to strike us when we need it. And we'll discuss four laws. Alan calls them the laws of the creative curve that, if followed, will enable just about anyone to become a creative rock star. As always, we've got worksheets for the show. If you want to make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways, get those four laws down pat and figure out what you need to do to stoke the, those creative fires. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. All right. Here's Alan Gannett. Alan, thanks for coming on the show today, man. Thanks for having me. Now, I know you've been deep in statistics and your sort of B2B services and things like that. So it seems a little

surprising to me that your book is about becoming more creative or how to develop the right idea at the right time. How did that happen? Because when I look at things like Track Maven, I'm like, okay, this is very analytical. There's a lot of data here. It seems kind of like the opposite of creativity in a way. Totally. So I've always been a big believer that there's this overlap between the right brain and left brain and that when you look at things like creativity that seem like

organic and nebulous, there's actually a lot of systems and logic to it. And so on the like entrepreneurship side, like I do that through helping big brands find those patterns in their data. But then for me, working with all these, you know, big marketing companies, I found that when I talked to them, usually the marketers there would say something like, oh, well, like, I'm not that creative. And for me, I always was a believer that anyone can learn creativity. And I realized about four years ago that, damn, I'm actually in this minority.

Most people think creativity is this fixed thing that you either have or you don't. You're either this demigod or you're a normie like the rest of us. And that got me frustrated. So most people, of course, want to develop their creative powers, but have no clue where to begin. And in fact, how do you even know that we can develop these creative powers? When we look at somebody who's a top entrepreneur or artist or creator, we look at them like a rock star, how do you know that we can even develop creativity? Where did that idea even come to light? Because a lot of people think that it's just you're born with it or you're not, you're a creative kid or you're not,

end of story. Here's the thing. There's been these studies for years. We've been studying this stuff and we've seen creativity across neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and the conclusion is no matter how you look at it, we see that creativity is a learnable, nurturable skill. When they do studies around creative potential, for example, they find these crazy stats like 86% of kindergartners test at creative genius levels of creative potential. They find that anyone with an IQ of 104, they find there's no relationship between IQ and creative potential. When they've done logiturnal studies where they follow kids with genius level IQs for their

entire life starting from childhood, they find those kids are no more likely to be these great, you know, big future household names. And so I talk about these stories in the book, but what's amazing to me is how much consensus there is in academia around this stuff, how much consensus there is that creativity is a learnable, nurturable skill. But I think we've been sold this idea that creativity is a special thing because it's what sells magazines. Like there's this famous story of Mozart as, you know, this guy who would compose music in

his head. And this came from a letter that he wrote that was published in 1815 in a music. magazine. And here's the problem. That letter where he describes this composition process was literally hashtag fake news. Like the music magazine publisher just forged it to sell copies back in 1815. And so we've been embellishing creativity for years because I think it's what sells. I think people like the idea that there's these people out there who are special who have these powers because I think it also makes us feel like there might be something like that for us. If I just look far enough and hard enough, maybe I'll find something that I just naturally easily.

at. The problem is, though, if we don't find that by age 25, 35, we go, okay, I don't have it, so I'm not going to try. Exactly. And this is where people get messed up. I actually think when we look at stories of creativity like that, on one lens, we view them as optimistic. But in the other lens, it's discouraging, right? Because it's saying, okay, like, if I'm not bestowed with this, I can't do it. And people keep looking and looking for that one thing that's easy. And they never buckle down and do the work. When you actually look at the science around how people develop talent, the science tells us over and over again that you have to do the work.

And it's not as simple as like, you know, practice, practice, practice. Like there's this whole 10,000 hour rule thing that Malcolm Gladwell popularized that is just scientifically, you know, not there. And there is, though, there is a lot of science that shows us that if you do the right type of practice, a type of practice called deliberate practice, if you do enough of that, you will get better at something. And I think we misunderstand the fact that our brain is this adaptable organ. See, we all sort of get, like, if I start eating lots of lean chicken and start going to

the gym that, like, I would gain muscle. But for some reason, when it comes to our brain, we just think it's fixed. And the reality is our brain is developing thousands of new brain cells every day. It's part of neurogenesis. And those brain cells go to the part of your brain that's most active. So they've done these studies, for example, where they look at, like, taxi cab drivers. And they find that the longer that someone's a taxi cab driver, this is all pre-GPS, the larger the part of their brain that's how the visual, spatial, and navigational skills is.

And then they compare this to bus drivers who drive the same route every single day. And they find that those drivers have no change. And so we think of our brain as this fixed thing. We think of creativity as this fixed thing. We think of our skills, our cognitive abilities as fixed things. But the reality is far from it. We just have this tendency to assume we can't change things. that we can't see. I love the idea that we can demystify creative genius a little bit here, and that when we do think of creative genius, we look at people, maybe that are not alive today, right, like Mozart or something like this, but we also do take a look at people that have achieved a lot. And instead of looking at their creativity, we're kind of just looking at their results.

And I think that's a problem too, right? If we look at Elon Musk, we're like, he's a genius, he sees things other people can't see. And to an extent that's true, but also to an extent that's something that we can develop. And do you have any insight then behind, let's say, the psychological mechanisms, the neurological mechanisms behind flashes of genius? Are there, is there even such a thing? Yeah, totally. So the book is split up into two halves. So the first half of the book is sort of like a 101 on the science and history of creativity, what we know about it, what we don't know about it, how our thoughts are on creative developed over time. And the second half of the book, I interviewed about 25 living creative

greats. These are everyone from like, you know, billionaires like David Rubinstein, Pasek and Paul, the songwaring duo who did the lyrics for La La Land, Dear Evan Hanson and the Greatest Showman, Alexis O'Hanian from Reddit, Nina Jacobson, the legendary Hollywood producer. And what you find when you do these interviews, that there's recurring patterns about how these people develop their creativity. They didn't just come to them. They actually worked at it. And so one of the things I think is so interesting is that one of the retorts people have, we start talking about creativity is aha moments. Like, well, some people have these flashes of genius.

You know, they have these brilliant moments. It's inspiration. It's, you know, these semi-divine experiences. And this to me is one of the funniest things because we've actually been studying aha moments and inspiration and flashes of genius from a neuroscience perspective for a long time. And basically, it's a really basic cognitive function. So, you know, it's kind of cliche when you write a book on creativity, talk about left brain, right brain, but it's actually really important.

So basically, your left brain is where you do logical processing. It's where you store the main definitions of concepts or phrases or words. And so when you're solving a math problem, right, you're doing your left hemisphere. And it's very step by step. And it's very conscious. You're aware of each step of the math problem you're solving. But then your right hemisphere, well, this is where you do more distant processing. You have metaphors, wordplay, puns.

But this is also where you get sudden insight. And what's interesting about this is that these sudden insights, they basically your brain, your right hemisphere is always doing work. And it's only once the idea comes together, does it sort of pop into consciousness? And the analogy I like to give is that of like a loud lab partner in college versus a quiet lab partner. Your left hemisphere is the loud lab partner who is like, you know, really smart but just kind of obnoxious. And he was like, okay, we're going to do this and then this and then this. And hey, we got the answer. Good job team. And you're like, why is everything at team. And then the right hemisphere is like the dorky quiet lab partner. And you know, him or her is like

sitting there sort of mumbling and they get the answer. And it's only once they actually get the answer, they go, hey, I got the answer. And if your left hemisphere, if your loud lab partner's too loud, if too much stuff is going on, you never actually experience those moments that your right hemisphere is working on. This is why you have aha moments in the shower or on a commute or on a run. It's not that your commute is like inspirational or that like, you know, seeing yourself naked is inspirational. It's that those are the moments when your left hemisphere subdued. Yeah, quite the opposite, actually, in fact. But yes, that makes sense, right?

It's sort of the default mode network, right? Where we're engaging that right hemisphere just enough where it's like, hey, I'm washing your armpits. And the left hemisphere is like, finally, I can think without you yamering in my ear. Just focus on the focus on those armpits. I got something to say now, finally. But it's also why people talk about experiencing creativity when they're like on drugs or drunk or any of this stuff. It's like that's moments when your left hemisphere is subdued.

You can hear what's going on in your right hemisphere. And so you don't have to like do LSD. You can just go on a run. It's the same thing. I'd rather, I mean, having to pick running or LSD, I don't know, it's a toss up. But yes. LSD while running. Could be dangerous.

But I like your, I like where I think of it. I come up with so many ideas in the shower. I actually have a waterproof notebook notepad. in there called Aqua Notes. You're kidding. Not kidding. That's amazing. That has to be in the show notes.

I think you need a picture of aqua notes in the show notes. Yeah, we'll link to it on Amazon. It's actually a great thing to have because I was talking with Barry Katz also on the show. He's a comedy manager of legendary status. And he told me that I want to say it's Whitney Cummings, who takes her phone in the shower in a Ziploc bag because she comes up with so much good stuff in there that she essentially has to write it down in her phone when it comes to her in the shower. So she brings a Ziploc iPhone or Android or whatever in the shower.

That's amazing. And I've opted for the low-tech Russian solution, which is a waterproof pencil and notepad. But it makes sense. What's going on here is just what you said. We finally get enough time where our left hemisphere can say, good, there's not a whole lot of noise from the right side. We think we're busy, but we're not.

So I can finally get a word in. Here's this genius thing I've been marinating on for the last week. And then here's where it gets even cooler, which is that you could say that, okay, So is it just sort of like how you structure your life? But actually, no. Actually, you can actually do stuff to encourage more of them to happen too when you're in those moments of peace. And that's where it's all about what scientists find.

It's actually all about consumption. So prior knowledge is critical to having aha moments and inspiration. So in the book, I tell these stories about this because, you know, I think we have this notion of creatives or creators and all this opposition to consumers, right? There's that really annoying social media. You've probably seen that's like 90% of people consume, 9% engaged, 1% create, hashtag hustle. And it's like not only like stupid, but it's also wrong because the realities when I did these interviews, I found that these great creatives, these creative achievers are huge consumers

of creative products in their niche. They're not learning a little about a lot. They're learning a lot about a little. I talk about I interviewed Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer of Netflix, who's been there for the last 18 years, and he started his career at a video rental store as the clerk, who during the day, when he was quiet, decided to watch every single movie in the store. Because ultimately, if you want to connect the dots, you have to have dots to connect. J.K. Rolling, you know, famously as a child would close her door and just read books and books and

books as her parents were arguing fighting. In college, she had library fines because she had so many books taken out. And so you see this theme of consumption is actually a huge part of creativity because it gives you the fuel for those aha moments. So when people talk about, you know, not having creativity, the thing I always push them on is, well, have you done the consumption? Have you done the ingestion? Have you done the research? Because that's actually what these great creatives focus on because they know that the inspiration will come.

You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Alan Gannett. Stick around and we'll get right back to the show after these important announcements. Thanks for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show. To learn more about our sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger, Thank you, www.com, slash advertisers. And don't forget to check out our Alexa skill. Go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa app. Now let's get back to Jordan and Alan Gannett.

So how do we systemize this, right? If the timing is everything, the science shows us that our best creativity happens when we slow down, yes, we've got to consume a lot. We've got to read a lot. We've got to consume a lot of the craft of what other folks are doing. You know, if we're a talk show host, we've got to listen to other great interviewers and maybe maybe even some not so great and sort of figure out what's appealing to folks there if they're still popular. But how do we systemize this? Do we just read a bunch and then take showers? I mean,

there seems to be, there's got to be a more efficient way for this. So one of the things I talk about in the book is that it's actually not just about how much you consume, but it's also how you consume. So I found that these really successful creatives were also how they consume was much more, I'd almost call it as imitation. It's kind of interactive. It's studying the structure. of these great creative works that have come before them. So, for example, I talk in the book about Kurt Vonnegut, who for his master's thesis, he went out and read all these great novels and actually mapped out the story arcs of the novels and found these four recurring story arcs that appeared over and over again.

I talk about, you know, Ben Franklin, his autobiography discussed how he became our great writer and it was he took magazine articles. He knew we're good and actually mapped out and found, okay, what was the way those articles were built, it started with a quote, a thesis, a story. So you find over and over again that these great creatives are much more comfortable with the idea of imitating. And the reason why is that, you know, when we think of creativity, we think about it as the act of creating something new. But the reality is when they actually study this stuff, the ideas that we're attracted to are ideas that are a blend of the familiar and the novel. They're familiar enough to be safe,

novel enough to be interesting, right? The first Star Wars was a Western in space. Harry Potter is a basic orphan story, but there's wizards. The iPhone was an iPod with a phone. And you find that the best ideas that have the biggest impact in our culture aren't the ideas that are radically new, right? We're not all driving segways. And so as a result, imitation is actually a huge part of the creative process because it helps you nail that familiarity. It helps you get that baseline that your audience is going to resonate with. So we need to balance familiarity with novelty. The why is clear, but how do we do this? Do you have a formula for that? Is there data on that? Because it's easy to say, all right, it's a Western, but it's in space. And that sounds like a bad idea on its face,

but then we have Star Wars. But then people say, it's the Uber of pizza delivery. And you're like, oh, that sounds like a really good idea. And then it fails. And you're like, wait, what happened there? You know? So one of the things I found that I thought was really surprising about these creatives that I interviewed was that they were surprisingly iterative and surprisingly data driven. I don't just mean data in the sort of like, you know, numbers and Google analytics type of way. I mean data in getting some form of feedback from their target audience and from their consumers. So for example, I tell the story in the book of the Ben and Jerry's flavor team because, you know, Ben and Jerry's billion dollars year in revenue, eight to 12 new flavors every year, quirky flavors, you know,

their job is to sort of be a little bit out there. And what was so interesting to me was that the R&D team spends most of the year literally consuming. Like they go in these things called trend tracks where they go to different cities. Eat tons of ice cream. Yeah, it's great. And they try different restaurants and bars and they see like what flavors are sort of percolating. What are people doing? And then they come up with a list, like a written list. There's no ice cream being made. They come up with a written list of 200 flavor ideas. And then they split up the list. they send it out to their email subscribers as a survey. And they ask two questions.

One, how unique is this flavor? And two, how likely are you to buy it? Which is basically how familiar is it and how novel is it? Because if they just focus on how likely you to buy, well, you'd end up with an entire brand of brownie cookie crunch caramel flavors, right? And eventually the brain would die. If you just focus on uniqueness, you have a bunch of stuff that might taste good and be interesting, but it's not actually commercially viable.

Right. you've got a lot of like dill pickle and mushroom or something. Yes. And dill pickle was actually a flavor that they made as a joke in the office. It's actually really good. And this is one of the things where I think we get confused when it comes to creativity, especially as entrepreneurs. Like one of the biggest mistakes aspiring creatives make is like, well, I made the best product.

But they don't mean best in terms of what their audience is most likely going to like. They mean best is in the most features or the best for them as the entrepreneur. But oftentimes our audience actually has a different taste palette. And so these great creative achievers are actually much more comfortable with the idea of creating for an audience. You don't hear as much from them things like, oh, I'm just creating for myself. I think that's code word for I'm not very good at creativity. Yeah, that makes sense.

Okay. Before we move on from consuming, though, which we sort of already did, but I'm very curious about this, how much do we have to consume? What does that content look like and is more consumption necessarily better? Yeah, great question. So I found that the pattern was that these great. creative spend on average about three to four hours a day consuming content relevant to their niche. So that's a lot of time. And I think for a lot of people, it's kind of shocking.

I call in the book the 20% principle because it's about 20% of their waking hours. But it's a lot of time. And I was really shocked by this, but I realize when you talk to these people, like so much of their time is about preparing for the creativity. It's not about sitting there and just hitting their head against the wall, but it's about setting up the best sort of context for them to be successful. The other thing that's really important is for it to be specialized knowledge. And, you know, for example, there's this one study that compared highly successful entrepreneurs to entrepreneurs overall and found that highly successful entrepreneurs, they read trade publications, niche publications, these very, very narrowly focused publications. So I think we have this idea

of creatives as these sort of Renaissance people who are like, know everything about everything. And that doesn't actually bear out when you actually look at the stories of these great creatives. great creatives actually become obsessive with their narrow niche. They go very, very, very deep. And so I think we like to tell ourselves it's okay that we, you know, read about all these things on Twitter and social media. But the reality is if you want to really master something, you have to go incredibly deep. What does that actually mean? Because that sort of spans off from the, okay, yes, three to four hours a day or whatever, four to six hours a day. What does that content look like. When you say go incredibly deep, are you talking about, all right, so I want to

learn about how great interviewers operate. Okay, so I watch a lot of talk shows. Well, that's not going to do it. A lot of people watch talk shows. They're not good talk show hosts. Well, maybe I need to go and find out what these people are doing on the side. Oh, they all study improv. Okay, cool. So I take an improv class. Well, wait a minute. The best ones, not only did they study improv, but they also wrote sketches. Well, maybe I need to write sketch. And then you go down that rabbit hole and then suddenly you go, wow, I'm really good on the radio because I've been writing comedy sketches for this crappy comedy club for three years. Yeah.

So one of the things you find is that when they're consuming, it's not just that they're listening to the talk shows, but they're actually studying the structure of the talk show as they're doing it, right? So how does the interviewer prep questions? How do they introduce guests? What are these individual moving pieces? So I tell in the book, the story of Andrew Ross Sorkin, who, you know, he's the editor of Deal Book in the New York Times, Anchor on Squawk Box.

he also wrote the book Too Big to Fail and he's the co-creator of the show Billions, right? So he's been able to have these huge successes across all these different fields. And when he talked to me about is that how he learned something when he wants to learn a new format or a new thing is it's really about this sort of imitative consumption where you're going in. And for example, with business books, he talks about how he got all these business books before he wrote Too Big to Fail and just studied the structure. Like how did they open up chapters, right? How do they bring you into the story? How do they unfold it? How do they end the chapter?

So it's not about letting yourself just sort of fall into subconscious, but rather consuming in a way that keeps it very conscious and active. That's the key thing. You need to be studying the structure of what you're consuming, not just consuming it like you would if you were a passive consumer. Okay. That's interesting. So that's sort of parallels deliberate practice, right?

We're not just sitting there and watching it. We're watching it and we're going, hey, pause. Okay, why did he ask that question that way? I bet you that he's going to do something with that later. then we watched another five minutes and we go, ah, he was setting up a callback joke and he probably knew that that would be an easy setup because he had watched the movie before this and he knew the guy was going to react that way. Oh, that's genius instead of just, ha, ha, David Letterman's funny.

Ding, ding, yeah, you got it. And this is where deliberate practice is really important. So the difference between practice and deliberate practice is just doing something to make it more rote and to make it more subconscious. First, deliberate practice is all about this idea of breaking down a skill into a micro skill and keeping it in your front of mind and being able to get better and better and better. So it's like if you're a painter, it'd be practicing brush pressure

where you paint a stroke and then you paint another stroke and try and exactly mirror the brush pressure that you used. That is deliberate practice versus I'm just going to paint a replica of a painting. And so what, for example, like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule gets wrong,

is that that is all based on research from K. Anders Erickson, who's someone I interviewed for the book, He's like the prominent researcher when it comes to talent development. And there were two big problems. One, Erickson's research said the 10,000 hours was the average across skills and across people because different skills take different amounts of time. Like becoming a world class piano player takes about 25,000 hours because people

have been doing it for hundreds of years and people start when they're like three years old now. But there's other skills. Like there's now a whole trend around digit memorization where people are like, how many digits a pie can I memorize and there's tournaments and all the stuff. Those must be really exciting. Yeah. Yeah, those are cool. Those take only about 400 hours to come world class because it's newer and there's less

people competing, which sort of makes sense. There's not some magic brain cell that a 10,000 hours goes, your world class. World class is subjective and relative. Achievement unlocked, right? Yeah. And then the other mistake and the bigger mistake of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, is that literally in the book, Outliers? He does not use the word purposeful or deliberate anywhere.

He just used the word practice. And the entire research is about deliberate practice, which is also called purposeful practice, which is this micro form of practice because that's how you actually become world class. When you look at these basketball players, they're not just playing basketball. They're doing left-handed mid-court dribbling over and over and over again, right? They do these micro drills because that compounding over time is what leads these world-class abilities. And so that's what you have to do when it also comes to creativity is that you This type of consumption is a form of deliberate practice of your creativity.

It helps you understand these structures so that you can then balance the familiar in the novel. That makes sense. Okay. I like this. So is more consumption then better? Is that considered we're doing more prep to be creative? If we're doing it in a deliberate practice sort of way, is there a drop-off point where, look, I've been consuming, I spend 80% of my day consuming content or 80% of my week and I only paint on Sunday,

but I do all of this consumption the rest, you know, five days a week, six days a week. No, I think, I think when you think about consumption, you're going to have just cognitive limits to your abilities to do it really well. So I think three to four hours, not only is kind of the best practice, but it's also, I think, about the max you can do before it starts becoming pretty inefficient, but also depends on your own sort of rhythm. So if you haven't yet, I actually think Dan Pink's book, When, which is all about timing your day and week is like really, really fantastic for creatives.

Because it seems like a really simple concept, but I think he does a really good job talking about how, as people, we all have these different sort of rhythms to how our days work. And you actually just want to lean into those rhythms, right? You don't want to try and force yourself to do stuff. So if it turns out that you're someone who can consume for six hours a day, great, do it. But most people at a certain point just starts to, you start to lose focus. We'll be right back with more from Alan Gannett after these extraordinarily brief announcements. Hey, thanks for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show. support keeps us on the air. And for a list of all the discounts from our amazing sponsors,

visit jordanharbinger.com slash advertisers. And if you've got a second, please hop on over to iTunes or your podcast player of choice and drop us a nice rating and review. It really helps us out. And if you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe. And now for the conclusion of our interview with Alan Gannett. Why is it the case that consumption helps us be more creative instead of just making us more like the content creators we're consuming in the first? first place. Because this creativity is about this tension between the familiar and the novel. And let me explain for a second why that tension exists. So basically, it both comes down to

evolutionary biology where we are fearful of things that are unfamiliar because we think they may harm us. So think about if you were a prehistoric cave dweller and you saw two caves and one cave was one you've never slept in before and the other one you've slept in lots, you wouldn't go in the one you haven't slept in before because it might kill you. Like, this is not a good idea. So, So, okay, we're fearful of the unfamiliar. So familiarity feels safe for us. We like going home.

It feels cozy. There's something, even if we come from a really nice vacation and a nice hotel, there's something warming about going home. But then we also have this other urge. We also have this urge to pursue the novel, the new. We like new sources of reward, of food, of pleasure. And this comes back to, you know, you're a hunter-gatherer trying to find the next meal. And if you found some weird, you know, new berries and effect.

field, you'd eat them because, oh, this is calories. We like calories, calories, calories good. And so these two things seem like a contradiction. The fear of the unfamiliar, but also the pursuit of the novel. Well, this contradiction is actually our brain's really elegant way of balancing risk and reward. We like ideas that are familiar enough to be safe, but novel enough to be interesting. We like, if we see a new berry in the field, if it's too weird, we don't want to eat it. But if it's kind of weird, it's like a strange strawberry, we go, okay, it's probably safe. And so because of this, the familiarity element I actually think is probably more important when it comes to creativity, because you have to know what people have already seen to be able to know

how to push, how to twist. So for example, when you talk to jazz musicians, the whole sort of magic of jazz is that these jazz musicians study the standards for years and years and years because you have to know the standards if you're going to play with them and experiment and push them in interesting ways. You have to know the rules to break the rules. And so that's why that's so consumption is so important is because you wouldn't actually like the radically new. And if you don't already know what's out there, you might actually create something that's just familiar, has no novelty. Okay. So as a practical, what we could do is maybe design a week in which we consume content in a specific space for 20% of the day for, I don't know, a week or a month. And, you know,

and see what happens because the way that I do this and the way that I know my business partner, Rob Fulton, does this. We will find a space or an idea or a theme that is super interesting, do a lot of reading about it to understand the ins and outs, find out what the key players in the space are saying, read their key works on the subject. So I'll go down like a Vladimir Putin rabbit hole, right? But that's seriously important, right? That for you has helped, helps you develop, you probably feel like you develop the sort of six cents for whatever you're studying. because you start understanding the sort of like meta structures that are going on within a field, right? It's like, this was my first time, you know, writing a book or marketing a book.

And so for me, I had to like understand like the nuance and the texture of like, what does an agent do? What's a book proposal? Like, how does this work? What are the meetings like? There's all this sort of texture and nuance to these fields that is actually really, really important. And you have to learn those if you want to operate within a creative field. And so that's that's really, really important.

And I think this is where some people get caught up is they think, well, if I can't just sit down and write or compose that great piece of music, I must have no talent. And they forget that these people who they look up to have been working at these crafts for years. The other thing you said, by the way, which I think is really interesting, is you brought up key people. One of the things I found in my interviews I was surprised by was how often these really successful older people are actually like obsessive. curious, especially curious about young people. Like I interviewed David Rubenstein, the billionaire. And he's like this very curious guy. Like he's constantly consuming information. Like he started asking me all these questions about big data. And I'm like, I'm trying to interview you, dude. But like these people who are really successful are also still like these giant vacuums of information because

they understand that they just keep doing what they've done the past. Eventually they'll become overly familiar. So they've done these studies, for example, NYU did this study looking at the composition of film crews like directors, producers, writers, you know, key operators. And they found the most effective teams are actually the teams that combine people from the establishment and people from the fringe, right? The sort of establishment producer with the brand new indie director. Because what you get is that the establishment has a bunch of the familiarity, a bunch of the sort of social connections necessary for creativity. And then the fringe has the new ideas and the novelty, which they can apply and sort of move the

ball forward. And so that to me is all really interesting is this dynamic where it's not just about who is technically skilled, which I think is a mistake when it comes to creativity, but who can create that right idea at the right time and really nail the zeitgeist. One of the ways which you recommended to do this or to surround yourself with really interesting and creative people is to do a dinner party. And it sounds like a really obvious idea. But I will say that one of the one of the skill sets, if I can use that word here, of the highly successful folks that I know and that I loved and have loved for years and years is to surround yourself with bringing novel people into your orbit, right?

So, oh, yeah. This is really important. And this is one of the reasons why networking and things like that relationship development is so important to me because if you want to change the way that you think, you have to do this. And whenever we see people who are really successful, for example, like a Tim Ferriss type of guy, you go, how does he think of all this amazing stuff? Oh, he's a genius.

But really, no offense to him. I love you, man. But, you know, you look at who he's around and you go, you know, if you're around all of these different founders in Silicon Valley for so long, you start to think like these people and you see these trends coming. And then it becomes really obvious. And then, yeah, you invest in something that seems like an easy no-brainer. And then three years later, people are going, how did nobody know that this was going to be so huge? How did these prescient people get it? But a lot of it is inside information or people that think differently being around you all the time.

So we don't think this is something that's new. We don't think this is something that's incredible because it becomes every day to us. But when you balance the idea that you're surrounding yourself with these creative and innovative people and then you sort of keep that beginner's mindset, that's kind of where the magic happens. 100%. I interviewed Kevin Ryan for the book, who he's one of these tech moguls that you probably haven't heard of kind of intentionally. but he's the guy behind, check this out. MongoDB double-click, guilt, business insider, and there's like five more. And he has this crazy track record.

And he was really interesting because he's this guy. And he talks about how literally he always hosts these dinner parties. And he invites young people, old people, people from a lot of different perspectives, you know, this sort of cognitive diversity in the room. And that, because he has become an establishment figure, right? He's had success. He has patterns, which is if he's not. not careful, he can end up overly sort of calcifying them and just doing those same things

over and over again. So he needs those new input. So this is one of the reasons why you find these creative achievers that have been really successful. They're actually really focused on reverse mentorship and like nurturing young talent and all this stuff and having younger and less experienced people around them because that actually is part of their process. So which I thought was really interesting. Like that's why these people like David Rubinstein's 68 and he's still like wildly successful and he hasn't sort of like lost his touch. But he also surrounds himself with all these new and interesting ideas all the time. And that's not coincidence. That's part of the process. So staying relevant on the creative curve involves making sure that you're surrounding yourself

with new and novel people. And for a lot of us who go, well, I don't know anyone. One, you know, we talk and teach about networking all the time on the show. And we have a mini course for that advanced human dynamics.com slash level one. But also there's a ton of people that. that might think, well, I can never meet these folks. When you look at somebody like a 68-year-old billionaire, he doesn't need to be around some sort of creative genius who's 25. He can literally find almost any 25-year-old who just uses apps. And that will be good enough because it'll be so far outside his comfort zone.

He can literally just hang out with his grandkids or something and say, what are the kids doing these days? And they're like, oh, Snapchat, Instagram, Discord, Xbox Live. and he's like, oh my gosh, there's something here that nobody else is seeing, right? He can, you can do things like this. Totally. Kevin Ryan told me about how he would like, he'd always like interrogate his daughter's friends because he just found that it was like an interesting way to learn.

And one of the experiences I had with the book, which was really interesting, was like, you know, first time author and, you know, a lot of the interviews I got were cold emails. Like David Rubinstein, I just sort of figured out his email address. And I'm sure you guys have talked about how to do that in the past. And it's like, and I emailed him. Go ahead and teach us that right now. Why not? I mean, there's a lot of different tools out there.

So if you search, like, email address finders, like, there's a lot of tools that basically will help you guess people's email address. And there's ways to check whether or not an email is valid or not. So they'll, like, check different permutations of the first name, last name. And they'll keep cycling through until they find one that clicks. Which one did you use primarily? There's hunter.io. I use hunter.io, which I think might no longer operate.

I'm clicking on it now. and you get 100 free searches a month. Oh, cool. There you go. So 100.io stills around. And I actually have a guide on my website about how to do this too. And basically what you find is that the people all the way at the top, people all the way at the top are actually some of the like most accessible and nicest people,

tends to be the mid-level managers that I find are kind of jerks. Like I remember I cold emailed Indranui, the CEO of Pepsi. She responded in like 10 minutes. And because like these people, like the reason they, got to where they got over the sort of long arcs of their careers that fundamentally they're good people, they're nice people, they're accessible, they sort of see a long-term view in terms of how they build and invest in relationships. And so I found that pattern was actually really striking to me was when I'm interviewing all these sort of really successful creators, they were actually

some of the nicest people in these organizations. Like a lot of times it was like the mid-level people that I was like, you're kind of self-involved. Interesting. Okay. And what did you, what's the template look like for when you were writing, where you like, look, this book I'm writing, because anybody can say I'm writing a book where they're like, who's the book with? Where's it going to come out? Yeah, yeah. So basically, it sort of was a social proof snowball. So like the first couple interviews were like, you know, friends of a friend or like a,

you know, a cousin's friend or just whatever I could get sort of my hands on. And then I use that content to generate the book proposal, got an agent who was really well regarded. And then when I went out to get more interviews, I could be like, hey, working on this book, my agent is the same agent who did Ray Dalio and Eric Schmidt, you know, blah, blah, blah. And people like, oh, okay, like this is interesting. And then I got some more interviews. And so then I could use the past interviews. Then I got the publisher. And then I had the publisher, the past interviews. And you sure get the snowball where by the end, you're getting more and more yeses, right? So it started smaller and then it got bigger and bigger over time. And the other thing I did is I looked for people

early on when I was doing the first couple interviews that I saw had talked about this topic before and seemed passionate about it. And to them, I was more direct about like the message and the mission of the book. Because the mission of the book is an optimistic mission, which is that people think they can't become more creative. And the reality is we know they can. And there are people like, I'm not the first one to ever say that. Like that's actually in like creative circles are pretty common belief. But outside of creative circles, people are like, what? Really? And so I found people who seemed like they were passionate about that. And I started there. And that was actually really helpful because those people were great advocates and they, you know, long term. When you work

on a book project, it's actually really interesting because, you know, the book, I think actually all in all, I've been saying three years, but I did the math today. I think it was actually three and half years that it took to come together. And so these long projects and then you need help marketing and all the stuff. And so, you know, these people who I met doing interviews, later became advocates and help promote the book and make connections and do all sorts of stuff. And so I think that sort of social proof snowball was actually really useful for getting the book done. So I would love to hear what that email looks like. And I know it sounds like I'm getting hung up on minutia here. But there's a lot of folks listening right now who are wondering, okay, so you found

this person's email. Well, I called emailed Richard Branson and I didn't get a response. What's going on here? Obviously there's something in there. So I'd love to deconstruct the elements of what you wrote to get their attention. Sure. I mean, I'll just, yeah, I have it pulled up here. Here. So let me, let me read it for you. So Indra, I'm at the Aspen Festival to the third because of a partnership we're doing with the Institute. So that was the conference that it was at. So we were at the same conference that I saw on the speaker list. And then I said, I run a tech company in D.C. backed by N.A. So that's our investor, the largest venture fund in the world. So I use some social proof. We're only 35 people, but growing. We'd love to get your advice on business. Perhaps if we run into each other, we can spend a few

minutes chatting, cheers Alan. So that was the whole email. I sent it at 624 p.m. She responded at 626 p.m. Sounds good. We'll be there today at 7. So I think what I did that worked really well was, one, I knew she was going to be somewhere where she had more time and she wasn't like running around in meetings. Like she was outside of the office. Second, I used some social proof, right? is I run a company. It's not just, you know, some random company. You know, we're backed by the world's largest investor. And then I asked her for advice.

And I also made the ask really small, right? Just can we spend a few minutes chatting? And I think that was all really helpful. I actually think there's a really great book on this, which is Brian Grazer's book, A Curious Mind. He talks a lot about how he would cold reach out to people early on his career and how he got a lot of yeses. And it's, I actually read the book only recently, but it talks a lot in

depth about this stuff. I think it's actually a really good guide for if you're trying to like trying to meet people. But I think ultimately what you find is again, when you skip level all the way to the top, the people all the way at the top tend to be like really nice, right? Because that's why they're there. I remember I met at a conference once, Jeff Immelt, who's that was a C of G, was a speaker. I just went up to him and started chatting with him. And he was like incredibly nice and incredibly kind. And he just asked him at the end if we could get lunch at some point. He was like, sure. I was like, great. And so we got lunch. And so we got lunch. And so we got lunch. And lunch in Boston and he was really pleasant and gave me great life advice and all this stuff. And so

I think a lot of times we forget just in our relationships that like people are human. And I think we can sort of dramatize how, you know, maybe systematic the world is. And the reality is that I think if we're just ourselves and we're people to other people, like people respect that and they enjoy that and they want to spend time with you. How much do you think that has to do with the fact that you're the CEO of Trackmaven versus just versus an author reaching out? Because I would find it hard to imagine that someone is like, I'm a senior in college. Can we have lunch? They would have the same reply. But I could be wrong. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the interneu emails from 2014 when the company was just, you know, we're just basically a year old, right?

And it wasn't about the book or anything. And so I think that there is an element of like you need some social proof, right? But I don't think it always has to be the biggest. And I also think this stuff sort of snowballs, right? I think you can say like, hey, I'm a, you know, for example, if you are a student at Wake Forest University, well, that's going to have some social proof to some alumni who also went to Wake Forest. So maybe you're starting there, right? And so I think you just have to understand that context and that relevance and how you can present that to someone else. So they don't just think, oh, is a random email.

And I think you also have to make the ask really small, right? I think it's, you know, for me, it's like, you know, can I go on a walk with you? Can I talk for five minutes? I think, you know, if you're sort of sending someone a random email and you're like, hey, can we, you know, get coffee for an hour? that's not a very good first impression because it shows that you don't respect their time. And I think that's just really important is making the ask really, really small in finding the relevance. And if it's not relevant, you know, be aware of that. It's probably not going to work.

You need some level of relevance. Perfect. Okay. Thanks for indulging me on that. I just think that's a really useful skill for people who are listening to reach out to others because it's very common. Jordan, the other thing I think is very important. Actually, you reminded me, is that I think people make are way too formal when they cold reach out to people. Like, you know, I'm looking at the email I sent to Indra and I abbreviated because B slash C. And it's just like, it's not like this like dear, you know, dearest Indra type thing, right? Or, you know, Ms. Dewey.

And so I think a lot of times I've been on the other side of this, I think a lot of times we sort of put people up on this pedestal when we reach out to them. And I think that's very uncomfortable for people. like because it creates this weird dynamic. But I think at the end of the day, you find that a lot of these people are very casual. They're themselves. They're just a human being. And so I think treat other people with sort of professional informality.

I actually think is a really important part of this. Before we go here, I want to touch on the importance of creative communities. And I think a lot of times, especially creative endeavors, can really be lonely and isolating. There's organizations for entrepreneurs like EO and things like that that that I don't necessarily recommend. but groups for entrepreneurs and other folks like that, community really does relieve a lot of the burden and pressure, I think, that people have when they're in a creative endeavor. And I think that these can be utilized or leveraged in a way to make us better as creators as well. Yeah, so this is one of the things that gets me most frustrated about creativity and how we talk about it, right? We talk about creativity like all this individual-centric stuff, like Steve Jobs, Elon Muff.

you know. And the crazy thing is that, you know, Steve Jobs is not like in a garage solving these problems by himself in the 70s. Like he had Steve Wozniak on day one. He had multiple employees. He had investors. When you look at creativity, it really is takes a community, like it takes a village to be successful creatively. And in the book I outlined some different people that you need in your creative community. I talk, for example, about a conflicting collaborator, how you find that the best creatives don't find collaborators who are similar to them, but are actually very different, who fill the weaknesses they have. So I talk about Passack and Paul, the songwriting do I mentioned before. And, you know, Benj Passick is like this like big ideas,

high energy, super, super bubbly guy. And Justin Paul is this like very quiet, very systematic, very process oriented songwriter. Like when I'm interviewing him, I literally have to be like, Justin, what do you think? Right. I have to like draw him in. But, separately would they be as successful, right? Is a lot of the magic coming from the fact that, you know, Justin is able to put these big ideas through his process and Benj is able to actually get his big ideas into some sort systematic innovation cycle, right? So you see, that's one thing I think is really interesting.

The other thing I think is particularly interesting when it comes to creating community is the role of a promoter. So we always get this idea that, you know, mentors help teach us things. But I actually think one of the bigger roles that mentors have is that of a promoter. So you look at this in music, for example, in music, bands have opening acts. In startups, you have board of directors and board of advisors. But you find that successful creativity, since recognition is part of the process, you need to have other people who have credibility.

You need to have them actually lend that to you, right? You need to get someone else to extend you that sort of awareness, that reputation. so people actually give you the time of day. I mean, there's this crazy study that I really love that looked at Nobel Prize winning scientists, and it compared them to other scientists who didn't win Nobel Prizes, but had similar pedigrees. And what it found was that in their 20s, the future Nobel Prize winners had their names on twice the number of papers. And you might go like, oh, yeah, duh, like they were more productive. That's why they won the Nobel Prize.

But actually, the whole thing was that those people worked for senior scientists who were willing to put their names on the paper. They were willing to share credit. And so as a result, by the time they're in their 30s, their names were on more papers. They had more citations. And they had this compounding advantage which helped them eventually win a Nobel Prize. And so the social aspect of creativity is so, so, so important. But people just kind of look right past it because they hear, you know, these stories of, of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs taking on the world.

Can we get some examples of these types of communities and maybe some first steps for those of us who are creatives, but feel that isolation? You know, I think a great example of this is there's that apartment building in L.A. Where all of the YouTube and formerly Vine Stars all live. Like there's a whole bunch of them that live in one building because they like each other. Then they do collaborations. They help make each other famous. You see this with obviously with musicians and this idea of opening acts like Taylor Swift opened for Rascal Flats when she was like 14.

And then now Taylor Swift has other people open for her. And so you see this sort of passing the baton of fame. And one of the things that sociologists talk about when it comes to creative careers is it's really important to understand something called clustering. And clustering is where you see these creative industries really become geographically very dense. like all these startups move to San Francisco. And it's not just San Francisco, but it's like the south of market area in San Francisco or, you know, in L.A. or artists in New York, for example. And the reason why that effect happens is that other people are really important to the

creative process. So if you want to succeed in one of these industries, you better either move or be willing to spend a lot of time on the road because there is something different about seeing someone face to face and getting their help, then talking to them on the phone or talking to them on Skype. So it sounds like there's a recipe in a way for creativity. Is that an oversimplification? Because it kind of sounds that way. I think it is an oversimplification because ultimately, it is actually one of the worries I have when writing a book like this. I'm actually not saying that it's easy. I'm actually saying that's incredibly difficult. I'm saying that if you're willing to

do all these things and put in all this work, you can get there. But, But it does take a lot of work. And so, you know, I think when it comes to things like finding your passion or any of this stuff, I think oftentimes this is code word for finding things that are easy from the beginning. And the only things that are really easy in the beginning are video games. So it's not simple. Alan, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me. So Alan was a good guy. And I have to say, more creative than a numbers geek, I would have assumed. You know, he just really, he really shone through this one. And I like the book. You know, he did come up with some unique insight with all those metrics. He's digging up over there, Track Maven. What do you think, Jason?

Yeah, I took creativity in, I literally took creativity in college. There was a class that was called Creativity 101. And it was pretty interesting because they did say that, you know, anybody can be creative and they can cultivate that skill. And I really think that Allen distilled it down to a simple formula for most people to follow. and you do have to have a lot of input, though. I got to say, you have to have more input than you think because that's how ideas are created. And that's where creativity comes from because you take other ideas and then you have your own genesis moment.

And especially when you're in the shower doing your armpits like you like to do. And looking at your junk, which you also talked about in the show. Did I really? Yes, you did. And so, you know, I think his formulas is pretty good. I really enjoyed the show. and I want people to be more creative. So I think everybody should share this with everybody they know.

Well, there you go. I do like the idea that you need more input. That's kind of a good sign. And it shows that if you're just reading a bunch and you're listening to a bunch of other people's stuff, you're not just wasting your time and learning from other people or stealing their ideas or, you know, you don't have to isolate yourself in a freaking chamber

to have your creativity going. The idea is you're taking a lot of input and then your brain does magical things. And then on the output is creative. Boom. Done. Pretty much that simple. Unless I missed something in the show there.

I don't know. Great big thank you to Alan. The book title is The Creative Curve. We'll link that up in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this, don't forget to thank Alan on Twitter. Tweet at me your number one takeaway from Alan Gannett. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply the things you learn today on the show,

make sure you go grab the worksheets. also in the show notes Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. It doesn't, I won't say it aggravates me, Jason, but it does surprise me. It disappoints me a little bit. How many people go, oh my God, there are worksheets? It's like, okay, it's not month one of worksheets, all right? It's month seven, okay, or six or something. You know, like get it together, people.

There are worksheets, they are important. We don't do them because we like typing up worksheets. No, we definitely don't. And we only mentioned it like three times in the show. at the minimum. Every single episode, too. So for crying out loud, go get the worksheets. They're in the show notes.

I don't want to hear about it again. This episode is produced and edited by Jason DePhilippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty. Happy birthday. By the way, Robert, that was today. I'm glad you spent your birthday uploading this show. Booking Back Office and Last Minute Miracles by Jen Harbinger. And I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please, share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got a lot more in the pipeline. I'm very excited for some of the upcoming episodes, as usual, and you should be too. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show

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