Nir Bashan is a world-renowned creativity expert. He has taught thousands of leaders and individuals around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, and ultimately create more meaning in their work. Nir has spent the last two decades working on a formula to codify creativity. That formula is found in The Creator Mindset, which has been translated into two languages. He was one of the youngest professors ever selected to teach graduate courses at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and also taught undergraduate courses at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has worked on numerous albums, movies, and advertisements with famous actors and musicians ranging from Rod Stewart to Woody Harrelson. His work on creativity has won a Clio Award and was nominated for an Emmy.
Nir is the founder and CEO of The Creator Mindset LLC, a company that conducts workshops, consulting, coaching, and keynote speeches at conferences and corporate events. His clients include AT&T, Microsoft, Ace Hardware, NFL Network, EA Sports, Suzuki, Activision and jetBlue. Nir lives in Orlando, Florida, with his wife, young son, and two Bernedoodles named P-Paws and Waylon Jennings.
linkedin.com/nirbashan
Nir Bashan is a world-renowned creativity expert. He has taught thousands of leaders and individuals around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, and ultimately create more meaning in their work. Nir has spent the last two decades working on a formula to codify creativity. That formula is found in The Creator Mindset, which has been translated into two languages. He was one of the youngest professors ever selected to teach graduate courses at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and also taught undergraduate courses at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has worked on numerous albums, movies, and advertisements with famous actors and musicians ranging from Rod Stewart to Woody Harrelson. His work on creativity has won a Clio Award and was nominated for an Emmy.
Nir is the founder and CEO of The Creator Mindset LLC, a company that conducts workshops, consulting, coaching, and keynote speeches at conferences and corporate events. His clients include AT&T, Microsoft, Ace Hardware, NFL Network, EA Sports, Suzuki, Activision and jetBlue. Nir lives in Orlando, Florida, with his wife, young son, and two Bernedoodles named P-Paws and Waylon Jennings.
linkedin.com/nirbashan
Intro: Welcome to the Lucky Titan podcast where you will learn how to fill your favorite platform with tons of your dream customers from some of the world's top entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Josh Tapp now let's get started.
Josh: What is up everybody, Josh Tapp here again, and welcome back to the lucky Titan. So guys, we're here with Nir Bashan you guys have to remember this guy, super amazing, we had such a fun conversation last time and right before this interview was a great conversation he's been doing some pretty amazing things, I'm excited to dive into this because near since our last conversation, you know, you've obviously you've I think you wrote your book, on our last conversation, I think about it, you might have written it recently but I mean, he's doing a podcast with McGraw Hill, you don't get that unless you're your big name, guy, I'm just gonna say it and that's amazing things in business so I'm excited to have you here near but I really want to know, next steps, right, what worked, what didn't what are you doing next, how are you scaling, are you pivoting, you know, we're gonna dive into that today so first off, say what's up Nir and then we'll hop in.
Nir: Hey, thanks, Josh. Thanks for having me, man and your follow up. It's like, great, you've been emailing me and keeping in touch with me on all social, and I really appreciate it and your show is, is incredible, I try to catch an episode when I can.
Josh: Oh, hey, I appreciate it. I try to do my best we've had this conversation already but for the people who listen to this as I am not the greatest networker on the planet, but I sure as heck care about the people we work with so Nir really diving into this right of like, you know, I think since we taught, we spoke last before all the COVID shenanigans, I believe it's been at least two years and maybe, anyways, what have you been doing as far as like, how is your business transformed in the last couple years.
Nir: So a lot, it's been a lot. The book had been out now almost a year and a half, a little bit more than a year and a half and things have really sort of took off, I have doubled down on scale efforts, Josh, so it's tracking staff, making sure that people are doing what they need to be doing, making sure that the customers of my product and service are happy, that's what it's been, it hasn't been a pivot, it's been like, as my friend, Stephen Shapiro says it's been a pivot, right, like, let's go down deeper into the whole of meaning, right, and figuring out how to become way, way better at what I do.
Josh: Yeah, I love that. What especially with what you're doing, you know, being somebody who is a thought leader really is what I would consider, you know, your business is thought leadership, you really have to be focused on that change yourself anyways, because people look to people like you when the pandemic hits, you know, they're like, oh, my goodness, what do I do, I can make a look at your page, they go listen to your podcast and say, what's next right?
Nir: Yeah, absolutely and you have to use your business, and especially in what I do, it's really kind of, you know, general public facing, right so you have to make the decisions that you make, with an eye toward what is next and what is new and fresh and exciting for me for my business, I generally monetize it in a few different ways, there's the book, there's the podcast, there is speaking gigs and so on the speaking gig, you know, I noticed that, especially when the pandemic started then even even recently, depending on the states, right, so like Florida, and Texas, they're like, Oh, we're doing in person, right, and today, we're, you know, in the middle of, or at the end of May and so some of the states are still doing stuff online, they don't want stuff to come back. So I came up with a bunch of new stuff, right, I got created and so I did coffee with Nir where I do this thing with companies where I get on the phone with them for half an hour, every morning, every morning of their day, and I sit and I have a cup of coffee with them and you know, just kind of come up with different ideas and brainstorm, I took the typical keynote model and spread it over a week so instead of doing it an hour in front of people, I do a little bit online so there's all these kinds of different methodologies that I develop to help become more creative during the pandemic.
Josh: Yeah, well, my question is, are you doing this with multiple companies, because if you're having a coffee with every single one of those, you're going to be a spasm.
Nir: And it'd be cracked up.
Josh: Yeah,
Nir: I can't like really excited about it, you know? Just yeah, you know, it's a different it's, yeah, two different kinds of things. I've done a lot more workshops over the last six months than I've ever have before, though, they're kind of intense one on one, one on three, some kind of really meaningful Small Group Training, it's kind of it's changed the nature of the business quite a bit. And I think, you know, people are constantly looking for leadership there and here's the thing like anybody who said they know what will happen or what will be effective is a liar because there is no recipe for this stuff is about Josh trying over and over and seeing what ends up working and seeing what doesn't, we are so afraid to fail as entrepreneurs and business owners that we say, ah, you know, it worked last year, it'll work again next year, everything will be fine, I need to change nothing and that is like literally the recipe for failure, what you want to do is you want to try a new initiative, see how the market absorbs or not absorbs it, and then change your track, depending on whether or not you're successful that is 100%, the, the pivot, you know, mentality, though, let's get into the weeds.
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it's funny as asking this question to so many different entrepreneurs, it's interesting, because if you watch, what's been happening in the online space, is that it's gone from $100 products to $10,000 products. I mean, the price has had to increase with going online, which is really interesting, because there's way less cost going online but people aren't even taking you seriously, unless you're charging 5 10 grand now, you know, it's, it's so interesting, because the way that you're doing what you're doing is it's allowing you to a probably increase your price, but leverage your time a little bit better, I'm really curious, though, at what point it's going to flip again, because everybody's like all gung ho about online and then now that we can have events, and everybody's all gung ho about going back to live events, everybody in our dog is starting a live event, because it's the perfect time, like, the perfect time isn't when everybody's doing it's when nobody's doing it, I'm just gonna say it but I'm just curious, like for you, when do you think that pivots can happen when people pivot back to, you know, the way that it used to be or do you think that's even gonna happen?
Nir: You know, it's I think it's inevitable so the markets in shambles as we talk right now, I don't know, I didn't check the Dow but I'm betting I checked a features before we got on the show. It's down like 300 points.
Josh: Yeah.
Nir: So and, you know, we're in one of the worst inflationary periods of history, now is, is the best time to come up with crazy ideas because on, you know, the practical nature of it is that if you try something, and it fails, you can blame someone else,
Josh: exactly.
Nir: Right. So if you try and initiative right now and it fails, you can go out, it's going to inflation, right and people go, Oh, of course. Yeah, it's built in. So to answer your question, I don't know. I don't know when things will flip back, I think they will because that's kind of the nature of these things. where something is new and fresh and exciting. Oh, yeah, let's pay 10 grand for that, right and now it's like, well, we want the guy here in person, and we want him, I just did a keynote in Chicago, and the meeting organizer, you know, they paid for the in person thing and they were like, please come to the we have like a donut break afterwards for 15 minutes, please come to the thing and I'm like, Okay, no problem so I showed up and you know, people were so excited about having a face to face conversation, it was so weird, it was almost as excited that they were to have an online presentation in like, you know, April of 2020 so it's kind of, I don't know, when it will go back but I do know, and I don't know what changes will happen, stuff like that but what I do know is now is a perfect time for your listeners to go to those three ideas that they have up on their bookshelf, and just execute, execute, execute, and throw it out there and see what happens, it's just like, this is the time to do something like that.
Josh: See, and I love that because what's so interesting is it's watching the study, I remember when or where this was probably in my MBA program, but they were talking about the biggest moments in tech advancement are always during war and recession, because everybody's back is to a wall and they're like, we have got to fix this right, XYZ problem and it's so interesting, because I mean, all that's happening right now, you know, unfortunately, but luckily, if you'll be that creator, right, which is near that's like your area of thought leadership is being a creator, right is that if you'll be that creator, right now, if you launch something and epically fails, nobody will even notice no, right and it's like, you're not going to have that weird embarrassment of like, oh, wow, that was an epic failure, because nobody even notices it's gonna get lost in a wave of other things.
Nir: Yeah, allow yourself the time and space you need now to make all kinds of mistakes, because you and everyone else are going to be making those mistakes and now it's the time where nobody will point it out so you literally have the opportunity right now to just fire off a bunch of stuff that you know that you need to try.
Josh: Yeah. What you've thrown this word around a couple times today Nir is the initiative right? And I'm really, really Want to kind of unpack that a little bit because, I mean, your area being a being of your area of thought leadership is being a creator, right and being a creator, running an initiative, what do you mean when you say an initiative?
Nir: So for me, an initiative is anything that leads an idea to making money, right so literally, it's a thought or a action, a product, a service, any kind of idea that you have as a business owner, or even as an employee or staff member, that equates to a form of revenue and hopefully, the revenue has some profit, that's what when I talk about taking a risk on initiative with different groups that I work with, it's always about taking an idea that you have, and it could be anything, right, it can literally be a product that we want to try in a particular market but it can also be an adjustment to a pathway a lot of people think, oh, man, Nir you know, ideas are always like a new product, right a new model, we're launching a new model, or, or we're trying a new service with our particular services company, it doesn't always have to be that you can launch an initiative in a pathway that changes the way that you do things internally, and get the pipeline out the door in a different way a lot of people don't see that as innovation, they don't see that as creativity but there is a ton and a very important creativity there, it's about looking at how we've been doing things internally and saying, you know, what, if this the best way to do it, or is there a better way, that's innovation, then you could do that now, fail a few times, do it wrong a few times, and then learn from hey, you know, this has been working, this has not been working, and then apply those lessons learned to move forward.
Josh: Yeah, it's funny about that, as you watch all these companies, especially in the tech sector, we've been working with a lot of tech companies randomly, which is funny, because they're not our ideal customer but with tech companies, they're all trying to be disruptive, quote, unquote, right and if you're chasing the disruption, you're going to fail, right? A disruption is that oops, thing? Oh, wow, I just I totally dominated a market, right but being innovative is something that everybody can do, because like you're saying is it's multiple different actions, and executing on it?
Nir: It can be subtle, like, I work with a lot of financial services companies who are like, we want to be disruptive in the business. It's like, No, you're you're starting with a goal without even understanding, you know, the, the path to get there you know, it's, I think it's fine to have lofty, you know, aspiration, but just being disruptive in your sector, if it's simply not enough.
Josh: Yeah. And it's funny, I'm on the board of this company they're doing, they're basically merging business education with gaming, it's actually quite an interesting company, but they have that mentality of like disruption but it's funny, because their model isn't to, you know, make millions and millions and millions of dollars doing like, just from their product, it's saying, hey, we're going to be disruptive enough that we're a slap in the face, everybody's gonna come download it, we collect their data, and that data is obviously worth billions of dollars and I thought it was so interesting, because watching the way that people do that, versus what a creator does, is a creator saying, how do I provide real value in the market so that it can just not so just I can just resell people's data, right? I'm leveraging my thought leadership to be a game changer and you're going to be attracting people maybe slower, but it becomes that really the type of business that I feel like most people actually want nowadays, they don't want to be that executive, they want to be that creator.
Nir: Yeah. And I think there's a lot of sort of misalignment in the tech community where, you know, the goal becomes, oh, you know, let's build it enough to sell it, you know, and cash in on a pay day and stuff like that, you know, that's all good and fine, but people don't realize how incredibly bored you know, you'll be once that happens, because then what are you going to do? I mean, if the goal is to sit with a Mai Tai on the beach, you know, for the rest of your life, then go for it but that's incredibly boring to me, right? I don't want to do that. I want to spend my life helping people become more creative, that's kind of my thing and so I think that, you know, collecting data in hurricanes, I think it's a worthwhile goal, but there's so much more there and if you don't sort of sit down and explore all of those things, and see how the company is situated to reap in that value, then you're cutting your mission and your approach short and you know what, Josh? People feel it, people know it, it whether it's a b2b or whether it's, you know, consumer facing people get it, they understand, wait a second this is really set up only to do this. This isn't a holistic approach to sit in a company that cares, these aren't people that want to go big, these are people that are literally looking to get out Mai Tai on the beach in the Bahamas style people know it people are very, very good bullshit detector and they know an authentic voice from an inauthentic one.
Josh: Yeah. Well, it's funny, I want to touch on that, I know that was like the end of the conversation, but you just sparked a thought the difference between authentic voice and inauthentic voice, I watch a lot of people who their quote unquote, mission driven right there, I'm focused on legacy, I'm trying to do all this but then they end up getting inauthentic while they're trying to be authentic, it's bizarre, do you know what I'm talking about? It's kind of a little.
Nir: Yeah, it's one of those. So here's what I think happened, I think that every company, every business has sort of a goal that they set out to do and an initiative that they want to monetize in some way, right and profit from hopefully and what ends up happening is, you know, sometimes the rush to margins, and lowering costs, and the manufacturing of that product or whatnot becomes the goal and people get blindsided by what it means to somebody at the end and people tell me all the time there, that's BS, right, my little part means nothing to this, it's just a part in the pipeline of a manufacturer that builds blah, blah, blah, right but I beg to differ because there's some human element in there, and somebody really cares that you built that part to that person with specific tolerance, you know, and that you're dependable and that you're nice on the phone. And that, you know, if they have a problem, they call you or they text you and you text them back, people have lost that sense of Josh, of connectivity, connecting their product or service to the humanity, of what it's like to deal with you and what it is that you do and so what ends up happening is you chase these efficiencies, you chase the things that you think are the holy grail of whatnot and you end up losing that authenticity that got you in that business in the first way.
Josh: Yeah, well, what's interesting is we look at brands like Apple, right and they've got people, people will argue back and forth on this one all over the place but the thing that Apple does better than anybody else is that what you get from their messaging is what you get from the product, and even more, and the Explorer, I mean, just opening a box of an iPhone or an iPad, or a MacBook is an experience, right, where you buy somebody else's tech products and it's like the cheapest possible box cheapest possible packaging and it just it's that super crappy foam that gets everywhere nobody likes it, right but that's the experience of providing I don't really like to use huge companies like them as an example on this podcast because it's not you can be doing something similar to that from the fulfillment marketing stage sale stage,
Nir: it's a through line, you got to have that through line and in the the approach to your product or service is very much unique to you are high and even if you're an apple, you still you've still got that whole Steve Jobs thing, man, it's still alive and it is still running through the veins of that company, every company is the same McDonald's. It's the same it's still that Ray Kroc approach of the best burger consistently he was crazy about consistency, consistency, consistency, and you have that whether or not you have a hamburger in New York City, at a McDonald's or in you know, in the Philippines, it doesn't matter, it's all the same experience and that's the McDonald's brand consistency so I think absolutely the through line is incredibly important and the through line from you know, the the idea all the way to the you know, to the tangible, the skill is the authenticity of the brand, right and if you keep that all up then your brand becomes authentic people love it and that worked for anybody from you know, what I do and thought leadership all the way down to you know, manufacturing.
Josh: Yeah, well, let's talk on a on a more info product scale at this point, right because a lot of people listen to this our info products, right coaches, consultants, course owners, right and when you're providing a service like that, it's so interesting to me, a lot of people who try to start a coaching program or something, are doing it from an angle of I need to solve this problem too. So I'm going to make a whole coaching program around this right, which to me is completely the wrong approach, in my opinion, especially from a coaching angle because people are putting their lifeblood and you but I'm curious from your perspective, you know, with the creator mindset is how are you helping people build an authentic brand around information products?
Nir: So I you know, I don't do a lot of coaching, I don't, I don't do a lot of coaching for a very specific reason, what I want to do is I want to empower people to do well on their own and I don't want them to come to me, I am in the business unfortunate We have augmented staff a lot of times because people gravitate towards my message, or they read the book and they call me up they're like, dude, help me put this department together, we need you to help build a innovation department, and I'm leaving money on the table, because this isn't the core of my business but I tell people, no, I'd rather do a couple of workshops to get you guys educated and off and running and then let's do a follow up in six months so I'm not, you know, in the business of sign up for 10 hours with Nir and we'll sit down and work through your particular problem with your CFO at work, or, you know, we'll get that product sold and that I think a lot of times the the goal of coaching is really to overcome a particular problem but my approach is that I want to teach somebody how to fish rather than give them a fish and then they go, yea, cool. You know, I got through this, you know, hunger period and I want to teach somebody the fundamental, which is teachable, all easy to grab, you know, I want to teach people the fundamentals of creativity so that they can go and apply it in their businesses.
Josh: Yeah. Love that. One. Yeah, we're coming up in an interview here. So I just want to give a shout out for the book, guys go to the creatormindset.com, you definitely check this book out, boom, there we go bor those of you who are visually seeing it, make sure you go check this book out because honestly, it's a fantastic book and it's funny neuros as we were talking, I'm like, Can I read this one, I look up, it's on my shelf. So I guess I have it's been a while but fantastic books and make sure you guys go check that one out, he also has a podcast you guys can check out we'll link all that beneath the show notes here today so I just want to ask you near just to kind of wrap this interview up with just one final question so I'm going to give you a scenario, right? So I'm a creator, I've done about a million dollars in sales and I'm trying to figure out, do I pivot or scale, go, what would you do?
Nir: That's a tough one, you know, pivot or scale is really about how much you do love the core business and are you authentic are you showing up at you and is that getting to your customer? Doesn't matter who it is, whoever it's spending that money to sponsor great if they an end user, great whoever it is, are you showing up authentic, if the answer is yes, and you're loving life, then you keep going right you keep going you scale, you build around it, you get people energized evangelized about the brand and really excited let them kind of come up with their own ideas which will expand your idea into a bunch of different option products and services, that's kind of my my thing, right so you have to really decide and ask yourself one question, am I enjoying this do I still love it am I still 100% into it, if you are then keep going, if not, you need to change.
Outro: I hope that you enjoyed this episode of The lucky Titan podcast. If you've learned anything from this or any other episode, make sure you rate it and share it with another entrepreneur could help. Thanks again. I'll catch you on the flip side