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SPEAKER_01Well, thank you. I love it. This is thrilling to be here. I remember eight years ago we had a good time together, so we'll just recreate that today and do something with a new concept. I love the rebrand, by the way.
SPEAKER_02Appreciate that. So, Phil, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work and business?
SPEAKER_01You know, it's interesting. I've worked behind the scenes at a church my whole life. My dad was a pastor, and um, I went to college having no clue what I wanted to do with my life. You know, I played the piano because back in those days, if you were a preacher's kid, that was part of the job description. And um, I enrolled in music, but uh, I had been making films in high school with a bunch of buddies. Never crossed my mind you could do this for a living. And uh, we just took my dad's old Super Eight movie camera out and we'd make mafia movies and army movies and war movies and space movies and everything you can imagine. And when I went away to college, a thousand miles away, I thought, you know what, maybe I'll find some buddies that want to make movies out there. Again, never crossed my mind that this could be an actual living. And um, the first day in at school, I was literally, literally unpacking my suitcase and a couple of my little reels fell out of my suitcase. And a guy across the hall, Rod Carlson, said, Hey, I'm taking a film class. I can show you how to edit those things. I mean, I didn't even know you could cut film back in those days. That's how ignorant I was. And we went down to the film department that night, worked on my little movie, and I discovered a few hours in the professor was there working on a project of his. And as he left that night, he um stopped by, introduced himself, and said, Hey, I kind of been watching your little movie out of the corner of my eye. He said, I've got students that have been taking classes for two or three years that still don't do this well. He said, Would you mind if I showed your movie in my class tomorrow? So I said, Well, sure, if I can sit in. So I literally sat on the back row the next day, he showed my movie, and believe me, it was pretty embarrassing. It was not a great movie, but he showed the movie, and when it was over, people talked. The class discussed it. And this thought hit me. I mean, it was a revelation that I've not had such a clear, crystal clear moment before since that if I can do something with a camera that makes people talk like this, this is what I'm supposed to do with my life. And I literally changed my major that day to film and television, and I've never looked back, never had a moment's thought that I may have made a mistake. I just have focused on the future and I've been doing it now for all these years. That was back in the early 70s, and that's how long I've been at this. So um pretty early, I guess you could say, I really felt confident that this would have this what it was what I was called to do. Yeah, and you really since God was in that. Well, you know, it's funny. I was a preacher's kid. I've never had a moment's feeling that I should become a pastor. I've got a PhD in theology mostly because I love studying it, but I never once felt a call to go into ministry as a pastor, preacher, you know, running an organization like that. But I've always, because I speak that language and I grew up behind the scenes at a church, I really understand how it works. And so we've ended up, even though you know I'm primarily a producer and a filmmaker, we consult with churches and you know, ministry organizations all the time, helping them tell their story more effectively. I mean, Darren, the language of the culture today is media. This digital world we live in has changed the way we communicate. And so I really believe part of the reason the Christian faith is being marginalized and is virtually disappearing from the culture is because we just don't know how to tell our story well in this digital age we live in. So that's been a passion of mine. So I've I'm a church guy, I believe in it uh totally, but but I want to do it from a marketplace perspective. I want to come in as a business person, as a as a you know, a visual media person and really help churches and ministry organizations tell their story more effectively. And we've worked with everybody from you know prominent churches to the Salvation Army to the new museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., just to all kinds of organizations and churches. And it's it's been an interesting journey.
SPEAKER_02We're going to be talking about your book, Ideas on a Deadline, but uh to kind of get a scriptural foundation for what we're gonna talk about. I wonder if you'd share uh one of your favorite Bible verses or passages related to business and entrepreneurship.
SPEAKER_01Probably one that no one's brought up yet on the on your program. And that is the first verse of the Bible. I find it interesting that, you know, God has many attributes. I certainly studied that working on my PhD in theology. There's many ways to describe God, He's got an enormous number of attributes. But I find it interesting that he chose to describe himself, introduce himself as a creator in the very first verse of the Bible. And that's really inspired me throughout my whole career. That's inspired me that God chose to introduce himself as a creator. We are made in his image. And so I think that is a huge incentive for us to raise the bar when it comes to creativity. If you look throughout history, the church supported creativity. You know, men like artists like Michelangelo, uh Kurt Caravaggio, they were all supported by the church and the work that they did, Leonardo da Vinci, so many others. And yet today, we don't value creativity at the level that we should. Obviously, there are some ministries, some churches out there that do a really great job with it. But for me, I just really had this burden to make creativity part of that mix again in the way we share our story with the culture and the way we impact culture. So I'm I'm all about helping leaders. One of the things I'm most passionate about, Darren, is helping leaders lead creative people. You know, there's a lot of information about leadership out there. John Maxwell and others have done a brilliant job of providing resources for leaders, but pastors and ministry leaders really don't know much about leading creative people. That's kind of a unique niche. And so I've spent decades doing just that. And now I want to share how techniques and ideas and how to be uh how to lead creative people to inspire and motivate them to do amazing things because I really think that's a big, big part of the future of the church.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. How does this uh really kind of serve as a foundation for what you teach in this book, Ideas on a deadline?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, it's I'm a practical guy. I'm I love theory, you know, I I love I love discussing theory and ideas, but I'm ultimately a practical guy. I've got to produce shows for a living. I was partners in a TV commercial company a number of years ago, and we did a couple Super Bowl commercials. And I discovered pretty quickly that the Super Bowl is not going to change its date because I can't come up with a good idea for a commercial. And uh, even my work in tele with television networks, if they have a slot for a show, it's got to go on that date. No matter what happens, you've got to have it. And of course, pastors and ministry leaders know that Sundays come around with relentless regularity. Every seven days we we have a Sunday, and we've got to be ready. Where we're a whether we're a pastor or a communications person or a worship leader, we've got to be ready. So though I I wanted to write a book that was not just for creative professionals, although they'll really, really get a lot out of this. But I wanted to also write a book for executives and coaches and teachers and people from all walks of life because we live in a creative culture. And honestly, Darren, we have to, everybody has to deliver ideas or projects or products or presentations. There's always something we have to deliver and we have to do it under the clock on a deadline. And so often creative people think, I need to sit on the back porch and wait for that aha moment, you know, wait for that eureka moment when the idea gods drop something on our head. But the truth is, we can't wait for those moments. And I've discovered that throughout my career, we don't have to, and we don't have to sacrifice high-level creativity in order to be able to hit a deadline. And so that's really what spurred me to write the book. I believe there's a lot of books out there on creativity. You can go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and see just tons of books on creativity, but there wasn't anything that I found that really answered the question how do we come up with those great, those breakthrough ideas when we're under the pressure of a clock or a schedule or a deadline? And that's what I wanted to focus on in the book. And it's it was really a fascinating thing to write and research. And I enjoyed it immensely, and I think people will too.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So how do we do it? How do we break through uh when we feel like we've got to just all the stars have got to align just perfectly, everything's gotta be the temperatures gotta be just right, every the noise levels gotta be just right. How do how do we break through?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I in the book I go into a couple of things. I I love I I start out with the idea that we need to just become friendly with deadlines. You know, so many people are literally paralyzed. You know, I work in Hollywood, I work here in Los Angeles with studios, film studios, TV networks all the time. And I've just discovered that there are people out there that literally become paralyzed at the thought of having a deadline. And so the deadline, truly, for me, I I love, I'll tell you a dirty little secret. Most creative people love deadlines because it gives us a boundary, it gives us a map. When I have a deadline, I know when I have to deliver, which means that tells me when I have to do my research, when I have to do my study, when I have to do my really hard work at coming up with this idea. And so a day, you know, I it's funny, I've talked to airline pilots who said when they see the end, you know, on takeoff, when they see the end of that runway racing up toward them, man, their blood starts pumping, their adrenaline starts flowing, and that's when they really focus and get serious about that flying that plane. Well, it's the same way with me. I don't honestly, Dara, I don't know about you, but I don't even start a project till I see the deadline looming in the distance. And that gets my blood pumping. And so I think it's important that we learn to deal with the deadline. You know, uh in many ways, deadlines should be our friend, and they certainly will tell the client or tell your boss that you respect them, you know, people that miss deadlines constantly are just basically saying the bosses or the the clients, their priorities don't matter to them. And that's not a message you want to share. So we need to get to a mode where we not only hit deadlines, but they become our friend. And when we can do that, and and I talk about that in the beginning of the book, that's really the launching pad that helps us get into that frame of mind to create brilliant ideas.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I was just thinking of biblical examples of what this might look like. Maybe you could share one or two. Um, but just thinking about Noah and how ridiculous it it looked that he was building this ark, you know, in the middle of this dry place, and people are just mocking him. But he's he's still, and I I don't know if you know this, Phil. I just found this out recently. And in the I don't know whether this is true or not, but in in Jewish thought, this some of the midrashes they teach that Noah invented the plow, uh, that he invented uh the scythe and a lot of these um you know agricultural tools that ended up uh helping him uh raise the the funds to be able to build this arc and hire all of the hire all these people. Um, and then it's said that you know he invented the fermentation process for for drinking and and you know, I was just thinking about what a deadline the the the world is about to get flooded, Noah. Like, yeah, like so, and just thinking about like uh is there any application for that? I know I didn't throw that out there, but we could riff on that a little bit.
SPEAKER_01No, I love that idea that you know, and I I love that phrase. Everybody thought Noah was a crazy person until it started raining. Yeah, um, but you're right. Very often, that's what I love about creativity. Very often a deadline will cause us to create ancillary ideas that will help us achieve it. A good example is in the book, I talk about one of the things, one of the breakthrough ideas that you need to understand is we need to get out of the office. You know, very often we think we're gonna sit at this desk until the idea hits and we bang our head against the wall, we bang our head against the laptop, and nothing is coming and nothing, you know, it doesn't seem to be clicking. And one of my ideas is get out of the office. And one of the things to do is go to where the problem is. I always tell leaders if the problem is in the parking lot, don't have your meeting in the conference room, have your meeting in the parking lot. You know, if the c if the problem is in the youth building, if the problem is in the sanctuary or somewhere at your office, go there to have the meeting. I I remember that uh years ago I was fired 36 years old. We'll do an episode about this one day. I got fired when I was 36 and uh we lived in the Midwest, and um, we decided this is our moment to go to LA. I felt like God had called me to LA years before, but I can rationalize anything. You know, we had our kids in good schools, we had a good church, we had our friends, I had a job. And I thought, well, maybe I can just commute. Well, I think God finally fired me to show me, no, no, no, I need to actually move. And we went to LA, but we stayed with Kathy's parents, my wife's parents in Vegas. She she grew up in Las Vegas, and we stayed with them for a month while we looked for a house in here in LA. And during that time, a friend of ours who was a graphic designer introduced me to the marketing director at one of the big hotels, the Excalibur Hotel, who the owner owned the Circus Circus and a couple other big ones. And so she hired me to be a writer for their marketing campaign. So I was writing restaurant, you know, food name, you know, restaurant names for foods and stuff. I was marketing the hotels. I even did a lot of promotional stuff for the owner, the hotel owners racing boat racing team. But at that point, Vegas was trying to become family friendly. So they built the Adventure Dome, which was the large the world's largest glass enclosed amusement park. And it was really designed for little kids. And so they tasked me with coming up with the names of the rides. And I just worked on it for a couple of days and I was getting nowhere with it. I was just getting nowhere. So I decided, wait a second, this is for little kids. So I went to my daughter, my daughter, who was in the second grade, Kelsey was in second grade at the time. I went to her classroom and I asked the teacher if I could have a couple hours with the kids. And so I just tossed out these rides. Okay, what about a roller coaster that goes through the desert? Canyon blaster, how about that? Check, got it. And then I had another ride that shakes you up and down and turns you upside down. Roadrunner, how about that? And I just went through this list, and all these second graders came up with these names. And I took the list back to the hotel in Vegas, present made a presentation with all the hotel names that I'd come, I'd supposedly come up with, and they bought every one. They liked every single one. They didn't change a name. Now, promise me, if you're listening to this podcast, don't go tell the hot the Circus Circus Hotel that a second grade class named all their rides. But that it's a good example of go to the source, go to where the problem is. I discovered that hey, kids are going to be using this. Maybe I should go to the kids. So that's a big part. Uh, get out of the office, get out of your church, get out of wherever you are, go to where the problem is, talk to those people, and very often you'll find the solution you need. So the idea of Noah coming up with random things like the plow and other things makes perfect sense to me because if you're open to where ideas will take you, it's amazing how often you come up with solutions for so many other things as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, you're on a roll, Phil. Keep keep on going with some of these other practical ideas that we can start to implement to break through.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, there's a number of ideas I talk about in the book, like going for a walk throughout history. If you study history, uh many of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world have done, have been really focused on walking. Uh, Soren Kierkegaard, the famous theologian, he would write in the morning and spend every afternoon walking. In fact, he said, My brain doesn't really kick in until I start walking. Uh, Beethoven, so many other musicians and artists and writers really were driven by the desire to walk because science now tells us that when we're walking, we're not concentrating on anything. You know, if if you're not focusing on, you know, your ex-boyfriend or the problem that you're facing, if you're just out walking and enjoying it, suddenly your subconscious starts putting things together and connections start happening. And the Eureka moment often will happen when you're out there on a walk. Um, probably my longest chapter in the book is on dreams. You know, as you know well, the Bible talks about dreams numerous times, about how God has revealed himself to people through dreams or he gave someone a message through a dream. That doesn't work with me. I've never had a revelation like that or a whole story or a solution. But what I've discovered is I dream, I mean, my dreams are totally vivid. They're full color, epic dreams, but they don't give me the full story, but they often help me make connections that I would not have thought about in my conscious life. So I keep a notepad and a pen by my bed. I even found a pilot's pen that has a little light at the tip. So when I click it, a little tiny light comes on that just illuminates the pad so I don't wake up my wife, Kathleen. And uh that's made our marriage much stronger, by the way. And um, but I jot it down. As you know, ideas are the most fragile thing in the world. If you don't write them down, you'll forget them. And so I really discovered early on that I keep a I keep index cards in my pocket. I've got a couple note-taking apps on my iPhone. I always have a notebook I carry with me. I just really think that if, you know, if you you're having brilliant ideas, you need to write them down right away. I've got notebooks and notebooks that literally go back to college of ideas I've had. So writing them down, um, thinking about, you know, before you go to bed, that I'm gonna remember this dream and I'm gonna try to, it's not mystical, weird, heretical stuff. You know, it dreams happen. And it's interesting the research that supports how your brain works when you're asleep, and very how often how great ideas will come in in your sleeping. And so, and probably the biggest thing that was a revelation for me, I discovered this early on, and I've been using it for years before I wrote the book, is I have a chapter, what I call the holy trinity of creativity, which is find the place, schedule the time, and show up. Those three things are the most important. A book came out a number of years ago called Daily Rituals by a guy named Mason Curry, and he studied the lives of some of the most brilliant artists, thinkers, statesmen, executives throughout the last hundred years. And what he discovered was they were all slaves to routine. I mean, routine was so critical. They showed up at the right time, they found the right place to work, uh, they knew what time of day was most productive for them. You know, Stephen King, the novelist, will actually write on Christmas Day. He has such a routine that he goes through every morning. He'll get up on Christmas morning and he'll put in a couple hours of writing before he gets with his family for Christmas. So I'll tell you, a routine I've discovered is really the key. Showing up every day, figuring out that time of day where you can be most productive, and then actually getting down to work. Someone once said the art of writing is the art of connecting your seat of your pants to the seat of a chair. And I do believe that. I think that if you know, don't you're not a writer if you just do it occasionally. You're a writer if you show up every day. And it's true with anything you want to do creatively. So little things like that throughout the book, I think are so important. And I have many, many more ideas that just practical, everyday things that you can put into action right now that will open up your ability to have ideas when you need them the most.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well said. I mean, I've I've written a couple of books, but the last several years, I got a hit, I think just getting so busy with other things that I just kind of let my writing just fall by the wayside. Um, and one of the things I've discovered is if I will just keep a Google Doc open with that next chapter that I'm gonna write, that next article that I'm gonna write, it just makes it so convenient. And there it just removes all the excuses. From why I can't start working on that chapter. And since I've done that, I mean, I've probably cranked out, well, I've probably cranked out like 20,000 words in the last two, three weeks. Um, some of that's because I had back sur back surgery. So um, thanks for thanks for your prayers, everybody. And I've just been kind of laid up in a you know hospital bed and and um just kind of been taken a little easier. But um but just having that Google Doc open has made it so much easier to just start start writing. It's like you know, it just making it convenient. Is there something that you found to that, Phil?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. Technology can help in so many ways. One of the in the very beginning of the book, I talk about getting organized because you know, one of our problems is we just have too much on our plate. Uh, you know, it's so difficult in this distracted culture we live in. Some research indicates we see about 10,000 media messages every single day. Um, we've, you know, got to the place today where we decide what we think of an, you know, we meet somebody new, we decide what we think of that person within the first four to eight seconds. I mean, think about that. We we haven't had a chance to really hear what they have to say, get to know them at all. But hey, we got other things to do. We got email, text messages, phone calls to make. And so we've just changed our behavior to adapt to this incredibly distracted culture we live in. So we have to get a little bit organized. I'm not a big fan, Darren, about the cult of productivity today. You know, very often you can see on YouTube and on websites that they're just people that live for productivity. You know, that's fine if you're into that. But I think if you're you spend so much time being productive, you're going to spend less time being creative. And we do need to create margins in our life where we have time to think, to reflect. Uh, one of the big frustrations I see out there is we carry this thing in our pocket called an iPhone or an Android phone. And, you know, whenever we get bored, we whip that out immediately, start checking our social media, checking our our emails and our text messages when we're waiting in line, you know, at the doctor's office or waiting in line at the grocery store or some other place. Here's what I've discovered. Looking back over my career, I can pretty much guarantee that many, maybe most of the best ideas I've ever had came to me in moments where I was bored out of my mind. Just sitting there reflecting, it may have been waiting for a church service to start, waiting for a movie to start, um, in a boring meeting or some teaching session somewhere in school, wherever it was, I was bored out of my mind. And that's when connections started being made. So I would tell people start off by just keeping your phone in your pocket. Don't automatically start pulling it out and checking it, because that's not going to help your creativity at all. Sometimes we need to be a clean slate. We need to be bored out of our mind in order to do it. The second thing I would say, and I don't want to rant here, but the second thought thing I would say is learn to say no. I have a whole chapter in the book about how to say no graciously. You know, we creative people, we're nice people, we want to help people, do things for people. But if you feel God has called you to something significant with your life, to do something important, we're gonna have to say no to a lot of things, some of those things being good things. But you don't have to be a jerk, you don't have to be, you know, ugly about it. In fact, in the book, I give four or five good ways to say no to people with that that are still respectful, that doesn't position you like a jerk, but they help you say no to things so you can start to focus on what God's really called you to do. And I think that's a real key. We just have so much trouble saying no. But in, you know, I I love the quote in the book. I have the quote by Warren Buffett, the great investor, who said the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no most of the time. Yeah, they know they have to focus. And so I think that's really important.
SPEAKER_02Well, I want to give a shout out to my wife. Um, this is how much she loves our boys. She she felt like when she would go out to the parks or you know, go out to to be with the boys that she wasn't wasn't really being fully present. So what she did is she got rid of her smartphone and downgraded or upgraded, depending on how you look at it, to a Keocera flip phone. Oh wow. So she literally that's her phone now. Um when you know, when she goes out, she obviously she's still got access to you know laptop and everything when she's home. But when she's out, she's just fully present um with us, um, with the boys, even though I'm probably still checking email or something, something dumb like that. Uh, she's just fully present. And um, and I think it's actually helped her get into more writing. She started to do more writing of notice to lately. And and so shout out to my wife Marie. Um, good for her. Great, great best. Somebody's gonna go run with that and head on down to their their uh phone provider and downgrade to a key assera. So do it.
SPEAKER_01I I think that's brilliant, actually. You know, I think just either leaving it or if you can't leave it. Uh, I I started I got a uh an Apple Watch and the kind was cell service. So I've stopped taking my phone. If I'm out with the grandkids or out with the dog walking, I've stopped taking my phone because if a call comes in, I can take it, or if there's an important message that comes in, I can take it. But it it's difficult for me to scroll, you know, on social media and do stuff like that and respond in those ways. So that's really helped me focus. And whatever it takes, I just think the impression it makes on your children for you to be on the phone all the time when you could be engaging with them is much more significant than we think. So I think she's done great. That's that's a brilliant idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So, Phil, obviously, we want people to go check out the book Ideas on a deadline. Um, people can go to philcook.com. Um, that's cook with the e on the end.com. That's Phil's blog. Cookmedia group.com is Phil's company website. Influence lab.com is his nonprofit. And then ideas on a deadline.com is the is the book site. That's probably a lot uh for people to remember, but what would be the yeah? My blog, you know what?
SPEAKER_01My blog will connect you to everything. Philcook.com, as you said, cook with an E. Philcook.com will connect you with social media, all the websites for our nonprofit, the influence lab, our company site, Cook Media Group. You can get everywhere from there. So uh yeah, have people check out philcook.com and that'll get them to wherever they need to go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And what actually how can people get involved with what you're doing?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, that's great. I I I would love that. We have we launched a nonprofit called the Influence Lab a number of years ago because we at any given moment, I have five to ten invitations to travel internationally to teach media to Christians around the world. There's such a hunger for it. You know, we kind of get sick of our social media and stuff here in the US, but people internationally have really grasped how to use it to share the gospel. And so we've done sessions in Egypt, we've done sessions in Russia, we've done sessions in India, uh, throughout Africa, South America, during the COVID pandemic, I was doing Zoom teachings to hundreds of pastors all over the world. And uh, we're always getting requests to come. And could, you know, I live in Hollywood, so I have the ability to get professional industry people who happen to be Christians who are thrilled to, you know, say, hey, I don't want to be paid. I just want to go and help. And so anybody that would would feel like they'd love to come and teach with us or fun, help us support, help support what we're doing. The influence you can go to influencelab.com. It's just a great work because there's such an opportunity to share for sharing the gospel. That you know, we call it the digital mission field. The world has changed. You know, traditional missionaries are not making as much of an impact as local indigenous missionaries who are taking the gospel through social media, through the online world, through digital films and short videos. It's just making a huge change in the way we are sharing the gospel with the world. So, yeah, love. Anybody wants to help us fund or get involved in that, we'd love that. Awesome.
SPEAKER_02What's one action you'd want to be able to take as a result of what they they've heard to unleash their creativity today? Well, of course, buy my book. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, other than that, have creative confidence. Whenever I go, let me tell you this. Whenever I teach on about creativity at conferences and events, I'll always have a handful of people that come up to me and say, Well, you know, Phil, that's great, but I'm not, I was never born creative. Let me tell you something. There is not a shred of evidence that indicates some people are born creative and some aren't. That everybody is born creative. Look at take a bunch of kids and put them in a room. They're all wildly creative, but it's like a muscle. If we stop using it, we start to lose it. So I would encourage you, start to use your creative muscle. And you can start by, you know, driving home a different way, doing things a different way, reading books that you don't normally read. Just start approaching life in a really different perspective and start exercising your creativity once again. And the last thing I would say is there's also no evidence that we lose our creativity when we get older. Um, in the book, I highlight people who are creative into their 70s, 80s, and even 90s. Um, as long as you're staying engaged, as long as you're reading and studying and aware of what's happening in the culture, you should have a voice at the table for as long as you want. So let me tell you, I just encourage you to open yourself up, be more confident of your own creativity, get out there and engage with today's culture. And that could be the most exhilarating and inspiring thing you could do.
SPEAKER_02Well said. Phil, it's been so good to reconnect with you and thank you for coming on to share with our audience. We're so much better for it. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Darren. It's been a thrill.
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