Ep 56 Podcast: How to get the most out of this podcast

In this essential episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates reveals the “missing manual” to help you turn insights from the podcast into real, impactful changes for you and your team. Listening and taking notes isn’t enough—learn the one key strategy you need to fully apply what you’ve learned, create lasting transformation, and drive progress in your work and team culture. Tune in to unlock the true potential of these lessons and start making a difference today.

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Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody, and welcome to the 56th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and all kinds of things that matter to creative people. Now we're gonna skip the usual leave a review, you know, go and subscribe to the show and all that because hopefully you know that by now, if you've been listening for any amount of time, you've definitely heard that more than once. And so instead, I just want to jump right in. Now, this is going to be another one of those kind of shorter shows, but I think it's a really important one. And I think it's really important, because hopefully, you saw the title of this episode. And it's the missing manual for how to use this podcast. And you may be thinking to yourself, Steve, it's the 56th episode of this podcast, why the hell are you now just getting to tell us the best way to use this information? That near listener is a wonderful question. I wish I had the answer to it. If this was a book or something else, this would obviously where I'd go back and make the edits. But look, I think that this show is just as much as For me as it is for everybody else, I'm trying to figure out how to do a podcast how to give this advice. I'm trying to figure out a lot of things in my own life and my own career. And as we all know, things don't happen sequentially. things don't happen in the order that you often wish they would. And that's the thing, right, is that I think, hopefully you figure it out by now, just what I said that in a lot of cases. I'm figuring this out as I go along. But based on more than a few recent emails and conversations, I realized that there is one key thing that I haven't covered in enough detail on this show, which is really the best way to use this information. How do you put into action? I think that's what I want to do now was just to be able to go through and give you that and look, give me a break. It's a free show. You get what you pay for better late than ever. I don't know what else to tell you. But my hope my sincerest hope whenever you have sat down and listened to the show, if you've done it for this is your first episode or if you've listened to all 50 plus, is that honestly this isn't one of those things Where you should just listen to this show and take a bunch of notes and then go go do nothing with them. I think that it is a trend that I see with more and more people with more and more creatives is that we become collectors we collect inspiration, we collect pins and tweets and all these other things that we just like having. Too often I see people who really crave exposure, this new information and they want new perspectives. But then they're really lacking the one key ingredients, which is the will or the strength to put that information into practice, and to make real changes. This is why I want to bring this missing man or the party however late it might be. Because my hope is that you feel like I do, about what you learn here. You feel a burden of hope that comes with knowing how things could be. It's been fascinating to me to get emails from people to have conversations with people who will come up to me and say that I talked about Creativity or leadership or teams or work about the way that they always thought it should be, but it's a way that they've never experienced. And that, I think, on the one hand is great that there is that hope. But on the other hand, it's more than a little frustrating that so many people are experiencing that. But it's also done a lot for me personally, because I think that the longer that I've done the show, I have to be really candid In saying that, I'm increasingly aware that I think I must be an incredibly disappointing person to work for. And I think that the reason why I feel that is in a lot of cases why I think a lot of people collect information that they don't use. Because in my case, people must think that I have this platform, I talk about all these answers. And isn't that easy. Isn't that ideal, like, you know, but then they go back to their own lives, the same way that I do and then why aren't things perfect? It's something think more and more about and that often I really struggle with that. But I came to realization recently and I think that is the missing manual or the missing insight to this. Knowing the information is not enough, listening to this show is not enough. Nothing will change if all you do is listen. It's how you personalize what we talk about. And it's how you bring it to life. That makes all the difference. But bringing it to life is important. But the intersection of theory with reality is also where there's a real struggle. It's a struggle, because it's very easy to talk about things in my case, or to learn things in your case in abstraction. That's why I said I think I must be kind of a frustrating guy to work for. Because in a lot of cases, I can talk about what should happen. I can talk about it because it happens in abstraction, it is free, a real life. The challenge comes when you try to apply that information, burdened with the constraints of real life that don't let you do just anything that you want. And I think that's the challenge, right? That's, that's the rub the intersection point with all this, this is why we need some sort of a manual. It's really fucking hard to put this stuff into practice. And it's even harder to do it well. And to do it effectively. The manual the insight, the thing that I tell so many people whenever they've come to me to ask, how do they take this information? How do they start applying design thinking? How do they become a better leader? How do you become more creative? How do you get in touch with your creative process better? Any number of the innumerable topics that we've covered in this show, any number of the innumerable things that people struggle with? You need to go out and find the insights you need to go out and do the research that is is an incredibly critical part of it. Getting multiple different perspectives is obviously the, you know, the absolute starting point for this. But the one word manual for this show, for I think any success is simply the word start. That's the secret. It's the missing manual, that one word, start. Start on something big. Start on something small. Start on something insanely hard, or really simple. But the key is, again, to not just be a spectator, to not just simply listen to this stuff and go Someday, I'll be a better leader. Someday, I'll be more creative. I think that we spend far too much of our lives preparing to live a life that in many cases we don't ever quite seem to get to. But I think that's the key is that there's never going to be a perfect moment. There's never going to be a perfect time a perfect team, a perfect company. Are anything else. So that what you need to do is to figure out what that challenge is to talk about what we do here to talk about what that information is to share it, but in no matter what you do, to start, don't listen to this show and do nothing. Don't get smarter and keep it to yourself. Go out and start, start doing something, start creating something, start making a difference, because that's what we're missing. Because when we talk about the need for people who are more creative, when we talk about the people who are better leaders, when we talk about the vacuum of that talent, and how we're struggling to find our way to find more of those people. The reason why there aren't more of those people is because more of us need to step up and start. This is where stupid people have the advantage. They're fearless. They will go out and try and fail. think nothing of it. Those of us who are burdened with creativity and leadership and aspiration and self awareness, were a little bit harder to do that were a little bit harder to get over that edge. But it's what I said, start doing, start creating, start making a difference. Take on a challenge, start a fight, teach somebody, inspire somebody, challenge yourself, change yourself. Do whatever it's going to take, so that someone calls you crazy. I've talked about this before. It is an incredibly hard step to do. To change yourself to change a team to change a company. It can be hard, it can be lonely. It can be something that in a lot of cases feels like Why the hell am I taking this on? anything worth doing feels this way and the thing that I know, and the reason why I go through it. And the reason why I share what I do is because at the end of the day, I know that whenever you start doing this stuff, people will vilify you for being crazy. They'll vilify you for wanting to do something different. There will be a laundry list of excuses and reasons why it's not going to happen. Why would it be easier to leave things the way that they are? Why it'd be better to not pick that fight, why it'd be easier to go along with the flow, all of these things. But it's amazing what happens when somebody gives a damn. When somebody actually views people as people, when you respect their creative process, when you step up and try to lead something and look, it is not ever going to be perfect. What I talked about here are talking about things in abstraction. Understand that my work life is far from perfect, my teams are far from perfect. Again, just because you know what you should do does not mean that it is that easy to do it. But it's taking up the fight, it's taking up the challenge that makes the difference. It's the thing that gets you to become that leader gets you to be somebody who's more creative and gets you to be somebody who's happier with your work, or your team or your company, or any of those things. And taking up that challenge means that those people who will vilify you for being crazy for being different for being the people who won't accept the way things have always been and why won't you do that? Because, well, somehow there has to be some sort of comfort or implied success in the fact that well, since it's always been that way, somehow it has to be good. None of us believe that. None of us know that to be true. But as soon as you start to make a difference, as soon as you step up and start doing it, and as soon as that starts to show any level of success, something amazing happens. Those people who will vilify you for being crazy those People who will vilify you for trying to change yourself or for caring or for stepping up or doing all those things, all the people that you have to shout out in the beginning, what's amazing how they will come looking for your help. Because all of a sudden, they know that they don't have the strength to do it. They don't understand how they can bring about that change in themselves. But they know that you've done it. And so for all the reasons that they will vilify, you will be all the exact same reasons while they'll seek you out. It'll be all the reasons why you do those things. But at the end of the day, for me, you have to start because you owe it to yourself. You listen to this show for a reason. You're looking for inspiration. You're looking for information, you're looking for a different perspective, there is something in you that continues to want to grow and push. If you didn't, you'd be sitting there listening to whatever kind of music you want or doing something else, as opposed to listening to a podcast and trying to learn something. So recognize that about yourself. Recognize that that need and that one is there for you, and there's not a day Anything wrong with that. But recognize that you need to do something with it, you need to start making a difference, you're not going to get it right, you're not don't set that expectation. But what you need to do is to start to do it, start to figure it out, in whatever way big or small and whatever way you're comfortable. Start to do that. And figure out when you're going to do it someday is not an answer. But that's the thing is that I don't want to share all this, for it to go nowhere. I don't want to share all this just so that people can write down a bunch of notes that don't go anywhere. I would do it because I want to try to share I want to try to make things different. I do it because I struggle with it in my own career. And the fact that somehow I feel like I'm chasing the ghost of the leader that I'm supposed to be juxtaposed against the reality of who I am. But that's the thing that drives you. That's the thing that keeps you moving. And that's what we need more of. So like I said, maybe it was a little antisocial. climactic that the manual was just one word. But take the time take that thing that you want to work on and just start and so once again if you found any part of any of this series the least bit valuable hit subscribe so you get the new shows leave a review you know the spiel. You can always find out more about this podcast get the notes listen to all the other episodes just head over to podcast Stephen Gates calm if you agree with this disagree with it have other questions anything like that well you can follow me on any social media asked me any questions I'll get back to you as quick as I can. You can always head over to Facebook search for The Crazy One podcast like that page I post new stuff all the time and go through again ask me questions out in the open do it privately there if you're afraid your boss might read it, which has happened more than once. But as always, all the reviews here my own. These don't represent any my or my current or former employers. These are just my own thoughts. But thanks for the time and thanks for trying and like I said know that whenever You try there's going to be an amazing amount of support for what it is you want to do that it may feel really lonely at first. But there's a lot of us out here who are rooting for you and really want to help you make that change. So until next time, stay crazy