How To Unleash Your Best Ideas And Create More

John Jantsch (00:00):
This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Marketing Against the Grain, hosted by Kip Bodner and Keion Flanigan is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Look, if you wanna know what’s happening now in marketing, what’s ahead and how you can stay ahead of the game, this is the podcast for you, host and HubSpot’s, CMO and SVP of Marketing. Kip and Keion share their marketing expertise unfiltered in the details of truth and nobody tells it. In fact, a recent episode, they titled Half Baked Marketing Ideas They Got Down In The Weeds, talked about some outside of the box campaigns with real businesses. Listen to marketing, its grain wherever you get your podcast.

(00:56):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Becky Blades. She’s an entrepreneur, writer, artist and philosopher of creative, adventurous living. Since selling her first company and award-winning public relations firm, Becky has studied what she has coined Starry, the Art of Creative Initiative. She’s also the author of a book we’re gonna talk about today. Start More Than You Can Finish a Creative Permission slip to Unleash your Best Ideas. So Becky, welcome to the

Becky Blades (01:28):
Show. Thanks. Glad to be here.

John Jantsch (01:30):
I have to warn you that when my wife saw this book come through the door and saw the title, she said, You’re not allowed to read that book because nobody needs to give you permission to start more than you finish. So I have to tell you that, you know, have one person out there that thinks this is a terrible title to a book stuff sure that because it is sort of counterintuitive, right? I’m sure you’re getting some similar pushback from people.

Becky Blades (01:54):
Exactly. But you know, are my people, John and my people get it. And it’s also tongue in cheek. In my first book was the title, Do Your Laundry or You’ll Die Alone. And sometimes I ask people why they bought it and they say just the title and they, they hated it, but they wanna know what it was about. So no, I mean the bottom line is when our parents said all those things to us, don’t bite off more than you can chew. It’s not what you start, it’s what you finish. They were likely trying to prevent us from making a mess, getting out the paint or starting a Legos project before dinner. And they did not accomplish getting us to finish more. They just got us to start less. So the beginning there, I’m not saying don’t finish, never anywhere do I say don’t finish. But the more you start the more you will finish. Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:56):
Again, I don’t wanna push back on this too much, but I know that some pushback you will get from people. I mean, is there a little danger in then us just constantly treading water because we have that mindset of like, Oh, I’m gonna go over here and do this now. Oh, I’m gonna go over and do this now. And Lord knows there’s enough things distracting us as it is

Becky Blades (03:15):
That, That’s a valid question, . I think when we know treat starting as a skill and a strength, which I think it is, then we will get better at kind of curating our ideas. I mean, you’re an excellent curator of ideas, don’t done, you’ve made a lot of stuff. I’ve only seen your finished stuff, so I’m sure that you have a lot of things that didn’t get finished. But don’t you think they led up to two things. One, you making better calls on the ideas that you do initiate and two, they likely led to richness in new ideas and a courage three, this is three things. a creative courage just to move forward.

John Jantsch (04:00):
Yeah, It also led to me having to added a detached garage to store some things in. But the money line from the book, my favorite line from the book that I wrote down is Take, when we take action, we bump into answers. And I think that probably in some ways is at the heart really of what I think you’re trying to say is that sometimes you’ve just gotta start some things before you realize what’s the right thing,

Becky Blades (04:26):
. Exactly. And does the idea have legs? And I mean, I think in organizations especially where you’re sitting in a meeting and the goal is to make more money and it’s time is money. And so the initial instinct is to shut things down, stay on the road, but we don’t know what we don’t know. And until we know can answer a few questions, we don’t really know what the idea’s made of. And so what we do in organizations and some of us personally is we plan them to death. And we all know, especially in lean organizations, that the finish is never what the plan originally designed. Yeah. It’s hopefully better. So we don’t, do you wanna wait two months to look perfect plan is in place, or is there a way that we can talk to the customer now? Is there a way that we can fashion a prototype now?

John Jantsch (05:27):
Yeah. I love these folks that start out by saying you need to have your 10 year vision to me. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with having a goal of what you want life to look like maybe in 10 years, but boy, how would you have a very clear vision of even next quarter sometimes it feels like.

Becky Blades (05:43):
Right.

John Jantsch (05:45):
I read in your to the term Starer Street, you want to talk a little bit about what you mean by that? How address that, what that implies?

Becky Blades (05:55):
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