Thought Leadership and the Creative Hustle | Sam Seidel & Olatunde Sobomehin | 452

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. So today we're doing something that we typically don't do, which is we've got two authors for the price of one. So we've got some co-authors on today. Sam Seidel is the director of strategy and research at the Sanford D. School K-12 Lab and the author of Hip-Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education. And Alatunde Shobohime is CEO and co-founder of Street Code Academy, a nonprofit that offers free tech classes to communities of color. He's a graduate of Stanford. He's an entrepreneur and an educator who has taught classes at the Stanford Haas Center at the D School. And they both just co-wrote a book together called Creative Hustle, which is published by, um, Stanford D School. So welcome aboard, gents. Let's start here. What was the light bulb that went on and who called who and said, hey dude, I want to write a book? Who's the guilty party?

We have to give credit, I think, to our friend and colleague Scott Dorley and his co-conspirator on the book series from the D School, Charlotte Burgess Auburn, who actually were the ones who made that call. They hit us up. We had taught a course at the D School called Creative Hustle. I think it's fair to say, Tunde, you can correct me if I'm wrong and you had a secret mission that you had never mentioned, but I think it's fair to say that neither of us knew this was a book until the call from Scott. And he said he and Charlotte had been talking about it and they thought there was a book in what we had done with the class. And that was the beginning.

Yeah. And the genesis though, I think a light bulb went off when You know, Sam and I both shared this, equally shared the passion of bringing together minds from our community of East Palo Alto, which is across the freeway from Stanford University and Stanford University, right? Where there's a divide and often a misnomer that those communities are different. We both understand and know there's a lot of similarities, especially when it comes to the ambition and the drive. Um, and so we said, let's do something together. We came— that was a call that we kind of both shared. We had tried several times to make it work. When we got together and said, hey, this is the time we can actually do this. Creative hustle was a word that, that kind of landed on the whiteboard of that session. And we said, let's do a class where we bring them together and figure out unorthodox paths that everybody, whether you're at Stanford or whether you're across the freeway, have to pave, and let's do a class exploring this topic.

So if we go back a little bit, right? So hustle's been out there for a while as a term, right? And typically it's your side hustle or hustle and grind, or I'm old enough to remember do the hustle, but we won't go there. And depending on how far back you go, but how are you defining—

It's too bad this is audio only, or we would've asked you to demonstrate.

That would be the only way I would demonstrate on audio. And I would imagine most of the listeners would need to Google what is The Hustle. And there's a lot of bell bottoms and anyway, whatever. So how are you defining creative hustle?

We're defining it as the combination of imagination and ambition, right? So on the creative side, it's like, how can we think about and envision new paths, new worlds, new lives for ourselves, new ventures for ourselves and our colleagues and communities. And then the hustle component is how do we make those things happen? How do we put the ambitious energy, the entrepreneurial energy behind those creative ideas and move them forward in the world?

Wouldn't— I would argue a bit that most creatives, the hustle comes more naturally to them, right? You don't apply for a job as an artist or this or that or whatever. In order to be successful as a creative, I think there's a level of hustle that's part of the process, right? That's part of the vibe.

I might argue those are the creatives that you hear about because they're the ones who were able to get the work out there, right? I think a lot of us, may have a creative side that we don't give that oxygen. We don't put that engine behind. And we may follow a path that's been a little more set for us, that we're told, oh, there's a career over here. So we may chase after that or pursue that or find ourselves there by default. And there may be creative aspects of our lives, of our work that doesn't get that same fuel in its tank. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that too, Tunde, if you have other thoughts about the notion that creatives are inherently more ambitious or entrepreneurial.

No, for sure. I think, you know, what I think about when I think about creative hustle, and Sam, you spoke to it beautifully, but I like our subline, right? Blaze your own path and make work that matters. I think a lot of times hustle is often talking about with survival, it's talking about money, it's talking about, kind of getting from A to B, but we don't think about A to infinity. What is, what is that? What is that big thing I want to do in the world? The world that makes matter? What, what's my purpose and how do I hustle to make that happen? And so if you think about it in that way, all of us are creatives and we have this amazing, you know, but not abnormal, uh, idea of like, you know, you go in a, you go in a room of, of third graders, you ask who's creative, everybody's hand goes up. You go in a room with 30-year-olds, you ask if you know who's creative. Barely a few hands go up, right? So this, this book is not necessarily for people who identify as creatives. This book is for people who want to make meaning. And then we ask you to identify as a creative, right? We're all creatives in that way. So it's, yeah.

So I, you know, as you were saying that today, I started thinking about sort of Maslow meets the hustle, right? So there's a level, like when you think about Way back, calling someone a hustler wasn't a compliment, right? It was typically synonymous with something shady, pickpocket, whatever. But now, so I think going back to what Tunde said, there's a level of hustle that's like survival hustle. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive. So is creative hustle, if you sort of ran parallel to Maslow, like a higher level of hustle?

That's beautiful. To me, I'm running with that.

That's it.

That's it. That's no, seriously. I mean, we've had a lot of questions about side hustle versus creative hustle, right? And why, why we all recognize side hustles have been a part of our lives, side hustles, you know, continue to be a part of our life and there's no knock on side hustle, but this, you're right. This Maslow hierarchy, right? There is something at the top of that. It's talking about making meaning. And I think the book tries to play in the both and, right? So we try to understand. Hey, creative hustle is that side hustle that allows you to survive in a world that needs you to pay bills. And it's also, how does that connect to this bigger purpose, these bigger life goals, this bigger meaning that you have in your life?

But until you get the baseline survival stuff, you're really limited cognitively in every way else to really get into that creative space. Right? If you're worried about the next meal, you know, is the heat getting turned off or whatever?

And that's why we say right at the beginning of the book, we have a heading that says, this book is, and then in parentheses it says, not about helping you make money or something like that. Because on the one hand, that is not what woke us up every day to work on this book is like, we want this get rich quick scheme for our readers or something like that.

Wait, hold on, timeout. So you don't get rich writing a book? We've never talked about that. So writing a book isn't the path to fame and fortune that everybody thinks it is? Hold on.

I'm sorry, sorry to be the ones to burst your bubble if you've been holding on to that this whole time.

If you want to really get depressed, guys, do the math on how many hours you put in and any form of compensation you've gotten, and it's actually more lucrative to get a job in a clothing factory in Vietnam, you know, when you think about it.

I learned this on my first book, and I learned— well, what I learned was don't do the math. Just that's not, that's not why we're doing it. That's not what we got into it for. But, you know, I think going back to the parentheses, they speak to the reality that you were just speaking to, which is, it's a very privileged position that only a very few people get to be in, that you don't have to think about that, that you don't have to think about how you're going to support yourself and your family. So we, we both don't want that to be the be-all end-all. And don't see that that's not really creative hustle. Or what it's about. And at the same time, if that's nowhere in the equation, I think we're letting folks down and we're limiting our audience of who can really engage with and enjoy these lessons to a very small number of people with inherited wealth or who have earned a lot already through some other venture. And that's definitely not who we set out. Not that those folks shouldn't find value in the book, but we wanted to write something that could be useful for folks from any walk of life at any point in their career or their journey. So we have to engage with the fact that there's financial realities that folks are dealing with. So that's why we say it in that way with the parentheses there. It isn't about making money, but we also recognize it has to be a little bit about making money at the same time.

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So, you know, and on that piece, on the financial reality, what if any, I mean, there's lots of reasons people write books, right? Hey, we, you know, the two of us always wanted to write a book together. It's a forcing mechanism to get your thinking tight, to codify. In the case of your book, there's so many people in here interviewing people, developing relationships. Is there a business model for you guys in terms of coming out of the book or what's next or speaking, consulting, advising, some of the typical-ish Stanford D School type things or what's on the horizon?

I think what's fun about Creative Hustle and what's fun about this journey for us as we explore our creative hustle is that We get to start with the big meaning and then we find business models along that way that are really exciting. Right. And so I just wanted a moment to speak directly, humbly to the folks that, you know, are worried about the bills, that are worried about the heat. And I think what I've gathered, right, as I've been in my own relative journey of moments like that, is that we try to highlight a you know, folks in this book and also throughout our work in our life that have made it through that moment. And one of the things that have made it through that moment is their eyes are on this bigger dream. Their eyes are on this bigger meaning. And so it helps you get through. Similarly, surprisingly, people with a lot of money, people with a lot of opportunity, very few take the time to think about what is that big next step. I remember when I first met with you, Peter Winick, when we first got on the line with you and you were helping us think through, well, what are your goals beyond this book? What are we, we don't oftentimes, few of us get a chance to do that. And this book helps you think about that. So Sam and I, we, we're extremely connected, like, right. Um, right. In the sense of we both know that we wanna leave this earth blessing the people around us. And leaving a mark for the next generation to be better. Right now, a book came out of that, a class came out of that. Now we're exploring, are we gonna do docu— are we gonna do mini documentary series? Are we gonna do our own podcast? Are we gonna do another book? Are we gonna do workshops across the world? Right? These are all things where now we can play with business models, but we're grounded by that principle and that north star. And that all is lines up with what we put in the book. So I don't, the short answer is I don't know exactly what the business model is gonna be, but we're having a lot of fun exploring what that is.

Yeah. And then, you know, to me in my work, the creativity is more often or as often in the business model as it is in the development of the thought leadership and the content, because there are some quote, you know, traditional things. You can go be a speaker, you can, you know, uh, be an advisor, be a consultant, but there's so many cool different things that you can do today. With your work that we never had chances for before. You know, everything is global. You can license it. There's nothing in the book that's not a universal concept. It might resonate more in certain cultures than others. So I think there's as much creativity to be applied towards what's our business model or models and what do we want to do and how do we want to do it. Documentary is great. You know, that's like an interesting piece. Typically not the world's greatest, most lucrative business models if you do the math.

You know how to make the money. You, you the master. You're right doing that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Cool.

So let me ask you another thing. So writing a book together, there's sort of this unspoken— call it a bias or whatever— in the publishing world where OGs, co-authors, that's a nightmare, right? Because it's bad enough for a publisher to have to manage one crazy author that's never on time and doesn't meet a deadline. Exponentially worse with two because now there's mood swings and this one doesn't get along with that one, or that one thought this one's doing this one. I don't think you guys have killed each other yet. I don't see—

we would have been—

we would have been about— what do you learn about each other on the other side?

We would have been the world's, like, most boring reality show, you know? Like, everyone watches these reality shows to see characters fall apart and fight each other. Like, we, we really have never had— have had that energy or that moment, and I guess a couple of things I can say on that front. I love the question. Thank you for asking about it. It's been the biggest gift of this book personally has been the relationship with Tunde and just the brotherhood that we've developed and the ways that we've become part of each other's lives and communities and families. So first of all, it's been the biggest gift of the process for me. One thing I'll say is I wrote a book, as you mentioned, 11 years ago now by myself. It was a painful experience. It was a lonely experience. It was a beautiful experience. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about writing. I learned a lot about a lot of things. But getting to co-author, I don't know that I ever want to go back. And in fact, this is— Creative Hustle is one of, I think, 4 books I've been working on over these last couple of years, all of which are co-authored and all of which so far have been great experiences. So I recommend it. And I say to all the publishers, listening, don't be so scared of it. It's a great thing. And I think it pushed me to be better and better in terms of how I showed up to this process because I didn't want to disappoint Toonday. And it was just fun. I just looked forward to it. The one other like kind of pro tip from what we did that I'll share is we started every session, every writing session together, every work session by setting intentions and by verbally speaking out what our intentions were in that moment, in that next 2 hours we had, or whatever the time period was. And more broadly, like, what are we trying to do here? And verbalizing that. And that was an extremely— I think we would have been great even without that. I think we would have gotten along great. I think we would have come out with a product we are proud of. But man, was that a powerful activity. And we've actually done that with our classes and some workshops we've run. Like, we try to always build in that time meetings with our teams around this work. We've tried to carry that forward because it was such a powerful part of the way that we work together.

Very cool. How would you respond to that, Tunde? Did you get as much joy as Sam did?

I would say this. You know, if you could see my screen right now, you would see a copy of Hip Hop Genius behind me. Hip Hop Genius is a phenomenal book, right? So that's number one. He got four books coming out. So you got four co-authors. Everything's great, rosy, and those books are going to be phenomenal. The common denominator is my brother Sam Sydell. We got a great collaborator. And so for any publishers out there, if Sam Sydell is involved, you're not going to have that drama. You have some good writing, you know, and you're going to have some good chemistry. So I can't— I mean, I would just double-click on everything he said. Everything he said has been mutual.

Very cool. Thank you. So as we start to, uh, wrap up here, what would be the thoughts that you would share with either someone in situations like you two, or even things specifically? What would you tell yourselves 2 years ago that you don't know now, being on the other side of getting the book out there and looking at other things and all that? I would say to the younger you, but 2 years ago you weren't all that much younger. The early COVID you, whatever.

Yeah, I would say two things. The first is, you know, I didn't really realize how much the book was going to be read, you know, and that shows, you know, that shows up. Had I known that, I think every single word, every single opportunity to sort of grind out the true essence of the material, I would've just cherished that, that much more, right? We wanted to put together a good book. We wanted to put together, but I didn't, I didn't know people were actually going to have it in hand, actually read it. I never would've guessed I would be on a podcast with, with someone, um, like you. And so those things I would've, I wish I would've known. And the second thing is I really wish we would've dug into, you know, the business model, the things, again, another salute to kind of time with you cuz we would've thought, I think we would've thought about, we're playing catch up now. It's out there and now we're trying to get ahead of, you know, what momentum. And again, it comes from an expectation of not really knowing what was gonna happen. And this book, frankly, for me, has surpassed expectation in terms of how much it's been received.

I love all that. I might add a couple thoughts, one being Enjoy. Just really make sure to enjoy along the way and to kind of document that enjoyment. Like, I just created a folder, both one in my email and one in my photos, actually on my phone to just start. People have been sending such beautiful messages and pictures of their kids with the book and videos of just these really great things. And I don't think I've taken them for granted, but they go by fast with all this digital technology. It's like you get a text, but you're in the middle of a meeting. You look at it, you heart it. You know, these are beautiful. I mean, this is so gratifying and like soul-feeding. So don't, you know, build the systems early to kind of like receive what folks are giving. And the other, and maybe this is more tactical or something, but we did a lot of interviews that didn't make it into the book. We talked to a bunch of people we really admired. I think there's ways that we could have been more methodical about sort of like each of those pieces belongs somewhere. It can be an article later. It can be, you know, Tunde mentioned to us, you know, doing a podcast. Well, it still can be. I choose the—

more stuff still has opportunity.

Absolutely no question. My only thing would be like plan for that, right? Because as Tunde said, we're kind of playing catch up. So now we might, we would go back to our Google Docs and say like, okay, like, let's look at all those interviews again. But we weren't necessarily like laying the blueprint for that upfront. It was more like focus on getting the book done, which is a very natural thing to do when you're busy and you're trying to get the book out and you have deadlines.

Those are important to think about in advance. Well, this has been great, guys. Appreciate the conversation. Appreciate the book.

Yeah.

The time we spent together. And thank you guys. Good luck with everything. Thanks so much.

Peter, thank you.

Thank you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.