Emmy Winner Bill Stainton CSP CPAE: my next guest on Espresso w the Experts on boosting Innovation

Oh look, there's Bill. He's on the screen. But no, it's supposed to be me. I'm Randy Dean, the email sanity expert. Let me move myself here to balance myself with Bill. Uh, it's time for another Espresso with the Experts. So let's, let's, let's get off the, uh, sharing and bring Bill in live. There he is. Hi there. How you doing?

I'm doing good, Randy. How about you?

Doing well. Now you're out in Seattle, correct?

I'm in Seattle. Yeah. How about you?

Yeah.

Coast, right?

East Lansing, Michigan. So I'm a little bit toward the middle, but still on Eastern time zone. Yeah. We call it the North Coast up here. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right.

My friends in Ohio call it the roller coast.

I'm firmly planted in the Pacific Northwest.

Yeah. I love it out there. Actually, my daughter was looking at a school up near Portland, uh, but ended up going to UC Denver.

So, oh, okay.

Oh, poor kid. Poor kid.

Yeah, the wrong choice. But, you know, so, you know, she actually— we all, we all hit road bumps and, you know, this is, this is one of hers.

Yeah, I, I love it.

I blame the parents. It's just, it's poor parenting really is what it is.

Yeah, exactly. We actually have done several vacations out your way and we have a couple friends that live up that way. I actually, uh, we hiked Hurricane Ridge across from St. Helens one time.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was, that was interesting. And we also went up to Vancouver Island, visited Victoria, and went to the Butchart Gardens.

Oh, Butchart Gardens!

Yeah, yeah. Oh wow, that was beautiful. Late May, so everything was starting to open up, but it wasn't all the way opened up yet. Yeah, you know, I would love to see it in June. I bet you it's just unbelievable.

It's pretty spectacular.

Yeah, so this has nothing to do with what we're talking about though.

Nothing whatsoever. Yeah, hopefully we can find a way to tie it in.

But yeah, hopefully people will make a visit up that way at some point. All right, you know the drill. I told you, it's coffee cup. Notice this one. I—

is that a Game of Thrones?

I honestly attest I am up to no good. No, that's Marauder's Map.

Oh, oh, oh, it is the Marauder's Map. I'm sorry, I'm getting reflection. Yeah, Harry Potter. There we go.

There we go. Uh, right, Prongs and Wormtail.

Yeah, right. Very, very cool. I love the Marauders map.

Yeah, isn't that fun? So, so let me see your cup. Tell me the story.

Well, mine is, uh, Almost Live Comedy Central, 1992. First of all, I had to dig up a coffee cup because I'm like the one guy who lives in Seattle who doesn't drink coffee.

Yeah, exactly.

I thought that what I've got in here actually is— yeah, what I've actually got is Diet Pepsi. I quickly poured my Diet Pepsi into the, into the coffee cup.

What's so funny is it's late in the day, so I put my Coke Zero in my cup. Well, yeah, cheers. Yeah, it's not first thing in the morning, right?

You know.

Yeah.

So for 15 years, I was the producer of this here TV show, uh, in Seattle, Almost Live. It was a sketch comedy TV show, and, uh, we were number one in our time slot for 10 years. But got this— you know, all the time we were on the air here in Seattle, you know, never had a cup, uh, didn't get a t-shirt, got nothing. And then all of a sudden Comedy Central came, and we were on Comedy Central for 2 and a half years, and they gave us cups and t-shirts and sweatshirts sweatshirts. I've given away the t-shirts and sweatshirts, but somehow this, this has remained. This is my one bit of proof that yes, in fact, we were on Comedy Central for a short time. 2 and a half years.

2 and a half years isn't that short a time. That's not bad.

Now, and I'll tell you, during those 2 and a half years, we were, we were, um, I forget what time we were on, but Kids in the Hall were on immediately after us for that whole stretch of 2 and a half years. Kids in the Hall. And, um, uh, short towards the end of our run, Kids in the Hall were doing a, a tour of the United States, you know, playing like theaters and things like that. And so they were coming to Seattle, and the promoter, and the promoter thought, oh, this will be cool, we'll get the Almost Live guys to introduce the Kids in the Hall guys, because, you know, hey, it's, you know, that, you know, they're local celebrities and they're on there, they're the lead-in and all kinds of— so, okay, that's good. Yeah, yeah, of course, we'll be happy to do that. Yeah, we're fans of theirs. Yeah, that'll be cool. So we get to the theater, we're downstairs in the green room. Kids in the Hall guys haven't gotten there yet. We thought this is gonna be fun. I mean, because, you know, both sketch comedy and, you know, I mean, we can talk shop and that kind of stuff. And eventually they filter in, didn't have a clue who we were. Not a clue. None of them knew who we were. I thought, we've been your lead-in for the last 2 and a half years. Didn't you ever tune in early? And one, it's like, 2 and a half years, you were never even curious enough to check us out?

Wow. Okay, that's wild. You'd think that they'd want to see the lead-in because the lead-in helps determine their audience.

You would, you know, you would think it was crazy. It was really crushing. I mean, here we had this whole image in our minds, oh, this is gonna be great fun and we're gonna be buddies and all that. It's like, okay, and who are you again? You're— oh, you do, you do a show here in Seattle? Oh nice, that's, that, that's nice. Well, no, we're also on— really? Okay, we're gonna have to check that out. I'm sure they never did.

Now you want some Emmys though, right?

I want a few Emmys. I won 29. I've got— you can see 29.

Just a few. Yeah, just a few.

Just a few. I've got 4 of them back there, um, and I've got a few more downstairs. I've given a few away. And then, oh, about a decade or two ago, uh, we had an earthquake here in Seattle, the Nisqually earthquake. And, um, it wasn't, you know, any great shakes of an earthquake by, you know, international standards, but there was some damage. And, um, I, I lost 10 of my Emmys in the earthquake. Oh wow. They fell over, and it's, it's a really poorly designed statue, you know. The ankle is weak and the wings will break off and that globe will break off. So I literally have a bag of broken Emmys in my garage. I always thought if I ever write my memoirs, that's the title. A Bag of Broken Emmys, the Bill States.

That would actually be an interesting title, you know. Yeah, see, when you have 29, then you can use them for like, you know, uh, holding down like your, um, you know, lawn bags in the yard when you don't want them to fly away.

And that's— that's 29. I do have one in my, um, in my downstairs guest bathroom, and the reason I have one there It's because I figured— see, I figured secretly everybody wants to have the, you know, I'd like to thank the Academy moment.

Their moment.

Yeah, but they're too embarrassed to ask, so I put it in the bathroom. You know, the door closes, it's private, there's a mirror, you know. So, well, yeah, that's awesome. You know, I was looking out for others. I'm a giver, you know.

And another thing you could do is if you wanted to be really fun, you could make that the hood ornament on your car.

That's a good idea. Actually, it's not a good idea, but it's an idea. It's an idea. Not all ideas are good. Maybe, maybe we'll talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, well, actually, what a lead-in! We just hit the lead-in, I think. What a nice segue there into— if you look back, let's go back here. I'm going to go back to screen share for just a second. If you look back at the COVID slide, Leveraging Innovation to Create Competitive Advantage. I pulled that right off your LinkedIn.

And so then it must be accurate.

I looked at that and I said, now that is a pretty cool topic. Can you tell me more? Because you also sent me an email, by the way, that said in part of it, innovation may not be what you think it is.

Yeah, that's, that's correct. Um, yeah, that email was supposed to be private, but you know, what the heck. Um, uh, now I'm— now I'm gonna have to backpedal a whole bunch. I've got to make some phone calls now. Um, I'm in big trouble. Uh, no, it is— I mean, innovation is your competitive advantage. It is the competitive advantage. Um, and I'll tell you why, especially during times of uncertainty, in case we're ever in times of uncertainty.

Yeah, yeah, it's been smooth sailing the last few years.

Pretty, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty smooth, like glassy waters. That's exactly right. But, you know, do you know who I envied back in high school, Randy? It wasn't, it wasn't the, you know, the quarterback of the football team. I didn't envy him. I did envy him, actually. But the person I envied the most was the custodian, the high school custodian, the janitor. And I can tell what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, wow, Bill, you know, aim higher. Um, but I'll tell you why and see if this resonates with you at all, because it's because the custodian had the master key that can open any door in the school. And I just thought, that's, that's so cool to have a master key that can unlock anything. And so, um, so in thinking through what we've all been going through, you know, these times of uncertain certainty, let's call it, um, yeah, just a But whatever, you know, we don't know what's coming down the pike. We don't know what next year is going to look like. We don't know what the next 5 years are going to look like. We barely know what next month is going to look like. But is there some kind of— is there a master key that can unlock any challenge no matter what comes our way? Is there a master key? Is there like— is there like a master skill that can— that can get us through? And yeah, it's— it's the ability to innovate. On demand, the ability to innovate, because that means, that means no matter what happens, you know, that you can think your way out of it. You know, that you can innovate your way through it. And research shows time and again that in times of crisis, the organizations, the companies, the associations, whatever, that, that innovate come out better. And that, that advantage sticks, you know, stays with them long after the quote-unquote crisis is over, right?

So yeah, yeah, well, I was just going to say, you know, when I think of the companies that have thrived through the last few years, you know, the ones that come to mind are, you know, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, uh, you know, Zoom. Yeah, interesting. Zoom has been a really interesting one to watch because I was reading the other day that, uh, I can't remember, one of the big investment houses says time to buy your Zoom again because it went way up because the pandemic— then it's come back down because they thought the pandemic was ending. But now what they were saying is, yeah, but here's the thing, that, that works well and we're not going to go back to what we had before, it's going to be different.

Of course. And think about this, Zoom had to innovate really fast because Zoom was never meant to be all this, right? They didn't design it for this. I read an interview with the guy who founded Zoom. He says, this is just supposed to be like, you know, little, you know, interdepartmental meetings and things like that. And then all of a sudden the pandemic hit and we went from something like, you know, 6,000 subscribers to 60 billion subscribers. My numbers might be off a little bit, but still, and they had to innovate. I mean, some people think, well, you have to innovate because there's a challenge or a crisis or a problem. Sometimes it's this huge opportunity. Yeah. And Zoom could have easily just, you know, crashed and folded and said, like, we can't handle this. You know, we're not up for it. You know, I mean, remember how Zoom is now the verb. Remember how Skype used to be the verb? Yeah. I mean, whoever's running Skype must be going like, what? Why? What are you saying?

Isn't Skype owned by Microsoft?

I think they are, but yeah, but, but they were already established.

Yeah. And they, they missed it somehow.

And they miss it because Zoom was able to innovate their way. Zoom saw the opportunity, or the opportunity was presented to them, and it took loads of innovation for them to be able to do what they're, you know, what they're doing now.

Yeah, although coming back to Microsoft for a second, you know, they put their eggs in the Teams basket and Teams has done pretty darn well too.

Teams has done well. Yeah.

Yeah. I think Zoom might be a little easier to use, but Teams has a lot of capabilities within it that even go beyond what some of the Zoom stuff is.

That's true. So yeah, very, very true. But still it is that, that, that skill of being able to innovate and I emphasize skill. Because that's the mistake so many people make. They think that innovation is a gift, right? You know, it's the lightning bolt that comes down and it only strikes the gifted few, you know, the like the Steve Jobs and the Elon Musks and people like that, you know, you know, the guys who build the rockets, you know, right? That kind of thing. And that anything less than that doesn't count, that you're not really an innovator. And that's— that absolutely is not true. Everybody has the ability to, to learn the skill of innovation. It is, it's a skill. It's a, you do these things in this order and you're going to come up with innovative ideas.

You know, it made me think, I don't know if you remember several years ago, um, Arkansas Razorbacks basketball, they had the good runs in the NCAA tournament and they, uh, the one year I think they made it to the final, might have even won the championship. And they were talking to the coach at the time And, um, you know, they had like several squeakers in a row. They were just barely winning, but they kept winning. And, and he, and he, you know, the person goes, what do you think about all these close call games that you've had? And he goes, you got to be dang good to be this lucky. And, and, and, and it makes me think about what you're saying. There's an art. It's not— there's an art and a science to innovation is what you're saying. You mentioned steps. Tell me some of the steps. What are the steps to becoming a consistently good innovator?

Well, the first thing is to realize that it's not the lightning bolt. I mean, trust me, as I told you, for 15 years, I produced this comedy TV show. Our job for 15 years, every single week, was to be innovative, whether we felt like it or not. You know, because we're gonna have a show this week. Yeah, we have to invent something. You know, it's a brand. So it's like, It was basically a smaller version of Saturday Night Live. You know, we're inventing a new show every single week. So we have to be innovative. And let me tell you something, when your paycheck depends on you being innovative, you can't afford to wait for a lightning bolt. Unfortunately, that's not how innovation works. Innovation is not about a lightning bolt. Innovation is all about connecting dots, seeing two or more things that don't normally belong together and finding a connection, which by the way, is also what comedy is all about too. Yeah, you make that connection. In comedy, we call it the punchline. In innovation, we call it the iPhone, you know, the big idea. It's about connecting dots, and we all have the ability to connect dots. Now, what are the dots? Well, they're experiences, ideas, people. Every conversation we have, every, every place we visit. I see, you know, obviously you've got a lot of maps in your background there, so clearly you're a traveler, or at least a wannabe traveler. And every place you go, that's another dot. Every podcast you listen to, uh, every news show you watch, every conversation you have, every article you read— those are dots. You collect those dots, and all of a sudden you start collecting enough of those, and you'll start to find connections. It'll be like, you know, you'll have this— oh, this reminds me of this experience. But here's the thing. If you're collecting all the same dots that your competition is collecting, uh, I call it like if you take a sheet of dots— I don't have them right here, uh, but like, you know, like Avery has these sheets of like, you know, adhesive dots. You can see—

oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the different colors and everything.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

If they're all, if they're all, if they're all 3/4-inch navy blue dots, okay, that's good. You've got a bunch of dots there, which means you make a lot of connections. But the problem is, if they're all 3/4-inch navy blue, then all your connections are going to be 3/4-inch navy blue. And the problem is, let's say if you are a, um, if you're an insurance salesperson, chances are your competition, your other insurance salespeople, are collecting those same navy blue, 3/4-inch navy blue dots. So what you need to do is collect the different color dots, because, you know, you take a You connect a blue dot with a blue dot, you get a blue idea. You connect a yellow dot with a blue dot, you get a green idea. That's when all of a sudden things start to happen. So you've got to be open for those yellow dots. You got to have to have those conversations with people that you wouldn't normally have a conversation with. You've got to listen to some music that you wouldn't normally listen to. You've got to read an article that you wouldn't normally read. And while you're reading it, while you're listening, while you're having those conversations, start thinking about how can I apply this to my situation?

Ah, that's interesting. Now I'm hearing a couple things here. One, sounds to me like in order for you to be successful, diversity matters. And we're not just talking like, you know, skin color or gender.

No, that's a part of it too.

It is part of it, but it's also background and culture and education and life experience. And all of that, if you get a mix, mixed mess of that, so to speak, right, right, right. You're gonna, it's a fertile ground for better. Innovation right there, correct?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Let me think about this. Um, you told me before we went on that your daughter almost went to college near Portland, Oregon, and then made a fatal mistake and didn't. Um, there's a college— I don't know what college she was looking at, but there's a college down there called Reed College. Um, fantastic school, a lot of, a lot of, uh, their graduates going to get their PhDs. Well, there was a guy who taught there, a guy named Robert Palladino. He was a Trappist monk. Uh, he taught a course in calligraphy. Okay, that's a weird, you know, course, but one of the guys who happened to take his course was a guy named Steve Jobs.

Oh wow.

Well, now Steve Jobs had other interests as well. He dabbled in computers with a friend of his named Steve Wozniak. When they decided to build their own computer, Steve Jobs, remembering that yellow dot, that course in calligraphy— okay, think of this. Steve Jobs is a computer guy. You and I both know a lot of computer guys, especially back then, that's all they focused on. That's, you know, they only took computer classes. They only read computer magazines. They only talked to computer people about computer stuff, right? Calligraphy? Nah! But Steve Jobs had that yellow dot in his collection so he could draw upon that. So when he and Steve Wozniak decided to build their own computer, Steve Jobs said, hey, what if we do a computer that could do calligraphy? And they invented the Macintosh, which led to Apple Computer, which became the world's first trillion-dollar company. You never know! You You never know which dot it is that's going to lead to the breakthrough. That's the point here. Well, that calligraphy class might not have meant anything. It might have just been a fun thing he did at some point, but all of a sudden the opportunity came up and he made that connection. That's where the innovation comes from. But had he not taken that course, had he not collected that yellow dot, that dot would not have been available to him. So it behooves us all to have, as you say, a diverse range of friends, of interests, of learning, of knowledge because you never know, all of a sudden your brain becomes this big matrix and this connects with that in a way. And if you've got— if you've collected dots that the competition hasn't collected, that means you can make connections that the competition can't make.

Right! And so—

that's why it's your competitive advantage.

Well, and— but I would also think that it's only going to work if you have people that are empowered to step outside their comfort zone and it's a safe place for them to do just that.

You know, a safe place for them to take risks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they have to be comfortable getting out of their comfort zone, so to speak.

They do. And if you're a leader, you've got— you have to create that context. Yeah, because it's not a natural place to be, especially in, in the workplace. I mean, everybody gives lip service to like, oh, we want you to take risks. Then you take a risk and you get slapped down for it.

Right!

Right! That's not a safe, you know, I mean, we learn real fast, oh, it's not a good place to take a risk. Right! So, and there are ways to kind of modulate the risk. That's not the word I'm looking for. I don't know what word I'm looking for but, you know, there are ways to kind of whatever, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. Not, not so much minimize it, but control the risk and how much risk you're willing to take.

Yeah.

As, as a leader, because you don't necessarily want to bet the farm on every idea because not every idea is going to work out.

Yeah. Well, it's really interesting you brought up Steve Jobs because I read a quote from him the other day and he said, you know, uh, it was something about you got to sort through all the really good ideas to find the great ones. And then your success is going to be based on what you say no to also.

Yeah. And that's, that's a real skill set of realizing what ideas— yeah, which ideas to say no to. Because when it comes to innovation and creativity, quality is a function of quantity. You come up with 100 ideas so you can come up with the one that's good, or 1,000 ideas. So you can come up with the one that's good. Here's what I would, I would suggest for any team that's, that's trying to come up with ideas. Come up with a lot of them because most people like, let's say they have either a challenge or an opportunity and think, okay, we need a solution to this. And they'll sit down around a table or whatever, either, you know, in really, really, or metaphorically, or on Zoom or something. And they'll work, work, work until they finally come up with a solution. And then they stop. Like, the first one is going to be the best?

What—

I mean, what are the odds of that?

Yeah, yeah.

There's a, there's a book called A Whack on the Side of the Head. It's been out for a million years, uh, by, I think, Roger van Ock or something like that, about creativity. He says go for the second right answer. I said, the heck with the second right answer. Go for the 20th. Go for the— what— when I, when I do workshops and masterminds on this, I— there's an activity I do where people have to, you know, I give them like 7 minutes or so to come up with as many ideas as they can for whatever parameter I've thrown at them. And what happened— and I divide them like teams of 5 to do this. And what I do is I listen, because when it starts off, you can hear the buzzing in the room. You can hear the talk and the chatter and the laughter, and it gets loud and it builds a little bit. And right around the 4 to 5 minute mark, there's this lull, like, because they've, they've, they've come up with all the ideas. And I just sit there and then it starts to pick up again. And then after we're done, one of the debriefs I say is, how many of you experienced that? And most of them say yes. It doesn't happen all the time, but so, okay. So how many of you came up with ideas after the lull? Yeah. Did any of you come up with ideas that you think actually might be among the best? And there's no right or wrong answer, but usually there's at least a few hands. I say, there's your competitive advantage. Well, first of all, now you know what the innovative, what the creative process feels like, what the innovative process feels like. It's work, but you know what it's like. And also, your competition will stop at the lull because the lull is when you think, okay, I've exhausted it there. I've got no more ideas. Okay, keep, keep doing it. So like, if even if you're sitting down by yourself, even if your team is just you and your philodendron, you know, you sit down to solve a problem, you're trying to come up with creative ideas or something, give yourself a number. Like, read an article, some unrelated article, and say, I'm gonna find 10 ways that this article relates to my particular situation. Even if it, you know, there might be none in here, you know, this might, again, it might be an article about, uh, about calligraphy and you're, you're with computers, you know, but give yourself that number because otherwise you'll just like, uh, okay, I'm done. That's not how it works. When it's done, you think, oh, but I only have 7 here and I promised myself I'd come up with 10. Okay. So you force yourself to, because your brain will do the work if you force it to, if you ask it the right question. And then make it work. And most of us don't do that because we get lazy or we don't realize, we think, well, it's a lightning bolt, it's just not striking.

Yeah.

That's not— that's a convenient excuse, but that's not how it works.

Yeah. So there's work, there's process, there is procedure that can allow you to make innovation happen much more frequently with much higher output potentially.

Yeah, and it gets easier the more you do it. The more your brain starts to realize, oh, we're doing connections, are we? Okay, we're— because most of us don't make connections in real life because we don't have to. Back when I was writing comedy, working on the show, I was also— I also wrote monologue jokes for The Tonight Show. This is back when Jay Leno was doing The Tonight Show. And this— I would actually fax him jokes every morning. That's how long ago this was. But I would fax him at least 20 jokes every morning. And when I first started doing it, it would take me like an hour maybe to write those 20 jokes. By the time I finished, I mean, you know, after, you know, a few weeks of doing that, and I was good at writing jokes because I've been doing it anyhow, but it got to the point where I could write 20 jokes just about in about 20 minutes or 25 minutes. I would read the newspaper, physical news, and as I'm reading, I'm writing the jokes because your brain just knows, okay, well, this is this, and you write the jokes and you fax it. So basically, I could write 20 jokes pretty much in real time. And by and large, they were better than the ones that took me longer. Again, just because I was practicing it.

Yeah, yeah, we all get aware of that.

Like, you know, do you have to— like, when you're driving a car, do you have to think about where the brake pedal is anymore?

No. That's funny you bring that up. My youngest just got her, uh, permit.

Oh, should I offer congratulations or condolences?

Exactly. Uh, and, um, Yeah, you know, so she's still doing the foot on brake, you know, that whole, you know, steer, you know, and, and you don't realize— yeah, you know, and I— and she was like getting a little like, I'm really bad at this, and I said, you'll get better. Yeah, I mean, I can see you can walk.

Yeah, well done there.

You didn't give up on that, so don't give up on this, you know.

Yeah, right, right, exactly. It does get easier. It is, it is not You know, I talk about the lightning bolt that comes down, strikes the gifted few. We are all the gifted few, all of us. And that's just a mindset thing. You just have to realize that, that we are— look, we all have this ability and we don't, you know, we shouldn't have this mindset of, well, I'm just not creative, you know. In fact, we have a creative services department, ask them, because I'm not an idea person. I don't have a good imagination. It's like, stop that. What's What's wrong with you? Yeah, yeah, of course you are. You have the ability. We all have the ability, and it's also valuable. I mean, my, my definition of innovation is turning creativity into money.

Yeah, yeah, I noticed that that was your other tagline.

Yeah, yeah, creativity is coming up with the ideas. That's the fun part, and that's easy. But then, okay, as you talked about, like, how do you weed out what's the— what out of all these ideas. Now I've got 100 ideas. What are the 1 or 2 that I should pursue that are going to lead to money? And money could be anything of value, like, right, you know, saving time, making money, whatever. It doesn't have to be that, you know, money, money, but it certainly can be money, money.

Yeah, this is fantastic. Now you mentioned you do workshops and stuff. Can you tell me a little bit more about the kinds of things that you're doing for your client groups. What kind of groups are you normally doing work with? Is it mostly corporate or are you doing like governmental, educational? What are you working with?

When I'm doing workshops and masterminds and things like that, it's mostly corporate. I also do keynotes. I mean, keynotes is probably what I do primarily. And now that we're— I don't know when people are watching this, but we're kind of coming back to where in-person is coming back a little bit. So I'm getting on airplanes more and doing keynotes and those can be associations, those can be, you know, big corporate groups anywhere from, you know, several hundred people to several thousand people.

Yeah!

But then if they want to go deep and I do a lot of this work with teams within corporations or if it's a small corporation, the startup that's like got some juice going for it, they want to make sure they keep that juice going, you know, one of the things I found that like startups who have achieved some like initial success, they tend— a lot of them have this in the back of their mind, like, you know, their fears that maybe they're going to be a one-hit wonder. Like, you know, they had a great idea and they made some money, but now what? Well, you can keep it going again. So it's, it's so— and so I'll do anything from, um, uh, popping in for 20, 30 minutes on on a Zoom, if they have like their weekly team meeting, a lot of people bring me in to pop in for like, you know, a 20 or 30-minute innovation shot in the arm, you know, and innovation, you know, like, like I call it like a little innovation jam session where I'll give them like 1 or 2 techniques, let them work on a little bit, make them feel good, like, oh wow, okay, yeah, we actually can do, okay, we know how to do this. Well, that at least gives them the experience. And it can go anywhere from that to a half-day workshop to a 90-day intensive.

And I would assume that you've probably done quite a bit of like guided brainstorming and stuff then too, I would imagine.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there are techniques about brainstorming. I'm sure you've read some of this stuff, Randy, when people say, well, brainstorming doesn't work, which is Yes and no. Traditional brainstorming doesn't work, like everybody sitting around a table and tossing out ideas doesn't tend to work. And there are a number— we don't have time to go into that, I don't think, now, but there are a number of reasons why that doesn't work. That doesn't mean that brainstorming itself is a bad idea. There are just better ways to do it than most people realize. And so when I can sit down with a team, either virtually, because we've had to learn how to do everything virtually, Uh, and, and this absolutely does work virtually or in person. If I can sit down with a team for, you know, an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, and we can actually put some of this stuff to work, it's, it's amazing what people who don't think they're creative will come up with. It's absolutely amazing. And it all starts with just asking different questions. It's, it's, it's not that difficult. It's hard work at first because again, our brains aren't used to doing that. It's like when you first start you know, lifting, you know, curling dumbbells, you know, you can only do like 15, 20 pounds. Okay, but eventually you can do more reps and more weight because, you know, you've developed this, this muscle.

Yeah. And again, so, so you're helping them develop their innovation muscle.

I'm helping them develop the innovation muscle. And it's such a— I mean, you know this feeling when all of a sudden you see people, you see the, the light bulb, the light bulb.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can do this. 'Oh, so this is what it is.' See, that's the whole thing. They just, they just don't know what it is. They think, they think it's magic, that, you know, they think it's— the innovation is magic. Like, it's like what, you know, the, the movie Amadeus. It's like, 'Oh my gosh, it's a gift from God,' and, you know, we don't have— and all of a sudden they're like, 'Oh, oh, this is what it is. Well, I can do that.' Yeah, that's just like, 'Yes, yes, yes, my work here is done.' Yeah.

And see, it's so funny. I think you just hit all of us that I think do the whole you know, professional speaker, onstage workshop leader thing. That's the moment we're always looking for. We want to see that person or that group go, oh! And when you, when you hit that, you know, you just— yeah, I just hit the home run right there. There.

Absolutely. It's the greatest feeling in the world. It's the greatest film when you see them. It's— I mean, I don't, I don't have kids, but it must be like when your kid first, you know, when your infant first realizes that, oh my goodness, this is my hand and I can control it, or I, or I can walk, or I can 'Oh, that's me in the mirror. Oh, you know, those—

what do you just— I can drive my parents crazy.' Hey, yeah, that's right.

But it is, it's just, it's, it's the greatest. You know, people think that we live for the standing ovation. Look, standing ovations are nice and they're ego builders. Yeah. But the real— I mean, the, the real high is that moment that you just described. Yeah. When you see them like Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the fun. I think that's a perfect place for us to cut this thing off. We could talk all day. Uh, let me go back into my screen sharing here real quick, uh, because what we're gonna do is I'm gonna give you a little bit of Bill's contact information here. Um, so, uh, there's his email, there's his LinkedIn. Uh, we were talking, it's sort of funny, uh, As we were filming this, I was showing him that there was a minor issue with the website. Soon as you got that fixed, we will put the website link in the comments, okay? So we'll get the website link in the comments. And Bill, if there's anything like any little, I don't know, like PDF or anything like that that you might wanna share with the viewers, send it to me and I'll also add that.

You know what? I do have one which gives, I believe it's like 5, 5 techniques if you need an idea right away.

Excellent.

That sounds great. Opportunity or challenge. Uh, yeah, yeah, I've got, I've got a cheat sheet on that. It's actually like about a 7-page cheat sheet. Um, I'll, I'll get that to you, Randy.

Yeah, if you can get that to me, I'll make sure that we can get it linked so that the viewers can get a hold of that.

And, um, this is on my website, so I have to get the website fixed first.

Yeah, get the, get the, get the website thing fixed. Uh, right. I'm hoping it wasn't my browser that was the problem, but I don't think it was, but I'll, I'll figure it out one way or another. That sounds good. And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and cut off this episode. But thanks for being a wonderful guest. And, uh, you know, uh, definitely looking forward to running into you on the road again at some point. We actually met, was it 3 or 4 years ago? And we were speaking at that, I think it was a speaker showcase, if I'm not mistaken.

But it was a speaker show. Was that for Midwest or was it Midwest?

Yeah, I think it was out in Iowa. Is that right? Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and ever since then I've been following Bill's work and I think he's just a wonderful resource for many of you. So if you're looking to step up that innovation muscle and start building it better, even with people that think maybe they're not that innovative, I think I got a resource for you right here. So, and with that, I'm going to say thank you for your time. We'll close this thing off. I am once again, I'm Randall F. Dean. F. Dean, the Email Sanity Guy. You can learn more about me on my website, randalldean.com. If you're liking these videos, please give it a like, please subscribe, and please add comments. I would love to start seeing some more comments on this. Uh, obviously I'll also be putting these out on my social nets like LinkedIn and my business Facebook page. And if you want to get my PDF tip sheets on how to be more productive with your time, email, and related technology, send me an email, randaldean.com. Just put YouTube PDF in the subject line, and I'll give you a lot of stuff to maybe make you more innovative with your email.

I see what you did there.

You see, see what I did there?

Yeah, so I saw what you did there.