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Tina Roth Eisenberg: Creative Mornings founder on building communities that run on trust
00:37:49
Tina Roth Eisenberg shares what she’s learned about building communities that scale on trust rather than control, why she measures success in “return on friendship,” and how playful side projects increase “the surface area for luck to find you.” We also talk about commitment as a creative practice, raising creative kids, and why she believes the future isn’t lonely—it’s hyperlocal.
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- [00:02]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Creativity is a discipline in optimism because in order to move through life you have to believe there's a better way. In order to believe there's a better way, you have to be optimistic. Then you can be creative. If you are coming from a place of I believe there's a better way, then you can really tune into what are my ideas to improve it.
- [00:22]
Aaron Walter
When Tina Roth Eisenberg moved to New York From Switzerland in 1999, she was a young designer and she kept asking herself the same question, where are my people? Eighteen years ago, she answered it by starting Creative Mornings. It's a free breakfast lecture series that has since grown into what she describes as the world's largest face to face creative community in 252 cities, 70 countries and more than 1,000 volunteers, gathering with around 25,000 people every month. Or as she puts it, it's church for creativity. But Creative Mornings is just one thread in Tina's story. She's also the voice behind Swiss Miss, the beloved design blog she's kept up for 21 years. Now she's the founder of Friends Work Here, a creative co working community in Brooklyn, and the creator of Tatly, the designer temporary tattoo company that started as a joke but turned into a business.
- [01:20]
Eli Woolery
In our conversation, Tina shares what she's learned about building communities that scale on trust rather than control, why she measures success in terms of return on friendship, and how playful side projects increase the surface area for luck to find you. We also talk about commitment as a creative practice, raising creative kids, and why she believes the future isn't lonely. It's hyper local. This is Design Better, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. I'm Eli Wooler.
- [01:48]
Aaron Walter
And I'm Aaron Walter. At DesignBetter, our primary mission is to produce work that helps people like you refine your craft, improve your collaboration skills, and get inspired by the creative process of others. If you enjoy what we do here, the best way to support us is to become a Premium subscriber@designbetterpodcast.com subscribe. We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.
- [02:25]
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- [02:55]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
good, so good, so good.
- [02:57]
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- [03:25]
Aaron Walter
And now back to the show. Tina Roth Eisenberg, I am so delighted to have you here on Design Better.
- [03:35]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
- [03:38]
Aaron Walter
So we've known each other for a long time because you founded Creative Mornings, among many other things. And for listeners who may not be familiar with Creative Mornings, how might you describe it?
- [03:50]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Our tagline is that Creative Mornings is the world's largest face to face creative community. And then oftentimes people look at me, what does that mean? And then I oftentimes say, just imagine it's like church for Creativity. We meet once a month for a talk and a breakfast. It's deeply communal. And then people go, oh yeah, I get that.
- [04:10]
Aaron Walter
So Creative Mornings give us a sense for the scale. So now that we know what it is, it is massive. It's around the world.
- [04:17]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Yes. I started Creative Mornings 18 years ago in New York City because I just love creative people. And I wanted to gather creative people under an umbrella of generosity and curiosity. And I never anticipated that it would grow into a global community. We are now in 252 cities in 70 countries, which means we have over 1,000 volunteers that gather about 25,000 people a month for free for a breakfast and a lecture.
- [04:46]
Eli Woolery
I have to say, I love the concept and I'm so grateful that we actually have it here in our little community here in Monterey. And not only just having that creative outlet is wonderful, but it actually introduced me to somebody who's now one of my dearest friends. Hey, Robert. He's a fan of the show. He might be listening. And in some places it's easy to find other outlets like this, somewhere like this. But at least here in Monterey, there wasn't something exactly like that. In fact, years ago I had tried to start something that started to get a little momentum, but then I got distracted with other things. But it's just such a powerful way to bring people together. They're like minded, they're curious about creativity, and you can meet wonderful friends out of it, which is just great.
- [05:24]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
When people tell me they made friends at our events, it's literally that's just pouring rocket fuel into my jetpack. In fact, it's the running joke with me and My team that the only thing I measure is ROF return on friendship. And I have to tell you, there was a moment last year when Timothy Goodman spoke here in New York at Parsons and we had 475 people in the audience. It was a big event. And I played this audience engagement thing where I say, stand up if this is your first event. It's like real life data visualization with people. And I said, stand up if you've ever made a friend at a Creative Mornings event. And out of 475, 450 were standing and smiling.
- [06:07]
Aaron Walter
That's incredible.
- [06:08]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
I have to say, I got so emotional because if I look back at the origin story of why I started Creative Mornings, it's really because I moved here as a freshly minted designer in 1999, and I was literally, where are my people? Where can I go to events where people are kind and curious and not necessarily in their own silos of their profession? I never understood why we did that. Like, why are the photographers meeting in their silo and the writers over there? That was a real moment for me. Like 17 years later, standing here was like, actually, you built the thing you wish existed when you moved here to New York.
- [06:43]
Aaron Walter
What have you learned about community? I find this to be such a mysterious thing. I think if we were to talk to most people, especially in the creative spaces, various creative disciplines, they would all be on board with the idea of face to face interaction, feeling, the sense of connection. There's a lot of reclusive creative people, but ultimately they like to have some moments with other creative people, to feel part of that bigger creative spirit. But the notion of creating a community where people will come together and a framework where that can scale and sort of franchise across the globe seems just short of impossible to me. So I'm curious, what is the formula that you've unpacked with Creative Mornings and building sustainable community gathering is how I
- [07:31]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
love creating a space where people feel literally wrapped in a blanket of love and celebrated. And where we create a space where your nervous system can relax a little bit and where we celebrate each other, where there's sort of this undercurrent of loving possibility. When you create an environment like that, and especially in the time we're in, people leave and are sort of remembering that there's another world that is possible. I think I just have a knack. You know, we often solve the thing that we didn't have in our childhood. I was just so determined to create deeply loving spaces, supportive spaces. From the minute I took off and became my own independent human. And if you look at the things I've built, it's not just Creative Mornings. It's also. I started the first creative co working community in New York City. I rebranded it 11 years ago to Friends work here and I still run it. And it's intentionally small. It is basically a physical manifestation of what Creative Mornings is. And again, it's this ethos of when you share space with people that have complementing talents and interests and skills and you have an ethos of kindness and just support, there is absolute magic how your life unfolds in magical ways. These people are also big dreamers. They have big dreams. Like Seth Coden has this beautiful quote that you know who you surround yourself with their dreams, become your dreams and it just all expands. So to me, identity is a communal process. We need community to define ourselves, to build our identity. And if I look back, my coworking space has, through the support of the people that were in it. I have started multiple companies. I wouldn't have been brave enough to do that if I didn't know that these smart humans had my back and cheered me on. And I think it's the same with Creative Mornings. Creative Mornings has created a space where you can be brave. That's what I hear all the time. I am brave in Creative Mornings. I dare to do a 30 second pitch at the venue and guess what? You put yourself out there and this community is so kind and supportive, it will come back and reward you for having been brave through opportunities, through connections, through friendship, through collaboration, whatever it is.
- [09:50]
Eli Woolery
Aaron and I are launching a community for Design Better, which is essentially a Slack based community, which is nothing novel, but one thing that we're I think both curious about and we'd love to do more in person stuff too, and we might have some news about that soon for something in the fall. But how do you think about keeping momentum going When a portion of the interaction, or maybe a large portion is online, you have the advantage of having these monthly cadence of in person. But I imagine between those, especially if it's maybe a new chapter, how do you keep people engaged and give them value in between those moments of in person events?
- [10:26]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
To be honest, we haven't really cracked that because other than some experimental WhatsApp groups like for example, we have one here at New York for our chapter. We haven't really cracked the online space. I think it's hard. It's really hard. But what we do have is we have a virtual side to Creative Mornings as well, where it's like a peer to peer learning engine where you can raise your hand and say, like, hey, I'm good at something. I want to teach a workshop or a class. It's community led. Like everything else at Creative Mornings, it's deeply generous and the ethos of the people that attend is also deeply supportive. So I would say there's that. But I think the more you can lean towards creating spaces in person and you don't necessarily have to always host them yourself. I always said that Creative Mornings has grown at the speed of trust. One of my favorite sentiments is that trust breeds magic. Like, I remember when I ran Creative Mornings here in New York for two years and all of a sudden I got people that knocked on my door and said, I want to bring it to my city. I remember, like I instantly contracted it and I was like, are they going to keep it safe? Are they going to keep it the way I want it to be? Are they going to translate my values? And then I realized what I had to do was sort of create the non negotiables. These are the non negotiables of a Creative Mornings event. And I think you have to write personality to you're in service of the community, you're showing up in a way of serving. And then I would say, take this, let me know what is unclear. These are the things you have to do. But beyond that, please experiment, add your own flavor. And I think that was the key that made it so successful. People felt they were not just executing a formula and they had to stick to it. They could actually be creative and bring themselves into the format. And the cool thing is I always told them, report back to us and guess what? We then shared it with everyone else, with all the other chapters. And now I have implemented a lot of things at my chapter event that I have learned from other chapters. Like we open now with music because of Austin. We have 30 second pitches because of the Toronto chapter. So when you create an ecosystem of let's teach each other, this works for me. What works for you? They take so much ownership of it and in the end of the day, that's it. A community is not a community until itself organizes. In order to self organize, you really need to feel like you have a bit of ownership and you can really bring yourself into it.
- [12:49]
Aaron Walter
In video games, there's these different models. There's something called a closed system and an open system. And it sounds like Creative Mornings is clearly an open system and gets a lot of benefits from that. A closed system would be like super Mario Brothers, where there's a formula of you gotta go this way from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen and you get to the end and then there's an open system like the Sims. I don't know, do people still play that? SimCity, anything like that? I don't play video games for a good reason.
- [13:16]
Eli Woolery
Minecraft would be the.
- [13:17]
Aaron Walter
Yeah, Minecraft, exactly. Or Roblox, where you're like building your own ecosystem and things unfold in unexpected ways. Which is a good segue to. There's an event coming up that I found really interesting, which feels like there must have been some feedback from the creative community to ask for this. Maybe not. Maybe this is something that you came up with or your team did, which is release day. This is May 29th. We're doing this interview on Friday, May 15th. So we've got two weeks. People are hard at work on creative projects and this is a big global community event to whatever you've been working on. It's now or never. Let's get that thing out. Tell us about the backstory of this.
- [14:02]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Release day is probably the biggest campaign we have ever worked on in 18 years of creative Mornings. And basically what it comes down to, it's an invitation to our global creative community to release a project they've been working on on May 29 for the entire global community to see. The idea for release day came to Sam Furness, who's London based, who is I think hands down the most creative unicorn I have ever met. He runs an organization called Creative Quests, where he takes you on quests and really sharpens and fuels your creativity. He's magical. You need to look him up. And I saw him last year very scrappily do a release day. And I followed along and I told my content team here at hq, send him as many eyeballs as you can. This is the best idea because he basically said so many of us have so many projects that are just sitting there or we've not started or we haven't finished, or we didn't dare to share with the world. Because I feel like in the time we're in, there's so much cynicism and so much judgment and all you want is just to celebrate people for leaning into their creativity. And that's what we're doing. So the entire month of May is under the umbrella of Create. Every month has a theme in our universe and we have workshops where you can work together on your project. You can tell each other what's happening. We have an online space with the Dark Forest operating system, which by the way, I would recommend to you if you're starting an online community. It's the NC Strickler's latest project. It's really cool. So, yeah. And on May 29, we're asking the community to what they've worked on on our site creativemornings.com releaseday and it's going to be an explosion of projects. You can already go there and look at the gallery and I am just in awe how we have over 2,000 people who have pledged they will share one of their projects, which to me is just a sign that we really hit a nerve. I feel especially with AI dominating the conversation and a lot of people feeling really disconnected because of we're just stuck in the algorithm. Tapping back into whatever it is that makes your heart happy that is a creative endeavor is literally the invitation and the permission that people want.
- [16:14]
Eli Woolery
I love the spirit of this and it reminds me a little bit of an adjacent thing, which is this nanowrimo, if you've heard of this. National Novel Writing Month in November. Yes, that thing was inspiring to me. I had been working on a book essentially for younger audience, 8 to 12 year olds forever. I started when my daughter was 8 and she's now 15. So that gives a sense of how long it's been going. But it's probably not going to happen this year. But one of these years I want to set time aside November to just finish it because it's been sitting way too long. But just having that little nudge in time and space to like get something out there that you've been working on in my case for years or shorter. Maybe it's something you just came up with. I think it's a really wonderful thing to do.
- [16:49]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
We're hoping to do this on an annual basis. We're Creative Mornings. We're so lucky that we're supported by Adobe. And I remember pitching Adobe because we couldn't do this. Like, everything in the Creative Mornings universe is free. And if we wouldn't have the patron support that we have and Adobe support, we can do it. And when I pitched them this idea, I have never seen eyes pop wide open like this before. And they were like, oh my God, hell yes, let's do this. And it made me so happy that they saw the value of leaning into the pureness of creativity, whatever it is.
- [17:23]
Aaron Walter
We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.
- [17:30]
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Aaron Walter
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Aaron Walter
you're back to the actual work.
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- [20:53]
Aaron Walter
And now back to the show.
- [21:00]
Eli Woolery
Following your journey. It's clear they like to do side projects. I think this Creative Mornings was essentially a side project, maybe at first. And you have another one called Tatli, which are these temporary tattoos, and they end up kind of becoming something more entrepreneurial, maybe not all the time, but talk to us about that, because that's something that I've. In my career, I've done a lot of experimentation, little projects that sometimes turn into bigger things. And it's kind of an interesting way to approach entrepreneurship.
- [21:24]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
I think I have a very low tolerance to complaining. I grew up in Switzerland. There's a lot of complaining. And so when I catch myself complaining about something repeatedly, I literally have to talk to myself and remind myself that I have two options. I can either do something about it or let it go. And then my problem is oftentimes I want to do something about it. And then I start, like, creating a fix my tattly, which unfortunately, RIP is dead now. I sold it and then it was shut down, which is really sad, but here we are. But Tatli was a response to my daughter bringing home tattoos that were an insult to my aesthetic. And as a joke, I launched it. And then instantly people wanted ordering, like, for stores, and I was like, what did I do? So that was a fun thing. And by the way, that was also made possible by mailchimp. I know, Aaron, you were at mailchimp at the time, and that happened. I just think when you start something in a playful way without leaning into it, this needs to be serious, and this needs to pay for my rent. And this is now the big thing. There's such lightness around it, and you have so much fun doing it, and you're just prototyping. And I swear to God that people sense that lightness and the joy you're having doing it. So I always tell people, start something just as a playful side project. Call it an experiment, because it takes all the pressure off. And then when you sense that there's energy and interest coming at it, then just keep going. You don't have to tell anyone. It's no longer an experiment.
- [22:45]
Eli Woolery
You know Luis Mendo by chance, an illustrator? He's based in Japan.
- [22:49]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
No.
- [22:49]
Eli Woolery
You should go check out his work. We had him on the show recently, and a lot of his projects are just starter side projects. He did these sort of fake New Yorker covers during COVID that just took off. Got him a lot of illustration work. And he talks about that. Yeah, it's just a fun thing I did, and it really benefited my career and what I'm doing now.
- [23:06]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
You know what I think it does? It increases the surface area for luck to find you. People love getting in touch or hiring someone who shows initiative, who has ideas, who is able to anchor an idea into the ground. All the things I've done have just opened doors for me. And it started with my blog, and all I did was just posting things I loved and thought were fun.
- [23:31]
Aaron Walter
It is kind of amazing how much you have done and how much has grown. And that starting point is Swiss Mission, which is this design blog for listeners who may not have encountered it. It's been around for 20 years or more.
- [23:44]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
21.
- [23:44]
Aaron Walter
Yeah, 21. And it's been a wonderful resource. It's usually not long, elaborate posts. It's like, these are beautiful things in the world, and I love that. I wonder, what have you gained from the discipline of running Swiss Miss, of always posting?
- [24:01]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Pete Davis gave a beautiful talk at Creative Mornings in April of 2024. He wrote a book called Dedicated. He did research on the happiest people are the people that are committing to a place, a cause, a thing, a community, and that we're all kind of like stuck in the hallway of life and nobody's committing to a room. Like, we're all keeping our options open these days. And once he articulated that, I realized that whenever I committed to something and I committed to my blog, to the practice of looking at the world with curiosity and then keeping an archive and sharing it with the world. Because I realized it was so good for me. It was a good practice for me, and it made so many people happy. I was like, that's a win, win. Why don't I keep doing it? And so many opportunities came my way because of it. You both have also teenagers. I talk about it all the time. What is a thing you're committing to? What is something that lights you up and you can push through even on a day where you don't want to do it? Because all the things that are worthwhile, they take time. Good things take time. And that is a notion I think we have lost. We're A bit in this immediate gratification. I do hope that my children see that. And I mean, I see it in my daughter already. She's a poet, she has a self published book and she's working on her second edition. And to me it's like, oh, she gets it. She is leaning into something. She's committing to her poetry. And I feel like my blog has been the most rewarding thing I've started in my life and has opened countless doors for me.
- [25:31]
Eli Woolery
I love that idea of commitment, something I'm gonna try to reinforce with my daughter because she's wonderfully creative. She'll do these little projects, like when she's a little younger, she created these little refrigerator magnets. Like one was a miniature sardine tin that was open and like a pop tart and you know, just for fun posted it on LinkedIn. I think people are like, oh, where can I buy these? I'm like, that wasn't the intent. And then she'll get on to something else. And I think it's great to do that exploration. But the idea of maybe like, oh, this one has some traction, like keep at it for a while till you figure out, is this something I can do for years. I like that idea of the creative commitment.
- [26:03]
Aaron Walter
I want to push back on this idea. So I am a believer in commitment and it is something that I often, when I start the year, there's usually a note at the front of my journal about discipline, bringing discipline to certain pursuits. And I like the idea of thinking beyond short term goals and trying to create endeavors. Like I am pursuing music. Am I a good musician? No. But it's just a thing that I want to continue to explore. I also think that especially for younger people and sometimes for older people too, there's something to be said for not getting too committed or optimizing too early. So feeling that, well, if I'm going to do this, I've got to do it the right way and I've got to do it every day. And I find that sometimes that's constraining. Like there's a balance to being committed to a thing and also not being constrained by a thing.
- [26:56]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
But I think that just comes down to your level. What do you consider commitment? Right. I am not endorsing like tiger mom behavior. You know, you have to dance with it. There have been days where I was like, I really don't want to pose today. And I maybe skipped it. Right. But in sort of the big arc of my life, I was like, this is something I'm proud Of and I want to contribute to. And obviously it ebbs and flows, but I hear you, especially when you're younger. I would never force my kids to do something they don't want to do. For example, my son. My daughter's thing is poetry, and she's really good at it. It's beautiful, right? She's a magician with language. And then my son is just wildly musical. I am not musical at all. I look at him, and I was like, I don't know what to do with you other than just throw any resources I can at him. But he has found music as his thing, and he's committed to it. And I see that. That's what I mean. Right. Because I see young people that was like, what is your thing? And they got nothing.
- [27:53]
Aaron Walter
Yeah. That breaks my heart. It's the one thing that I've always wanted for my children. Parents, they think, I want you to be successful, I want you to do well in school, et cetera. I just want my kids to find what they're passionate about and latch on. Find that thing that lights you up and go there. I have learned the hard way, though, with my youngest son, who is commitment phobic when it comes to creative pursuits. Very creative person. He is musical, inherently kind of musical. But when I created, like, you got to go to piano lessons all the time. He was great at piano. But he's like, nope, I'm not doing it.
- [28:31]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
My son did the same thing.
- [28:33]
Aaron Walter
Yeah. And so now I've learned, like, okay, he's pursuing guitar and flute. You do that when you'd like to do that. And I'll set up. Here's a teacher. Want to go work on a song? But that's it. It's very light, and sometimes I feel this, and I wonder, you know, ADHD is a common thread that keeps popping up. In our nearly 300 interviews with people, we see a lot of creative people whose minds are neurodivergent in some ways. But anyway, that's where I'm coming from with the pushback on commitment. It's like, there is this balance, gentle commitment. There you go.
- [29:08]
Eli Woolery
This whole area is so interesting, and I don't need to turn this into, like, a parenting podcast, and hopefully people will still find this interesting. But I think raising kids, which interesting is like, almost the most powerful thing you can do is unintentional things. Like, we have a lot of books around the house, and that's how I grew up, too, is like bookcases everywhere and books, and there's actually research around the Fact that if you do that, kids get naturally more interested in reading. I think it's true for my daughter, my son. I'm not so sure yet if that's actually worked out. We'll see. But that could mean a negative thing too. Where we live in a very expensive area and being kind of entrepreneurial, sometimes there's financial stress and I see my daughter has maybe picked up on that and she's massively creative. And then we talked about what she want to do and she's, well, I want to make a lot of money and I want to be a lawyer. I'm like, I don't know if you're going to be happy being a lawyer. I don't even know what is going to exist. And you know, 10 years from now they might all be robots. But sorry, sorry to any lawyers in the crowd, or at least, you know, robot assistants, we'll say, but I feel like frankly our future is in creativity and the human sides of that. I don't know if there's a question there other than like we lead by example, whether it's good or bad.
- [30:19]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
I agree, I agree. You know, this reminds me, I highly recommend you watch Yancy Strickler's Creative Mornings talk from last year. If you search yancy strickler on creativemornings.com he's the co founder of Kickstarter and he's on to building really exciting new things. And his talk was hands down my Favorite talk in 18 year History of Creative Mornings. And he sort of really talks about where creativity came from and he is convinced that the creative class is the one who is about to take off. And it's a really beautiful talk. I highly recommend you watch it. And I was just sitting there and my heart was just bursting when he was talking. He's so deeply in service of the creative community with what he's ever built. And I was thinking that to me creativity is a discipline in optimism because in order to move through life you have to believe there's a better way. In order to believe there's a better way, you have to be optimistic. Right Then you can be creative. If you are coming from a place of I believe there's a better way, then you can really tune into what are my ideas to improve it. And I feel like Creative Mornings has created rituals of optimism where we practice sort of that orientation of there is a better way, there is a kinder way. It just makes me really happy that creativity is really having a moment right now.
- [31:36]
Aaron Walter
Let's go deeper on this you're in this unique position that you've seen so many different types of creative thinkers, and you've watched them coalesce their ethos, their methodologies, their spirit of creativity. What are the threads that run through what you've seen in all of these different Creative Mornings talks and just the conversations with people you've met.
- [31:58]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
It would be hard to summarize 18 years of talks. But the thing I can tell you that I have learned because I curate the speakers in New York. And it's fascinating for me to see how much I have learned in discerning who would make a good speaker and sort of what I've realized. And I had to articulate this the other day because somebody asked me, what is really the criteria for you? I always say I want people on stage that model a creative brave life, that show that another way is possible, that have taken a risk. For example, one of my favorite speakers was Geetika Agaral, who was building Vacation Away with an Artist. Have you interviewed her?
- [32:40]
Aaron Walter
Yeah, we've had her. Not on the show, but she wrote a newsletter with us, and we've done a few things with her. She's wonderful.
- [32:46]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
She's magic. So basically, what she has built is a mini apprenticeship vacation. You can choose a country, Japan. You can learn how to dye fabric with an artist and possibly even stay with the artist for two, three days. This is hard, what she's building. I want her to succeed, but it's magical what she's building. I want to put people on stage and put a spotlight on people who are really pushing the boundaries with what's possible, that are brave, that are building things, that are a little unreasonable, a little crazy, because I think we all need to be given permission to break out of our own little safe worlds and safe boxes and imagine that there's a different way. And we need to have spaces where we support each other and cheer each other on. So I know that people get a boost after they speak at Creative Mornings, especially in New York City. And that to me is like this ethos of celebration of each other and each other's bravery is just what I want to see more of in the world. Doesn't have to just be us, more communities like that.
- [33:42]
Eli Woolery
So if somebody's listening right now and is getting really excited about Creative Mornings, but they don't have one in their area and they think, oh, wow, maybe this is an opportunity to do that, I'm sure they can go to your website. Do you have any pro tips on somebody wanting to start Creative Mornings, yeah.
- [33:57]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
So if you go to creativemornings.com and you scroll to the bottom, there's a link that says start a chapter. Fair warning. It's a pretty extensive process, but we're doing this on purpose, that we really want the people, that they want to do this and bring this to the city. But once you jump over the hoops and you get to be the host of a city, we just give you all, all the resources. You are part of a global network of creatives, which is incredible. That is like the biggest perk ever. And we support you and you are in the center of your creative community in your city. And you can knock on doors of people that you want to have speak because you have a global brand in your background. It's a really beautiful thing. But if you don't want to do that, you can also just tap into our virtual events for now and just get a taste of the community. It's not exactly the same, but we call them field trips, a virtual field trip every day. And they're completely community led. So if you have something to offer, you can also just approach us and say like, hey, I want to teach this for an hour. Or I have an experience I could share and just start contributing to the universe of creative mornings.
- [34:58]
Aaron Walter
Tell us about clubs.
- [34:59]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
So clubs is our latest baby, you know, Creative Mornings chapters. We meet one Friday morning a month and all we heard is once a month is not enough. And so we realized, and I think it's time that we extend the trust that we have given chapter hosts to our community members and say like, hey, is there something you love doing and you want to make friends when you do it? Then start a club and we offer you the platform. We help push it to our community. And we started it in New York two years ago. We have greenlit over 120 clubs. Some of them have been running a year and a half straight from photo walks to knitting to drawing, to writing. Literally anything goes. People want to just meet up. It's generosity based, it's community led, it's completely free, and we're slowly but surely rolling them out in other cities. And if you really eager to bring it to your city, reach out to us as well. When the Internet started, and I was the biggest Internet fangirl, Aaron, you know that, right?
- [35:52]
Aaron Walter
Yeah.
- [35:52]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
And I was like, oh my God, I can see the world. I can be friends with anyone, anywhere. And I feel like what's happening now is that we've lost the art of being friends with our neighbors. And I believe the future is not lonely. It's actually hyper local. And so clubs is really our contribution for people to bring their community, building their love for community into their hyper local neighborhoods. And so that gets me very excited too. You know, you have a knitting club in Brooklyn, Fort Greene, and you have a knitting club on the Upper west side. And that's going to be our biggest focus to create this meet. It's almost like meetup.com on top of our community. But unlike meetup.com, we're not just a platform. We actually are a community with built in value. So I know people who have gone to drawing clubs and have told me I suck at drawing, I want to draw. This is the only place I would ever go to a drawing club because I know there's such kindness and an ethos of celebration here that I feel safe to do that. And again, to me, we're winning. When I hear things like this circling
- [36:53]
Eli Woolery
back to the beginning of our conversation, it feels like this is such a great antidote to these really frankly disturbing trends where there's a survey that says it's, I think this is for under 25 year olds. Something like 25% of them say they have no close friends, like zero close friends. And I just think, wow, that is just a tragedy. And so if you can build these local things where people like I did find a new friend, I think that's actually really, really positive impact.
- [37:17]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
You know, we call ourselves a friendship engine and it makes me happy. It really does.
- [37:22]
Aaron Walter
That's great. What are you excited about right now, Tina? What are you inspired by? Maybe something reading you're watching, you're listening to, or maybe something adjacent that is giving you new perspective.
- [37:34]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
I'm reading this book service Barry, and I am totally not going to be able to articulate it. Like I would have never found it if it wasn't for this woman. That this woman was putting quotes out like she had a whole thread on threats on this book. And I was just so enamored just to read you. One of them that got me to buy the book was the prosperity of the community grows from the flow of relationships, not the accumulation of goods. The book's called the Serviceberry and it's titled the Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. And it is such a left field book that I would have never read otherwise. But it's full of gems, so I highly recommend.
- [38:12]
Aaron Walter
This looks very interesting. I love finding metaphors and adjacencies in biology or just the natural world.
- [38:19]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Totally. It's a gem I highly recommend.
- [38:21]
Aaron Walter
That's great. Well, where can people learn more about what you're doing about Creative Mornings and any of the other stuff we talked about?
- [38:29]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Yes, you can find us@creativemornings.com you can click on the City tab, you can find a city near you, or you can click on the Release Day banner at the top and join us. And we would love to see what you release on May 29th.
- [38:43]
Aaron Walter
I'm excited about Release Day. I think I'm going to throw my hat in the ring as well. I've got a project I'm working on. Both Eli and I have spoken at Creative Mornings, so if you go to creativemornings.com and search, I think you might find our talks from the past. And I've just gotten so much value from Creative Mornings over the years. So thank you for everything you've done. What a treat to have you on Design Better.
- [39:04]
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Thank you so much.
- [39:10]
Aaron Walter
This episode was produced by Eli Woolery and me, Aaron Walter, with engineering and production support from Brian Paik of Pacific Audio. If you found this episode useful, we hope that you'll leave us a review on Apple, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to finer shows. Or simply drop a link to the show in your team slack channel designbetterpodcast.com it'll really help others discover the show. Until next time,
- [39:50]
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