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- [00:03]
A
Welcome to It's a Good Life, the podcast for entrepreneurs where it's all about growing yourself and your business. Here's your host, founder of America's largest business coaching company, Brian Buffini. Well, the top of the morning to you, and welcome to It's a Good Life. I'm your host, Brian Buffini, and our guest today is a man by the name of Kyle Shealy. If you don't know that name yet, you're in for a treat. He is a speaker, an author, and just a creative force in nature. He takes wild creative ideas and brings them to life in ways that has inspired millions of people. And today, we're going to dive into creativity, what it is, how to develop it, and ultimately how to bring your big ideas to life. So, Kyle, thanks for making the time for us. So delighted to have you on the show.
- [00:49]
B
Excited to be here.
- [00:50]
A
Great. Well, we're going to dive right in. I think when people hear the word creativity already kind of brings a smile to people's face, you know, And I think we all have creativity in us. I was told growing up in Ireland, I went to the Catholic school, the Catholic school was a public school in Ireland. And the priest told me, you're not a creative person because you don't have good handwriting. And creativity is about 95% of what I do every hour of every day for the past four decades. So turned out he was wrong. Many people don't think they're creative when they are. Many people, their creativity is stifled. I'd love you to kind of just jump right in. And how do you define creativity?
- [01:30]
B
I define creativity as broadly as possible. I think that anytime you make anything new, that is a creative act. And I think that people often feel like creativity is something you're either born with or you're not. And I would say that that's true. But if you're born, you're born with it, and if you're not, then you're not. Those are the only. There's no creative people and uncreative people. And one of the things that we do is that we justify this belie. One of the things I say on stage is that unfortunately, humans, our brains are not belief just or are not truth seeking machines. They're belief justification machines. And so when you decide I'm not creative, your brain doesn't really care if that's true or not. Your brain just goes, okay, that's the party line. I'm going to go build a defense around that. And the way that we build that defense is we Say, well, only some things count. When I'm with an audience, I'll say, all of you guys are creative. And I'll see kind of people looking around, I don't know. And then I'll say, you're all creating carbon dioxide right now. And then they all kind of go, ah. I'm like, and you create businesses, you create spreadsheets, you create teams, you create opportunities. But as soon as I say that, I know that their first kind of gut response is, oh, yeah, but, but that doesn't count. And then we say, well, only these things count, right? Painting, music, theater, dance, decorating the bedroom. Yeah, that kind of stuff is creative. And that it's a ridiculous belief justification, but. But we just kind of go with it. And, you know, it's interesting that you said 95% of what I do is creative. I would say that a hundred percent of what you do is creative. 100% of what all of us do all the time is creative. But we justify that belief and then the negative complication of that is that or implication of that is that then we end up just. Our brain kind of keeps trying to justify the belief so that when we do start to have a good idea, your brain goes, no, no, no, shut that down. Remember, we don't do that. We don't do that around here. And so you're limiting yourself. And that's a sad thing to do to yourself with the one life that you have. But I think it's a travesty when we do that to the people around us, our families, our kids, the people that we lead, the people that we work with. We often just someone to a role and say, oh, that's so and so. They're a CEO. That's so and so. They do this. No, that's a human being. And they have great ideas.
- [03:31]
A
You know, not being born in America, I always tell my kids, you know, God doesn't speak with an American accent, you know, but America loves to systemize everything. I had the great privilege when I first came to America, a different story for a different day of doing a paint job. And it turns out it was for Ray Kroc's bride, John Kroc, his widow.
- [03:50]
B
Wow.
- [03:50]
A
And, you know, he was a brilliant guy in his own right, but it's almost like the Ray Kroc ization of America. You know, you go to church, all the churches are the same. You go to the restaurants, all the restaurants are the same. People seek out franchises. We used to die in Ireland. Someone would get off a plane, you Know, we back in the 80s and they go, do you have a McDonald's? And you're like, you're in Ireland, for God's sake. Like, no, you're going to eat in a pub. And yeah, I might be standing right next to the McDonald's, but I'm going to direct you to the pub so you can go have an experience of Ireland. It produces for people a sense of safety. You know, you have Henry Ford, he built the assembly lines. You know that. That was his creativity. Cars weren't his creativity. He built the assembly line. And it seems like so many things in our culture, in our work life, in our schooling, our education, everything seems to be the McDonaldization and the Henry Fordization of all activity. And on one hand it gives you comfort, but I'd love you to talk to the other side of it is how does it show up in a person when they don't use their creativity, when they don't exercise that, when they don't let that freedom out.
- [04:54]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it limits you to the sidelines. Like all of the people that you're talking about, like Henry Ford, like you said, was an innovator. And then we just took that and we went, let's apply that to everything. But the people who, who continue to break through are people who say, okay, let's take this other thing that no one's thought and let's combine it with this. That's. Every idea is just a combination of existing ide. There's nothing new under the sun. Innovation comes from a novel interaction of two or more existing things. Sometimes that's, let's take this plus this. Let's. Sometimes it's, hey, let's take half of this out and replace it with this other thing. And so when, when all you do is go, I'm going to work with only what's existing and try to change it as little as possible, then good luck getting any kind of breakthrough, good luck getting any kind of traction, because people have seen that already, right? They. They want new stuff. And it's interesting because I think that I sort of live in this tension. I agree with you that we want. We're desperate for, you know, predictability, but we're also desperate for new. We're desperate for novel. And. And that's almost anything that I've ever done that has broken through in any way has been something just totally out of left field, something that felt totally crazy at the time. And so when you limit yourself, you're limiting your opportunity to, to get Those big breakthroughs.
- [06:03]
A
Yeah, I've heard the phrase synthetic creativity, which is, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I mean, my own company, there had been companies out there that did three day seminars. They had Realtors doing realtor to realtor coaching. They had different types of training program. I saw all these different things, the events they did, the training they did. And then I just packaged it and presented it, made modifications based on my own experience, and then just packaged it together and we took the industry by storm as a disruptor 30 years ago and had exponential growth for decades. And so again, that synthetic piece is, it's out there. There is nothing new under the sun, but it is. This plus The H +2 equals. Oh, you know, hey, it's water.
- [06:46]
B
Yeah.
- [06:46]
A
Your dad, I was reading about your dad being a big influence on you and helped you come up and facilitate some of your big lessons and big ideas. I'd love you to talk about that for a second.
- [06:57]
B
Yeah, my dad is, he's an interesting guy. He, he's, I mean, always been my hero. One of my favorite people in the world, my dad in manufacturing his whole life. And so I think my dad would not be a person who would intrinsically identify as being creative. But I always looked at my dad, I was like, my dad can make anything, my dad can fix anything. Like, I, I rarely, if ever, remember a repair person coming to our house. My dad was going to fix the thing, my dad was going to make the thing. And because my dad worked in manufacturing, that gave me this interesting insight. Like, my dad worked in a factory that made disposable cups for gas stations and restaurants. And they would make millions of these things. And, and when we would go on, you know, road trips and stuff, we stop at a gas station and my dad would grab the cups and he would look at the bottom and there'd be some weird little stamp on it. He would go, oh, this was made in Augusta. I know those guys, you know, they, they do good work. And that just gave me this kind of like this, this concrete evidence that everything comes from somewhere and this awareness of that. And so I just, I, I think that sparked a lot of curiosity for me to the point where, you know, nobody thinks about who's making styrofoam cups. But I was thinking about that because that was my dad. So now when I would look at something, I would go, somebody has to make that somebody's job. Every day somebody's trying to pick up a girl in a bar and they go, what do you do for. Oh, yeah, I make traffic cones, you know, or whatever it is. And so I think I just became really aware of that. And then. And then that just sparked a lot of curiosity for me to go, well, where did that come from? And who makes that? And how many of those do they make? And what does that industry look like? And. And I think a lot of that came from my dad. My dad was also, like, voracious reader, you know, took us to the library to get our library cards as soon as we were old enough and just kind of inspired this. This love of. Of knowledge and of curiosity. And, hey, you can figure this stuff out. Like, you know, the people who changed the world, they weren't smarter than you. They weren't better than you. They were just curious and persistent. And those are things that you can cultivate in yourself.
- [08:48]
A
And you've had a couple of these crazies. I'm interested in the T shirt story. You end up building a T shirt company from a lunchroom in your school, and it ends up all the way in Urban Outfitters. And also, I'd love you to talk about this Viking funeral for your 20s on your 30th birthday. I'd love you to talk about those two things. I think when we get exposed to someone who's being creative, it spurs that on in us. And I think those are two great ideas.
- [09:12]
B
Yeah. So when I was 17 years old, I was beginning my senior year in high school, and I needed some money. You know, I wanted to go to basketball games and take my girlfriend on a date. I didn't have a girlfriend, but I needed to be ready, you know, if you had, and buy new shoes and stuff. But I was really involved in school, and I was applying to colleges and studying for the act, and I just. I remember I, like, I would go apply for jobs, and they would look at my availability, and they're like, we can't hire you. You can work here for, like, 30 minutes, you know, on random, two days a week. And so that kind of. The constraint of that, I was like, I got to figure out a way to make money. And I. I thought I'd sell T shirts. I designed a T shirt for. For this school event, and it had been, like, sold better than any other fundraising T shirt they had. And. And so I just borrowed a buddy's laptop and I just started messing around. And the first T shirt I ever designed, it had a really poorly done, like, drawing that I just scribbled out on a computer of, like, an old woman walking with a cane. And then it said, osteoporosis is bad to the bone. And I. I took that. I printed that out. I used the school's computer lab to print it. And then I went table to table with this drawing, and I said, would you like to buy one of these T shirts? And somehow enough people gave me 15 bucks or whatever, and I was able to order that batch of shirts. And I. I didn't even make enough money to where I felt like I should buy one of my own shirts. I couldn't afford my own stuff. And so I just took that and poured it back into the business and just kept designing just really dumb, silly shirts. You know, like, Friends was a popular TV show at the time. So I had a shirt that said, friends. Don't let friends watch Friends. And, you know, lyme disease ticks me off. I mean, it's highbrow humor that we're dealing with, but it went really well. And I. I was. I got the attention of the school administration, who pulled me into the office and said, you can't run a business on school grounds. And so then I started. I asked, well, where do school grounds end? And then after that, we just started taking things to the parking lot after school, and we'd walk out of the parking lot onto the street and. And trade, you know, wares and money. And there's a quote I have in my talk where I show my. My principal space in the yearbook, and it's. It's a real quote. He said, as long as you don't get hit by a car, it's okay by me. And so I just kind of learned, like, hey, there's, like, business is not that hard. It's not this big, complicated thing that everyone makes it out to be. And so then I graduate, and I realized I just lost access to my entire customer base.
- [11:26]
A
That was.
- [11:27]
B
Everyone I was selling T shirts to was still in. And so I decided I'm gonna kind of try to go to retail. And I started Googling around, and Urban Outfitters was, like, the coolest store that I could imagine being in. And so I. I found their number on a website somewhere on a Google listing. And I called it. They're located in Philadelphia. And this lady answers, and she said, urban Outfitters. How may I direct your call? And I remember I. I had researched, like, enough to know that there was something called a buying department. And I said, I'd like to speak with someone in your buying department. And she said, do you have a specific name? And I was like, yeah, my Name's Kyle. I didn't know, I didn't know anything about what was going on. And. And she's like, no, I need this name of someone in the department. I was thinking, like, you should probably know that lady. That's your job. But she basically just gave me a hard no, like I can't page you through if you don't have a connection. And I said, well, how about I mail you some stuff? And she said, no, we don't accept unsolicited packages. Like, if you want to get in with us, you need to go to one of these big, you know, trade shows or apparel fairs or things like that. And that was like thousands and thousands of dollars to go there that I didn't have. And so I just kind of had this idea. I thought, you know what, like I'm going to Trojan horse this thing. Like, if you send someone a cool enough package, they're going to open it regardless of what their policy is. And so I got this old vintage suitcase and I reupholstered the whole inside of it with cool fabric. And then I put all my T shirts in there and my best selling ones. And then I. And then I actually took a folded pair of like vintage corduroy Levi's and I cut and sewed it so it looked like a folded pair of pants. But when you picked it up, it opened up into a book and there was like a catalog. All of our designs, our pricing in contact, company story. And then I just blind shipped this to Urban Outfitters. And a couple weeks later, a week later, something like that, this guy calls me and, and he goes, hey, my name's Don, and your suitcase is sitting on my desk. And I was like, oh, interesting. It sounds like you guys do accept unsolicited packages. So he said, how old were you?
- [13:12]
A
How old were you at this time?
- [13:13]
B
I was 18. I, I just freshly 18 and love it. And it was, yeah, it was my freshman year of college at that point. And he said, hey man, we'd love to have these shirts in our stores. And I knew nothing about retail. I knew nothing about price. I mean, all of my prices set him are way too high for them to have any margin on. And this guy just, I think he knew I was a kid and he was like, hey, let me walk you through like. And I remember I had to go back to like, I had no, I had no credit. This was, this is in 2004. And I mean even to get a credit card processing account, like to be able to take credit cards, you had to pay a bank, like 600 or something. And it was just background checks and I didn't have any of that. So I remember I went to my screen printer who had been printing my shirts locally, and I said, man, listen, I've got this order for like thousands of shirts. I cannot pay you for this until they pay me. And it was just like a handshake deal. And mailed it off to Urban Outfitters and became, you know, distributed all over. And the story I tell on stage is that there were Urban Outfitters all over the country, but they had one Urban Outfitters in Toronto. And so that because they had that store, I started introducing myself as Kyle Shealy, international fashion designer. So that kind of set the tone and, and really kind of showed me that, like, hey, sometimes a crazy idea isn't that crazy and maybe more is possible than you, than you think. And so I just kind of like started chasing crazy ideas for the last 20 years. The Viking funeral was an interesting one because I didn't think that that would be anything outside of just kind of this party for my friends. I was turning 30 and I was talking to my mom one day and she was over at the house and watching the kids and she said, hey, are you going to have a party for your, you know, for your 30s? And she's like, you can have people over, they have some land out in the country. And she was like, you want to have people over and you know, have a big party? And I just sort of jokingly, I was like, mom, I'm not gonna have a party to celebrate turning 30. I'm gonna have a funeral for the death of my 20s. And she was like, oh, that's pretty morbid. You know, what are you gonna have a big coffin and people throw their gifts in? And I was like, no, not a regular funeral. I'm gonna have a Viking funeral. And so something about that, I was just like, this is a crazy idea. So I built this. It was basically about the size of a minivan. It was like 8ft tall, 16ft long. Just, it's an ornate, like, I made it out of cardboard and hot glue, but you can look pictures up online. It had hundreds and hundreds of hand cut dragon scales and all this detailing. And I put these big numbers and letters inside that said my 20s and invited all my friends over and we shot Roman candles at it and set it on fire. And something about that kind of like just started taking off online and I, I, some friends of mine made a video about it. And in the video they Asked me like, hey, are you going to be sad to burn this thing that you work so hard on? And I was like, well, first of all, it's taking up my entire garage, so I think my wife will be happy to get it out of there. But. But I said something about, you know, you got to let go of the past to make room for things in the future. And it was just kind of this offhanded comment and in like a 30 minute interview, and they clipped that one part out. And that idea just seemed to really resonate with a lot of people. And over the next, like weeks, months, and even a year later, I started getting all these emails from people saying, like, hey, I saw your video. And it made me think about the things I want to let go of. And then they would always kind of say this little snarky thing at the end where they're like, just wish I could do it with the Viking funeral. So a year later, I'm still getting emails about this, and most of the projects I've ever done, I'll put them out, they'll make some kind of a splash. And then a few weeks later, kind of the world's moved on. But this one just kind of like kept with me. And so finally I was like, all right, if everybody wants another Viking funeral, let's do another Viking funeral. And I, I announced to the world, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a Viking funeral for regrets. So send me your regrets. Send me anything you wanna let go of. Your mistakes, things that you did or didn't do, relationships, beliefs, identities, whatever that is that you're like, hey, this is the old me. This is not what I want to be anymore. And my goal was to collect 10,000 regrets. And I ended up collecting 21,000 regrets. It took me two and a half years. And the second Viking ship that I built actually could have held the first Viking ship inside of it. It was 30ft long and 16ft tall. And yeah, I collected all these regrets from all around the world that put them in this big boat and set them on fire and ended up writing a book about it. And it was, it was a whole very meaningful experience that, that all came out of this silly birthday party.
- [17:17]
A
Yeah, it's amazing stuff. I mean, I relate to the T shirts. I started my American Experience selling T shirts on a cart and similar thing. You know, for me, I was down in Pacific beach, and in the summertime it gets cool in the evening. So we'd have all these people come from Arizona because it's you know, it's 115 degrees, so they come and hang out in San Diego, but it gets cool at night in the 60s, you know, high 60s and they'd be freezing. So the people I was buying the T shirts from, they had a warehouse full of sweatshirts and they're like, wow, these things are no good. We wait till next year. And I would buy them for a buck apiece and I'd sell them to the Arizonans. I was making 50 grand a month off of T shirt cards as an 18 year old myself. 19 year old. But it's like that is the deal. And I think today, in the world we live in today, creative expression. Find a need, fill a need, right? See what's already out there, filling the need. But what can you do better, quicker, faster, you know, in a different way? I just think it's an enormous thing. I mean, for you, how do you go about cultivating an idea, right? You have a thought, right? So an idea is not a plan. An idea is not a strategy. So how do you go about cultivating a creative idea?
- [18:25]
B
I'm working on. We talked a little bit before the podcast and I'm working on a book right now that'll be. Won't come out until 2027, but I basically, like, I've identified this. There's a cycle that every idea has to go through, and there's four stages to this cycle. And the first half is about kind of like coming up with the idea, gathering the inputs, connecting those. You come out of this first half and you've got this thing that you have an idea, and then everything from there on out is about narrowing that down from all the possibilities down to this one thing that finally exists in the world. And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. There's a plant, I actually have a tattooed on my arm. There's this plant called Brassica oleracea, and it grows wild in the Mediterranean. It' like a. It's in the wild mustard and cabbage family. And if you were to see this plant, you wouldn't really think anything of it. But a few thousand years ago, humans noticed this plant and we were like, hey, we want to do something with that. But it seems like they couldn't agree on what to do with it. And so different people started cultivating it for different things through just selective breeding. So one group was like, hey, we like the leaves on this plant. We want to make it bigger so we can have bigger leaves to eat. And they just started. They plant, you know, A hundred of these. They'd take the ones with the biggest leaves, cross pollinate those, plant the seeds from that, just do that over and over again. Well, over time, these leaves became enormous. And if I were to show you one of these leaves, you would go, oh, that's kale. That's Brassica oleracea is kale. But another group said, well, we want to cultivate the flowers. And so that the flower version of that became cauliflower. And another group said, we want to cultivate for flowers and stems. And that became broccoli. And then so broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, Brussels sprouts, all of these different plants, like half the grocery aisle, it all came out of this one plant. And I think that oftentimes what people forget is that the idea, like when you come, when you have an idea, you're like, this is it. We think of that as broccoli or as kale, as this kind of finished thing. But in fact, it's kind of the top of that, that evolutionary chart. And every idea can exist in a lot of different forms. And so what you have to do is say, which of these forms do I want to evolve for? You know, when I think about Buffini, like, like you said, that could have been a weekend workshop, it could have been a book. It could have been, you don't train anybody. You just run your own company and you invest all of that training into them. And every. There's no right or wrong version of that. It really is like, well, what choice do I want to optimize for? Because when you say, hey, I'm going to get bigger leaves, that means you're going to get smaller flowers and vice versa. And I think that a lot of people get stuck because they think the first version of the idea that comes into my head, that's the one I have to go with. That's not true. And so I think a lot of how you get things out into the world is you start by just looking at kind of like, well, what are all the possibilities that this could be? And what are all the trade offs of that, Right? If you had like a soundboard and you've got, you know, bass guitar and electric and lead and all this stuff, every time you move one of those sliders, it changes the volume of that, but it also changes the overall mix. And the same thing is true for an idea. When you go, do I want to scale up the team? Well, that's going to also scale up the budget, and that's going to also do this. And, and there's no right or wrong answers. You just have to go, what are the constraints that I have? What are my personal desires? What optimal goal am I, you know, aiming for? And then which version of these am I going to aim for? And that can be really tricky because that inherently means making decisions and decisions. The word decide comes from the Latin desidere, which means to cut off. And it means that every, you know, one of the things I say is that the cost of any idea that exists in the world, it's not just the time and the money. The bigger cost is all of the other versions of the idea that you have to sacrifice for that to happen. Right. In order for you to go all in on Buffini, like, like you had to let the T shirt thing go, right? Hey, I can't do both of these things. And, and, and, and that might seem like so silly in hindsight, like, oh, T shirts versus this massive empire. But 50 grand a month is nothing to shake a stick at. And I think that, that we often forget, like, hey, in order to make this book into a book, that means it's not going to be a video game. That means the story is not going to be, you know, a movie. It's not going to be, at least not now. I've got to pick one thing and go all in on and then that's that. So that's the third stage of the process and the fourth stage is action. That's getting this thing out into the world. And that's even scarier because the evolution phase, like, you're making sacrifices, you're making changes, you're giving things up, but all that's happening kind of behind closed doors and you're only letting people in who you decide get in. But in order for anything to make a difference in the world, like, you got to go out there and you got to like put this in front of people and that is inherently going to mean feedback. And it's not all going to be positive. And in fact, yeah, I mean, this.
- [22:41]
A
Is where I want to jump in here, Kyle, because there's two things I see and I'll break it down generationally and I'd love your thoughts on this, you know, people of my era, if you will, a lot of us have done well with appreciation and inflation has made our assets grow, right. And what happens is you start doing well. And what I've seen in my own company, we became risk averse. It wasn't until very recently I came in, I started breaking stuff and it's like, you know what, we've gotten too safe, we've just damped down. And actually innovation was like, well, what is that gonna cost? You know, so you become, on one hand, you become successful, you're afraid to lose anything. Right? So then it becomes a maintenance thing on the other side. You know, I have six younger kids myself, millennials, down disease. Right. And all their friends in between. Well, one of the things I've seen with the younger generation is they seem to be very risk averse. And so the only way this works, and it sounds great on stage, it sounds great in a podcast, is you have to be willing to try iterate, fail, try again. And it sounds easy on a seminar, it reads easy in a book, it sounds easy in a podcast. But people have become risk averse in both young and older. And you know, I think one of the reasons that guy in Urban Outfitter, you know, saw that briefcase and he went, this is cheeky. Like he knew you were a young guy. Like a, this is creative. I like these design, this is some smart stuff. But I guarantee you, like, he hadn't had anybody send him anything that cheeky in a long time. I was like, I'm going to give this kid a call. I'll say this, I run a pretty good sized business. I have hundreds of employees. If somebody sent me something like that, I'm probably giving them a call. Okay. You know, and so talk to the young, talk to the folks my age who've succeeded and who've kind of gotten comfortable and afraid to try something new, but also talk to the young folks that seem to like, not be willing to try at all.
- [24:35]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think for the older generation, yeah, it does. Like, the older you get, the more, the, the more you have to protect, but also the more wounds you have. Right? You've gotten beat up a couple times, you've got some war stories to tell, and sometimes you feel like, I don't know if I have it in me to go through that again. And, and then for the younger people, I think that oftentimes they don't have those stories and they don't know. And so then in their mind, like, they, they build up this big thing of like, well, what if I fail? What happens if everybody sees me? And the reality is like the answer to both those things is you've survived everything you've come through so far. And yeah, you, maybe there's things that you're like, I would totally do that differently. Great, well then you'll take those lessons into the next round, and you won't do those things. But you have to continue to innovate. It's not like there used to be some industries that kind of were just stable and everybody that doesn't really exist anymore. And part of that is because what's happened in the last five or 10 years is people became, like, keen to that idea. And you have a lot of people. There's a whole side of the Internet that talks about and builds courses around buying boring businesses. They go find a guy who's 65, built this business, and is ready to retire, and then you buy that, and then you bring all this innovation in that he didn't think to do, and then you wipe the market out because you just wipe the floor. All of his competition's gone. So all of those boring, predictable businesses, they aren't going to be boring and predictable anymore. So your choice is like, do I stay and just hope that, like, that the slide is gradual enough that I can kind of slide into the sunset before this whole thing gets slipped on its head? Or do I say, like, hey, like it or not, I've got to innovate. I've got to keep changing. And then to the young person, I think I would just say, like, every. Like you said, I. I blew past all of the other people who, you know, called Urban Outfitters and gave up or. Or tried to mail them something and it was a little packet or something like that. The job market's tough. There's never been more people trying to do probably the thing that you're trying to do, which means that you've got to figure out a way to stand out. And I would say we often consider the risk of the thing that seems risky, right? Like, oh, I'm going to put myself out there. But we don't calculate the risk of just doing the same thing that everyone else is doing and throwing yourself into the pool of, like, hey, it's just as risky to be in a line of 100 people as it is to go, hey, I'm going to go try to knock on the window over here, or I'm going to see if there's another door. Like, they both have risks. And in my experience, in my perspective, I'm a little biased, but I think that, like, I think it's actually way less risky to put yourself out there. And even. Even when things fail, I think that so many times, like, things that I thought were tremendous failures at the time have ended up opening doors later on because of exactly what you said. Even when something doesn't work out. People go, hey, you know what? That was pretty cheeky, that thing that you tried. Like, I like that because I have had way more business. I would say 99% of the business owners I talked to say, I wish my team was a little bit more proactive. I wish that they were bringing me more ideas. The. The idea that, like, companies are out there just going, no, we don't need innovation. Like, actively saying that, that just has not been my experience at all.
- [27:33]
A
Right? No, it's true. And the piece to the public, I have a quote in my office from St. Irena Siblion that said, the glory of God is the human person fully alive. And I just feel when I'm in creation mode, I'm fully alive. Like, there's nothing better than coming up with a wild hair idea. Now you brought up something great. And I am excited for when this book comes out and will, Lord will. And have you back on Kyle, because, you know, when you talk about the plant and at some point in time, you got to make a decision. You got to decide there is that you can become an idea junkie. You know, some people, they. We have people who are seminar junkies. They go to seminar, to seminar, seminar, seminar, seminar. And they never execute on anything. And that in itself becomes its own slow drift to depression. You have the creative who can be an idea junkie. They get the idea. They create. They create, but they never execute. And so at some point in time, it's gotta align with something you're passionate about, something you're fired up about. And then you go for it, and you gotta put all your eggs in the basket. And that's, you know, you test, you iterate, you test, you iterate, and you go, I love this. I love doing this. I've gotten positive feedback from the marketplace. Let's go. And at some point in time, you just got to burn your ships and put all your chips to the center of the table, you know, so what's an example for you of when you put all your chips in the table and how to really let that creativity turn into something of substance?
- [28:53]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, I have. I was a. I've been a speaker, professional speaker. As I'm stammering over my words, I'm telling you that I'm a professional speaker. I've been a professional speaker for about 15 years, and I spent the first 12 years of that in the youth speaking space. And I was a keynote speaker at. I would do high school assemblies and leadership conferences for kids. And in 2018, I did this event. It's the National FFA Convention. It's the largest student event that I know of. There was 67,000 people at that event. And I was the opening keynote. I had to do the session three times because they could only fit 20,000 people in this arena. And I did that. And a friend said, kyle, congrats, like, that's so cool. That's the biggest thing that you'll ever do. And I remember just feeling like, why would you tell me that? You know, I'm not, I'm. I still got a lot of gas in the tank. And I kind of felt like I had beat the video game of that career. And the, the kind of two pass in front of me were like, just keep doing victory laps. Right? Now that you've done this, you can do all the state association, you can do all this, or hey, go after this corporate speaking thing. And I knew nothing about corporate. I've never worked in a corporation. I've always been self employed and. But that was like this thing that felt like that's hard and that's going to be a new challenge for me. And I like this idea. My friend Diana Kander talks about, like, you should set goals that require you to become a different person in order to achieve that goal. And that felt like that for me. And so I threw all of my eggs into that basket. I handed off my youth speaking career to a bureau in that world. And I said, you guys keep this on autopilot as long as you can. I'll go out and do the gigs. I don't want to send the emails. I don't want to do the marketing. I don't do any of that. And then I'm going to go focus all in on this other thing. And I thought it would take three to five years to make that transition. And it. Because I think partially because of luck and good circumstances and meeting the right people, and partially because of hard work, it happened immediately. Like I. Very quickly. Last year I was the most booked speaker at my speakers bureau for the whole year. And it's just been an insane ride. And it came. I was scared. I was like, am I throwing away this really good thing that's working? And then that market's gonna go, okay, I guess Kyle's a corporate speaker now and the corporate market's gonna go, we've never heard of this guy. And then I'm gonna go broke, right? And I. That's kind of what was in my mind. But I thought, man, I've. I gotta give this Thing a shot, and it's been the best thing that I've ever done.
- [31:07]
A
That's great. Well, we know a lot of people in common, and it's great stuff, and we're certainly excited to have you at a number of our gigs, as well as refer you to a number of our clients. Last formal question here is a number of our listeners right now. They have an idea, and maybe people have called it crazy. It's this, it's that. Maybe they've called it crazy themselves. What's the best piece of advice you can give somebody on taking the first step on pursuing their crazy idea?
- [31:34]
B
I think I heard someone say recently, I can't remember, this is on a podcast somewhere, but they said, if you are scared of taking the first step, then you've probably made the first step too big. And so any forward progress is better than none. I am a big fan of the idea that momentum begets more momentum. So if you have this idea and you go, I want to open a clothing store, you're like, well, the lease is going to be $10,000 a month, and the inventory is going to be a hundred grand. Okay, well, you've probably built this idea so big in your head so that it's an easy thing to say no to, but instead going, like, how can I open something online? How could I sell one T shirt to one person? Right? How could I design something? What are ways that I could do this that makes it easier for me? Or, hey, do I just need to do a little bit more research? Do I need to talk to the right people? And I think you're always going to have to kind of weigh, am I avoiding the thing or am I doing the thing? Like, it's. It can become really easy to go, oh, I just need to do more research. I need to do this. But. But there's also a time where you go, I think the thing I'm scared of is because I don't know enough information. So I'm going to keep asking until I get that, and then there will be a point where you go, okay, I know the information now I've got to take a step. And I would say any step is better than no step. Figure out what's the smallest thing that I can do to move this thing forward. And then you do that and your life doesn't end. And you go, oh, okay, that wasn't so bad. And then you take another big step, and pretty soon you're sprinting. You know, you go, oh, I. This is so much easier than I Thought it would be. Every single thing I have ever done that's been successful was easier than I thought it would be. I spent way more time building up in my head how hard something was going to be, whether that's getting a book published. I mean, I, I tell the story on stage. I wanted to be a kids book author when I was in college and I was actively pursuing that goal and I was in writing groups and classes at university and meeting with friends and I was getting good feedback and, and then someone said, kyle, I think you could get this published. And I did the worst thing that you can do in that situation. I googled how do you get a book published? And what Google told me was you don't. And I gave up on that dream for almost a decade. And then when I finally came back to it, everything that everyone had said was hard or impossible was like so smooth. I have an agent that I love, I have a publisher that I love. My book's been translated into languages I don't even speak right. And, and all of that happened and I look back at that now and I go, man, that's so cool, everything that's come out of that. But also I go, man, I wonder how many more of those I would have had if I hadn't listened to all the people who told me it wouldn't work.
- [33:52]
A
You know, Kyle, I've often heard it said you don't need to see the whole staircase to take the next step, but it's very, very common. In fact, one creative innovation we came up with earlier this year that's done amazing things in our community. You know, we're this coaching company and we created this business consultation, a free coaching session for people like a no strings attached, just come and have this great experience. And it's 30 minutes and we tell people it's the best 30 minutes they'll have in their business this year. And what we do is one of my trained coaches sits down with somebody, they do a, you know, they get in, they schedule a 30 minute call and the first thing they do is they help somebody get clarity on their vision, which I, I know you know, is the key to creativity. Then we uncover what's holding them back. Like everybody has something that's holding them back. Like you just said, maybe they've made too big of a deal of it. And then we help them see what's working for others. There's a bunch of people in their market, in their area we have expertise with who are doing things that are absolutely working right now. And Then lastly, we kind of lay out for them the next steps, and then people leave, and after 30 minutes, they got a great picture what to do and what they should do, and it's been a blessing for them, and it's turned into a giant blessing for us. People have gone out, taken some next steps, and then said, hey, you know, what else do you have for me that I could use? So I do agree. So many people get paralyzed by that, and we have this next step dynamic. So if someone's listening today and you want to know what your next step is, go to it's a good life dot com. So it's a good life, all one word, dot com, BC. And the BC stands for business consultation. Take 30 minutes, get it scheduled, and get clear on your next step, and then just take that next step. And it could lead you to great places.
- [35:29]
B
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, I think about it, like, there's that metaphor of, like, walking in the woods with a flashlight at night. You can only take a couple steps that way, but you can see the whole path. Like, you can make the whole journey that way, a couple steps at a time.
- [35:45]
A
So good, Kyle. So good. Well, this has been fantastic. I'm very excited. I have a number of events that we'd like to plug in for, and a number of people would like to refer you to. But one thing we've done with every guest we've had is we have these five interesting questions we ask everybody, and we just get this different flavor of everybody. So first off, what's the single best piece of advice you've ever been given?
- [36:06]
B
Oh, man, I think advice is all situational, but I think that. So, I mean, I can think of specific pieces of advice like, hey, you should ask that girl loud, or, hey, you should ask that girl to marry you. Those are kind of some of the big ones. But I mean, honestly, just people telling me, like, hey, just give it a shot. You never know. I think that over and over again. I've heard that advice in different contexts at different times of people saying, like, hey, man, it might work. And sometimes that's all you need. I tell parents that all the time. I don't think that every kid's idea is. Is amazing and that we need to, you know, praise everything. But I do think that sometimes all a kid needs is one adult going, I don't know, man, give it a shot. And so I think that's some of the best advice I've ever gotten.
- [36:43]
A
My wife heard one comment like that from a coach at a camp and it led her to becoming an all American in volleyball and a member of the U.S. olympic team. And it was just one coach who said one thing.
- [36:54]
B
Right. Incredible.
- [36:55]
A
What one talent or gift do you wish you possessed that you currently don't?
- [36:59]
B
I am the clumsiest person in the world. I like when my wife and I got married, she was like, I thought you were joking. I thought you were doing a bit or something. I, I am like the least physically coordinated person, which is hilarious as my wife is like an athlete. She's super in shape, has abs year round and I am like, I'll trip over my own feet walking down a hallway. So I think like, like that if I had some kind of semblance of physical coordination, that would be wonderful.
- [37:23]
A
You're just too creative to be coordinated. That's it. What's book's been most instrumental in your life?
- [37:30]
B
Oh man, there's no way I could limit that to. I, I mean, you could. This is.
- [37:34]
A
Yeah.
- [37:34]
B
I'm looking behind one of like five bookshelves that I have in my house and office. There are so many books. Actually, I just read a. I finished a book last night. It's a fiction book. It's called Boy's Life and it's about this like small town kind of like, like it's almost like magical realism book. Like totally entranced the whole way through. So many like non fiction fiction. I could go, I could. We could spend the rest of this.
- [37:57]
A
But you're, you're a big time reader. I hear that, so that's cool.
- [38:00]
B
I, Yeah, I love reading. I. That's why I wanted to be an author. I have a passion for the written word. I think there's nothing like it.
- [38:07]
A
Okay, this will be even harder then. If you're scrolling through the TV and there's one movie on, what's the one movie you've watched over and over or you watch part of it every time it's on, you kind of stop.
- [38:18]
B
You know what's funny is I just had coffee with someone today and he asked me that exact same question. And the one that I come up with that is probably the most, the least well known is called Secondhand Lions.
- [38:31]
A
Oh yeah.
- [38:31]
B
It's got. I know so many people don't know that, love that. And I've told them that. And that was one. I think I did stumble onto it. Like it was on TV one night.
- [38:40]
A
Was it Michael Caine and Robert Duval?
- [38:43]
B
Robert Duvall and Haley Joel Osment and that. Man, I could watch that movie every day for the rest of My life. It's fantastic.
- [38:51]
A
Last but not least, what does a good life mean to you, man?
- [38:54]
B
I think that, like, you summed it up great earlier, of just being fully alive. I think that. That there's always man, more than ever, it feels like. But everyone's, I think, has always said that throughout history. It feels like everything's bad all the time and everything's getting worse, but there's just so much to be grateful for. I. I have family that I love and kids that I love and. And friends and community I get to do. Like, this job doesn't feel like a job to me. I feel like I can't believe that people pay me money to do this, and then afterwards, don't ask for the money back, and they say, oh, that was great. I mean, I just think. I think. I don't know, I'm just so grateful for everything that I have. I think the good life is the one that I've got, but I think it's also the one that you build and, you know, through. Through gratitude and through hard work and. And through trying stuff. You know, one of the things that I Learned from surveying 21,000 people about their regrets is that people regret things that they didn't do way more than they regret things that they did. And so I think that. That you are on this planet for such a short amount of time. In the grand scheme of history, your life is a. It's a breath in the wind, it's a blip on the radar. And so, man, just like, lean in, make a difference, make a dent in the world, be kind to other people, try to make the world a little bit weirder and a little bit funner and a little bit cooler than it was when you got here. That's the good life to me.
- [40:12]
A
Well, you've added to our good life today, Kyle, and I appreciate it. It's been a shot in the arm for myself. I know it's going to be a shot in the arm for so many people. You're a talented, gifted man with a great message that's very timely, I think. And getting people in touch with that creativity and embracing that, I think you end up with the life of less risk, a life of more joy. And who knows, Many of these creative thoughts could lead to all kinds of fantastic innovations, cures, breakthroughs, and either way, the pursuit of it is a joy. So I want to thank you for being here today. It was really, really a lot of fun being with you.
- [40:44]
B
It was great being here.
- [40:45]
A
Great. Well, I always finish the podcast the way my mom did for the last nine and a half years. She passed this April, but we finish off with a little Irish blessing. So may the roads rise up to meet you and may the wind always be at your back. May the rain fall soft upon your fields and the sunshine warm upon your face. And until we meet again, again May God hold us all in the hollow of his hand. We'll see you next time.