Author Natalie Nixon, The Creativity Leap, Shares How to Open Your Creative Pathways to Entrepreneurship - #27

Show Notes

Many aspiring side business entrepreneurs are too fearful to pursue their innovative ideas and just as many consultants and coaches get anxious with the thought of talking about their business in a uniquely creative way. 
Yet, we are hardwired to be creative and in a competitive marketplace, creativity and imagination are needed and necessary in order for your product or service to stand out from the crowd. So, how can you position your business, course or idea in a unique way, one that captures attention and converts potential buyers? To find out, Lori Vajda and Nola Boea asked Dr. Natalie Nixon, creativity strategist, global keynote speaker, and the president of Figure8Thinking. Her approach to using creativity, curiosity and rigor in business and in life, are the subject of today’s episode.

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Business success strategies are in the works. Come have a listen!
In This Episode You’ll Learn

• Why having multiple interests doesn’t need to limit your career pursuits nor your business path.
• How being good at something, doesn’t mean it’s the career path you have to follow forever. 
• What happens to your mind and body creatively, when you truly are doing what you love.
• The one thing many, if not most, entrepreneurs get wrong about being in business for yourself.
• How prototyping (the ugly first draft of an idea) can give you insights and information to improve your side business, professional talks or a book you’re writing.

When creativity is regulated to the arts and artistic people, individuals, entrepreneurs, or even a successful plumber, minimize or ignore the process they go through to come up with a solution to a particular problem. As Nola and Lori found out, creativity is available to everyone and needed in both life and career. Tapping into creativity comes from applying both rigor (task and focus) and wonder (making time to ask big ‘what if’ questions). Implementing these successful strategies takes work, but the result is found in your ability to think differently, dare we say, entrepreneurial. 

(5:21.39) What does it mean to be a ‘hybrid’ thinker and how do you apply hybrid thinking in your life and career. 

(9:33.41) When you follow your heart in your career or business pursuits, you’ll need to be prepared to do the one thing most entrepreneurs ignore.
 
(11:33:69) 5 underrated, yet valuable, lessons from having a side business/hustle that may help boost your income and career.

(15:33.52) How you know your innovative idea or approach is truly an innovation, is by being able to answer these two and necessary questions.

(21:25:11) Unleashing our curiosity, improvisation and intuition in our work, business, and life, starts when we are willing to interrupt these behaviors.

(29:28:32) Entrepreneurs fall in love with finding solutions to people’s problems. However, it’s these three ‘I’s’ that link creativity with entrepreneurship.

Resources
You can subscribe to Lori and Nola's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Figure8Thinking - https://www.figure8thinking.com/ 

The Creativity Leap - Book on Amazon 

Get a Free Chapter of The Creativity Leap - Download First Chapter

Wonder Rigor Tip Sheet,16 tips on how to exercise more wonder and more rigor in your life and work - https://www.figure8thinking.com/resources/ 

This episode was supported by: Be-YOU-nique

Transcript

Nola: [00:00:00] Listeners, we're departing from our typical 30 minute podcast to bring you an exceptional experience. Enjoy the conversation.
 LinkedIn named creative thinking the most in demand skill of 2020, and researchers have put it on the top three required skills to run a business. Why? Because creative thinkers are visionaries. And even if your goal is not to invent the next big idea, creating a side hustle and a business that will stand out from the crowd requires imagination to keep you from following the typical, and usual business model.
So stay tuned as we explore how to open your creative pathways to entrepreneurship in today's show.
You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast, where time strapped professionals, like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.
Lori: [00:00:49] Healthy IO, Tesla, Shopify, Indigo, and Omaze are just a few of the businesses named as Fast Company's list of the world's 50 most innovative companies. Entrepreneurship and creativity go hand in hand. And whether your goal is to develop a new world-changing product or to solve an old problem in a new way, you'll need to think differently. Dare we say out of the box. We were curious about what it takes to come up with the new business model. And more importantly, is it a skill accessible to everyone to find the answer, we sought out an expert in the field of creativity.  Hello, and welcome aspiring side hustlers, Lori and Nola here with an inspiring inquisitive and innovative episode of Sticky Brand Lab. But before we show you how to poke holes in your thinking cap, so you can see opportunities where others see challenges, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on. Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts that way you'll never miss out on any of our weekly helpful, informative, and always opinionated podcasts. Now let's get this curiously creative show started.
Nola: [00:02:05] I'm going to make a bold statement. Being a successful entrepreneur requires creative thinking. Yet we talk to people all the time who are too fearful to pursue their creative ideas, or even talk about their business in a uniquely creative way to help us explore, understand, and find ways to connect entrepreneurship and creativity. We sought out an expert in the field. Dr. Natalie Nixon is a creativity strategist, global keynote speaker, and the president of Figure 8 Thinking. She helps leaders apply creativity and foresight to achieve transformative business results and amplify value. Natalie is the author of The Creativity Leap, Unleash, Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work, which by the way, was awarded best business book 2020 by Porchlight and selected best business book 2020 by Soundview. A hybrid thinker, Natalie consistently applies her background in cultural anthropology and fashion. She was a professor for 16 years and is an early stage investor at two social impact ventures as well as a regular contributor to Inc, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Welcome, Natalie.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:03:18] Thank you. It's great to be here.
Lori: [00:03:20] We're very excited to have you here. And I first want to start off by saying, um, I absolutely loved your book. I felt like you truly understood how my mind works. And beyond that, you made me feel like the way that I think is its own form of creativity, which is huge, especially if you're a typical web thinker, right. You yourself have been described as a creative strategist and hybrid thinker, and we wanted to know what exactly does that mean?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:03:52] So, first of all, thank you for having me here. It's really a pleasure to join you you both in conversation about creativity and especially as it connects to entrepreneurship. Um, so hybridity is something that I have experienced in myself since probably since high school, when I started getting signaling and messaging that as one gets older and becomes more successful it's because one focuses. And one , decides on a lane, um, it may be in part because I'm a Libra and I have, very inherently indecisive. Um, but I, I interned when I was in high school at an AM radio station, and the woman who was the host of this early morning, Sunday morning program, I was probably a 12th grader and I knew I was going on to college.   I remember her saying to me, you know, as you get older, people are going to expect you to decide on, you know, the one thing that you're going to be good at. And she said, don't let that get to you. If you have a multiplicity of interests, you know, embrace that. Um, so that combined with my parents' encouragement. Yeah, it's totally awesome.  The wisdom from someone much older than me, and then my encouragement from my parents. Who really told me, I remember I was a sophomore in college, they told me, you know, follow your heart. When I was having my first world crisis of what majors should I choose. Um, being hybrid really is about being able to embrace all of the dimensions of oneself and to really follow the breadcrumbs of curiosity. After college and my early twenties, I lived in New York city, and I remember having friends who worked on wall street, who in my view were a bit condescending, as they re referenced people in the arts and nonprofit sector. And then I would have friends in the arts and nonprofit sector who I thought were a bit naive who, who referenced me, who worked in corporate as working for The Man. I always understood the interdependence of all that. I was encouraged early on to really embrace that part of myself. And then years later, I actually was a professor, as you mentioned. And the last six years in my academic career, I created a launch, the Strategic Design MBA program, and the moniker for that MBA program was "the MBA for hybrid thinkers." so it's definitely something it's been a, it's been a through-line in my career.
Nola: [00:06:19] So you've really embraced hybrid thinking. It's like, it's not something that's a weakness that you have to get into a lane and focus. It's, I'm a hybrid thinker and I'm embracing this and you should too.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:06:29] right. That's right.
Nola: [00:06:31] That's great. Sticky Brand Lab was created for professional women seeking to turn their expertise and ideas into a side hustle or transition their side hustle into a full-time business. So as a professional woman, yourself, as you said, you were, in full-time academia, can you tell us what led you to start and eventually grow, Figure 8 Thinking?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:06:54] I kind of always had side hustles. So I think about in my twenties, my first entree into the world of fashion, was I started my own, uh, hat design business. It was called Nat's Hats.
 Lori: [00:07:06] I love that.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:07:07] Well, I really, I went to hats ‘cause I was like hat rhymes with Nat and all my friends call me Nat um, but I started it in my twenties out of naivete and need. I couldn't afford to buy any of the pretty frocks and all the boutiques in Manhattan and Brooklyn. And I knew how to, sew my mom taught us how to sew when we were girls. And I ended up having to, sew most of my outfits for work, I sewed my winter coat. I sewed outfits. I said hats. And my friends started saying Nat, I would totally buy this. You should sell this. And on a whim one day on many, a subway ride back and forth to work. I thought maybe I could do this. And I walked into a boutique on the upper West side where I love to window shop. Introducing myself as a hat designer.  Asked to speak to the manager owner that you're speaking to her. And I said, well, may I show you my line? I'm a hat designer. I had like the hat on my head and two hats at home. And she said, sure, let's make an appointment. And that started the following week. I went home. I sewed like 20 hats. Um, I didn't know the difference between inventory and samples at the time. but that started, she bought everything outright and that was my first side hustle.
Years later, I'm a professor, and I give a TEDx Philadelphia talk. And my TEDx Philadelphia talk in 2014 was about basically "the future of work is jazz." And that catapulted me into invitations to come into companies and help to share with them why and how they could become improvisational organizations. And after about six months of this, my husband, John, who is a, has a different type of beautiful brain. He's much, he's a lawyer, he's more of a planner. And he said, babe, this is a thing. You need to formalize this. And I was like, okay. And so I was a full-time professor and, I created this company Figure8Thinking, which was truly my side hustle. It was this repository for practice on the side of all my scholarship and academic work. And then I looked up six months later and realized I was having more fun with my side hustle than with my main employment with academia. I loved, I loved being a professor until I didn't anymore. And some of the answers was really tugging at my heartstrings.
Nola: [00:09:26] Following your parents' advice. Do what you love.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:09:28] Yeah, yeah. To, to, to follow your heart. I remember my father told me that when you follow your heart, you'll have to turn down opportunities.  They both said, my mom and dad said, study what you love, which turned out to be anthropology and Africana studies. You see right there, how indecisive I am. I just, I thrive in, multi-disciplinary interdisciplinary environments. Um, but my father was right. Um, when you, when you do what you love, no one has to tell you to wake up earlier, stay after longer and later, put in the extra hours, because you are just energized to do that work.
Lori: [00:10:06] I can so relate to that. Um, when I started out in my own career after college, it was in community mental health in particular, in the division of youth corrections. And I went on to do coach training. And started my first side hustle, which was a dating coach, but the dating coach was starting a business. And that's what really opened up the opportunity into digital at that time. So social media was just coming on. Websites were just coming on. I was exploring all of the marketing and branding and I fell in love with it and it energized me and I took that information and applied it. In the day job that I had until I made a career change that led to well, where I am now. But when you're excited about something that you're doing, your brain is like to me on fire, which is what, which was what I love. So that brings up, um, uh, a really good point is that you've had a very multidisciplinary path, widely diverse degrees, career track and experience, which made us wonder given how you see the world, what was the problem that you were trying to solve by writing the book. The Creativity Leap?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:11:29] Yeah. Um, before I answer that question about the problem I was trying to solve by writing the Creativity Leap, I just want to build on your point about how energized we are when we are following our hearts and the value of investing in a side hustle. In my, my par lands from design thinking and strategic design work, what we're basically doing is we're prototyping, right? The stakes are a little lower if you're not totally dependent yet on that venture for your income, and you begin, at least for me, when I had one foot in academia and one foot and Figuring 8 Thinking I was constantly learning what clients needed, what I was good at what I was really bad at what I would interested me, what I really didn't want to do.  That's also another value of a side hustle is you really are prototyping, right? Ways to work and identifying, you know, sometimes we have this, this, this image in our head, like I would love to do, I'd love to be a dating coach. Right. And then maybe you start dabbling in it. That's not really my jam or I'm not that good at it or, or whatever. So anyway, I just wanted to point that out. 
Lori: [00:12:41] You get very excited when you're talking about the things that mean a lot to you, and it's clear and seeing it on the expression on your face and the tone of your voice. And I wanted to piggyback off of what you said when you're, when it's. You're prototyping on the low value. You really get to see who you like to work with, what you like to do. And it can take you in a new direction that your day job, where you're required to take in whoever the client is or whatever the situation is because you're working for somebody you're not learning about yourself.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:13:15] Right.
Lori: [00:13:16] I just wanted to piggyback off of your excitement and just what happens when you're talking about what you love.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:13:22] Well, but also here's the thing you do. We're always having the opportunity to learn about ourselves, even when we have an employer who is not us, who's not ourselves. And it's also a misnomer that, Oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur and work for myself. Actually, you're always working for someone else. And you're working for your clients when you were an entrepreneur. You do have a lot more control over how the work gets done. A little bit more control on your terms. You get to shape the form and delivery, but you really are always working for someone. Um, so, I think that's important for people to mind. Yeah. Um, but with, in writing The Creativity Leap, that book is an outcome of two realizations. So one was a personal problem I was trying to solve. And then it was a problem. I was, I was seeing, was emerging in my client work. So I am a global keynote speaker and by the way, I use my speaking also as a way to prototype ideas, I always do a variation on a theme. I make sure that my, my content is merging with what, the client needs and what people in the audience are needing. But I would, I was prototyping this, this, this creativity framework, this ecosystem of wonder and rigor, experiences and services I've developed. And it was half baked, a lot of the time. And I was, you know, missing, matching different things in different ways. And people will come up to me after a talk and they'd say, that was great. Where could I learn more about that? Now I quickly realized the personal problem I had was I needed a repository of my intellectual capital.  I needed to be able to productize my intellectual capital in a nice, curated way. I would be able to say, here you go read this book. So that was one reason I wrote the book. I quickly realized that as a speaker, it would help immensely for me to be able to direct people to the book version, the audio version, the Kindle version of, of, of my ideas.
The other reason why I wrote the book, which really gets to the content is because a lot of the time earlier I would be invited in to help corporate clients design cultures of innovation. Build innovation to the way that they work. And everyone was throwing around the I word innovation constantly. And it kind of bothered me because it just felt so generic. And I had this creeping sensation that we were kind of all, like talking over and around each other. And we were, we're thinking about innovation in slightly different ways. So in my view, I thought, gosh, we need kind of a lingua franca around innovation. And by the way, I define innovation as invention converted into value. And that value could be financial value, cultural value, social value. But if it's just an invention, I won't say just, but if it's an invention and it's not scalable yet, is that delivering value? It's not an innovation. The converter value to go from an invention to an innovation is creativity. Now that left me with a conundrum that I was working a lot of the times in corporate environments where, you don't lead with creativity. Like. Creativity is not muttered in the hallways. It's not brought up in the boardroom. So, so then my, the problem I wanted to solve was how might I make creativity more accessible and meaningful and actionable for people who don't think that they're creative, who for folks who don't think that the work they're doing is linked to creativity. And meanwhile, I very clearly saw that the only way you're going to innovate is if you hire for creativity. Is if you cultivate creativity, and if you sustain it. And the first ones I wanted to start, was to bust the myth that there are The Creatives air quotes that there of the creative types, the creative team will take care of it over there. Um, that what ends up happening, we think that way is we're siloing and ghettoizing creativity in the arts. Which isn't fair to artists and it's not beneficial to our society at large. So a big problem that I, that I hope that I am solving by having written the book is to really democratize the way that people are thinking about creativity.
Nola: [00:17:49] Making creativity accessible by everybody.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:17:54] Yeah. Because we're hard wired to be creative as humans.
Lori: [00:17:58] I love that.
Nola: [00:17:59] Creativity often gets regulated to the arts and artistic people, as you said, but you say to be a successful employee, entrepreneur, or even a successful plumber, you have to be creative. Could you tell us what you mean by that?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:18:13] Yeah. So I should also just clarify how I'm defining creativity. So I define creativity as toggling between wonder and rigor to solve problems. Full stop. So if you think about creativity as toggling between wonder and rigor, then you soon realize that, you know, artists are outstanding and excellent at manifesting that on a consistent basis. They wrestle with the ambiguity of process they delve into it. They don't avoid it. But any incredible engineer, entrepreneur, scientist, accountant, uh, aesthetician. who is successful at what they do are uber creative, because they are toggling between wonder and rigor to solve problems. And then The Creativity Leap, I interviewed over 50 people who come from a range of sectors to collect stories and examples of how they in their own work environments do just that.
So Wonder is about dreaming. It's about audacity. It's about asking what if and big blue-sky questions. It's also about awe and pausing, which we're not very good at in American society, but it's essential. Um, Rigor is about discipline and time on task and focus. And it's not very sexy and it's often very solitary work. And it is an essential component of creativity. So, so we have romanticized creativity. And part of what I'm trying to do is kind of pull the veil back, open the kimono a bit and help all of us understand that, you know, creativity is not pulling something randomly out of your armpit. It really requires an intensive amount of work.
That's the rigor part, and it requires you to design space and time in your life and work for the wonder.
Nola: [00:20:06] That's that's very creative thinking.
Lori: [00:20:11] Okay. When we come back, Natalie, we would love to get your advice and feedback on what gets in the way of adults applying wonder and rigor in life, especially as it pertains to entrepreneurship. as well as some practical tips for developing our creative confidence.
Nola: [00:20:31] So
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 Nola: [00:21:11] Welcome back to Sticky Brand Lab, where we show you how to turn your knowledge, passion, and great idea into an income stream. So you can create a side, business and lifestyle you're excited about. So Natalie, what gets in the way of us unleashing our curiosity, improvisation and intuition in our work, business, and life?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:21:32] Well, First of all it's, it's a mental model challenge. A lot of it is mindset. You know, I launched a, uh, an online course in the early winter of 2020 called Your Creativity Leap. It was, live course through Zoom, the course goes through for miles milestones. And, one of the great pieces of feedback about the course, which I'm glad that I invested in was, was so much work in the front end around wrapping your head and your mind around your own capacity for creativity. And we kind of did excavation work in the beginning to really examine, perceived. faults and, you know, even the mistakes, there are mistakes that we make.  And now I'm converting that into a digital course, that's going to be available later in 2021. And so the first piece is really mindset and mental model. And I'm a big fan of, um, the relationships, psychologist, Esther Perel. I love her and her work and her wisdom. And she talks a lot about interrupting the stories that we tell ourselves. And we totally tell ourselves stories about who we are, what we can do, what we can't do. I'm not a blank type of person. I am an X type of person, et cetera, et cetera. And once you, um, pause. And realize A that's been happening and B you pose a new question about what if I started asking myself new questions and suppose new things about, who I am and what I can do. It's a game changer. Now. It's work. Because we have, the inner critic, always available, but it's really a matter of good of exercising, uh, a different voice.
I remember when I decided that, my job title is I am a Creativity Strategist. And I probably spent. A good month where I would have to look at myself in the mirror and I would pray, this is before a COVID quarantine, where we were still meeting person and traveling a lot. And, and I would look myself in the mirror and say, hi, I'm Natalie Nixon. I'm a Creativity Strategist. Hi. I would say over it, or someone would just roll off my tongue because it felt so clumsy and awkward. And I was like, that's people are going to think, what is she talking about? And I would say, no, that's okay. People are going to ask you what does that mean? And then I will have to fumble my way through, explain that until I get my schtick down. Right.  That's one thing that gets in our way is we just, um, we don't have the right mental models, but th but there are tools and techniques we can incorporate. And practice, which I teach a lot in my course to help people do that.
The second thing really has to do with our educational system and as a former academic, I totally own that. And as a former I'm product of our, of our educational system, but, you know, um, I have a friend and colleague Bob Schwartz, who's the former head of design for GE healthcare. He now is a professor actually, But he always reminds people, think back to when you were a kid, you were given four chairs and a blanket. What do you do? And everyone knows you built a fort, you build a little house, you built a little hut, you imagine, right? So we have no problem as children. And we observe it in our own children as young people to be all about the mashup, the remix, juxtaposing, things that that adults think should never go together. But that's how creativity thrives. So part of what happens in our educational system as we, um, are educated to err, on the side of The Answer, The Solution too many, not all, but too many of our educational environments do not encourage questioning and really deep curiosity and inquiry. And we, then if we're fortunate, we go onto college university and maybe beyond, and we're asked to major in something and, and pick a lane. And then, you know, it's even more evident if you go as far as the doctoral level, because you you're supposed to identify a really narrow way that you can contribute to the field of knowledge. And then, um, and work, you know, we have departments, we literally have divisions in most organizations. So it's also, it's learned behavior that we have erred on the side of siloing versus, really, being invited to become polymaths. And in my view, the future of work is going to require us to, uh, develop our ability to be polymaths and to have, um, breadth and depth in our thinking.
Lori: [00:26:18] I think that's going to be great because I've often said that I'm a master of nothing and a Jack of all trade, because I, I take the little pieces of everything that I've learned along the way. Uh, but in the beginning of my career, I felt like I was the odd person out because I could not, um, comfortably focus on just one thing. I loved the variety that was available. And I think, you know, you're speaking to that, we want our employees to think broadly, but we don't encourage or provide the opportunity for them to do that. Yeah.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:26:54] Yeah. I remember when I was probably kindergarten or first grader, I thought, and I didn't think there was anything wrong thinking I wanted to be all these things. When I grew up, I wanted to be. A dancer, a writer and a nurse. And I thought, yeah, I could totally do all those things.  You know, it's, it's, uh, drummed out of us. And, but I think the secret is that most of us really are hybrid. It's just the way our brains are designed. And once we're given the permission to, as you say, for our employees, our teams to, to, to cultivate that, then we're off and running.
Nola: [00:27:28] Absolutely.  You mentioned how you take these. And I'm paraphrasing now but you were taking two. When you take two disparate things and be able to mash them up. You reminded me I read a book called On Writing by Stephen. King the author. I don't really read his books, but I know he's a prolific author. So I was curious and he, he said people often come to him and ask, how do you come up with those, all these ideas? And he basically says, here it is. I take this, this crazy scenario over here on the left. And then I take a totally non-related scenario over here on the right. And then I bring them together and and think to myself, what would happen if these two scenarios, collided and bam, a storyline is born.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:28:11] I love that. I'm going to read that book. that's awesome. Yeah, that's about the, the beauty of asking what if over and over and over again.
Lori: [00:28:20] I'm currently reading Creative Quest by Questlove and he talks similarly about listening to like sitting outside and hearing the bugs making different noises. And then all of a sudden a beat comes in and he relates it to an artist. And then all of a sudden these ideas come in a mashup as well, but for him, it's a musical mashup.
And so then he takes that idea into the studio.
Nola: [00:28:50] That is so cool.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:28:51] Yeah, we all have different canvases for some people. It's a, it's a laboratory for other people. It's a classroom, for other people it's a construction site, for other people it's, music video, you know, it's a financial plan, you know, it's it's, but we all are creative.  Some more so than others only because others really commit to exercising. Um, paying attention to all the opportunities that are constantly around us to tap into wonder and tap into rigor.
Lori: [00:29:23] Well, switching gears just a little, in what ways do you think entrepreneurship and creativity are linked?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:29:31] Entrepreneurs are really great at falling in love with people's problems and then figuring out a way how to monetize the solution to that problem and scale it. That's what entrepreneurs are really good at doing. And, in order to fall in love with people's problems, you have to be super creative in the following way.
Part of my, creativity framework and system, I call I'm calling it. Now the, my Wonder Rigor Ecosystem, is I talk about practicing creativity through the three "I"s. And the three "I"s are inquiry, improvisation and intuition. And I actually, since you got started asking about entrepreneurs, I'll start with intuition piece because. When I was a professor had launched this MBA program, my professional network started to intersect a lot more with startup leaders. And I often bring them in to meet with graduate students and to share their, their journeys. And I started observing them in their origin stories. They would reference things like something told me not to do the deal. Or something told me to work with her. And not him, even though her pedigree, wasn't a Snuffy. I thought what's that something, I think it's intuition, but we don't touch intuition in MBA programs and law school in medical school. Yet to every successful leader, they always credit their intuition. So one of the things that entrepreneurs are excellent at is they incorporate intuition in their decision-making process. They're super curious, that's the inquiry part of the three "I"s, about understanding. Um, I wonder what would happen if we could figure out a way, you know, you know, the data that shows how much time people were spending in office buildings at work in their cars are just sitting there and other people need rides. What if we could create some sort of service that connected, you know, rideshare services, for example, as, as an outcome of, of that questioning.
And then, um, improvisation. Improvisation is less to do with, you know, being able to do an impressive jazz riff, or being a talented actor on Saturday night live, which can be quite intimidating for me, it would be, um, but, being improvisational is about being adaptive and actively listening. And saying yes. And instead of, yeah, but we tried that six months ago and didn't work or a flat out no, which is even worse. So, entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs have to be incredibly improvisational because often we're starting just with scraps, limited resources. So you have to be very adaptive. You have to, be able to hack a lot and juxtapose things that people would never have otherwise thought to put together. So the three "I"s are always in play in successful entrepreneurship.
Lori: [00:32:31] That's great. if I can. Kind of piggyback off of that. If you wouldn't mind describing LEAP as it might apply to professionals wanting to start a side hustle or try out entrepreneurship, for example, to take their expertise into consulting so that they can gain, insight and kind of, uh, apply and develop ideas, products. How can a listener use leap in that way?
 Natalie-Nixon: [00:32:55] The way that people can use the leap process, um, in their work is, first of all, it's. It's work. It requires a commitment to wrestle with the ambiguity of process.  In the beginning of the Creativity Leap, I asked the question, what is a leap? You know, what does it take to leap? And I talk about how you first need to identify an obstacle in front of you. And it's an obstacle of a size that you couldn't just walk around it or kind of hop over it. It's something that requires the kinesthetic energy momentum that's required, to galvanize that, that forward motion. And finally, you know, it's impossible to leap backward. We can only leap forward. Um, and I took those principles and incorporate, I incorporate into my advisory work and by coaching and into this online course that I'm developing, which by the way is called the Wonder Rigor Lab.
So I actually divide the course into four milestones. And the four milestones, really map to the letters in the word leap. And so the first milestone is to be able to leverage everything that you've experienced, even the stuff that you shudder to remember if you have the increasing capacity to identify, what did I learn from that mishap or that unfortunate experience? That can be converted into an asset.
The second milestone is to envision an incredibly audacious, magnificent future. And the more audacious the better, because the reality is we're always going to have to edit down and chisel away things because of a lack of time or limited funds, et cetera.
Uh, the A, the third milestone is about asking. It's about asking new and different and better questions of ourselves. And it's also about asking for help. Um, and so I take people through ways to get better at asking for help, ways to get better at framing different and new questions.
And then the P. It's about prototyping. It's about oxygenating your ideas, giving it air, giving, giving your ideas sunlight, but not in these huge magnificent, it has to be perfect out the gate way, but prototyping it, a prototype is an ugly, rough draft version of something. It is supposed to be. Imperfect. It's supposed to be rough on the edges in fashion, prototypes were never made in the right fabric. They would have the, the wrong color thread, uh, you know, put together with some safety pins, perhaps draped on a form. It's it's to give you a conception of the idea, just to conceive the idea and start to roll out your idea and small, iterative stages and learn from each.
So the L.E.A.P. process to leverage, to envision, to ask and to prototype is the way I have packaged, um, our ability to really exercise creativity in the way I advise people.
Lori: [00:35:58] When you were describing what that stood for, I had a new way of thinking about not only creativity, but entrepreneurship and, uh, Nola and I had recently, um, done an episode on Say Yes to the Mess, with the idea that when you're starting your side hustle or an entrepreneurial journey, that it, if you wait for perfection, then you're never going to find it.
Nola: [00:36:27] Right.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:36:27] it doesn't exist. 
Lori: [00:36:28] Exactly.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:36:30] You'll never start it. Yeah. That's why the prototyping, I, what I learned from my students and my first rollout in the live roll out of the course, it's understandably terrifying because the answer could be no, the answer could be who cares?  But  if you don't give it air light. Um, it's never going to grow. It just becomes something that you covet. And then somebody will say, well, someone can knock me off. Well, one makes one of the most valuable lessons I learned in the fashion industry. As soon as you launch something. it will be knocked off. And there's two different camps in that world with fashion about that, the Diane Von Furstenberg camp, she worked really hard to try to create more legal systems and infringements to protect designers. Awesome. However, the challenge is a lot of fashion designers would never have the financial means to invest in the kind of legal protection to make that happen.
Then there were the Tom Fords of the world and Tom Ford basically said, bring it on. You know, I know that I'm going to be knocked off. As soon as I launched this, it just, it just makes my game tighter. And this means that I'm going to show up very different I'm going to move on to the next. So if you have this constant fear, I have to covet my idea.
I can't let anyone know what I'm thinking about. You're never really going to even know if it matters to people. if it's meaningful to others. um, in the arts, and in design, there's a process built into the pedagogy to help students of art and students of design learn to test your ideas and small iterative bits. So there's the recital and for dancers, there's, the work in progress, fall gallery show for visual artists. There's the gigs that musicians do and also recitals that musicians do. There's the audition process that you have to just show up over and over and over again.
You're told no. And no. And finally, maybe, uh, maybe, and then a yes. And in design, there's the Crip. So you build this muscle to be able to have the courage. It never, I don't know that it's ever easy, but you just begin to accept that it's part of the process. That I have to kind of begin to inch my way out there and, uh, I learned from people's feedback. And I know that's an interesting interpretation that could be great for my next iteration or my, my next way of doing this. And so that's a really valuable part of the pedagogy, I believe. In the studio that comes in the arts and in design that so many other fields could really benefit from. Instead of educating our kids and young people to have the answer, which you think about it, that the standardized testing system is about fill in the dot, don't go outside the line. What's the answer. And I get the, the need for standardization, but we, it can only be that otherwise we're, we're never really going to flourish.
Nola: [00:39:27] Fascinating.
Lori: [00:39:31] Exactly my brain is on fire. Um, this is like, woo. I could see why people would love to take your course. I'm thinking, uh, you bring that academic profession, a professor type where I'm in that learning mode, and I love that. And then just the relatable stories that you bring that connect the dots that are like, yes, she is saying what I believe.
So it's like this combination right now. So yes, it is very fascinating.
Nola: [00:39:59] So we're going to get a little personal. Our guests usually share with our listeners, either their motto for success. Um, since we're like inspirational quote junkies or their recipe for success, and when we asked you. Do you want to share with us like a motto or quote, or would you ever prefer a recipe recipe? You said, well, I'm going to share a recipe that includes some mottoes. And I have to say that is a first. So you have us both really intrigued.
Lori: [00:40:32] Yes.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:40:33] Well, now that we've talked, it should not be shocking to you that I couldn't decide on a motto or a recipe, obviously I couldn't decide. No, but, um, I would say my recipe for success is to follow your heart. Because I realized now this stage and age in my life, it's a matter of taking your medicine now, or take your medicine later. And follow your heart is actually a much more efficient way of living.  So my, my recipe is to follow your heart, which can sometimes be a solitary path. It's an as, as a path where people don't really understand why you're making this move, or you left that job while you're now moving abroad to, to blah, blah, blah. it helps you to practice the habit of following and acting on on your intuition.
But embedded in that recipe of following your heart, listening to your intuition of, of trusting the process, I also have, uh, three quotes that I, I love. Uh, the first is. In the process of following your heart, uh, keep your eye on the donut, not the hole that came from. Um, a boss I had when I worked in the fashion industry, Jim Schwartz, who is now the president of Mast Industries. And, um, Jim was an incredible boss to have. I ended up living and working Sri Lanka and Portugal, making bras and panties for the Victoria Secret brand. And, whenever I, someone on the team, would make a mistake or   the order was held up, he would remind us, first of all, we're not doing heart surgery here. It's clothes. Second of all, he would say, keep your eye on the donut, not the hole, which was such a remarkably simple and simultaneously Zen statement, because it was all about focusing on what is in the now versus on what would have, should have, could have been. So, so that model of keeping your eye on the donut, not the hole is something that I've taken with me, Jim Schwartz, which I love as a lesson from him. He was a great boss.
Um, secondly, um, It's a, it's a phrase that I made up called "inventory of courage." I actually just posted about it on LinkedIn and my own YouTube channel, um, that in the process of prototyping and inching out your ideas and bits and stages, when we have that inner critic that starts to rise, you have to build a reserve of examples, stories, scenarios in your life, where you were able to make that move, um, leap ahead, act on your heart so that when it comes to the next time you have reference points. And for me, it started when I was. Uh, six years old, there was a little girl who used to bully me. I   showed up at school smelling like Jergens, baby lotion, and she, you know, she did not. And she used to bully me a lot. And, um, one time she, too many, she busted in front of me in line outside of the school yard. We were lining up for recess. After recess. And she shoved in front of me and I tapped her on the shoulder and I politely said, you, you just busted it in front of me. And she said, so what you going to do? Kick my butt? And she turned her back to me. And I thought, okay, I will. It's I w to the back of the line, a running start and I kicked her in the ass and she never bothered me again. So that led to the next thing. And the next thing up to the point where, you know, where do I leave academia?    So, you had need to build this inventory of courage.
And then finally this comes from my lovely husband, John, john is a partner at a law firm. He, as he likes to, he eats what he kills. And so I really learned a lot from him as, as I built my business, uh, and something that he always reminds me of is, don't ask, don't get. And I think for women, especially. Um, we're afraid to ask. And it's amazing what men will ask for.
Nola: [00:44:35] Bodacious.
Natalie-Nixon: [00:44:36] Yeah, there's a joke that a man will see a job listing for breastfeeding. He'll look up a tutorial on YouTube and how I can do that. Or, you know, a woman will see a job listing and there's 10 requirements for the job. And she can only do nine and just like, Oh, I better not apply. I can't, I don't have what it takes to that tenth thing. So don't ask, don't get. That has reaped incredible rewards for me in my career.
Nola: [00:45:07] that's fantastic.
Lori: [00:45:09] So in order to help our audience get to know you just a little bit better or what it would be like to work with you. given your book, The Creativity Leap, we wondered what is your creative outlet?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:45:21] So my creative outlet in the artistically is dance. Um, and I still dance. I started dancing when I was age four. Um, I dance in the dance company in college. And I now study ballroom and hip hop and I'm, and I love it. It's it's uh, this is about every day. Um, I'm in some sort of an online class or in person class, and it's a lot of fun.
Nola: [00:45:45] Awesome. Thank you, Natalie, for being our guests to and helping us and our listeners apply curiosity, improvisation, and intuition to entrepreneurship and to life in general. Would you tell our listeners how they can learn more about you and your company?
Natalie-Nixon: [00:46:01] Yeah, I'll simply go to figure8thinking.com. That's the number eight. It's not spelled out. And I invite all listeners to download a free sample chapter of The Creativity Leap, which is right on the homepage. Of figure8thinking.com and there is also the opportunity we can share it in the episode notes, um, for listeners to access a, um, Wonder Rigor Tip Sheet, it's 16 tips on how to exercise more wonder and more rigor in your life and work. And happy to share that. in the episode notes,
Nola: [00:46:38] Perfect. and in addition to our episode notes, listeners, you can get other links, details, and information about Natalie, her company, Figure 8 Thinking, and, uh, as well as the services and courses she provides. by visiting our website at stickybrandlab.com on our resources page that's forward slash resources.
Lori: [00:47:00] Be sure to come back Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode. And remember. Actions create results. So tap into your desire to create a life business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects.
Nola: [00:47:19] Do you have questions about creating a personal brand, side hustle or small business? Sign up for one of our clarity sessions. For more information, contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact.

Out-take
I'm going to make a bold statement, being a successful. being a successful entrepreneur, created being a successful entrepreneur creates no, I'm going to make a, I'm going to make another bold
Lori: [00:47:55] Another bold statement.
Nola: [00:47:57] that this statement is really convoluted. Okay.