Ultimate 5-step framework to improve creativity and innovation for Entrepreneurs with Josh Linkner.

0:00As soon as you can launch something, get it out in the world. And then instead of thinking about it as chiseled in stone, perfect, never changing, recognize that things are usually more of an evolutionary process. Don't think about, I'm launching this and it's going to work forever. Instead, I'm launching this and it's version number one. Find a way. Josh is going to take us on a journey. Yes, he's got a venture capital company, invests in tech startups, more than 100 of them. He's going to share with you what he looks for and someone he invested. On top of that, he's going to take you through the five structures of find a way and how that actually works to create massive success for you.

0:30Are you living into your calling? Are you sort of optimizing your full potential? Are you bringing that call into its full logical conclusion? And also, are you making a difference? So to me, if you check those boxes, that's success. It's not about the moonshots. It's about the big little breakthroughs. Follow me. Come learn with Josh Linkner. Josh, your definition of success. How do you see it? Well, I think each of us are, of course, entitled to have their own definition. But for me, I think about it as, are you fully living into your calling? If you really believe, as I do that most people are here for a reason.

1:02And maybe like in my case, it's to help people connect with their creativity, et cetera. Are you living into your calling? Are you sort of optimizing your full potential with it? Are you bringing that call into its full logical conclusion? And also coupled with it, are you making an impact? Are you affecting the world and lives in it in a positive manner? So to me, if you check those boxes, that's success. Now, how did you arrive at that? How did you as a, you know, I bet as a young man, and it was different to what it is today. How did you arrive at that definition? Yeah, I think many of us in our early careers, we have something to prove.

1:35And then as you gain some success, it's more about something to give. So shifting from something to prove to something to give. And I think over the years, as you reflect on why we're here and what we're meant to do, I actually get a lot more joy out of helping others than personal gain. In fact, funny enough, I named our venture capital fund Mudita Venture Partners, M-U-D-I-T-A. Mudita is a Sanskrit term, which means taking joy at other people's success. It's like when your best friend gets a promotion or your buddy sells his company or whatever. And it sounds like a really benevolent thing because it is.

2:09Obviously, it's someone else's. But there's no better feeling personally, like on the planet, in my mind, than helping somebody else succeed. And so to me, my joy really comes from that. And ironically, what I've discovered is that if you chase your own individual success and material success, you seldom find it. On the other hand, when you're chasing impact and greatness and contribution, the money and personal success tends to come as a byproduct. So it's funny, like you start to think, oh, you're giving something up by cheering for other people. You're giving something up by helping others.

2:40The truth is it's the opposite. You actually gain more and you get the joy in helping others. It's a double win. Dude, you're bringing me right back to Buckminster Fuller's teachings on pre-session right there. The whole formula of things happen. Well, let's just dive a little further into success. You mentioned living your calling. How did you find yours? What was it that brought you to a phase of going, that is my calling? Because I think a lot of people listening are trying to define success for themselves and define their calling as well. And it's good to hear how others did it. Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that because sometimes it's not that obvious.

3:15It wasn't for me anyway. I mean, I'm sure that if, you know, Simone Biles knew very early on that her calling was to be a gymnast, but for most of us mere mortals, it might not be that clear. So I first started out thinking my calling was to play jazz guitar, and it's still something I love. I put myself through college to play music. I've played over a thousand concerts around the world. I have one coming up in a couple weeks in Brussels. So I still play, and I love that. Then I thought my calling was to be a successful entrepreneur, a business person. And what happened is over time, I started to do different things that I loved and pursued and enjoyed some success.

3:46But then over time, that calling became more apparent. In other words, it wasn't apparent when I was earlier on. And eventually, my calling kind of came to the point of thinking that there are 7 billion of us walking on this planet with dormant creative capacity, me and you included. None of us have fully actualized our full capacity to be creative, which is something that all human beings have. And at the same time, there are real challenges in the world from racial divisiveness, from income inequality, climate change, et cetera. And the only way that progress has ever really manifested in any dimension is unleashing human creativity.

4:21So if I felt like if I have a system that I can help people unlock their human creativity to in turn make a bigger impact on the planet, all of a sudden that became my calling and that became apparent. and once it hit me, which took years, by the way, it wasn't obvious. Then I felt like, wow, I hope I'm remembered for that. I hope they put that on my tombstone. And when you start to feel like, okay, I want something on my tombstone. Now, you know, you're pursuing your calling. Yeah. It's interesting because I look at, you know, I having five kids and, you know, some of them in their twenties and they're like, well, I don't know what my calling is.

4:51You're right. In your twenties, you're probably not meant to know what your calling is yet. You know, you're trying different things. I want to go back to then, you know, building multiple tech companies today. You help others build their tech companies. What's sort of the formula for success that you teach those people that you invest in and help them build their futures? Yeah, just real quickly, before I hit that answer, if you're earlier on and you don't know what your calling is, I don't know if you had this game where you grew up, but there's a childhood game called, you know, Hotter Colder.

5:24So you close your eyes and someone says, okay, am I getting hotter? Am I getting, oh, no, you're getting colder. You're getting colder. That's actually a pretty good game to play if you don't know what your calling is. In other words, you start doing something. Oh, I start writing. How does that feel? Do you feel drawn to it? Hotter, hotter, hotter. Okay, that's a good sign. Maybe you're on your way toward discovering a calling. If it's colder, colder, colder, maybe you're not. And so instead of worrying about having the perfect answer, it's more about trusting your instincts and what is your heart telling you?

5:50Are you getting a little hotter or a little bit colder? Love it. Brilliant. So back to the formula for success. What do you think it is or what's your strategy for that now? Well, as I work with entrepreneurs, it's actually very counterintuitive. It's not what you might guess. When we back entrepreneurs, you think, oh, you're probably looking for someone like Steve Jobs, who is hugely charismatic and has this beautiful orator and has this giant vision. Nothing wrong with those things independently. But my experience investing in over 100 entrepreneurs is that the formula looks a little different.

6:21The ones that I see most successful are the ones that are humble, that are open-minded. They're willing to put their collective goals or the company's goals ahead of their own personal gain. They are generous and compassionate. They lift others up instead of kick people down. They don't rant around and scream at people. They lift people up with compassion. And so it's actually, I think it's more of the new model. In other words, Steve Jobs was different, but maybe he was successful despite his nuances, not because of them. And so those are the things that I look for is, again, open-mindedness, coachability, willingness to be creative on your feet, and also like a scrappiness.

7:00The one distinctive attribute that I've seen with successful entrepreneurs is this real scrappiness. Like, I'm just going to figure it out no matter what. So inevitably, when you're trying to do something hard, start a company, et cetera, you're going to hit a wall. You're probably going to hit like 30 walls. And it's not the one with the highest IQ or the best pedigree that wins. It's the one that says, I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to find a way through the wall, around the wall, under the wall, over the wall, whatever. But they're like, you can throw any obstacle. I might not have the answer right away, but I'm going to figure it out.

7:30And that sense of agency, willingness to try new things, inventive thinking, creative problem solving, that to me is a hallmark of a successful entrepreneur. In front of me, a hallmark of a successful human being. You know, buddy, on one speech one time that I listened to yours, you mentioned the fear and creativity can't exist together. Tell me more about that thinking. Yeah, so again, I've been studying human creativity now for a couple decades. And the research is crystal clear that all human beings, I mean, literally all, are built to be creative, period. Now, we often think, oh, no, not me.

8:02And it's actually sad. I've seen stats that show as much as 98 % of adults don't view themselves as a creative person. That actually kind of breaks my heart a bit because we look at creativity in a very limited sense. Oh, do you play guitar? Do you do interpretive dance? Do you write poetry? Do you paint on canvas? And it's a silly thing because we can express creativity in lots of different ways. Like I play guitar pretty well. I can't draw a stick figure if I try. It doesn't mean I'm not creative. And so someone might say, well, I'm in finance. I can't be creative. That's a great creative role.

8:31Not to cook the books, of course, but to read between the lines, to spot patterns, to find new ways to create more margin, et cetera. So in my mind, every job is a creative job. It's not just for those people doing traditional art sense. Anyway, so all humans are art creative, period. The biggest blocker of creativity, it's not natural talent, it's fear. And so fear tends to be that poisonous force that robs us of our creative abilities. Instead of expressing creativity as we're built to do, we restrict it because we don't want to look foolish. We don't want to be judged. We don't want to have any negative consequences.

9:03And so if you're a leader trying to build a creative organization, it's not – people ask me, how do I hire for creative people? I say just hire people. Seriously, every human being is a creative person at their core. The thing that's getting in their way, they might need some skills, but more importantly, they just need the right environment. If you remove the fear, if you create an environment that feels safe, you've got psychological safety, creativity tends to blossom naturally. And so the point that I raised in that clip that you said is that simply fear and creativity cannot coexist. And so as a leader, again, you remove the fear that creativity starts to blossom and grow in a very natural and beautiful manner.

9:37Love it, love it. Now, when we talk creativity and you kill this subject, the whole moonshot versus the little big or the big little breakthroughs, I think is your exact terminology. Explain that thinking more because I love that, I guess, that perspective on change in business or change in life. Yeah, thank you. I wrote a book. My most recent book is called Big Little Breakthroughs, How Small Everyday Innovations Drive Oversized Results. And I set out on this mission when writing the book, like how do the most innovative people and leaders think and act? What do they do every day? And I spent over a thousand hours on the project.

10:15I interviewed CEOs, billionaires, celebrity entrepreneurs, award-winning musicians. And what I learned is that it's actually the opposite of what you might think. We think of creative people that take these wild high-risk moonshots, but the best actually do the opposite. They cultivate high-frequency little innovations, micro-innovations all the time. And it's not something they do once a decade. It's something they do as part of their daily groove. In other words, it starts to become not something that you do, but something that you are. And so big little breakthroughs to me is a much more pragmatic approach to cultivating creative skills, unlocking dormant creative capacity.

10:50Because if you're saying, okay, to be creative, to be innovative, it's got to be a billion dollars. Well, the corresponding risk might be so high that we just do nothing. We freeze up like deer in a headlight. And so if you could take the risk off again, remove the fear, take a little small bets. They're less risky. They're more accessible to more people. The small skills, you start to build skill doing little things, and they add up to greatness over time. I just think it's a much more pragmatic approach. And we see people that we revere. Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa. We say, wow, the Mona Lisa.

11:20But the Mona Lisa wasn't da Vinci's first piece of art. He had to first learn to paint. And first, by the way, you know what he had to do? Paint bad. And then he's painted a little less worse. And then over time, the Mona Lisa emerges. And so it's no different for any of us. We shouldn't be expected to just walk in the room with a Mona Lisa. It's more like, hey, you've got to build skill over time and do a lot of bad stuff. And over time, you get better at it. And that's really how creativity unfolds. Is there something that we can do to really get ourselves in that thinking, in that way of taking the little innovations rather than going for the big one?

11:53Yeah, I think the first thing is an identity shift, which is, it's not as hard as you might think. I'm not saying someone should change who they are, but it's more of stepping into an additional identity. I love the word artist. And you think artist immediately someone painting, Da Vinci. But artists, you could be a customer service artist. You could be a sales artist. You could be a manufacturing artist. Whatever your business card title says, just put the word artist at the end of it. And being an artist doesn't mean you have to be snooty or smug or wear a beret or look down on people. None of that.

12:24Being an artist means that you can challenge conventional wisdom, that you can look at what's possible instead of just what is, that you're willing to work on your craft that you leave a little bit of love in the process. And so we can all be artists. And so I think the first step actually is stepping into this identity. When you and I were six years old, we were all artists. Every kid is an artist. And instead of growing into that, we tend to grow out of it. So it's reconnecting with that childhood sense of we are an artist. After that, it's just doing little baby steps. Instead of saying, how can I solve this problem in a silver bullet way that's perfect on the first shot?

12:56Forget that. It's too much pressure. Just say, what's one little teeny thing I could do to improve the problem? How can I make this a little bit better? Is there something I could do to make it 2 % better, 0.2 % better? And so it's chunking it down into little baby steps of creativity. And all of a sudden it just opens up. I mean, I've said that to people like, hey, how should we solve this problem? No one says a word. Like, hey, how could we improve the problem by 0.2 %? The whiteboards are instantly filled with ideas. So we actually know instinctively what to do when we lower the stakes. Got it.

13:26One percent, not solve the problem, move in the right direction. So I want to go back to, you talked about the grittiness or the find a way, which is, of course, something that you're very well known for that theory. And maybe we break that down into the five different stages. But first of all, what led you to that thinking, the find a way thinking? Well, it's an observation, as I mentioned, that I've seen in other entrepreneurs. But frankly, I had a big moment myself. I almost lost my company. and I had an investor that backed out on an investment and it was a very tenuous time. I was inches away, like literally the same day.

14:01I almost thought I was going to lose my company. And we got new investment by a fraction of a hair and I got lucky, to be honest. I could have easily gone the other way. And I realized that luck is not a strategy and I needed to substitute luck with something different, which became this mantra that I've just embraced for the last 20 years now, which is just simply find a way. And the idea behind it is, first of all, that there is a way that any problem can be solved, any opportunity can be seized. So instead of looking at something like, oh my gosh, can't be done, we're like, well, maybe it can be.

14:30So it's a willingness to go after something. It's not find the way, implying that there's only one way, it's find a way, meaning that any of us could find our own way. And if you really double click on that phrase, to me it's the intersection of two seemingly unrelated forces, ingenuity and resolved. So it's the willingness to be creative, try new things, experiment, coupled with like this unwavering belief that I'm going to figure this out, even if it's hard. And so when I apply that find a way philosophy, it's actually worked really well, even in very difficult situations where my team and I have been seemingly outgunned, but we managed to navigate our way to success.

15:08Yeah. So if I look at the whole start before you're ready, fall in love with the problem, I'll get you to break these down for everyone in just a moment and let the sparks fly, run the experiment, fire the slingshot. Is that something that just came to you or is it you worked it out over time or where did that framework come from? Yeah, thank you for asking. You know, most frameworks come from lots and lots of years of doing bad, stupid mistakes. And that certainly was the case. Yeah. You know, I just I mean, I'm happy to make fun of myself, which I do often. But the truth is that when we put so much pressure, you see someone create some idea or framework, you're like, oh, that person's so smart.

15:49Yeah, you know what? It didn't just come like that. Most often they made a bunch of life lessons. They screwed stuff up. And over time they started to figure out what works and what doesn't. So mine was no different than that. And I just tried to come up with a systematic approach to say if you really want something, what do you crave? Maybe it's financial success. Maybe it's a promotion. Maybe it's winning a certain new account. Maybe it's a technical breakthrough. Maybe it's a relationship that you crave, a personal relationship. And then you say, okay, if I crave this, and that's where I want to get to, and I'm here now, it's a little different than what I crave, how do I get there?

16:20How do I find a way? And so that's all I tried to do is break down what are the steps you could take to identify what you want and find the most efficient way, the most likely way to win. So I love the fact that you start before you're ready because if you wait until you're ready, you never begin. What led you to that theory or that as the beginning point? Because many of us, even though we want something, that's the hardest part is getting rolling. You know, you're like, oh, how many people have you met? I want to write a book. I want to learn to sing. I want to do this. And they never do. You know, 30 years later, they look back with regret.

16:53And so to your point, there's never going to be ideal conditions. There's never going to be a perfect plan. And so if we're waiting for that, we're going to be waiting forever. And my observation is the most successful people just throw themselves into motion, even if they can't see the finish line. And they sort of bob and weave and course correct and adapt to changing conditions. And they don't find their way before they start. They find their way once they're rolling. Yeah. Yeah, I use the term like having five kids. It's like if I waited till I was ready to have kids, then there's no way I would have kids.

17:23Thank God they give you a nine-month period to sort of get your head around the fact. And the same is true for business. You know, most people try and wait until they've got the perfect idea or the perfect plan or the perfect thing. how do you work with all the young entrepreneurs and the people you invest in to get them to just push through, I guess? Yeah. What I've discovered is that where you think you're going to go off and changes. I've seen lots of businesses that start one way and they pivot a few times before they find their path. And so if you're waiting till you think it's perfect, you're going to probably miss the opportunity altogether.

17:57I was interviewing a self-made billionaire for that book, Big Little Breakthroughs, and he told me a really good line. He said, Josh, imagine that you and I both had an idea, a directional idea, an opportunity. Now imagine, he goes, imagine you're smarter than me and you have more money, which by the way, I was neither, just to be clear. But he said, imagine that you're smarter than me and have more money. And you wait six months to make sure it's perfect and you get everything just right and you line up all your resources. And he goes, but imagine I start today. My first shot is going to be terrible.

18:26It'll be messy and I'll screw up and it'd be awful. And then the next day I try another one And it's still really bad, but it's like a little bit better. At the next day, I get a little bit better. He goes, six months come by. I don't care if you have more money than me or you're smarter than me. I'm going to be ahead of you because each day was a new experiment. Each day was a chance to tweak and refine and adapt and learn. And he goes, and so those cycles that you get, that's actually way more effective resource, the multiple cycles, than trying to be perfect going into it. And I thought that was a really good way to say it.

18:53Start before you're ready. Yeah, love it. So step two then, falling in love with the problem. Teach me more about that and why I got to do that one. Many times we fall in love with a solution, not the problem. Like I've got an idea to do X. And then what happens is when you have this idea, you become tunnel vision. And you tune out every bit of data around you because you're so married to a particular answer. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution, is a good phrase that's used often in Silicon Valley, which is basically like identify the problem and that becomes a thing that you're serving, not a particular solution.

19:27And when you're in love with the problem, you're willing to look at that problem from different perspectives. You're willing to let go of one solution in favor of a better one if needed. You're willing to let go of any ego tied to it. You're always just trying to be in service of the problem rather than a particular way of solving it. And so what that does, it keeps you adaptive and fluid and ultimately helps you discover a better path. Even if you landed on like a B-plus path, you might be so focused on that you never can find the A path because you're dogmatic about the original one. So if I'm in love with the problem, you remain fluid and willing to adapt and change some new things to ultimately solve the problem in the best possible way.

20:03So the problem is the master, not the solution being the master. Are there any keys to really defining the problem well? Because, you know, if we don't define the problem well, it doesn't matter how good we are finding a solution. Yeah, it's a really good question. You know, like when you subdivide fractions, it's like 50 over 100. And you can reduce that to 25 over 50. and eventually you can reduce it to one over two and that's as far as you can go. Defining a problem, you're sort of like, here's a problem I have. You say, okay, what's the root of that problem? What's the root of that problem?

20:33And when you keep doing that to the point where you can't get any further, that's when you really define the problem well. So if a problem is, you know, there's too much childhood obesity, you say, well, why? Because of X. Well, why that? Because of X. Well, why that? And you certainly keep asking why a bunch of times. You ultimately get to the root problem And the more we can get to a root problem rather than an abstract problem, the more likely we'll be able to solve it. Got it. Got it. And so then turning that into solution oriented, is that where let the sparks fly gets going or how does let the sparks fly kick us into action?

21:08Yeah. So once you've got started before you're ready, you've identified the problem. Letting the sparks fly is this sort of creative process where you're not trying to solve it all at once. That's the pressure we put on ourselves. Like, oh, my gosh, I better not even say an idea until it's fully developed. You have five kids. That'd be like you saying, I'm not going to have a baby unless I know it's going to be a college graduate at birth. Like, that's a ridiculous thing to say. And so I like the notion of sparks rather than ideas because a spark is a beginning. It's not a final work product. A spark isn't ready for scrutiny.