Sunday Caffeine - Brave Territory

Hello Hello,

Welcome back to another beautiful day on earth!

I’m writing to you again with a flurry of other posts on the way. That, and working through understanding the world of live-streaming. Hitting the circuit and considering options. There's Twitch but that's for gamers, and Youtube has the distribution. Still, you've got to run open sourced OBS on your mac to go live Youtube etc. and the jury is still a bit out on which is best. Seems like we're still early in this space, and the tech is a bit complex.

But one thing is for sure, we're entering new territories.

So I'm glad to work through this in the open. The Creative Caffeine community is about moving forward with the new mindset of an artist in a world that is changing.

The ideas available to us, the opportunity at hand, we don’t need more money for. What we need to is to brave, and a community gives us the ability to go places we couldn't go alone.

Moving forward with the conversation...

I’ve just finished Dan Pink’s new book“A Whole New Mind”and to spare you the read, his conclusion is that whereas the last 50 years was about “Left Brain” thinking that brought us mass production (analytics, processing, details), the next 50 is for the "Right Brain" (the creative, the synthesizer, the storyteller, and the artist).

That the “MFA is the new MBA."

So is this the future? Or is this an academic using data to skew a view in his favor?

Then again, every idea you share today, someone will have a counterpoint to whatever “fact” you present.
Which makes me think that it’s about the story.
Which is a +1 for the Right Brain creatives.

The facts don’t move people, and even if you wish they did, they don’t.

The meaning and context you give to your cause change our view.

So what this is about is the shift. It’s a world of overflowing media, malls, andstores are chalk full of thousands upon thousands of goods waiting for your consumption. And after all of the cars, the upgrades, and second homes and storage containerswerenot much happier. So we don't simply need more stuff.

Which in turn means that the work that it took to create all of that stuff, is dying out.

So what’s next?

We’re on a search for meaning. For leaders who can unravel the mystery of what this whole thing is about, and serve us it in a way that helps us move forward with our lives, our relationships and with our communities.

This is an old idea which forever resonates. It’s the exploration of a lifetime. People move people, and we’re ready to listen if you’ve got something new to say. If you can help us transcend.

At its best, the artist synthesizes new ideas in a way that helps us confront our demons or question how things have been done. It's the artist that empathizes, connects the dots and brings us into the future. This is no longer for the fine arts. This is about every industry going through an overhaul in a shifting global economy that's demanding a new type of eye. One that sees our deeper needs calling and can bring them to us through industry.

Pink even quotes the stodgiest of citizens, Bob Lutz of General Motors who when asked about the future of the company said,

“I see us being in the art business. Art, entertainment, and mobile sculpture, which coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.”

But how many leaders do we have that inspire?

A handful of exceptional individuals…

And what is exceptional?

Well, first it means they don’t follow the conventional rules.

I can only guess how many people told Elon Musk what he’s doing is impossible, at every stage. Second, it means they don’t provide anything incrementally “improved.” Instead, they transcend. It’s never been incrementally beating out the other, like how we learned to do on the SAT.

As Dan Pink rightly asks: “Can someone else do it cheaper? Can a computer do it faster?”

These questions are irrelevant to the individual with their own ideas.

And how do we measure the impact?

Trick question! This is where the Left Brain and the Right Brain will take issue. The data.But can we really measure their impact?

You can measure the Beatles in CD sales but...
Meaning is hard to measure.

So the motives are re-balancing.

Every time there's a new article about a “Tesla Competitor” coming in to dethrone Tesla in the electric car market. His whole point was to INCREASE competition in the space of electric vehicles. This is a victory. But it’s misunderstood when reading through the old lens. And as for shareholder value… that’s another game that people play based on the old rules of business. Today those that inspire come from a place of deeper meaning, like I mentioned…An internal meter based on belief, because the money alone isn't doing it for us.

And so people invest in people like Jacqueline Novogratz and Elon Musk because they want to be them, not just because they want the return. They’ve built their career on a different type of idea. They've stepped forward into the new age.

And now we see what they’re up to and see that it’s possible and hope to one day be in their shoes.

We have the option to jump but we hesitate.
If we have to, we can walk. Step by step into the new world.

But it still takes guts…

xx David