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

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 .

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 .

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 in 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 Obviously it's like 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 . The truth is , it's the opposite . You actually gain more and you get the joy in helping others . It's a double win .

in that . 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 .

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 playing 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 . But 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 .

So 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 .

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 ?

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 . You , in other words , you'd start doing something . Oh , I started writing . How does that feel , are you ? Do you feel drawn to it ? Hotter , 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 ? Are you getting a little hotter or a little bit ?

Nothing wrong with those things independently , but my experience investing in over 100 entrepreneurs is that the formula looks a little different . The 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 . The one distinctive attribute that I've seen with successful entrepreneurs is this real scrappiness .

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 .

And 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 .

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 , not 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 , and 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 said just hire people .

Like 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 .

I 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 . Because 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 and remove the fear , take a little small bets . They're less risky , they're more accessible to more people . The small skills 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 . But 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 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 the 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 .

But artist , 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 .

Being 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 going into that , we tend to go 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 . Forget 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 can 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 the stakes , got it 1% .

I 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 . So 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 resolve . 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 .

You're like , oh , that person is so smart . Yeah , 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 like , 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 ? How 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 .

And 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 .

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 was interviewing a self-made billionaire for that book , big Little Breakdoos , and he told me a really good line . He said , josh , imagine that you and I both had an idea , directional idea , an opportunity . Now imagine he goes . 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 , it'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 . And the next day I get a little bit better . It was 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 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 Start before you're ready . Yeah .

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 the thing that you're serving , not a particular solution . And 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 , finding out about the problem , you remain fluid and willing to adapt and change some new things to ultimately solve the problem in the best possible way . So the problem is the master , not the solution .

Being the master Are there ?

What's the root of that problem ? And 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 ? Why that ? 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 .

That'd be like you saying I'm'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 on it . A spark isn't ready for scrutiny , it's not ready to stand up to judgment .

So the idea of sparking is like setting your operational brain out for a coffee , letting all creative ideas flow in a nonjudgmental , safe way , because even a ridiculous , inappropriate idea might be actually a good idea once you tweak it or adapt it or pivot it a bit .

So sparking is like the idea of just like let it all hang out , let your hair down , be as wildly as creative , don't worry about any execution challenges , budget , regulatory burdens , don't even worry if it's ethical , just let all the creativity out . And then , of course , later we're not going to do something unethical .

But that unethical , weird idea actually might lead to something else .

What's the best way you've found to do that ?

And the problem with it is that when you share an idea in a brainstorm now , you're responsible for the idea , so fear is a big part of the mix . We've all done it . You're in a brainstorm session , someone comes up with an idea and all the other people in the room become the idea police and they tell you all the reasons that idea is not going to work .

Oh , our boss isn't going to like it , it'll never fit in the budget . Who's going to do the PowerPoint Like it's just , it's a bloodbath , and so that is a terrible way to do it . I've developed over the years a whole bunch of , I think , better ways , better example . One fun one is called rollstorming R-O-L-E .

So instead of brainstorming where you're responsible for an idea , rollstorming is brainstorming in character . You're pretending that you are somebody else . So if you were rollstorming in the role of Steve Jobs or Aretha Franklin or fill in the blank author , movie star , alien , six-year-old child , fictitious character .

When Ernest Hemingway shares an idea , you have no responsibility for it . In other words , it's not you on the line . So if you share an idea as Steve Jobs , nobody's gonna laugh at your wild idea . They might laugh at your small idea if you come up with a small one . So if you're playing the role of Steve Jobs , you're totally liberated .

You can say anything you want , no fear of retribution . So the technique is really simple . You pick any character you want . Each person in the room picks a different character and you have to stay in character as you generate ideas , and just real quickly . I did this one time with a group of executives at Sony Japan . I met this guy .

He was the stiffest human being I've ever met Dark suit , white shirt , his tie is strangling him and we got him roll-storming as Yoda . I've never seen personal transformation like this . This dude's jackets off , his tie's undone , he's like leaping around the room and he had wild , great ideas . And the truth is I didn't teach him to be creative .

He had that inside him all along , but he was playing a role that forbid it from coming out . We changed the technique , we put him in a different role and his creativity was liberated . So that's just one example , but there's a number of techniques that are far better improvements to brainstorming that bring people's natural creativity to the surface very quickly .

In my experience , what is a better approach is actually to try lots of little things and test them , cheap and fast . So it's the experimentation process that reduces risk . So it's the experimentation process that reduces risk . It's the experimentation process that allows us to land on better , more thoughtful ideas .

So I would , literally just before this chat with you today which is lovely , by the way someone asked me hey , I'm struggling with a sales problem . What do you think I should do ? I said I have no idea what you should do , but what are five things that we could test ?

What if , instead of trying to solve the problem , we said hey , for the next 20 sales calls , let's do this , this , this and this . We take 100 , try five different experiments , 20 each , and let's measure them . I don't know which is going to work . And maybe number one you get two yeses . Number two you get one yes .

Number three you get 19 out of 20 guesses . Now you

know . And so to me , the best leaders are the best experimenters , the best innovators are the best experimenters , and I have a very specific and tactical recommendation for anyone listening . Every one of us has a to-do list , I'm sure of it . My suggestion is keep a second list , keep a to-test list .

The idea is this On your phone next year to-do list , keep a second list , and anytime an idea pops in your head big , small , weird , half-baked , doesn't matter , no judgment stick it on the list . Here's the cool part the mere existence of the list will boost your ability to be innovative because it serves as a reminder to take like . You're part of this .

You're an innovator , you're an experimenter , excuse me . And then periodically , maybe once a week , you say what am I going to test this week ? And , in my opinion , successful leaders are testing four or five things a week . Most of them will fail . Dump them quick . Make cheap , fast , crude experiments and the ones that show a little promise , don't go wild .

Just expand the size of the experiment a bit . If it still looks good , expand the size of that experiment a little bit . So by the time you actually bring something to full scale rollout , you've taken like 90% of the risk off the table . So experimentation I'm so passionate about this .

It's easy , it's fun , it's like what can we test , and you don't have to put the weight of the world on your shoulder to come up with the perfect answer . Come up with 10 possible answers and test them , cheap and fast , and the data will lead you forward .

To be clear , if you're conducting a medical procedure on a patient , you need a different level of certainty than if you're testing a mobile app . You know like those are different standards .

Of course , I'm not trying to be glib , but the idea is , as soon as you can launch something you know responsible , let's call responsibly , get it out in the world and then , instead of thinking about it as chiseled in stone , perfect , never changing , recognize it that that things are usually more of an evolutionary process .

So don't think about I'm launching this and it's gonna work forever . It's not like I'm launching this and it's version number one and then I'm gonna measure it and test it and tweak it and refine it and learn more about it and then , pretty soon , a lot , version 1.1 and then version 1.2 . And after a little more insight , now you have maybe version 2.0 .

And so it's the notion of not launching things with a sense of permanence , but launching things quickly with a sense of impermanence and a sense of willingness to continue to adapt and change as you go .

Hey , there's one other subject of yours that I really wanted to touch on today the level of innovative leader today and creating that psychological safety . You touched on the fear and creativity earlier . How do you , what is the steps or what's the way that we do , create psychological safety today for our teams ?

And then someone shows up at a meeting with some half-baked idea and you berate them and send them back to their cube . You've trained them to never share another idea again . Instead , don't say it's great if it's not , but just engage in nonjudgmental conversation . You might say , for example , how'd you come up with that idea ? Where do you see the idea headed ?

Is there anything you might add to the idea to make it even better ? And so , even if you don't do the idea now the person feels seen and understood and heard and validated , and they may come back with four or five bad ideas in a row , so what ?

But they might show up with a great idea that would have never surfaced in most organizations that tend to be fear-based . So that's one thing . It's just sort of nonjudgmental conversation . The other one is rituals , One of the gents that I interviewed in the book . I asked him . I said how do you keep your folks innovative ?

He has a very simple , elegant product . So now that you've kind of solved this cool thing , how do you keep people innovative ? He said I'll tell you exactly what we do . Every Friday they have a ritual called F up Fridays . They say the whole word . I'm just being polite .

And I just want you to think about the message that that sends to everyone in this company . What's the vibe , what's the feeling they're getting ? That innovation is everybody's job , that everybody in this company is an artist , that we understand that if we want innovation , we're going to have to tolerate some setbacks . And we got you covered .

We have your back , that it's okay to make a mistake . And so now you've created and modeled an environment where people can truly feel safe . And so rituals like that , coupled with nonjudgmental dialogue , tend to really lift people's creativity . That's already there , it's inside every one of us . It lifts it to the surface .

, been a pleasure . My final question is always this what's the best ?

But the actual quote Chinese proverb was this man who says it can't be done should not interrupt man doing it .