Maximizing Creativity + Navigating the Messy Middle with Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, and early investor in companies like Pinterest, Uber, and Periscope, and others. He also co-founded Behance in 2006, sold it to Adobe in 2012 and recently became Adobe's Chief Product Officer. But more than his list of accomplishments, Scott is a passionate advocate for creativity. He has that rare perspective of the world-class artist and entrepreneur with the ability to communicate VERY clearly about the ups, the downs of the messy middle. ... And that just so happens to be the title of his new bestselling book which just dropped last week. In this episode of the podcast, we go deep into that book, The Messy Middle: finding your way through the most crucial part of any bold venture. It doesn't take long to realize that as creators we love to talk about the thrilling start of something new, and our victorious - or fiery - end! Yet, what we need to be talking about (and nobody is…) is the crazy ups and downs that are inevitable in anything worth doing. The MIDDLE is where all the difference is made. This is a dose of REAL in a sea of normally-glossy books on creativity and business. This book is one of my top recommends thus far for 2018. And, if any of this resonates with you, you'll LOVE our conversation.

In this episode:

• Are you doing "insecurity work?" Turns out that when we're faced with a lot of uncertainty, we spend too many cycles checking analytics, social feeds, or what others are doing to assure ourselves everything is okay, The kicker = NONE of this moves the needle for us. Scott shares some strategies to compartmentalize and manage these insecurities.
• We romanticize the starts and finishes of everything. When we tell the story of our journey, we sum it up in about three sentences. It does little to capture the highs and lows (and often years) of what it ACTUALLY took to get there. Propagating this myth is harmful and Scott does an amazing job of helping us shed our lies and face the truth.
• There's a price to postponing decisions that you KNOW in your heart…but that you don't want to tell your co-worker, or client or boss or partner. When we fail to make decisions, we're creating "organizational debt." When this debt accumulates it really slows us down, so Scott shares some strategies that will help you zero in on doing the hard things you know you need to do, but are avoiding.

Enjoy!

Today's episode is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world's largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world's top experts -- Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.