Imagination and The Power of Change with Beth Comstock

One of the world's most powerful women in business, Beth Comstock, recently left a 27 year career at GE as their Chief Marketing Officer and Vice Chair to go in a completely different direction - to a new life beyond the enterprise-exec world where her new areas of focus include writing, art, exploration and discovery. Rarely do we see or hear of these evolutions - where someone like Beth who is so accomplished in big business reveals very publicly and vulnerably that she's just excited to "do something new" and figure it all out along the way. It's simultaneously brilliant, empowering, and refreshing all at the same time. And that's in part what makes this episode of the podcast so extraordinary. We talk about this journey she's been on and this is among her very first interviews where she share's key insights from her new book Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and The Power of Change.

If you are interested in transformation, leadership, overcoming fear or the intersection of creativity and business you'll love this episode. Beth's mission and our show aim to stand for the same things- imagination, courage, creativity, and the power of change. Beth shares stories and tactics alike around how she's taking a renewed control over her future and next career, and how you can too. Whether you're and artist, or you work as a middle manager, or you're putting an idea into a niche market for the first time - there's something great in here for you.

In this episode,

• If you are like so many of us creators out there, you probably have a bit of a perfectionist mentality. You want your ideas and art to be perfect before releasing it to the world. However, if you don't release anything (be it a song, a painting, or a business idea) until it's perfect, you'll very rarely release anything at all. Get your ideas out into the world and let the feedback that you get help shape it into perfection.
• Who are you waiting for to give you permission to make decisions, to speak up, and to take action? Write yourself a permission slip to do what needs to be done.
• If you want to make something, you have to learn the skills necessary to build it. In order to learn something, you've got to be inspired enough to put in the amount of work required to learn it. If you aren't inspired by anything, start with your own curiosity. Ask questions that you'd like to know the answer to until you find inspiration. Then start learning… which will lead to making.

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.