Hey, hey, squad, what is up? Here we are, episode three of The Hell Yes Entrepreneur. On this episode, we’re going to discuss why creativity can feel spastic and why this spastic-ness may actually be your superpower. Let’s begin.

Hey, guys. I’m Becca Pike and welcome to The Hell Yes Entrepreneur Podcast, the number one show for entrepreneurs looking to create their first six-figure year. If you’ve got the drive and you know how to hustle but you’re not sure where to channel your energy, we’ve got the answers. Let’s dive into today’s show.

Hey, guys. Welcome back. How are you all doing today? I am gearing up to go on a vacation. My husband, my four kids, and I, we’re going to hit up those islands off of North Carolina. I’ve never been before. The only thing I know about these islands is that Nicholas Sparks is always writing his books about these islands, which means they must be romantic and beautiful. Am I right?

I’m excited. And if you’re a parent, you know that using the word vacation when you have your kids is super relative. I heard one time that you have to know the difference between the word vacation and the word trip. If you’re taking a portable training potty with you, you are not going on vacation. You’re going on a trip. If diapers are involved, you’re going on a trip.

But hey, on that same token, you know what? Count me in because this is what life is all about, right? My babies are growing up. They won’t be babies anymore. This is likely the last year that I’ll ever take diapers on a vacation with us and it’s definitely the last year that I can still claim that my 15 extra pounds is baby weight. Next year, no one’s going to accept that as an excuse.

But anyway, let’s get back to this focus. Today, I will be talking about creativity in business. Are y’all ready? Okay. Especially in career and business, if you are a highly creative person who hasn’t learned to channel your energy very specifically, it can look, from the outside, well directionless really. It may even feel directionless.

You may wake up with an idea for your business, execute it halfway before you get another idea for your business, and then you execute that halfway. And before you know it, you have 49 half-assed projects, open-ended and with no real traction under your belt.

Sound familiar? This reminds me of my friend’s dad when I was a kid. I used to have sleepovers at her house and her parents would always argue and bicker. And I remember the mom always saying, “Damnit, Dale, if you start another project that just tells me that this one is not going to get finished.” Dale was very creative in his home projects. I now can appreciate that as a grownup looking back on it.

So, for some of you, this podcast is going to really hit home. This episode is going to really hit home for you and it’s going to feel like I’m talking directly to you. For some of you, you don’t feel spastic. You feel very focused and that’s fantastic too.

When our creative juices are flowing, this can feel a lot like shiny red ball syndrome, right, shiny ball syndrome. And maybe you already own a business and you have shiny red ball syndrome with ways to make this business grow.

Maybe though, you have no business yet, but you have shiny red ball syndrome with ideas for different businesses that you could start. Either way, this is actually way more normal than you think. A lot of people feel this way.

What a lot of people don’t do is anything about it. Only like 1% – I just made that statistic up – will actually decide their creativity is worth putting their money and time where their mouth is. And only 1% – again, an imaginary statistic – will trust themselves or bet on themselves to see if this idea can take them all the way to the bank.

You may feel like you’re floating through life or floating through your career like I did for so long, especially if you’re a creative person. I used to bounce from idea to idea. I cleaned houses. I waitressed. I sold protein shakes. I sold workout plans.

If I knew how to do anything, it was hustle from a very early age. I used to sell candy in school. I would take that money so that I could go and buy bigger and better candy to sell. I was all over the place.

But here’s the catch. I never really stuck with any of my ideas. The newness would wear off and a new shiny ball would roll through catching my attention and promising me a brighter future. And before I knew it, I was heading down another path.

I now realize so deeply that these feelings of directionlessness happen when a creative person is not putting their creative geniuses to a constrained discipline path, or no one has taught them how to channel this creative energy because they either, A, deep down they don’t believe it will work, or B, they have a fear of failure or a fear of success even, or C, it just doesn’t align with what society and friends or family wants to do.

And C, the whole not aligning with what your friends and family want holds a really special place in my heart. Just a sidebar here, do you want to know a really morbid fact? Of course you do. I read once that a large number of entrepreneurs, they don’t start their passions until their 60s.

And at first glance, I thought this was just because they finally retired from their lifelong careers and they felt free enough to follow their passions and it was all wholesome and totally fine. But then, I read further into the article and it stated that most of the poll-takers said that they waited until their 60s because that was when their parents passed away and they finally felt free enough to follow their hearts without judgment.

What? People are so driven by what others may think of them, including their parents, that they’re willing to waste most of their life to not step over a line that they themselves drew in the sand. This is mind-blowing to me.

Whether it is believing that it won’t work, having a fear of failure, or whether it’s not aligning with what we think is viewed as acceptable, these thoughts may not even be a conscious thought or a realization for you. And it wasn’t for me either.

You see, creative people, we have ideas and we often jump from one idea to the next. This does not make us directionless. Our stupid fucking American education and expectation system taught us that this was a fail. They also taught us that fails are bad. Our school system teaches us that failure is wrong. You get an F, you get in trouble.

We’re taught to follow a strict timeline also. You go to high school, you go to college, you get married, you get a job that allows you to climb this invisible ladder and it gives you false hope of security and whatever you do, never, ever, ever have a career outside of the box, right? That’s too dangerous. Be like the rest of us.

From movies to media to marketing, we are taught that what is normal is spending all our day in our box little office staring at our box little computer until we walk outside in the parking lot and we get in our box car and we drive to our box home and we stare at our box TV and eat our box dinner. Oh my god, kill me. I will take pushing the limits and being weird and wild and outside the box any day. And I actually stand by this.

Have you guys ever stopped and had the realization that all of these rules that society has on us were created by humans? They were just made up by people. And most likely, people that are less intelligent than you and I. That is scary. Let’s change that. That starts with the awareness and the realization that this doing things outside the box is not weird or directionless. It is not a pitfall, but a superpower. And beginning to see all of this through a more productive lens.

If you are highly creative, you may bounce from idea to idea, and that’s okay for now. What I want you to do though is to be trusting that this superpower is your strength. When you’re filled with ideas, this is the path that you want to be on in entrepreneurship.

It can feel overwhelming. So you might be like, “Okay, great, but what do I do about this?”

I want you to focus on the thought that none of your ideas are right or wrong. All of them can be successful. You just have to pick one and go all in on it and leave the rest in the dust. The anxiety comes from living in the land of too many ideas and not following through on any of them.

I truly believe that one of the biggest depression triggers for humans is knowing that they have or had potential and they didn’t live up to that potential. That sounds like my worst nightmare. And there’s a lot of anxiety that comes out of this. And really, it stems from just not choosing that path and going all in on it.

So, creative Karen, let’s say that you want to make muffins to sell. But you also like sewing children’s clothes and you think that could be a good business. Oh, and you would be a damn good health coach, right? Awesome.

You’re going to feel like shit if you tell yourself that one of these paths is likely the right path and the rest are the wrong and it’s up to you to research how saturated the markets are or how well this product is selling in your area or what the average profit margins are, or any other bullshit that you don’t need to know.

When we think this, we are only putting unneeded pressure on ourselves with this illusion that one will make us more successful than the other without any evidence in front of us. As if your success is out of your control and lives in the land of the perfect niche or the perfect industry or the perfect idea, as if the success of your idea lands on whether this industry is oversaturated or not.

By the way, please stop talking about saturation being the reason your business isn’t doing well. I’m a massage therapist that opened a massage therapy studio in a town with the most accredited massage school in the nation.

So, all the graduates stayed here and they opened up shop in Lexington. And there was 250 massage therapy studios within like a 30-mile radius when I opened up shop. Saturation is actually a good thing and it’s what you want. But that’s for another episode.

This success in your future does not lie in the circumstances that are outside of you. You are the reason something is successful or not successful. You are the only common denominator with any business you open.

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. Let’s say that you’re selling X. If you put the efforts towards selling X and you hire a coach to learn how to sell X and you build a team around selling X and you start believing you can sell X and you choose to go all in on X then you will be successful. You can replace X with anything.

X can be hotdogs, spatulas, massages, coaching packages, cars, couches, accounting services, children. Just kidding. Don’t sell children. That was fucked up. Did she just say that?

Y’all, creativity is our gift. Be weird. Be wild. Be kooky. Allow your brain to do what it’s good at and allow it to become an idea machine generator. Don’t suppress this to stay in line with how you think you should act.

Your million-dollar idea is in that head of yours. Take some LSD and get it out of there on paper. Oh my god, did she just say that again?

Allowing yourself to be fully creative takes more than just hoping for a new idea to drop. It requires making a choice to become more authentically you. And I’ll never forget the day I had a come-to-Jesus sit down with myself about being more authentic.

It’s a long story. I’ll probably do a whole episode on it. But to sum it up, short and sweet, I spent the first year or so in coaching suppressing my creativity without realizing it. Which of course suppressed my authenticity, or who I really was.

I just wasn’t trusting that the ideas I had were safe enough and they weren’t like the other coaches that I knew that were so successful. The other coaches that I knew were so feminine and pretty and polished. They wore dresses with ruffled sleeves and the only sleeve I rocked is the one that is permanently inked into my skin.

I cussed a lot and I didn’t want to pretend anymore. I remember the day that I decided to rip off the mask and I specifically remember saying, “Becca, this polished, muted, censored, robot version of you, it’s not sustainable. That girl has an expiration date and you will lose your mind and pull a Britney.”

I would rather take this pressure off to be like my amazing colleagues. And if it fails now, at least it’s the beginning of my business and not 10 years in. I eased in slowly into this new idea and not enough for anyone to really notice outside of me. I started speaking a little differently. I started dressing more like myself, less heels, more Converse. I started making posts on social media about things that I wanted to talk about, not just what I knew would get the most clicks.

And what was the best product of this change? My creativity started flowing. The wall was gone and the pressure was gone about what other people are thinking of me. And when my creativity came out, I started attracting way more people. My content was of better quality. My clients started getting better results and money followed. And not to mention how much more fun I had. Yes, fun. Real fun in my business.

Along with making the decision to put creativity at the top of your list and making space for more authenticity, here are a few other things you can do to get your creative juices flowing.

Number one, meditate. Guys, ideas only come into our minds when there is room for them to come in. If our brains are occupied, new ideas can’t make their way in. Spending even just five minutes focusing on the vast nothingness of life and practicing clarity will provide significantly more space for ideas to flow. My favorite meditation app right now is Headspace.

Number two, chore meditation. This is my favorite form of meditation. If you have trouble sitting still, you can really reap the benefits from this type of meditation while moving and focusing on one specific thing deeply. Whether it’s an adult coloring book, cleaning your house, crocheting, running, or for me, it’s about pulling the weeds in my landscape. I don’t know what it is, the most therapeutic thing ever.

Doing a chore or moving and focusing on one thing can be a form of meditation. The idea here is that you have no input. So, your brain isn’t processing new information. So, new music, no audio, just you and a task.

Allow your thoughts to flow through you and what you’ll notice is that, after about 15 minutes, all of your chirping thoughts kind of get processed out of you and they start to dissipate. What’s left is kind of like a quiet no-thinking place. This is good and this is what we want. This is where ideas are born.

Number three, get inspired by others. Inspiration is the key to creativity. I hate to say it, but I mean it. If you’re not inspiring others, it’s just because you aren’t inspired enough yourself. If you’re lacking your mojo, it’s time to get inspired. Ask yourself, what inspires you? What author, what podcast?

I have had countless times that I have listened to a podcast and came to the ending with so many ideas in my head I had to open my notes app to keep track of all of them.

Number four, go somewhere you haven’t been. I don’t know why this works for me, but it does. I think it has to do with presence. So, for example, if I’m in another country, I find myself way more present. I’m like, “Whoa, look at their trees. Look at their buildings. Look at their beautiful people. Look at the beautiful people’s outfits. They’re so different from us. Look at their roads. Look at their cars.”

It’s like I am so much more present and it always inspires me. The good news is, you don’t have to go out of country to do this. You can just go somewhere you haven’t been for a long time and start focusing on the little things that you would focus on if you were out of the country.

Number five, psychedelics. I know I joked about this earlier, but in all seriousness, the research is now surfacing at rapid rates. It is far more common than you may think for top CEOs, artists, and famous authors to experiment with micro-doses of psychedelics to tap into their inner creative brain. It is also proving to be one of the leading successful treatments for depression as well as psychotic behaviors and diseases. If this intrigues you, try picking up the book Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind.

Alright, guys, so just as a quick recap, one of the things I want you to take away from here is just realizing that your shiny red ball syndrome might be your biggest superpower. Being creative is one of the best ways to have a successful business. Being creative looks a lot of different ways. Our society likes to make it look as though creative people are directionless. This is not the case.

If you find yourself being highly creative and filled with ideas, I urge you to learn the ways to really focus your brain so that you can B-line it towards a goal. Pick one idea and go for it. Lean how to create more creative space in your mind Meditate. Being inspired by others. Going somewhere you haven’t been before. Really leaning into what could be possible for you if you allowed this creativity to come in with super open arms.

Alright, guys, that is it for today’s episode. Thank you so much for coming here. I will see you next Wednesday right here on The Hell Yes Entrepreneur. Bye.

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Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to today’s episode. If you’re looking to get more clarity and momentum for your business, visit hellyescoachingonline.com. See you next week here on The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast.