Babe, What Do You Know About?
Babe, What Do You Know About?
Creativity
Have you ever wondered how a major event like surgery recovery can upend your carefully balanced life? Join us as we share our personal journey through the challenges of Taylor's surgery and its impact on our co-parenting routine. From disrupted sleep schedules to the joys of celebrating our seven-year anniversary with jet skiing and target shooting, we lay it all bare. Plus, hear about the little moments that kept us going, like watching the Olympics together post-surgery.
But it's not all about family life. We dive deep into the essence of creativity and success, exploring how self-awareness and strategic planning can transform visionary ideas into real-world achievements. Whether you're a budding artist or a corporate leader, you'll find valuable insights on balancing creative talent with practical execution. Discover how building systems and relationships plays a pivotal role in both personal and professional growth.
Lastly, we take a nostalgic trip down memory lane, reflecting on our childhood entrepreneurial ventures—from mini casinos to selling stamps. These early experiences not only fueled our creativity but also shaped our future endeavors. We wrap up by discussing the significance of maintaining a lifestyle that aligns with your creative ambitions and sharing our excitement for future projects, including an autobiography and a game expansion. Tune in for an episode packed with relatable stories and actionable takeaways!
Connect with us at @babewhatpodcast for updates, interactions, and polls.
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Welcome to Babe. What Do you Know About the podcast with your favorite husband and wife, duo Sam?
Tayla:and Taylo. Each week we dive deep into a new subject, blending fun and seriousness to push boundaries and buttons.
Sam:Get ready to expand your knowledge, challenge your perspectives and have a blast along the way so what's been the hardest part of me having had surgery for you? Okay, serious answer yeah, serious answer probably missing out on the alternate sleeping that we would do. That is the hardest part. So for a lot, for all of our many listeners, this is how me and T try to co-parent if you can call it that yeah so typically on a normal week, you know I'll get up with max on monday, which is about six o'clock in the morning.
Sam:It's not super early, but it is early enough and you know I'm with the kids until about 7.30, 8 o'clock and then the next day it's switch. Taylo wakes up with Max at 6 o'clock. Ella gets up sometime between then. I get out of the room sometime between 7.30 and 8.
Sam:That's great because it works, because you get like an alternate, like okay, cool, I can sleep in just a little bit longer every other day and like kind of get ready a little bit more, yeah. So unfortunately with T you know can't chase after any kids or pick up anything, or you know none of those things until maybe a day or two ago, yeah.
Tayla:Saturday.
Sam:Yeah, so just that that would probably be the hardest part. Everything else has been relatively manageable and you kind of go through it, because Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday no, it was like Wednesday and Thursday they were in daycare. Then it was Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I had the kids the whole day, and that's fine because it's three days in a row and then it's back to you took them up to the river and you did all these nice things with them but then it was like again monday wake up.
Sam:Tuesday wake up wednesday wake up, so it's just yeah and then. So now one week after that whole thing, T, you know, got up with the kids on the weekend, I was like that was so nice, that was great.
Tayla:Yeah, I have to say, like when you're out of town in Portugal and when you've been out of town for work or when you've had previous surgeries, like, yeah, I'd say that's just the main thing. It's just like not feeling quite like you're recharged. As far as sleep, which we're going to talk a little bit about today, sleep, interestingly enough. But yeah, so sorry for everyone, we've disappointed because we haven't had an episode come out for the last two weeks. It's just that, been having surgery, recovering from surgery, trying to survive Now on my ankle oh, everyone knows this saga, or everyone should, because we've talked about it all through the half marathon training or through everything. So had the piece of bone removed from my ankle joint and, uh yeah, been limping around the last few days.
Sam:Yeah, no, you've been a champ.
Tayla:Thanks, I'll get my stitches removed in a couple of days. So it's exciting. Anything else interesting happened to us?
Sam:Minus that, anything else interesting happened to us. Minus that, I feel like I don't know how long it's been, but we had an anniversary.
Tayla:I don't know if we oh yeah, we know we haven't talked about that. Yeah, that was the saturday before the surgery, so we haven't talked about it. So sam and I just celebrated our seven month year, seven year anniversary and sam decided that he would plan it for us this week and he knocked it out of the park, completely out of the park. We went jet skiing in the morning on the lake. It was pretty choppy, but I kind of liked it. It was fun. Then we had dinner on the what would you call that?
Sam:A restaurant on the lake, pretty much, yeah, like they have a dock restaurant thing. It's kind of nice. Yeah, and then we chilled with the kids. We took them, didn't we?
Tayla:take them to see a movie or something. Swimming oh, we took them swimming. Yes, we took the kids swimming. And then that night we went to a really good burger place if you're in provo or around provo backdoor burger, so good. And then we were gonna do axe throwing, but instead, why don't you explain the the thing?
Sam:oh, it's like a whack. It's target shooting with like like a with a wax bb, and the targets are these electronic targets, so it knows when you and where you hit the targets. On top of that, you got a little like touch screen in front of you and you play different games and so you'd like do quick, quick draw, kind of yeah like, yeah, it was really fun.
Tayla:Actually it wasn't that fun for me because sam just wins at everything shooting related and speed related, but I beat him one time yeah, I don't even remember what game it was.
Sam:One time I beat him.
Tayla:It was really fun. It was really really fun. So it's just great. Can't believe we've been married seven years, which means we've been together what eight and a half wow I've officially surpassed everyone as sam's longest relationship same and I mean you surpass that like pretty quickly.
Tayla:But yeah, it was fun. Anything else interesting? I mean we had a whole bunch of interesting world events happen. Oh, I have to talk about the olympics very briefly. So I hadn't been able to watch most of the olympics for the first half because of the time difference. Like I was always working during when the olympics were showing and it was kind of a bummer because I was like I feel like I'm missing out, blah, blah. Anyway, the next day after my surgery I'm like oh my gosh, I'm off work, I'm just sitting here on a couch, I can watch the Olympics, and we watched it pretty religiously over the last till it finished. It was so fun. The dynastics, all-around finals were on the first day that I could watch the Olympics. I was like, wow, literally could not have time this bad over. It was really fun. We got really into the track events especially.
Sam:It's awesome yeah, I got to watch the track events.
Tayla:That was a lot of fun yeah, I'm sad I missed the the rugby stuff at the beginning, but I got the highlights. So yeah, but yeah, it's a lot of updates and also not a lot of updates as well. But here we are. So today we're going to talk about creativity. Okay, you ready for my little intro?
Sam:I'm so ready.
Tayla:It's been a while since I had kind of did it as officially as I did. But creativity is often seen as a mysterious, innate talent. But the truth is far more fascinating. Things like taking a short walk can boost creativity by up to 60. Our brains are also more active during sleep, potentially leading to breakthrough ideas. And also studies show that people who are considered highly creative are also those who are often more open to new experiences and have a higher tolerance for ambiguity. So, babe, what do you know about creativity?
Sam:this, actually, I feel, I feel I know a lot about yeah not scientifically, but just being on the creative side yeah, we'll say more about that so I didn't realize this, but until I was very much into adulthood. But I have adhd. I think I found out when I was like 27 or 28 somewhere around there, maybe no 26, it was something mid to mid to late 20s and got diagnosed and I was like, oh, I guess you know it makes made a lot of things make sense growing up.
Sam:You know, I dropped out of college and I really like a semester left right.
Tayla:I had one semester left.
Sam:Literally it was my last semester. I was like meh and I had really struggled with doing homework in you know throughout school the whole time like I intensely struggled with it and I was always a class class clown, so always making jokes, always kind of being disruptive but I'd get, but I get, but I do exceptional on tests.
Sam:So I could, you know, hold a lot of information in my head but I I really struggled with paying attention and, you know, being focused. Anyways, my dad had always just been like, hey, you can just, you know, use that skill of you know having a lot going on to your advantage, you know, and one of those things that I ended up doing was getting into music, being, you know, very creative on that side it's. And, funny enough, Tayl just asked a question like hey, so why are we singing this tune? I was like, oh, I had this melody in my head and I kept repeating this phrase. And are you shaking your head?
Sam:just pass it along, yeah yeah, oh yeah so, but but anyway. So it's like well, why are you thinking about that?
Tayla:I was like I don't know, I literally probably have, like, it's probably been like two decades since the two.
Sam:You'd heard the tune, yeah but it's weird, I I have a constant stream of like a lot of thoughts going on at the same time, or and there could be melodies, it could be you know lyrics, it could be you know a movie phrase, but it's there's always something there. My brain's always like grabbing onto a lot of whatever's going on subconsciously, and so I I use that for creativity, because you kind of mix a lot of new ideas together for like a new thing.
Tayla:So so did you always feel like you're a creative person? Or is that something that you just kind of channeled? Whatever energy, adhd, whatever it is into like with time?
Sam:I since I can remember, so like four, five or six, I'd been in piano lessons and I always my mom, you know put me into music theory and stuff and I was always writing songs, even back then, even if it was like really bad, because I wasn't.
Tayla:So I wasn't very skilled, but I was, yeah, always trying to be creative and I was always, you know, drawing or man building or whatever, yeah, that's interesting because for me as a child, like I wanted to be creative, but I was very not creative in a in a conventional way, I should say, and that's something I'm sure we'll talk more about but, like, when it came to, I wasn't very good at coloring in the lines or drawing something just out of my head or even coming up with stuff from scratch. I'll say music is the one exception. Like as I got into high school I started writing a lot of lyrics and so a lot of my creativity was channeled into, like English, essentially in writing and reading, and some music, composition stuff. But even then I didn't feel like creative doing it.
Tayla:It felt not that I don't know, but like it's always been difficult for me to just create something from scratch, and so in my mind I just wasn't creative because of whatever limitations, and definitely felt like for me an innate thing that I that's how I felt about creativity was like I just don't have it. I'm just more of a doer I don't know, you know what I mean like just more of a let's plan it out, let's get the plan. And obviously, as I've grown up, I've come to learn that that's like very creative in like this very different way, but at the time I just, yeah, I never resonated or felt like I could adopt that label for myself.
Sam:Yeah.
Tayla:But what was it like growing up? Feeling like that that's who I am, like I'm a creative person, and you still feel that way. I feel like that's probably still part of your identity yeah, so it definitely is.
Sam:I mean, my whole career path is based on creativity. Right now, like the board game is you. We've created a functioning universe in itself with you, know rules and how things work, and it's even branding art, everything yeah, so yeah, everything is creative.
Sam:I feel safe in that space. It feels very natural, so it's nice. So, like you know, I feel very uncomfortable sitting at a computer for more than an hour or two, like it's a really big struggle unless I can come up with multiple different things to do at that computer station yeah, you know, or you'd like balance it out with physical activity or something, yeah, something, so I don't feel safe there and that sucks because there's oftentimes you need to be able to sit and focus and be able to be diligent at something, it can seem very overwhelming, so you just kind of want to go on to the next new thing.
Sam:So in some ways it's always been you know great, because you, you feel like you've always got ideas. You always feel like you do have a little bit of magic in a bottle you can draw from. You know it gives you a lot of confidence. You know you're like, oh, I can solve that problem. Well, yeah, we'll figure that out. Or, you know, we'll creatively fix this thing or see an opportunity, but on you. But the problem is, though, is you do run into challenges where it's like it stops working, and so you, you can't kick in the other gear sometimes where you need to be diligent in something or to be creative, like you're saying you're not like make yourself be creative yeah, you can't.
Sam:Yeah, from my perspective, I can't. If the, if there's no magic in that bottle, then it's just not there, right, then it's just, it's gone, it's quiet that's interesting because, like kind of the opposite, where I'm like I just have never had the bottle.
Tayla:There's nothing been in the bottle, so any kind of it feels to me like any creativity I've experienced has just been from just making it happen yeah, doing it.
Sam:Diligence, yeah, probably.
Tayla:Yeah, that's an accurate way to put it so you've kind of taken us through your work journey, you know, a couple of times from through some different topics, and I'm curious for you because I feel like there's a lot of creative people in the world that aren't successful in that and they're not successful in the creativity so not just in general successful, but like successful doing those kinds of creative things. But you very much have been. What do you think is the difference or kind of what took you from just like being creative and having this creativity to like actually being successful with that?
Sam:yeah.
Sam:So I think, just to clarify, I don't think I'm very skilled so there's a lot of creative musicians and artists that are like exceptionally talented on top of being creative.
Sam:Like that you've got the ideas and you know, like, what I want to happen, but then you also, on top of that base layer, you have to have skill sets to execute some of these ideas and some of these. You know concepts that you've got, whether it be musically or you know like painting, artistically, etc. And I don't think I'm very skilled in that area, very creative. But I think where I was skilled in is identifying opportunity for my creative passions and beyond, like it was like a different layer to there's like the creative side, where you have the art, you know that, the, the thing that people enjoy to listen to or see, and then on the other side is getting exposure to that and that's a whole nother skill set. That has got nothing to do with the creative side and I think just because maybe my upbringing or the people I was around or my experiences, I was able to understand how to get eyes on the creative project.
Tayla:Interesting, so for me can I like see what I think is like a little bit of the special sources.
Tayla:So the two things that I've observed is and one is the what you just described, which is like a realistic plan, like and not just a realistic, but that balance between a realistic and visionary plan for everything, like thinking ahead, not just being reactionary but being proactive with the plan. And then the second thing that I have observed that I have seen contribute, I think, to your success is a self-awareness that maybe in general, people lack, but I think with creativity is quite hard and not right. People are either like too self-aware that they like push themselves into self-deprecation and lack of confidence, or they're in the clouds, completely on like where they're actually at and I think, finding right in the middle of like I know where my weaknesses are, but I'm also confident about my strengths and being able to plan and mitigate with. That is what I've been oh thanks, Tayla.
Sam:That's really sweet, yeah, and I agree with it in terms of being. I feel like if you want success, you have to obviously define that for you, whatever that success is. And then you have to be honest about how good your thing is, or what people will actually like and what you're good at. And if you're honest about that, you'll know and be aware of the problems that you'll face. And if you're honest about that, you'll know and be aware of the problems that you'll face. And if you know those problems, you'll be able to focus on the things that you can do or the people that you can put in place to, you know, solve those issues. Because if you don't, if you just kind of like full steam ahead and it'll all figure itself out, you know you're kind of just rolling the dice as you were thinking, or, sorry, as you were talking.
Tayla:I was thinking about.
Tayla:I think the tie between like a successful creative person and actually successful leaders is I think it's tied to the same thing, which is that self-awareness, but like right in the balance of and, and then that vision essentially in the plan and the confidence in that.
Tayla:And that's kind of interesting for me to think about it that way. But I do think where I see a lot of people be like unsuccessful entrepreneurs or whatever, when they're very creative people, is like you may have the best product ever, but like you're not also a salesman or you're not also an executor, you don't actually have like the plan or the business knowledge or the whatever right, the relationships and people that I think continue pounding that entrepreneurship, that don't do so successfully, I think don't have the honesty or wherewithal to accept that like I am not equipped to do this by myself and therefore, like I'm going to have confidence in what I have and get the right partners or the right plan in place to make up for what I'm lacking essentially. But I do feel like people who become serial unsuccessful entrepreneurs like don't really ever do that. They just keep trying to like.
Tayla:Well then it must be the idea. So I'll move on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one, which sometimes it is the idea, but a lot of the times it's it's exactly what you're saying. It's, uh, audience, it's eyes, it's marketing, it's you know, all of that combined and and it is similar with leadership as well. It's just, you could be a really good people leader, but if you don't have vision, if you don't have a plan and if you don't get people to buy in to that that whole thing, you're not going to be successful, no matter what a great mentor you are or whatever.
Sam:Yeah, so you're in the corporate training, the management training space, right, and I would imagine you have to be creative to problem solve in terms of what you need in terms of messaging and materials to make sure that the people that you're training are able to consume and be able to remember these things and to apply those things.
Tayla:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's where the creativity that I work with is a little more logistical, and maybe it's because because it's relying more on like quote-unquote, less creative things like psychology or like curriculum, architecture or whether it's whatever, right. But but I I have come to realize that I'm actually like highly creative in that logistical, less visually or whatever creative sense, and I just like, I think I just struggle like I'm a creator of systems and ecosystem and relationships, rather than like products necessarily so if you have, it sounds like it and correct me if I'm wrong, as long as you, sam is doing something with his.
Tayla:He's doing something with his hand, but he's holding like a plastic flower in it. For some reason of our child's. Tell me you're a parent without telling me I'm trying, I'm trying to visually you also have bluey's goggles on your finger like a ring. It's just very funny.
Sam:Anyways, so correct me if I'm wrong, but as long as you have a paradigm of these are all the things that you can operate in, here's all your things that you need to resolve, here are all your assets, and then here are all your resources that you need to resolve, here all your assets, and then here all your resources. We don't know what it all looks like, but we know that within this paradigm there's a solution here. Can you please come up with that solution?
Tayla:I would say yes, but I do think that my skill set kind of goes and this has come totally with time and experience I don't think I've always had this but even goes outside of that where I don't even need the paradigm, I just need the problem and then the context can you define context?
Tayla:yeah. So context is not just like what the problem is, but what have people tried thus far? How did it get to this place in the first place? And just asking questions to like really determine because a lot of the times what people think their problem is is not the problem. But if you can like tell me what it is that you need to solve, then I can I use context to get me to like what should happen. And it's always like really clear for me, very clear, like oh, it's super clear that this curriculum needs an entire overhaul rather than an update, right? Or it's super clear to me that there is misalignment between the training philosophies of this enablement team and this technical training team, or there's a lack of ownership or buy-in to this training process, things like that. It's. If you can give me like what it is that we're seeing and at least generally how it needs to be changed, what we need to see, it's very easy for me to find what it is that's preventing like what is wanted from being the reality.
Sam:I guess it's interesting, that's yeah, that's interesting, but it's just come.
Tayla:It's come with time, but I actually I've been able to be part of this interesting mentorship program at work where our senior vice president he invites like a few people from the org to essentially like spend a couple hours with him once a week, virtually, of course, learning from him about leadership. He's also just a fascinating person to learn from because in my opinion, he's a highly engaged and visionary leader and he had us take this strength finder test at the beginning and it was interesting, like what it was, that my strengths were and and creativity, like, wasn't one of them.
Tayla:But this idea of context was things like winning others over was because you can have the best plan in the world, but if you can't, present get buy-in and if you can't like get people to not only be on the same page but to be like motivated and excited about it, like it doesn't really matter, and so I think that's how I've been able to thrive in my space is just kind of that communication aspect. Oh, that was one of them too. Is communication ironically, because I feel like I'm maybe suffer, my communication maybe isn't the best outside of a work setting, but yeah, it's just just interesting. But all these things I like never considered to be creative because I just don't think they're ever framed to me as a child or as a teenager in that way. I don't know about you, but like creativity very much evoked a very specific kind of creativity as a kid yeah, yeah, it definitely did so.
Sam:I grew up with my on my dad's side, like everyone like played an instrument. You know, my dad played the guitar. My mom grew up playing the piano. But on my dad's side, like my, his mom taught piano and then her whole family they had like a mini orchestra, like that's what they did. You know that it's kind of just always been there in the background to be creative, like they all could not all of them, but you know my, my brothers can I think it's especially my older, older brothers can paint really well. They played instruments and sang and stuff. So it's always just kind of being there and being around. It hasn't seemed like anything interesting or special. It's just that's just what you did you. You learned instruments, you painted, you created things like you know you. Just that just was your day-to-day.
Sam:That's what was valued that's interesting, but I feel like your family's also so business oriented, so I just wonder how that intersection I think that happened now like from like as adults, yeah as adults from the from immigrating here, where it's like you have to be an entrepreneur when you first move here, like there's just no, there was just no opportunities, they'll just. If you want to get by, you want to have any money, you have to be entrepreneurial so you didn't really have like your.
Tayla:Your family wasn't very business oriented like you growing up, or your, or your dad, wasn't he?
Sam:yeah, no so that was still there, but it wasn't as, like you know, we probably we saw ourselves like going to university and maybe working at my dad's like business or something like that. But it wasn't like hey, everyone, go start your own businesses and right go be lone wolves out there. No, it was never. It was. It was. I think that's very much an immigrant thing. I think again the sources my dad had a business but yeah, like you had that background, that context. Yeah.
Tayla:So it's interesting that like that creative side, because I think building a business and building it successfully is a very creative thing.
Sam:Yeah.
Tayla:So that was kind of born for your family, out of necessity, out of survival. What are your thoughts on that? Because in my mind survival and creativity like don't necessarily go hand in hand.
Sam:I don't think they do. You don't think they do. No, no, I don't think they do in terms of like it's a nice, safe, comfortable place to be. They don't go hand in hand like that. I feel like they go hand in hand out of necessity.
Tayla:Creativity and survival.
Sam:Yeah.
Tayla:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Sam:That's why If you're a creative person and you are lacking things and things that you need to pay bills and to go to school and stuff and have shelter, you use that creativity in an entrepreneurial way Interesting. I sold stamps when I was a kid and I, and so I was. I've been kind of in and I started a little mini casino and when now you got to tell that story the whole.
Sam:Thing the whole thing. Okay. So I went to a home and garden show. I think I was like eight and a home and garden show is kind of like a expo, but it's for like home and garden, like so stuff, and my dad had a booth up there for his kitchens or you know, and so I would go there, my dad would take me around and stuff, and one of the the booths that was a casino thing or they were selling casino products, probably like roulette tables and poker table and stuff, and I my dad got me super into it because I was really good with, like I said, I was really so. My dad gave me a calculator when I was like two years old and I've been like just playing with numbers and I have numbers running my head since I can remember, so you take me there and I got.
Sam:I was I picked up like all the like poker and blackjack and I got really good at it really quick. I understood it when I was a little kid and so my dad thought this was really cool because you know like how fun is that?
Tayla:And didn't you specifically ask for him to?
Sam:Yeah, so he bought me like. I got like playing cards. I got like a real For your birthday.
Tayla:Yeah, yeah For my birthday.
Sam:So you asked for that? Yeah, I think I was not. It was like my ninth birthday or something like that. I would like some casino stuff, yeah. But so he thought I was playing, gonna just play with it at home. I had the idea is I'm gonna take this to school, and so I'd set up like stuff at school and try. You know, I had a little mini casino that we'd have during lunchtime and how did you make that profitable?
Sam:I don't remember the specifics, but the house always wins. You know it's. It's like, basically, you, you put in this much, everyone gets, everyone puts in money, and then I gave it some money back yeah, well, how did that?
Tayla:how did you get? I got interested in it though.
Sam:Well, everyone was super excited that someone had a roulette wheel and some cards and like oh, you're nine, like you're like what you know what's happening here? Here's my tuck shop money and but I it literally only lasted one day. I got in trouble immediately so that I couldn't and your dad's response I don't remember, I literally don't remember. But I sold, I started a whole stamp industry for a good couple weeks at school.
Tayla:Someone started like a marble industry when I was in primary school and that was like a hot commodity real money, like actually exchange, Like someone starts a market for this in primary school.
Sam:I had one of those too later. So the stamps I got in big trouble for because of my dad's stamp collection.
Tayla:You were selling them.
Sam:Yeah.
Tayla:Oh my gosh, I forgot about this story.
Sam:So, yeah, I sold I don't know how many stamps, but it wasn't that many stamps, but I did sell a number of stamps. But it was interesting because there'd be like a stamp from multiple different countries. It would be like from Germany or whatever, and it's like 5 Deutsche. Whatever the currency was, I forgot deutsch, deutschland, I don't remember what it is, but I remember seeing that word on on there somewhere. Yeah, and anyways, so like, and then I would sell that for like five rand. Here's the stamp and I get five rand and like it was a lot of money.
Sam:I was, it was so I was getting so much money, but I don't know how much those were actually worth or what.
Tayla:But more than five grand probably but for you they were just paper you got for free yeah, it's just money.
Sam:Yeah, and I had an. I've got so many little businesses that I had before I was even out of school.
Tayla:So when I was, but you were always thinking what was motivating this like? Was it just like the thrill of like oh, people want this product or this idea, or was it the money?
Sam:it was the money okay, like I thought it was so cool that you could like here's stuff and here's money and now with this money I can get other stuff which was great, pretty much always just built on right, which is south african jerky. Just I don't know if that's true, but yes it was just you can buy the things, so like I did the marble thing and I don't know why, okay, just really quick. So because this is.
Tayla:I mean it's interesting for me so okay, had the.
Sam:I had a lot of marbles. I was good at playing marbles I'd win all the games but the here's the big part, here's the exciting part.
Sam:There were some other, richer kids than me, so so we didn't have that much money, but I had a lot of marbles, but there were some richer kids that bought a bunch of marbles. Anyways, we had this idea that we'd combine our marbles and then what we could do with all our marbles, because we had like 90% of all the marbles in the marble trade at this point and we'd literally bring them in in, like these duffel bags.
Tayla:We'd and yeah, so we bring them in these duffel bags.
Sam:Oh my gosh, we would loan out marbles as in our conglomerate, that you could play with our marbles for a fee yeah, so people were renting the marbles, yeah because we, we had so many, we had all all the.
Sam:We had all of them, all the good ones. So like we would rent out, like, for example, like I think it would be like 18 marbles for a pyramid. You stack up a pyramid and we'd lend those out, but we would be the ones that would collect so many, but we wouldn't be responsible for those 18 if, if, they got lost. So I don't remember the exact details.
Tayla:It was like some sort of like like marble moving business. More successful than the casino business? I'm guessing. Okay, interesting.
Sam:But everyone kind of like lost interest because once we had so many marbles people stopped actually getting interested in marbles.
Tayla:Yeah, you oversaturated the market.
Sam:Yeah, especially one of the rich kids. He's like oh, this is dumb, we just have marbles, that's so kids. He's like, oh, this is dumb, we just have marbles, that's so funny, it's stupid.
Tayla:So the motivation was pretty money focused. Like when you're a kid, do you feel like that's the same as you've grown?
Sam:Yeah Well, I mean yeah. So I've always seen it as a way to create wealth, I guess from the start.
Tayla:Yeah, so like the music which the wealth represents to you, what Freedom, freedom.
Sam:Time and, yeah, freedom and time, like the whole reason that I so. I was making music for fun between like 23 and 25.
Sam:When I was 23, and 25, I was just doing it for fun, just like it's a hobby, like I'd come home from work and be like I'm exhausted, let me make some techno. Anyways, I was going to move to Hawaii and I wasn't going to be able to make money anymore because I had a nice, stable career path in California at the time, and so I was like, if I can figure out how to make money making music, then I'm gold, because I can live anywhere in the world, I can do it whenever I wanted, and it just represented I could be anywhere and I wouldn't have any obligations. So, yeah, represented freedom.
Tayla:Interesting. I think that's a good way to think about it.
Sam:It's the same thing for this board game. Like, honestly, like for me it's you put in all the time and energy and sacrifice into creating the thing and if people love the thing now I don't have to necessarily like work every day. I mean you still can running a company and creating more ideas and building upon but you have the flexibility but once yeah once it's out there and it's sold and it's a.
Sam:It's a its own intellectual property, it's worth something, and it's worth something for a very long time. So it creates a lot of freedom interesting, so kind of pivoting.
Tayla:I think I want to kind of close this out by talking about how to be better at creativity or how to get the creative juices flowing, like when you're struggling or when you're tired of that. Did you have any rituals or things that you did when you needed to get into the creative mindset? I know you said you couldn't like force yourself to be creative, and that's, I think, valid. But at the same time, I think there's like it's not like a binary, it's on or it's off. Yeah, think valid, but at the same time I think there's like it's not like a binary, it's on or it's off.
Sam:Yeah, what were some things that were important, some behaviors that were important for you when it came to like, fostering creativity.
Sam:So I think it depends on what you're making, but for me, I was making pretty upbeat electronic dance music and so if I wasn't in a positive mood on some level, it was impossible.
Sam:There's just nothing like that fun and interesting to really draw from. So I tried to have a routine where I was living a really happy life, like genuinely happy lifestyle, you know, for, like, making sure I'm listening to a lot of different kinds of music, I'm consuming a lot of different kinds of media, you know, listening to jazz music or going to go, you know, down to like a graffiti art festival, you know, just to go get inspiration there, and you're not really looking for inspiration, you're just kind of like living a certain way, and so I know that I'm going to be at some point something that I've sucked into my brain while at these things can be used as inspiration or like a piece of it. Um, so, yeah, I made sure that I had a really good lifestyle and that the problem is, if that lifestyle goes away, it's hard to rely on that. So it really depends on your medium like but if you're making super sad, depressed, like music, can you do that in a space where everything's going right?
Sam:I don't know you know, unless that person's, you know suffers from depression. I don't know, but I for like processing past experiences.
Tayla:Yeah, yeah.
Sam:So I guess the moral of the story is try to create an environment around you that is conducive to the content you want to create, because it's hard to go against the grain. It really is it's. It's hard to be creative in a certain way if you're living a completely different lifestyle interesting.
Tayla:What about the role of sleep? I feel like you.
Sam:Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, Part of that feeling good and happy. You need a good and happy lifestyle.
Tayla:So if you're not getting sleep If you're not healthy.
Sam:Yeah, so you know I was eating right, I was being very active. Just, you know, for me that worked in that space. So I, I mean, it really depends that that. And again, I'm just guessing here. I, everyone's got their own different processes. And for you, like, you're saying like, hey, if I'm given context and I'm given um, the problem, I can figure it out and you could do that in any sort of environment. Because you're like hey, I can do this in a stressful environment, I can do this in a time crunch, I can do this sitting on my bed, or maybe that's the thing that doesn't work for you. You need it to be professional.
Tayla:I'm not sure yeah, I would say, for me, a couple of things that lend itself to my brand of creativity, so to speak, is, I think, connecting to what it is that you're doing, whether it's okay.
Tayla:So, like, what is it about this that is going to kind of scratch the passion itch, so to speak, or scratch the like. Yeah, like I have to feel motivated about the results of what I'll be making, or the impact or the value it will provide to certain people, or the gratification I'll make for, like, making a name for myself and being someone that is regarded in such and such a way, or that it's about a topic that I'm like very, very interested and passionate about. But I feel like a really good way to boost your creativity is to find a connection to it, and maybe it's as lame as saying, like, find your why, but I don't know that like why necessarily has to be the only thing that connects you to something, but I do think it is like an effective way to figure out how am I going to connect with this, because then I think a lot of the drive comes a lot more naturally to kind of push through the harder parts of creativity, I guess interesting.
Sam:What do you want to do on the creative side this next coming year or so? Going to get into art, singing, playing the piano?
Tayla:weirdly and I was. I was actually. I don't know why I was actually thinking about this as we've been talking. Is I like, really want to write an autobiography?
Sam:that'd be cool.
Tayla:Start getting it out I know I was like I don't know if it'll be in this next year or something, but I do like I really do want to just kind of get something like that out there and do it in a way that's like interesting to consume, I guess yeah, that'd be dope.
Sam:Fully support you. I've got some ideas how you can get it out nice, perfect, perfect, dream team partnership.
Tayla:What about you? Question?
Sam:it's really this game. I've got a lot of things already built out in terms of how broad it can go, like expansions for the game, additional, like there's the small idea, which is the game, the bigger idea, which is the expansions, and there's the bigger, bigger idea, which is the intellectual property, which you can do cool things with like do a mobile game and you can do like like a little mini tv series and you can do like books, and there's quite a few people who do that really well.
Sam:The brander sent brandon sanderson's like really doing a good job of this idea starting to, so he started with the books, yeah and then he did a little bit of work with the wheel of time, yeah, and now he's got. He did a board game and it was bad, but now he's got. He did a board game and it was bad, but now he's just doing another board game, which is hopeful Because he's got, like other people, involved. Yeah.
Tayla:See, that's that self like he's got it man, that confidence slash, self-awareness, anyway Interesting. Okay. So beyond that, because that's I mean I know that's long-term and I know you know you're going to be releasing the game in the next month or so. Here Can I be on that, like after it's released. I know there's creatively.
Sam:Creatively, I'd make music again.
Tayla:Yeah.
Sam:Just on the creative side, I've got a bunch of melodies cramming up my brain again.
Tayla:So do you think it would be similar to the music you created in the past or significantly different?
Sam:similar to the music you created in the past or significantly different. I would say it would land on the things that I learned and maybe some of the vibe. But yeah, it's a different time. I'm in a different place in life. Music is in a whole different place in general, so it would be different.
Tayla:Yeah, I'm interested. That'll be fun. This has been a good conversation. I've, I've, I've, it's, it's honestly, it's truly. Maybe this is one of the more selfish episodes, but it has gotten my brain kind of turning and working and planning and problem solving. Hopefully it's done that for anyone else, yeah.
Sam:Let's get that autobiography out there.
Tayla:Yeah, let's do it, that'd be awesome. Thanks for listening to the Babe. What do you know about podcast?
Sam:Thanks, for listening to the Babe. What Do you Know About podcast? Remember to rate, subscribe and review.
