The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody for today's episode of the Authority Podcast on the Bee Podcast Network. It is my pleasure today to be joined by Maria Brito. For those of you who are just learning about Maria's work, she's an award winning New York City based contemporary art advisor, entrepreneur, author, and curator.

She was selected by Complex Magazine as one of the 20 Power Players in the art world and her work and her self has been featured in, media across the board from the New York Times, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Forbes, many, many more. Maria's book is called How Creativity Rules the World, The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold.

It's available from Harper Collins. It was the recipient of the Axiom Book Award [00:01:00] in the entrepreneurship category. And we're going to talk about that today. Maria, welcome to the authority.

Maria Brito: Thank you, Ross. How are you? I'm so happy to be here and everybody who's listening. Hello.

Ross Romano: Yes, I'm doing great. And it's really a pleasure to have you here. And I loved reading through this book and preparing for our chat here. And one of the first things that jumped out to me and, one of my favorite authors, one of somebody who I'm sure a lot of our listeners have on their bookshelf, Daniel Pink, called the book a first rate guide to creativity that explodes the many myths about the topic.

And then even in the book, right, you write nearly everything you've been told about creativity are a lie. So let's go right there. What are these myths and these lies that get repeated about creativity to the point that we kind of take them as fact, but you're saying, not so fast.

Maria Brito: Well creativity is a word that we adopted in America during the Cold War, and it was because It was the desire of the United States to outshine [00:02:00] the U. S. S. R. and to show that we could do better by producing better products, better things, art that was more interesting and Contribute to the cultural landscape across the board, and then the theme and the concept, obviously, was fully embraced by the artists and the artistic community.

And as we moved forward, it sort of, like, stayed in that realm, and it's, like, typically associated with children doing finger paint or play dough, whatever. Unless you are fully inserted in an environment, let's say tech, for example, uses the word creativity and innovation consistently, and sometimes interchangeably, even if it's not the same.

Ross Romano: Mm hmm. Mm

Maria Brito: And so the myth that has to be broken, basically, is that creativity is just for certain people like artists or the tech entrepreneurs, and [00:03:00] that it's also something that people are You know, kind of born with, and just some specific type of people. While it is true that everybody's born with creativity, it doesn't belong to a specific type of people.

What happens is as we grow older, and as we are inserted in an educational system, we tend to... To follow what's been given to us without questioning. We tend to read information and it's a little bit like, well, this is what the textbooks say. And so you're not, you don't have a lot of authority, especially as let's say, a middle grader fourth grade or whatever, you're not going to be challenging everything that is written in a book because it takes so much energy and so the mythology of creativity basically is, That this, this world of wonderful ideas that could be ranging from an, an iPhone, to, um, a whole system of, you [00:04:00] know, ecology that cleans up the air, whatever it is that we want to dream for the future, it's just for certain people.

So those are some of, like, the biggest myths that hurt and keep people in. In their little spots, or in their little confined boxes, because it has been not necessarily made very the topic of creativity hasn't been given to people in school as a subject to study outside the arts, and it's really much more meaningful than that, and I, You know, as you read the book I backed up almost every one of my points throughout the book with studies because I thought that was super important.

I have read so many books on creativity and they, most of them are wonderful, but they usually are either just all the way on the scientific side [00:05:00] or all the way on some sort of imaginary utopian world. And so I wanted to have. A little bit of, like, my own experience building my business, the experience firsthand that I've gotten from working with artists.

I wanted to have the science to back it up, and I also wanted to have artists from history that are important, sort of, like, connecting all these thoughts together.

Ross Romano: Yeah, and

Maria Brito: And entrepreneurs, obviously. Entrepreneurs are big in the book, too.

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Ross Romano: Yeah, do you have thoughts on how the... the myths or the exclusionary mindset, maybe toward creativity gets perpetuated. I, cause I could see how one there's this mindset that a lot of people may have around creativity where they think, well, I'm not creative, right? That's other people.

And I, and, and so it's like that. self perpetuating thing, but also, sometimes there's these gatekeepers that pop up around [00:06:00] creativity who have a certain mentality of what we are doing is authentic creativity. And outside of that, you see it in media or, you know, whether the concept of somebody who's a quote unquote sellout, right?

Well, they made money off of that. They're no longer the starving artists, so to speak. So that. they must have compromised on their authentic creativity or and there's, I guess, different groups that create their own definitions of what they think it is and, and isn't, that are maybe, I don't know, apart from...

some of the prerequisites to exist for creativity, which is the purpose. What is it doing? What are you trying to create? Right. What's your, what is your goal? Which can be unique and can define creativity in different ways, I would think.

Maria Brito: Well, I think that let's start by the end, which is what you said about the concept. What is creativity? Right? And so creativity is your unique ability to come up with ideas of value that can be materialized [00:07:00] because we all can come up with ideas of value. But if we don't have a plan and we don't have the means.

To make them a reality, then it's just, it doesn't mean much, right? So, anybody who is able to create something new of value in their fields, whatever that field is, from education to fashion, let's say, has the ability to become creative and to create something that is a breakthrough. Right, a breakthrough in any industry, you don't have to come up with the cure to cancer because there are only a certain amount of scientists that are working on that and they are testing it so you're right in which the concept should be and the subject should be really given to children.

Mostly throughout middle school and, obviously in high school, because when they are little kids do whatever they want. And that's what you want. You want children who are expressive. You want [00:08:00] children who see no limit to their ideas and dreams, et cetera, et cetera, because experimentation and curiosity is actually the Number one thing that every person in history who has been creative shows.

So the media, as you said, is also sometimes responsible for telling us what is creativity and what is not creativity and who owns it and who doesn't. So when we become I, I think that it's important to question, obviously, what you read, because, and what you watch, because as that information is being given to you by human beings who are biased, who have their own agendas, unfortunately, I mean, journalism and media reporting is not something that is neutral.

So, we tend to believe the things without necessarily wondering or questioning whether that is something. That should be a setting stone, right? Monolithic, or if [00:09:00] it should be alive and malleable and adaptable, which is what I think about this ideas and concepts, and they might change in the future and as we.

Become more adept, like scientists and psychologists and researchers keep studying what is creativity and what is not, then we have more answers to our questions. What we do know about creativity is that it's uniquely human, although I have been reading recently some animals and I don't know what, but like, for the most part is.

He is uniquely human, and we are the only species, really, who have this type of ideas and come up with new things. And that also the way that we receive education in the West is stifling in the sense of, again, like, we have to have textbooks, those textbooks go through all this incredible bureaucratic processes of adoption and baptisms [00:10:00] and all the things that need to happen for a textbook or any book to be adopted in a school, then there is a curriculum, then you have to do it this way, then if somebody deviates from that, then it's wrong, then so those, those things, as you can imagine.

Do not allow for people to think by themselves. Do not allow kids to say, I have a different idea and I am going to prove you wrong or I am going to show you that my idea also works that are, I don't know, because I mean, my kids go to a very open and creative school, but. You know, when public schools have to follow a curriculum, because this is, they are funded by our money for taxpayers, they can't deviate from those things too much.

So we have to be extremely careful on how we give education to kids, because without creativity, there is no progress. And that is the truth. We wouldn't have airplanes, we wouldn't have phones or computers or Zoom or anything without [00:11:00] creativity. And so it is very important that this gets to be shown and taught and that there are no gatekeepers pretending that only the chosen ones, right?

It's not just Steve Jobs. Yes, he is extraordinarily important and, and we should celebrate his accomplishments and what he's given us just by the same. You know, token, we should really celebrate Picasso or Jackson Pollock or Frida Kahlo and, you know, the selling out part that you mentioned is quite interesting because there has never been a better time to be an artist.

Artists are really wealthy these days. I mean, I know that sometimes they cringe at this, but there is no shame, right? And, the, originality. And the authenticity of what an artist puts out in the world should be rewarded financially. And I know that a lot of people, I mean, since I am an [00:12:00] insider in the art world, because I have been working as an art advisor for 15 years, and what I do is I build art collections for people and I help my clients navigate.

It's a very, very massive market, so I help them navigate that and acquire art that makes sense for them, for their budget, things that they can count on as assets for the future, etc. But, the process of creativity is the same. For artists and for engineers and for scientists, what differs is the end application, if you will, right?

I mean, it's not the same if I stand in front of a canvas and try to do something that if I am sitting in front of a computer, trying to code for a specific program or whatnot, but the process is exactly the same and this is something also that doesn't get enough emphasis or explanation that It doesn't matter what you're doing in the end, but that getting there is [00:13:00] usually the same.

It's the same steps, the same steps of discovery, the same steps of breakthrough, the incubation phase, the waiting for the idea to hit you, the it all starts with trying to find. A solution to a problem or trying to find a way to express something that nobody else has done before. And that's also why we celebrate filmmakers that create insanity and like magic like everything everywhere all at once.

I mean, why was that movie coming from totally like unknown filmmakers, like, won every award in this year? Because it's new, it's fantastically well done, and it hit a chord you also have to be relevant, and they did the, it's a perfect example of how we think and digest information is like short cuts, everything has to be kind of quick, even though the movie's long everything is sort of like this patchwork of things put together in a [00:14:00] way that We feel it because we are from this time and we resonate with it and I I watched that movie a year and a half ago, whatever, and it came out and I'm still thinking about it and so that's kind of the beauty of creativity is that you don't get old with it either, right?

I mean, it's like, obviously, Young people have a special tool because they see what for us is sort of like, wow, they see it as normal, right? I mean, it's like, I wasn't born with all this technology. I didn't have all this since the day I was a baby. My kids had iPads when there were three so for them, that's like the norm.

And so their brains function. In a way that adopts technology with an ease that is not the same for me. It takes me a little longer but it's what what that says is that we have upcoming generations that are so extremely well equipped [00:15:00] in one hand. But on the other hand, they are not as excellently well equipped because they are missing a lot of steps also on the way and the things that they, like for example, handwriting, which is so important also for creativity and flow of ideas, they don't necessarily do that.

You know, and like evolution of human history and if we look back a million years ago, we definitely have seen the fastest and the biggest growth in knowledge and technology in the last 20 and super accelerated in the last 10. And it just grows faster and faster. So that means that people need to be more and more creative because you have to come up with more solutions and more systems and.

You know, offerings, services, products, et cetera, that actually can compete in the world as it is right now.

Ross Romano: Yeah, there's so many good examples of [00:16:00] what you just said, and one that I'll pull out is your reference to Steve Jobs and the fact that it, that is sort of an illustration of one of the things that makes creativity difficult to teach, at least within the traditional structure of how teaching and learning often happens, and yet, supports that it should be done, right?

And one of the good examples is the iPhone. Which turned out to be the most transformative device of this century so far, right? And, I think currently iPhone sales alone account for more annual revenue than, like, the entire company of Microsoft makes, right? Like, that's how successful... And yet, when this thing was released...

People were, I mean, it was pretty skeptical, right? Other than the, other than the people who were already fully Apple fans, most other people said, what is this? Why do I need this? And so much of it was the vision and the articulate and the understanding of what made [00:17:00] that creation valuable and what tapped into.

what was going to resonate with people and the simplicity of that vision. And now retroactively when I said, well of course this was creative and this, that, and the other, but if you were to teach what should happen, right, you may not have taught that because you would say, well, we don't know how this is going to work out.

We don't know. And what we're looking for are. right answers, and there's no way to know what the answer to this is. So how can we come about it? But it speaks to the fact, okay, we're saying creativity is for everybody, anyone can learn creativity. So we need to think about, okay, what are the important things to know in order to teach it, right?

Because it just sounds like until we make it practical or anybody can do this. Oh, okay. Well but where do we focus first? Is it mindsets? Is it skills is what, what are the kind of things to start with to say, we are going to teach everybody to learn how to be creative,

Maria Brito: Well I think [00:18:00] mindset is the most important thing and it should be from. The beginning to the end, a part of your process, and it should be your it should be like the thing that you hold on to, and one of the things is claiming it, right? I am creative, and I can do things, and I can come up with great ideas, right?

I mean, it's, this is not about self help, and like. You know, affirmations and the craziness, but it is, it has a lot to do also with neuroplasticity and we already know that you can change your brain and that you can train yourself to think differently. And one of the things is. Creative people claim it I mean, they are not going around.

I have friends who are artists and I interviewed them a lot for the book and whatnot. And they say, Well, we don't go around saying I'm creative because it's going to sound so dumb. And artists are very self conscious about how the world looks at them. And they have to be cool. And they have like all the things that you said before, like, Oh, my God, are you so loud?

And you have like 10 million bucks cash in your you have three [00:19:00] homes and whatnot. But, yeah, people don't go around Potentially saying that, but they know it, and that makes a difference, right? I mean, these are the people who have never said, Oh, my God, I have a creative blog, never. These are the people who are just saying, Steve Jobs never showed up at the board meeting at Apple and say, Sorry, Plox, I have nothing for you today.

Bye. He never said that, right? I mean, Elon Musk, the same. He never said, I don't really know he, he might be a mess right now, but we have to acknowledge that he is one of the most brilliant minds that we have had in entrepreneurship in the last 10 years, right? So it is mindset is very, very important and mindset obviously precedes action and attitude and without action.

Also, there's nothing a lot of people might feel that they are waiting for the muse to come and show them. You know what to do and that obviously is part of [00:20:00] creative thinking and creativity is to take a step back and to think and to let things sort of marinate inside your brain and give you the answer but Without previous action and work, it's just not going to happen.

So I think that people have to understand that it is a fine balance between doing not to the point that your burnout and you don't even know how to handle your life anymore, because that happens. You know, a lot of people, especially my generation. Gen Xers. We work to the point of, like, no return, you know?

Like, we work really, really hard, and we have done it through our lives, so that is also not helpful in creativity, and I have had clients and worked with CEOs of big companies who for the longest time, they didn't take vacation, and they were really like, Oh, my God, I don't I don't even know why is it that I'm not coming with my best ideas anymore.

I said, when was the last time you took a vacation? He says, Oh, well, maybe like 18 months [00:21:00] ago. So that's not good either. So creativity is, is an attitude. It is an action. Like I call it in the book. It's a do. It's a thing that you do. It's a thing that is alive. It's a thing that requires daily work, daily effort.

And it, it should be. A part of what you are and who you are and what you do every day, because it definitely follows that, especially with what I said before about neuroplasticity, right? And so the more ideas you're able to generate. The better it is going to be for whatever you do. And if you're teaching that to people, you have to allow them to come up with as many ideas as possible.

I mean, my book doesn't follow those specific methodologies, but other authors say they have groups of people write down 10 ideas. And so then 10 more, then 10 more until they have 40 and then one of them,[00:22:00] It has to be kind of good, right? And so that is, and everybody has this capacity actually to like, oh there is this exercise, how many uses can you think about, for a a pin, like something like a paperclip, right? How many different things can you think about? Like, is it an earring? Is it like to open a a door? Is it to hold something together? Is it a necklace? You know, and so you go on and on. And so those are the type of things that actually help people open up their minds to see different uses.

And creativity is a lot about being someone who is willing to find problems that need to be solved. And it is also kind of you have to be evaluating all the time. You know, if like you find yourself thinking a lot of like, why isn't anybody doing this? Then that's a sign you should do it because if you are not finding what you're looking for in the marketplace, [00:23:00] and you've been looking for a while, listen, maybe somebody did it in Alaska, maybe somebody did it in, in in France, somewhere in the south of France, I don't know, but if you haven't found a solution for something that bugs you, and that slows you down, or that It's inconvenient.

Then you should definitely think about if you want to do that for your business or your career or your educational system or whatever it is.

Ross Romano: Yeah, there's a right there's a phrase that's used to appropriately critique I think products or quote unquote innovations that aren't necessarily aligned to any need which is a solution in search of a problem right and that's what kind of what you're talking about as far as like find that issue that needs to be solved and come up with something and I think a lot of people when they think well creativity is just for these people, they think that that's what Creativity is supposed to be, is coming up with something new and kind of outside the box that has nothing to do with anything versus saying having that bias toward action, [00:24:00] as you said, right?

Creative, where does that come from? It comes from create. Create is something you can do. And instead of stressing over, okay, I came up with 10 ideas. Are each of those individual ideas creative in their own? It's, they're creative. You created ideas, you created opportunities. Now you can go back through and say, okay, which of these might make sense?

And they lead to something novel, but that's a combination of. existing elements, existing knowledge, problems that sort of manifested from just organic evolution of things, right? This didn't, this was not previously an issue, and now it is because our society has changed, and so now we need something different.

And it shows how people can kind of be in the driver's seat, and we know We know that creativity is valuable, right, in the economy and the workforce. We can see it. We also know it's valued, at least in the abstract. There was a big LinkedIn study in the World Economic [00:25:00] Forum that listed creativity as this number one in demand skill.

What I'm wondering is... individual company, right? When they're saying, yes, we want people who are creative. Do they know what they're looking for, right? They're saying they want

Maria Brito: highly doubt it. I, I mean, I think that it depends, right? Every company operates differently. I think Apple knows, for example, what they need.

Ross Romano: right.

Maria Brito: knows when they say they're looking for a creative individual to join the company. I think that. Look, Corporate America is a very fantastic and unique beast, right?

Because for, you have, on the one hand, how immensely all these companies have grown from scratch, because IBM was a little company one day, same as Apple, same as Ford, right? Like, so all these things were little things, were little startups, and then they become Or became this incredible powerhouses that [00:26:00] generate billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

So the problem is that once an executive or a group of executives have become comfortable in their jobs and positions, it all trickles down, right? Like, I mean, what the CEO says. It's what the vice president says, it's what the managers, so it all comes down from that. And sometimes it's the same thing when you talk to a billionaire who's self made and it's hard for them to understand or remember when they had a hundred bucks in their account.

They're, they can't fully grasp. The difference between what they were thinking or feeling back then, and what they are thinking and feeling now. So, for the CEOs of those companies is pretty similar. It's like, for you to get to that level, it took so much effort and years and years and years, and once you're there, you sort of have forgotten a little bit what it is to be A [00:27:00] creative leader.

I'm not saying all all the CEOs of big companies think that way, but I think that a lot of them want in their hearts to have this creative individuals join their teams, but they cannot fully articulate because when people come up with this amazing ideas, they're like, Oh, but the rule book says no or we have systems and processes.

And we just cannot do it that way, right?

Ross Romano: Yeah.

Maria Brito: But, but again, I feel that, I mean, all these things, leaders in those big positions are usually people who have a growth mindset and they want to be coached too, and they want to make the best that they can for their organization. So it's possible for these people to actually, See the implications of a creative individual who can help the company grow or create, or be more relevant through new applications [00:28:00] of this concepts without having to just give them the manual.

This is how it's done. Right? And so it's kind of finding for them. the space for growth and for creativity that still allows the company to run and in a way that is efficient. Because efficiency, right, is one of the most important economic principles of the firm, right? Like, like how all the economists have written in those books, efficiency is so important.

And efficiency is one of the things that Americans pride themselves the most, which is wonderful, except when it is at the expense of creativity that you become so used to your system and it runs so well. But it runs so well until it doesn't. And why it doesn't run so well? Because then it encounters the future.

And when it encounters the future is so hard, right? Because then you have an entire machinery with thousands of people, thousands of terminals, thousands of machine, whatever [00:29:00] it is, right? And so then it becomes a liability. Instead of saying, Oh my goodness, I spent all my life building this up and now I'm completely irrelevant because everything moved fast while I was just spending all this money in efficiency and making things faster than the world moved on.

And now all these things are irrelevant, and that is the tricky part. And that's why a lot of businesses have disappeared, and that's why a lot of businesses have lost an insane amount of market share, because competitors could do things faster. And so I think that is part of the risk of every business that grows too much, too fast, too soon, or whatever, whatever the path is, because we can't say that Ford grew too fast, too much, too soon, but it was left behind by all the You know, Japanese and, and German and whatever that did sexier vehicles, faster, smaller, sweeter.

Now, I mean, they, they, they caught up in a way, but, but it's not the same.

Ross Romano: Right. [00:30:00] And, yeah, it's one of those things where in some places if you don't really have the right culture around creativity and innovation, like it sounds good until people start doing it and you realize, well, that's not what we, that's not what we meant. But I think a lot of it also it is that cultural thing and it's a piece of, how we manage teams focused on creativity and how we.

Leverage the right kind of collaboration, right? You have a chapter in the book, Collaboration 2 plus 2 equals 5. It's how do we create a 2 plus 2 equals 5 culture of collaboration, not a 2 plus 2 equals 1, where we have groupthink, where everybody ends up coming up with ideas that are even less interesting than they would have come up by themselves, because they're all diluting one another because the incentive structure is inverted.

And I think that's a lot of times we talk about creatives and artists and all kinds in, in film, for example, when somebody has a, makes a really great independent film where they're totally on their own and they're doing on the shoestring budget, [00:31:00] whatever. And, and their reward is, Oh, they're now they're going to direct a Marvel movie or Star Wars.

And then that's when everybody's, Oh no, now they're going to. You know, they're going to lose something because they're going into an environment where the creative vision is already established. And it's whatever creativity they have is now going into a specific box. And maybe within the micro, they're making some small decisions, but now it's like, okay, now the surprise of what that person may have done next or created is kind of diminished because now we sort of know what it's going to end up looking like.

And I think that's where a lot of the tension is and we don't. want that, right? If we really want people and teams who are creative, we want to say, hey, we put these four smart people in a room together and who knows what they're going to come up with because they're going to yes, and want each other's ideas, right?

Versus yes, but, but how do you, what does that culture look like? Or how would, [00:32:00] how would you suggest managing a team like that to create the right incentive structure and the right collaboration to say, yeah, you should be augmentative to one another.

Maria Brito: Well, I'm glad that you mentioned this because this has been something that I have been thinking in the actually always, but in the past two weeks, I've thought about it more because I was sort of like, not stuck, but a little bit a little bit stagnant with a couple of projects that I needed to really move forward and you know what I did is like I sat down, I mean, because I was really burning the midnight oil trying to figure it out and I just sat down and said I need to meditate more.

I meditate every day, but I'm going to add more. And I, thought about a couple of people that I hadn't really interacted in a long time. And I, went to them. And I solved the problems and they, and so, and everybody's incentivized because there's money for everybody, right? , that's the ultimate thing, let's say, in a way that is practical, right?

Because there's You [00:33:00] know, sharing credits and whatnot. I mean, that's wonderful in like egalitarian system and whatnot. But I think people want money too. Right? So everybody got money. I was like, I'm going to split this in like, I'm not going to make more, even if it's my thing, and they are going to make equal amount of money that I am.

So I. Had left this just now and, I mean, every company obviously can't really just like open up bonuses like that crazy, right? But they can actually. Set an incentive structure in, like, their I mean, whatever it is that they do and how they recruit and how they bring people in by saying if we work together as teams, this team will get this bonus and you guys can split equally, right?

On top of, I mean, like, if the managing director of a certain team is making a million bucks, right? And has separate, like, I don't know, stock options, whatever, and then the team itself can win [00:34:00] I don't know, 500, 000 and split that in, like, five people. I mean, I think it's cool to have 100, 000 bucks more a pop, right, than not.

So I think that monetary incentives in that way are very, very welcomed and helpful because, and so that incentivizes the team. I don't know if this is something that people have thought to do. Obviously, everything has to do with the profits of a company because bonuses are always tied to profits and like it depends if it's a public company.

I mean, like, there are many things here to ponder that I don't have the answers. Specifically to each case, but it's usually how it works and I think that what the, the teams that thrive the best are the ones with the, the, the, the largest amount of diversity, right? I mean, it's, it's like, if you put together the team where everybody is the same, comes from the same background, everybody went to Ivy league, everybody's white, everybody.

I mean, [00:35:00] great, but I don't think it's us. It's going to be us. creative as the one where you have a lot of You know, diverse people from different countries and different backgrounds and different races because they have experiences that are very valuable and no experience is going to be more valuable than the other is just a combination of how people see things and what they know in their lives and sometimes you miss out on addressing a particular market because you don't have people who understand how that market behaves.

Or how that might market reacts to, you know, a product or an ad or. A service and things like that. So the more diverse the team, whatever that might mean because it like, it's, it's very difficult to say it has to be this thing, right? I can't say that it has to be whatever works for that [00:36:00] company, but understanding that bringing all this different backgrounds and passions and passions.

Perspectives is really what enriches the bottom line, and it does. Mm hmm.

Ross Romano: Yeah, that's the diversity can certainly be race, gender, age, cross functional roles, right, a lot of listeners who may be in schools thinking about, okay, when we have these groups of leadership decision making, are we including, newer staff members, newer teachers, educators, are you recruiting, including people from across different roles and departments, right, so that we're getting different perspectives, so we're not missing Things that are obvious and also you mentioned right financial incentives and there are other things that are correlated with that and it's not necessarily directly but as far as the way we assess, evaluate, you know, and tune into employee performance.

Are we Is there encouragement [00:37:00] to come up with some excellence right in these settings because it's going to lead to positive valuations, potentially an opportunity for a promotion or a raise or whatever is the. The right next step and also do those systems account for being being able to account for individual contributions to a group effort.

All right. And where many cultures, work cultures would not necessarily incentivize collaboration because of The competition around the scarcity of opportunities to say, okay, well, are you going to get the best out of your teams and your company as a whole, if everybody in that room is only worried about how they come out the best and it's going to lead to a completely different incentivization.

And that can apply across any kind of setting, because everybody has. variable motivation, where everybody works for a reason, everybody works to make a living, but [00:38:00] everybody also wants to have their work acknowledged and recognized and understood, and to have, be, have fulfillment in that. And if the only way to gain that is through competition, because it's somewhat of a zero sum game, then is that Going to get the best.

And I don't know if that relates to we haven't mentioned this yet, but this is of course, contributes to your perspective on creativity. We've talked about how you work in the art world now, but you started as a corporate lawyer before making the change to entrepreneur and art world innovator.

And, certainly I'm sure that played into your perspective on where. There was a lack of opportunities to be creative or to to fulfill your creative urge and those skills that you have in an environment where that just wasn't really part of it and was perhaps never really going to be part of what you were going to do.

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Maria Brito: [00:39:00] The, I mean, the shift and the pivot I, made, and it was 14 years ago was out of necessity, basically, because it was a spiritual necessity and a psychological one, because I really I couldn't be trapped in the world of law firms anymore, or in any legal capacity.

And, I think that it's important to understand that anybody can start something new, right? Anybody can shift and pivot. These things are not easy at any age. But I think that if you... Over intellectualize the change or whatever, then you're never going to do it because you think too much about all the mistakes you're going to make, or all the roadblocks you're going to encounter, or all the things that are going to go wrong.

And then no, forget it. You're not going to do it, but I believe that for me, [00:40:00] particularly, it was really something that not only Changed my entire life and the course of my life, but it was necessary for my survival as a human being, right? I wanted to be happy. I wanted to contribute something else and people may be wondering, well, what do you, why do you do this?

Why do you go to law school and spend so many years practicing? It's because I grew up in a house in Venezuela and, super conservative, Catholic, and they, my parents didn't have the training or the skill to think like an American, right? I mean, they never thought that there could be any possibilities for anybody outside of traditional careers, which is what they knew.

You were a doctor, you were an attorney, or an engineer, something like that. To them, it was being serious about your life, right? And you had to be, in a dependable career so that you would get a salary for the rest of your life, right? Even though both [00:41:00] my parents were entrepreneurs, it's a very funny thing that they wanted for me, the safety that they think they lack and.

I obviously do not regret anything because, for me, it worked out the way it had to, and I think, you know, going to law school and practicing as a corporate attorney has helped me tremendously to think through so many different aspects of, like, the logical thinking. It's also great for reading and writing and whatnot, but I believe that What I'm doing right now is what I was meant to do is, is I'm serving my clients in a way that I could have never served them because

with passion and the desire to grow and to innovate and to be creative and to do great things for the world, you can go much farther than, I mean, it's not that lawyers don't have a function, they do, and we love them, that's fine, but, like, in the environment I had, and in the field, Per se, there was really nothing that I could contribute.

There was nothing other [00:42:00] than just following the path of here is your rule book. This is what you have to do. Take care of this contracts and be good to the clients. And that's fine, but it wasn't for me. And I think that is important that people understand that. There is something inside of you, no matter how buried you think it is, that has that seed of that contribution and that greatness that you can give to the world and I don't know what that is, you do, if you want to do something else, but you know, not everybody is also caught for this.

Not everybody should quit their jobs and start something new. But what I'm saying is, is that has been on the back of your mind, I am the proof that it can happen, and it, you can be wildly successful even without having. A proper training, which I didn't. I mean, it's just like, I didn't go and work for a gallery or for an auction house or a museum.

No, I was like, you know what, this is it. I'm just doing it. So it was bold and [00:43:00] insanely risky, but it paid off and here we are. And honestly, I also think that it gives me a lot of. heard every time that I think that phrase that says the biggest disruptors are always outsiders like, and the reason is very obvious.

You don't, you haven't been trained to think like everybody, right? And so I hope that people feel those words, like when you are an outsider, you see possibilities, you see gaps, you see options, and you see a vast array of things that If you have been inside for too long, you can't see it anymore. Or if you have been trained with the books and the authorities and the secure pathways and whatever, then you don't see anymore a way to innovate or a way to differentiate yourself.

Ross Romano: Yeah, and there's certainly in that whole, story there, there's something to be said about intuition. Tapping into it and not being afraid of it. It can [00:44:00] seem... It doesn't mean living in evidence free existence, you can mix that intuition with rationality, but also, so much of intuition can be about lived experience, about being in the moment, about Being reflective and thinking, and then you you begin to have these instincts and thoughts about the things you should be doing, or what would be right, or what's the right move, and you can't always necessarily.

put a finger on exactly what it is, but it is the summation of where you've been before, right? And things that you kind of know, and you just start to feel, okay, this is not the right place for me, or this is not the right way to be doing it, or on the flip side, this is exactly the right idea. And I don't know how to explain it yet, right?

You'll kind of see it when we go, but this is the direction to go. But it's a, again, it's a word. tuition, just like creativity and how it becomes part of that profile of creativity that a lot of [00:45:00] people would just say, like, I don't know if I have that. How do I have that? Or I, I have the reverse.

And that's why I go to learning to kind of benefit from your lived experience and just living in those moments and saying, okay, like I have seen and done enough things to have developed instincts if I'm open to that.

Maria Brito: Yeah, well intuition is a big part of all that I do, but it's also a big part of anybody who is or believes to be creative and, and it's having an answer without really knowing where it came from, because what you said about experience is right, but at the same time, intuition gives you answers of things that you have no clue, right?

And, You know, a lot of psychologists have tried to fully explain intuition in business in particular, and they can't fully articulate it because it's just not [00:46:00] possible yet, I guess.

Maybe it's the studies that we have been able to read and whatnot do not fully explain where it comes from or what it is. And children are highly intuitive, even though they don't have as much experience as us adults, right? And they act on those intuitive impulses, or they feel things without necessarily knowing where that comes from. And without trying to be too woo woo, right? You know, intuition is simply having an answer for something that you don't necessarily know where it comes from. And the intuition is always right. What is wrong is our reading and our interpretation because it comes in symbols, it comes in words and obviously it is so hard as humans who have had a life and been out in the world to let themselves be led by this voice.

And as we tend to trust our intuition more, we tend to see the benefits that come with [00:47:00] that. And I think that one of the things, obviously, that sharpens intuition the most is silence and meditation. And, Spending a lot of time observing your surroundings is also a very important part of feeding that into your brain, because we are always on the go and always running, and we have so many distractions.

We live with the phones almost like attached to our brain. bodies and whatnot. And we forget to pay attention to our surroundings. And this is a, it's a big mistake because we miss out on those opportunities for business or for career advancement that are there hiding in plain sight. And I think it's, a missed opportunity to not embrace what's around us that it's valuable and we want to use it to figure out the next step of something or the solution [00:48:00] to a problem, but also once you have a thought that has been hitting you out of the blue, and you repeatedly feel it or think it or whatever.

Do not dismiss it, right? I mean, it's important to have an intuitive log where you have a note of that thought and how many times and why and work with that thought. So a lot of people will say, well, man, I am sorry. I'm too practical for that. That's fine. I mean, it's just, you're missing out on things that are really, truly important guides, you know?

And like we talked about Steve Jobs, he always spoke about his Zen meditation practice daily. He talked about his intuition, like when he conceived the iPhone, he Didn't know how it was going to be put together when he talked to the engineers about a container that was completely flat and had nothing outside, [00:49:00] everything, all the operating system was going to be hidden inside.

It was going to look perfect. He's he wanted the glass that was coming from. From the mouse actually on, on the laptops and everybody told him you're crazy. And he said, I'm not. I mean, it's like, I know this can be done. And because I feel it. I mean that's like when people talk about genius. That's kind of it. But at the same time, we all can be geniuses because it but again, you have to have sort of like the means to get things done, right? Because if tomorrow, I want to think about something insanely amazing, but I don't know how to do it at all. And I don't have the money and I don't have it.

So then I'm like a little cuckoo, right? I'm like, Okay, well, what are you talking about? It has to be within, it has to be a stretch far All Outside enough to make you really scratch your head, but it can't be it can't be so far out that you're like, I will need to go out tomorrow and raise [00:50:00] 100 million bucks and all I have is 1000 bucks in my account that that's not going to work out right so.

I think people have to, that's why I like the idea of the intuitive that is mingled with the rational, because we need sort of both to operate in a way that makes sense for us, and business minds, business minds need a lot of intuition, but they also need a lot of rationality.

Ross Romano: Right, yeah, and intuitive when you think about intuitive design principles, right, that's kind of, it's something that it's guiding you where you know it should be, even if it's not explained. And anecdotally, I hear way more people regretting not having followed their intuition than the reverse, but so often it's, it's the subtext.

for a long time and we refuse to read it until it's the text until something very obvious happens. It says, okay, you have to do this. So often intuition is in conflict with the status quo and we [00:51:00] find reasons to put that off and say, well it feels more risky to do something different than to keep doing what I'm doing.

And we're not great at calculating the opportunity cost or. You know, the opportunity cost is so much a potential. But realistically that's tapping into these things that lead us to inventing the future, right? And this is where I want to close our conversation. But that concept of creativity is inventing the future.

And it's micro and macro, right? There's, of course, the macro of how creative visionaries, creative companies, enterprises are creating You know, the future that we are all living in, as far as technologies and systems and all those sorts of things, but it's also in the micro, in our own lives, that we are, we have the ability to create what we want our life to be in small ways and in large ways.

Like you mentioned earlier, it doesn't necessarily mean it's an entire disruption, okay? I'm [00:52:00] throwing away my career and starting something new or anything. It doesn't have, it can be that. It doesn't have to be that. It can be much smaller pieces to say, look, there's something that I want to be different, or my ideal vision of this thing in my life is.

this, and it looks different right now. And I, and so now I can create that versus just sort of hoping that that happens. So I wanted to give you the final word on on inventing the future through creativity and the encouragement, I guess, that you would give listeners to say, look, trust the process, so to speak, right?

If you work through this, you have it within you to create what you want things to see. And you just make a plan and you do it.

Maria Brito: So, without vision, people perish. It's, it's one of the... Versus in the scripture, but like, I'm not trying to indoctrinate anybody. I'm just saying vision is a very important thing [00:53:00] because everything starts really with an idea.

And that's why creativity for me is such a fundamental topic of life and the ideas that we have, if we are bold enough and courageous enough to pursue them. There is a big chance that we can see them materialize, but it all takes effort. Regardless of how advanced our communications and technology and all the hoopla of wonderful things that surround us these days, from AI to metaverses and whatever you want to call it, things still need work.

I tell this to my children who are 15 and 13 every day, right? I mean, it's like, yes? It's easier. That doesn't mean it's not going to take a lot of effort. And that doesn't mean that there are things that never really change. And that's why I went so much into history as far back as the Renaissance, because it, the amount of work that someone like Leonardo da Vinci was putting into his work or Thomas Edison.

[00:54:00] It's the same amount of work that Steve Jobs put into his things. It's the same amount of work that Elon Musk is putting into his things, right? And it's not about being them because you are you, but it is about understanding that breakthroughs, amazing ideas, creations take time and commitment and patience, whether you're writing a book or a film, or you want to Launch a phenomenal product, or upgrade the systems in your company, or ultimately develop a curriculum for a school that is like revolutionary, right?

Whatever it is that you want to do, it requires your dedication. Creativity is one of those things that requires a lot of discipline, and Edward De Bono, who was one of the foremost psychologists and researchers, used to say that all the time. Creativity requires, it's not rigidity, it's discipline. It is the willingness to do things.

Every day, little by little, until you find your big breakthrough. And like you said, you don't [00:55:00] need to disrupt your life, or you don't need to disrupt the market. It's not about inventing Uber again, right? It is not about that. It is about the fulfillment also that comes with seeing you. Your creations and your thoughts and ideas, whatever was a thought one day to see them come to fruition and to pursue them.

And you also need to be able to discern when is the time to say this is not working out and let me go with this other thing. Right. And so I obviously I'm a proponent of entrepreneurship because I'm one myself and that has many faces it. You don't need to own 20 business at the same time to be considered an entrepreneur.

You don't have to have them generating a billion. I mean, if that happens, fantastic, but it doesn't have to be like that. Right. It's all about this conviction and self image that you [00:56:00] have. Given to yourself. And that's why we go back to mindset, which is a word that I started at the beginning of the podcast talking about because mindset precedes everything you mindset and then action, right?

And then how do you assume this new phase of who you are and how you see yourself, how you present yourself and how others will see you and respect you and understand you. Right? And so. It is critical that you start with the new parameters of how you want to operate within your world and inventing the future.

I think that we all have the capacity to do things that contribute to the better world that we all want to have. Right? And every contribution. That is not illegal and it's not against the laws of nature. I always tell that, like, if it's not illegal, if it's not against the laws of nature, who is actually [00:57:00] stopping you from doing those things.

So, if you've been thinking about ways to improve. Ways to create something else that is different from the norm going against the status quo, which also mentioned is also, I think it's not just for being belligerent, right? It's like going against the status quo to go, like, say, on the record and say, some things that are crazy, like we see in the political landscape, but things like that, that's just doesn't bring anything, but going against like, okay, well, they said it has to be done this way.

And when I wanted to open my business, I spoke with people and they told me, you're not going to succeed. Is this not for you? Is this a club and you're not allowed because you don't have all the background and all the degrees and said, okay, fine. I'm going to get a status quo anyway. You know, I'm like, the establishment knows nothing.

They will see. Try me. Right? So I, I think that. It is important to start with the big vision, but it requires little steps every [00:58:00] day, every day, and that discipline and that consistency is what actually builds empires, is what actually builds big businesses, is what builds big brands, or not. It doesn't have to be the biggest brand.

It has to be whatever you want it to be. It has to be whatever provides the lifestyle that you think is good for you. And to do that. You just have to be a hundred percent committed. You just have to be on board. Things are not going to happen if you don't drive them. And look, I have been in this business, as I said, 14 years.

I know everybody and everybody knows me and I still have to do all sorts of things every day. It's not that I am like doing the minutiae, like I am actually involved in all parts of my business because I really want to know what's going on, but what I'm saying is like, I still have to reach out.

I still have to say, Hey, I'm doing this. I still have to shake hands. I still have to show up in person. And this is daily work. It's daily work. And, and that fuels my ideas. [00:59:00] Sometimes I've had the fortune that people come to me On their own and say, let's do this together.

Or we would like to hire you for this. But for the most part, it's me actually saying, Hey, I had this idea. Would you like to hire me to do it? And you know, that's freaking hard at times, right? I mean, it's like, Oh I could be this ice queen sitting on my thing. And no, no, no, I'm like, Oh, this is interesting.

I would love to do this. I would love to work with these people in this like south of Spain and do this crazy project that I thought about. Let me ask them if they say yes to this and so it's important to have that kind of desire to put yourself out there, right? And keep asking and retain that inner child, which is what most, people really don't have that inner child anymore.

That fun, that, curiosity, you know, the no limits kind of thing. and most people aren't really paying attention to their surroundings to see what's missing or to see what are the trends that [01:00:00] may become mainstream. And that is even good for people who like to invest, people who like to, put money on the stock market and whatever, if you spot things that are marginal and early on and follow them with seriousness, you can make some serious bucks there, again, I don't want to give investment advice because that's not what I do, but what I'm saying is that this are principles that keep replicating themselves in every area, right?

I mean, especially in business and, and creativity is pay attention to the margins, pay attention to new trends, make sure that you're looking at children and teenagers and what are they doing and what are they talking about, what are they playing with, what are this are very, very important and sometimes overlooked areas for opportunities, whatever kids do.

It's usually what becomes the mainstream. I am not on TikTok, but my kids were way before it became a thing it's same thing with, they were playing with metaverses and they were doing [01:01:00] things with video games that, I could have been an investor if I wanted to, but I didn't because that's I didn't pay attention to that.

But I think it's like, it's important to pay attention to what's going on and, and in your microcosmos, in your macrocosmos, and like, Whatever it is that you're doing, whomever it is you're involved with, no matter how separated you feel you are from reality, sometimes people in academia are like, Oh, I am a a professor, tenured professor, whatever.

And I just don't have time for that. No, I think you do.

Ross Romano: right. Yeah, and that point about that the discipline doing it, it happens a little bit at a time. It's not this idea we have that there has to be this one big swing, this one, especially for sustained success the companies that, All of a sudden come out of nowhere and get this high valuation and get a lot of money.

There are most often the ones that a couple of years from now you never hear from them again because they weren't [01:02:00] built up over time or if you're wanting to encourage a student who is. getting Bs in a certain class or Cs and they want to create an A, right? Studying a little bit every day and working your way up to it is going to be a better way to sustain, to achieve that and sustain that knowledge than just cram the night before the exam.

Maybe you'll do well on the test, but then you're going to forget it. So we want to encourage that it is that discipline. It's if you want to. achieve the things that other people aren't achieving. You have to do the things that they're not doing. Look where they're not looking, right? Pay attention, look for opportunities, and just stick with it.

And it gets there. You know, that's creation. Listeners, the book is How Creativity Rules the World. It's available from HarperCollins Leadership. You can find it at Maria's website. We'll put the link below. Please do also subscribe to The Authority for more author interviews like this one, or visit [01:03:00] bpodcast.

network to learn about all of our other shows. Maria, thanks so much for being on The Authority.

Maria Brito: Thank you, Ross, and everybody who's listening, thank you for your time. I hope you had fun. Just, to clarify something about the book, it's available wherever books are sold. So you can buy it on Amazon, Barnes Noble, Bookshop, Books A Million, whatever it is that you use to buy your books.

I hope, you enjoy. And, have a wonderful day.