 and welcome back to The Creative Life, a collaborative production between Think Tech Hawaii and the American Creativity Association Austin Global. I'm your host, Darlene Boyd, and joining me today is Bill Stanton, and Bill is coming to us from Seattle, Washington. Bill was the producer of the longest running, highest rated, and most award-winning comedy TV show in the United States. In fact, Bill received 29 Emmys, and his team received over 100 Emmys of their own. Together, Bill and the team experienced 10 years straight of number one ratings. Bill has been inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame, and interestingly, admittedly, is quite renowned for irritating blues club bands until the drumsticks are passed to him. And before you know it, he has been invited to join the band on stage to the sound of rousing applause. Bill is a sought after speaker, consultant, and creativity expert. Bill joins us today from Seattle, Washington to help us understand what innovation really is and what it really is not. And he'll be telling us a little bit about the yellow dot advantage and hopefully share with us the magic question that can unlock a lifetime of innovative ideas. Welcome to the creative life, Bill Stanton. It's my pleasure. Oh, thanks so much, Darlene. It's such a blast to be here with you, and aloha, everybody. And I'll just say to our viewers, I'm sure by now our viewers have noticed just a sampling of those 29 Emmys behind you. Here they are, a few of them. So is that a record, by the way, 29? 29? I actually don't know. I should probably try and find out. I don't think so. Well, we know Susan Lucci. We know the records for Susan Lucci having had 19 nominations. So before receiving her Emmy, congratulations. Bill, we'd like to start the show and help our viewers with just doing a little bit of a clarification of the concepts we'll be talking about. So with that in mind, would you mind just starting out and explain to us what you feel is the difference between creativity and innovation? Oh, that's a great question because so many people think they're the same thing, synonymous. Creativity, innovation, same thing. They're not. And here's the basic difference. I say that innovation is applied creativity. It's basically turning creativity into money. Creativity is one of the first steps of innovation. Creativity is coming up with the ideas, which, of course, you need. You need those ideas in order to be innovative. But innovation is actually putting those ideas to use. So the creativity is the generating of the ideas. But beyond that, to get to innovation, okay, once you generate a lot of ideas, and there are lots of cool ways to do that, once you generate a lot of ideas, then you need to have a process for figuring out, okay, which one or ones are we going to work with? Like, what are the good ones and what are the bad ones? Okay, that's another part. And then once you figure out what the good ones are, then you need to implement those and bring them to the marketplace. And the marketplace doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be selling them, but somehow making those ideas tangible in some way, shape or form. A piece of writing, a new product, a new service, just, in my case, a television show. Something that's so that you can bring those ideas out there into the world. So again, innovation is turning creativity into money. And by money, I just mean something of value to the world. Because creativity, ideas just by themselves are kind of a dime a dozen. It's easy to come up with them. But you figure out what the good ones are and bring them into the world. Now you've got something. Now you're an innovator. I think sometimes people get confused and interface novelty with innovation. And probably because novelty, the word is almost in innovation. But it's not just novelty. It's much more than that. And I appreciate the way you explain that to our viewers and to me, that it really has to be a usable, usable product at the end. And certainly product service. Again, a book, a movie, a TV show doesn't necessarily have to be a product. If you come up with an idea to shave 10 minutes off the weekly staff meeting. Okay, that's valuable. That's that's an innovative idea. You've come up with a creative idea. And it creates value by shaving 10 minutes off of the of the meeting. So that that counts as well. That's that's bringing something of value into the world that wasn't there before. There, there's some meetings that I think we need more than 10 minutes shaved off formula for that. So I think we've touched we've touched on just a few misconceptions of innovation. And you and you had proposed to us that we're going to be talking about these dots. And I wonder if you could tell us about the mystique of innovation to connecting the dots. What might the dots represent? Sure, yeah, one of the one of the really big misconceptions about innovation. In fact, it's so big that it keeps them. I think it keeps most people from even thinking of themselves as an innovator, because they automatically rule themselves out. So they don't even try to think, well, I'm just not an innovator. And it's this idea that innovation, creativity, and now I will kind of use them interchangeably, but that it's that it's about this lightning bolt that comes down from above, you know, and it only strikes the gifted few. So when it comes to creativity or innovation, you're either born with it or you're not. If your name is, you know, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, you were born with it and lightning strikes you. And I'm here to tell you that it's innovation is not about some magic lightning bolt in the sky. Innovation is actually all about connecting dots, taking two or more things that already exist connecting them in a way that nobody else ever has before. Now that raises the question, what are these dots I'm talking about? Well, they can be anything, ideas, experiences, people, people in your life, you know, every conversation you have, every podcast you listen to, every article you read, every new experience you have, you travel to a new place, you're collecting dots, you're, you're, you're collecting experiences, ideas that you can then combine in ways. You get kind of like, oh, you know what, this reminds me of that. And maybe if I put them together, it's like when I just said you don't have to be Steve Jobs, but when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were working on the first Apple computer, well, Steve Jobs happened to have taken a course in calligraphy, which is not something that most computer geeks were taking courses in. They didn't know anything about it. Certainly not, right? Yeah. So calligraphy, that was a dot that was available. It was already there. It had been around for thousands of years. Computers were already there. You know, the Macintosh wasn't the first computer, the Apple wasn't the first computer. So those two dots already existed, but Steve Jobs is the one who connected them and made a computer that could do calligraphy. In other words, that could do fonts and hand writing and that sort of thing. That's what set the Mac apart from everything else. So again, it's connecting, it's connecting those dots. That's where the idea is really coming. That's what innovation is all about. It's not creating something out of scratch. It's not waiting for some lightning bolt. When I was working on my TV show, our job was to be innovative every single week. And let me tell you something. If your paycheck depends on you being innovative, you can't afford to wait for a magic lightning bolt. So fortunately, we learned how to connect dots. I appreciate you reinforcing for us that creativity is not necessarily that aha moment and it doesn't always have to be something completely brand new and amazing and remarkable. It can be looking at something and taking and breaking it down into its parts, whatever it is, and then doing a reconceptualization into something new. And that can be innovative. Absolutely. Oh, I know you probably have had many people say to you, oh, this creativity thing is not for me. I'm not creative. I'm the least creative person in the world. Well, in my lifetime, I have crossed paths with some people that constantly would say that they're not creative. Yet I knew they were. And for me, whatever the relationship was, as a professor or as a colleague, they were creative. And I felt that and they were helping me to be more creative. But they just continue to say they weren't creative. Have you had that experience? I suspect you have. I suspect you've had big audience say. All the time people think I'm not creative. And part of it is because they think it's the lightning bolt. They think you're either born with it or you're not. And they weren't born Steve Jobs. Therefore, they're not creative. Well, we've already busted that myth. That's not true. It's not about a lightning bolt. Okay. They also think a lot of times that, well, you have to be a genius. You know, you have to have a, you know, a mental level IQ in order to be an innovator, because those are the ones who get publicized. You know, again, the Steve Jobs, the Elon Musk, the Leonardo da Vinci's, you know, the Marie Curie's, the people like that. Those are the innovations that we hear about and they get all the press. We think, well, you know, I'm not a genius. Therefore, I can't be an innovator. Innovation has nothing to do with IQ. And then the third huge myth that keeps people from thinking they're an innovator is that an innovation has to be earth shattering in order to count as an innovation. Like if you don't invent the iPhone or a rocket ship to Mars, then you're not really an innovator. Well, we already talked about, look, if you come up with a way to shave 10 minutes off the, off the Monday morning meeting, you're an innovator because innovation is really, all it really is, is solving problems. It's looking at a situation, a challenge, an opportunity, a problem and saying, hmm, I wonder how I could make this better. Because most people bump into a challenge of some sort, you know, some sort of brick wall in their life and they go, oh, I hate that. And that's where most people stop. The innovator does all that, but then says, I hate that. How could I make it better? Anybody can do that. Anybody can ask that question. You know, you think about something that irritates you, something that happens all the time and think, okay, rather than just put up with it like that's how it has to be, just think for a moment, oh, could I make this better? That's what an innovator does. And so it's, it's, it's a, it's a mindset. It's, it's believing that you're creative, believing that you're innovative. Because if you go through life believing that you're innovative, you'll create a whole different universe for yourself. I mean, you know, that's true, darling. Just like if you go through life believing that you're good looking or popular or talented, you create that world in a very real, real way. You create your own reality. So if you believe, yes, you know what, I am a creative person. I can connect dots. I can look at a situation and say, how can it be better? You know, I can, I can do that. Okay, I am an innovator. Once you start believing that about yourself, you'll start seeing those dots all over the place. There is a, there is a prop. It seems to me that there is a problem with problems. And sometimes we, we, we bump, then we run into that bump. And that is that we might go down the path and want to work on the wrong problem or what is not truly the problem. So you have any tips on how to really get to that path or is, or will our dots, the connecting the dots maybe narrow it down and give us more discipline in identifying that the right problem to pursue? No, the dots don't do that. The dots come in, come in right after that, but you're absolutely right, darling, because so many people, I mean, you don't want to be solving the wrong problem. I call it band-aid innovation, which is basically you're treating the symptom of a problem. You're, you're solving the symptom of a problem. The best way I've found, there are a number of techniques, but the best technique I've found is the five Y's, which some of you, some of you watching this may have heard Y's like W-H-Y, which were basically you become a two-year-old, you know, an irritating two-year-old is like, well, you know, you have to do this. Why? Well, because I said, so why, why, why? So you keep asking at least five Y's like, oh, here's the problem we have to solve. Well, why are we having that problem? Well, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, we're not selling enough widgets. That's the problem we have to solve. Well, why aren't we selling enough widgets? Well, because they've gotten too expensive and, you know, people don't want to pay. Okay, well, why have they gotten too expensive? Well, because, you know, our supplier, you know, we have, you know, they have, we only have the one supplier and they can charge with, why do we only have one supplier for that? Why don't we have everything go, why? And you go down and all of a sudden it's like, maybe, maybe this is the real problem that needs to be solved. You know, if you can solve the root problem, everything else takes care of itself. So just ask, ask those, ask a series of Y's until you get, and you may find out that the first one is the problem you need to solve, but you need to figure that out first. And then you start applying your, your creativity, your innovative muscle to the right problem, because you're absolutely right. We take, there's so many times that I've seen people doing, they're solving the wrong problem, and they solve it, but it's only temporary because they've picked the wrong problem. Bill, I like that. I like the handy dandy tip to look for the five Y's. I've never thought about it that way, but just having a simple, a simple tip like that, five Y's, just run them through your mind and see if, if that little piece of paper and just go through and see if that helps you get on the right path or the right journey. Right. It's a great thing to do with the team. Also, if you're, if you're leading a team or even part of a team, spending at least a few minutes doing that first could save you a lot of time, money, and resources solving the wrong problem. What about communication and the team? What if you have a team and you have that thorn in your team? Well, that can be difficult. It does come down to communication, but one of the things that may help, if you've got somebody who's kind of a naysayer on the team, now the big problem, if that naysayer is the leader, okay, that's a leadership problem. That's a whole different conversation, but let's put that aside for now. Let's say it's just one person. First of all, if you're, if you're trying to lead a creative team, which is what I did for 15 years, here's how you do it. And I'll just give you the thumbnail version right now and then kind of unpack it a little bit. You give them the what and let them surprise you with the how. In other words, you say, once you've identified the problem, like here's the problem I'll solve and maybe there are some parameters. Like we need to come up with a new product and it's got to be ready for the holidays or it's got to cost under, it's got to retail for under $100 or it's got to, you know, whatever. You figure all like, so here's, here's what we need to create. And then, but you don't tell them how to do it because creative people love solving the puzzle. So you give them the what because you're the leader, here's the vision, here's where we want to go, here's what we want to create. How can we do that? Because when you give them the how, when you let them surprise you with the how, now all of a sudden they're starting to take ownership of it. Now all of a sudden it's not you just saying, here's what we're going to do, here's how we're going to do it. Because then, then they're just robots and there's no, you know, and it's easy for people to rebel against that. But all of a sudden you give them a sense of ownership rather than, rather than trying to get them to buy in, you give them ownership. And now, now they start to feel like they've got some skin in the game. Now, now they start to feel like, oh, okay, maybe what I have to say is valuable. And that's, that's at least the first step. It's kind of shifting again, shifting that mindset of, you know, it's not you the boss giving the directions, it's you the boss asking for, you know, how, how do we get to where we want to go? And I agree with you that that pride of ownership is very important. And I suspect that we've all experienced where all too often someone is put in a position of authority who is not an authority and really doesn't take the time to listen to the team and work towards that pride of ownership and get buy in from the team members. You've mentioned, or at least I've heard you've mentioned that there's a magic question. So what is the magic question that you say can unlock a like time of innovative ideas? It's a real easy question. And if people would just kind of have this as part of their standard vocabulary, because again, we talk about how creativity and innovation is all about connecting dots. So here's the magic question. How is this, how can I apply this to my situation? Just how can I apply this to my situation? I'll give you an example. Have you ever, have you ever had the experience of like being in a doctor's office, and you have to wait for like an hour because you always have to wait for like an hour. And the only magazine there is a 1972, you know, the March 1972 issue of modern knitting or something, you know, that's, you know, that's all they have. And you think, Oh, but you pick it up because you have an hour. Okay. What if you read an article, but while you're reading that article, you have in the back of your mind, how can I apply this to my situation, whatever situation it is that you want to work on? Maybe it's a, maybe it's a work challenge. Maybe it's, maybe it's a problem with your relationship or your family or, you know, or whatever, you know, whatever you want to work on, say, how can I apply this? And notice the question is not, can I apply this? Because the secret is that your brain will try and answer any question you put to it. That's what it does. So if, if you just put to it, can I apply this to my situation? You're bringing and say, Nope, time for lunch. But if you say, how can I apply this? Or how might I? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So in fact, one of the activities I give to, to my clients a lot, just to kind of, just to kind of flex that muscle that connecting the dots muscle is to, and I would encourage anybody watching this to do this, like do this within the next three days. Sometimes I say, you know, do it sometime this week, but you'll forget. So do it within the next three days. Read an article or listen to a podcast or have a conversation that you wouldn't normally do. Like read an article, preferably about something and not about anything having to do with your business. But read an article, preferably about something that you don't really have that much interest in or listen to a podcast about a topic that you don't really have that much interest in or have a conversation with somebody that you wouldn't normally have a conversation with. But you're doing it with an explicit purpose. You're doing it as you're reading that article, having that conversation, listening to that podcast podcast, you're asking yourself this question, how can I apply this to my situation? And then ideally sit down with a pad of paper, not on your computer, but a pad of paper, because there's something about the, you know, the wiring between, you know, actually physically writing something down, come up with at least five answers to that question. Now here's that they don't have to be good answers. They can be outlandish answers. That's, you know, the answer itself is not the point at this particular time. Right now, we're just trying to get our brains to begin connecting, begin connecting those dots. So if you can go through life that way, it doesn't mean you have to be asking it all the time, but you see something cool, you see something that attracts your attention, or you're stuck at a conference in a breakout session, which is not what it was advertised. And you're sitting there going like, Oh, I'm so bored. Instead of just being bored, think, okay, how can I apply this to my situation? And force yourself to come up with at least a few answers. And you'll come up with them. It doesn't mean they're going to be great and that you're going to use them. But it might be the million dollar idea. You never know. Because here's the thing, you never know which dot is going to be the one that leads to the breakthrough. So don't go through life looking at dust going like, well, that one's not important, Steve Jobs could have easily said, well, calligraphy, no, that's never going to apply. Well, that turned out to be the first world's first trillion dollar company, because Steve Jobs took a calligraphy course. Amazing. So I know you have a couple slides for us with the dots. So before we go on to some other questions, maybe... Yeah, let me talk about this because there's something specific about these dots I want to talk about. So here's some dots, a bunch of dots here, which is good. You want to be collecting lots of dots because the more dots you have, the more connections you can make, which is great. See right here, this is what it looks like inside the brain of an innovator. Connections, connections, connections. Some people's brains though look more like this. These people who are not lifelong learners, right? This is very, very sad, right? I mean, not a lot of connections going on here. So it just makes sense that the more dots you collect, the more connections you can make, which means the odds of any one of those connections being that breakthrough idea that's going to move the needle for you, increase dramatically. But Darlene, what do you notice about these dots as you're looking at them? They all look alike. Exactly. They're all the same. And how do we cut through that? Well, they're all three-quarter inch navy blue. Here's the thing. If all of your dots are three-quarter inch navy blue, and by that what I mean is if you only collect, if you only read the same kinds of articles about the same topics, if you only listen to the same kinds of podcasts, if you only hang out with the same kinds of people and talk about the same kinds of things, if all of your dots are three-quarter inch navy blue, then most of your connections are going to be three-quarter inch navy blue. Not exactly breakthrough, right? But what if your dots looked more like this? Oh, you see, now we're talking. See, you start connecting these dots, and there's no telling what color your connections, your creative ideas, your innovations are going to be a blue dot and a yellow dot, like a green idea. So, see, sometimes when you look for that outside dot, I call it the yellow dot, the yellow dot advantage, you look for that yellow dot that nobody else is looking for. Again, Steve Jobs, the yellow dot was calligraphy. This might be overly stereotypical, but back in those days, you know, you think of computer geeks, all they do is take courses in computers. They only talk to computer people about computer stuff. They only read computer articles. They collect a lot of navy blue, you know, three-quarter inch navy blue dots, and so they all tend to come up with the same kinds of ideas, those three-quarter inch navy blue ideas, but you have one yellow dot. Ooh, calligraphy. Bring that into the mix, and now you're coming up with ideas that the competition is never going to come up with because they don't have that idea. So, in addition to just collecting any dots, look for those outside the dots, which is why I say when you read that article, try and make it one that you wouldn't normally read. Preferably about a subject that you don't have any interest in because that is something you wouldn't normally read. That's the yellow dot. There may be something there, you go like, oh, that's cool. Anytime you're watching or listening or reading the news and you hear about some company, some person, some mom and pop, some entrepreneur, whatever, that's doing something that, you know, that's innovative and interesting and cool. Instead of just going like, oh, that's cool. And then, you know, moving on to the next thing, say, oh, that's cool. How can I apply that to my situation? Because that's probably a yellow dot idea, but it's only a yellow dot idea if you connect it to your own situation. So, again, collect dots, especially those yellow dots that nobody else is going to be collecting, and then ask that magic question, how can I apply this to my situation? And now you're an innovator. Bill, you tell a story about when you were working on the path to get your Emmys and working with the funniest show, and I recognize that there's, as too many people recognize, that there's a lot of pressure underway, especially with the last minute and guests. Why didn't you tell us that story? Because it's rather interesting. It was a weekly comedy show that I produced, and one day we were excited because we had booked a big-named guest. Johnny Depp was going to be our guest. This is pre-wackadoodle Johnny Depp. He was shooting a TV series called 21 Jump Street, and, you know, they shot in Vancouver, BC. I'm in Seattle. It's only a few hours apart. So, we got Johnny. We got Johnny to be a guest on the show. So, that, you know, the day of the show, that Saturday, we're just, we're elated. We're doing our happy dance, because Johnny Depp's going to be on the show. But then around 10, 11 in the morning, I get a phone call, and it's Johnny, and he says he has to cancel. He can't make it. They scheduled reshoots, and he can't get out of it. So, now we're in this panic, and, you know, we have to come up with a guest for the show. So, we're just, we're throwing out ideas, and, you know, no, they're out of town. No, she's sick. No, you know, no, nothing was working, until all of a sudden, one of my writers, in fact, it was my lowest paid writer, my lowest paid writer at the time, popped his head up and said, I might be able to do something with liquid nitrogen, which scared us all, because, you know, that's insane. Clearly, he did not understand the situation. You know, we're trying to come up with a guest to interview, and he's babbling on about liquid nitrogen. And plus, he's my lowest paid writer. His name was Bill, and so we're all thinking, well, you know, Bill, you know, just shut up, Bill. The grown-ups are trying to solve a problem. But then the clock kept ticking, and it's getting closer and closer to showtime. It's like, oh, what are we going to do? Well, okay, Bill, what's your idea? And that's when Bill, whose last name was Nye, started telling us about how he could do something scientific with liquid nitrogen that's very, very cool and visual. And that's the night he became, that's the night that my lowest paid writer became Bill Nye, the science guy. And that happened, Darlene, because he saw the world differently than we did. We were all writers and producers. Bill Nye was and is a science guy. He saw the world differently than we did. He was the yellow dot. You see what I'm saying? He was the yellow dot. Being the yellow dot. And I almost missed it because I wasn't open to the yellow dot. I thought I was, but at that time I just, you know, no, we need a guess. I couldn't see outside my blinders until I was kind of hit over the head with it. So sometimes, sometimes the yellow dot hits you over the head and you've got to go like, wait a minute, maybe there's a great idea here. But your example also reinforces for us that we really have to remember to not be judgmental, not to rush to judgment. Now that would be a hard one under pressure, someone saying, you know, this is supposed to be a funny show and I'm just going to do the liquid nitrogen. So yeah, she'd be in a panic. That's a, that's, but the example does remind us that sometimes it does pay off to hold off on judgment. Absolutely. We are winding down, but we, I was told that I should ask you something about a piano and your house. I'm not, well, I do have a piano in my house. I've got a 1923 Steinway medium grand, which is my biggest distraction because if I'm not on the road or on a stage someplace doing a keynote speech, I work out of my home. And it's a, it's a huge distraction to me. I'm not quite sure if there's something else there that we should be leading to. But yeah, I've got, I've got a piano. And it distracts you from time to time. It does distract me from time to time. But, but I suspect I have a colleague who, and he's in technology, pure technology. So it would be one of our geeky type people. But when he's stuck on an idea in front of his, his computer, he pulls a ukulele from behind and he just gets his ideas while plucking his ukulele now. You can't pull your piano behind you. Actually, I can't consider a ukulele. But I actually, I have a ukulele. I've got, I've got a couple of ukuleles and several guitars in the house as well. But yeah, there is, there is something if you, if you can just doodle around on a musical instrument, it helps both John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who for you kids were members of a band called The Beatles. They were pretty popular back in the 60s. They both played guitar and piano. But John Lennon, for example, said he's not a good piano player. So sometimes when he really wants to come up with a creative song, he'll sit down the piano because he knows he's going to make mistakes. You know, with it, you know, he, he knew the guitar well enough that he's just going to, it's easy to just go into the typical patterns. Like if you play guitar, you're just going to start playing the same thing. Again, just those, you know, those same three quarter inch navy blue dots. But you sit in an instrument that, you know, you sit or pick up an instrument that you don't play, you play a little bit, not quite well enough. And now all of a sudden the mistakes might happen. You know, you'll hit a chord and they go, Oh, what's that? Oh, I don't know what that is. That sounds weird. But, you know, that's the yellow dot. That's, that's the chord that you wouldn't normally have come up with if you knew too much. Like, you know, so, you know, be, be open, be open for those happy accidents. With this may not be this next question I have for you. It may not be a happy accident question, but how does one future proof one's own business? So if we, if we go back to our dots and the connections, and now we've got our ideas and they might be time sensitive, or they might be cultural sensitive, and then something hits us that completely can turn our life apart. And it's an overused term lately, but the pandemic hits. And how do we future proof our own businesses? You future proof by learning how to innovate. Innovation is the master key, because we don't know what's going to happen. You know, we didn't expect the pandemic, most of us. We don't expect, you know, a major supplier going out of business. You know, we don't expect those things. Those kinds of things are going to happen. It's a part of life, you know, good things. And they aren't always bad. It could be like a great opportunity that all of a sudden pops up. And if you don't act right now, you're going to miss it. So it could be a challenge. It could be a problem. It can be an opportunity. The key is if you've got that skill of innovation, which anybody can learn, that's what I do. I teach innovation. I teach people that they are innovators, and it's easier than most people think. And I work with teams about that. So if you can build that innovation muscle in your team, you're going to have the master key that will unlock any challenge. Whatever comes at you, you can apply this master key of innovation to that situation. So instead of just hibernating and hoping it goes away, like a lot of people did when the pandemic first hit, instead of just doing the same thing you've always been doing, but just doing it harder and faster, which is what a lot of people did. You'll all of a sudden look at it and go like, okay, and you'll start applying some of the tools and go like, ooh, okay. How can this, one easy question, if it's a challenge with your team, ask the question, how is this? How fast forward five years from now, what can we do now to make us look back and go like, that was the best thing that ever happened to us? And all of a sudden you're looking at it from a completely different perspective, like the pandemic hits or something like that. And you go, okay, how can we look back on this a year from now or five years from now, whatever time span you want to say, ooh, that was when we really click it into high gear. But the key to that is to make innovation a process, not just an event, because a lot of people don't innovate until something happens and they're, ooh, now we have to innovate and we don't know how. It's kind of, if you use, for people who use, say, Photoshop. Photoshop is a complicated piece of software. Those who use it every day can use it almost without thinking about it. I use Photoshop maybe once or twice a month. And so every time I have to break it out, it's like, okay, how do you do this again? And what, and I never get really good at it. I can just, I can do what needs to be done, but just barely and not really terribly well, because it's not a habit. If you make innovation a habit, then all of a sudden it's available to you anytime. You don't think you're like, oh wait, we did this once 12 years ago. How did we do it? What does innovation feel like? But just make it a part of the DNA. If innovation is a part of your culture, then you are future-proofed. Then you've got everything you need to ride whatever wave comes your way. Well, Bill, we have much more we can talk about, but at our time, we've come down to the close of the show. And I think that's, I know it's, I have a sad face too, but it's also, I think the direction you took us in your final remarks are a good reminder for us to just keep practicing too. Practicing is a very simple word, but just always be on alert and thinking. And as you said, try new things and reflect on them. And with that, I hope we see you again. And it's my pleasure to serve as your host. I'm Darlene Boyd and for our viewers. And you have been watching The Creative Life with today's guest, Bill Staten. And we invite you to come back and join us again in about in two weeks with another edition of The Creative Life brought to you by the American Creativity Association Austin Global. And with that, aloha.