The Creator's Journey tracks

Jean Freeman is the CEO of Zambezi, one of the largest female-owned businesses in the advertising industry, and has been twice named Small Agency of the Year by the industry publication, AdAge. She has been recognized as a leading advocate for the advancement of women in the advertising industry. In addition, she’s been named to Adweek’s Disruptors List, included in the “100 People Who Make Advertising Great” by the 4As, received the 3 Cheers Award from The 3% Conference, and named a Working Mother of the Year by She Runs It. Jean has also been a frequent contributor to trade publications and a respected voice on a number of issues including women in the workplace, leadership, and building a sustainable business.

Ryan Berman likes to help stuck people get unstuck. As the founder of Courageous Brands, a consulting firm that encourages and helps companies develop more courageous brands and branding – as well as before that, a branding agency called i.d.e.a. - Ryan has spent a career developing meaningful stories for household brands including Hilton, Major League Baseball, PUMA, Subway, and UNICEF. He works from the foundation of belief that courage can be the ultimate competitive advantage, regardless of who you are or the business you’re in. His book ‘Return on Courage’ dives into the process of drawing on courage to do more impactful work, both personally and in your business. Using the methodology unveiled in his book, Ryan also launched Sock Problems: a charitable sock company that allows people to address various problems in the world when they purchase their themed socks.He’s a man of many talents, interests, and even more enthusiasm!

Chris Denson is a man of many talents and interests.After earning a degree in packaging engineering and working for a few years as an engineer for Daimler-Chrysler, he packed up his Isuzu Rodeo and moved to LA based on a passing invitation from a TV executive who invited Chris to meet with him if he ever came to LA. Although the meeting never materialized, Chris stayed and began his illustrious career riding life’s roller coaster as an innovator in the marketing world. While still in college, Chris began doing stand-up comedy in clubs, a pursuit that he continued for a number of years into his career. Most importantly, it was that work that built his skills and confidence in writing, developing a sense of timing, and dealing with rejection from others. He then carried those gifts into screenwriting, production, and building an expertise in marketing based on thoughtful innovation. In 2014, Chris launched his podcast, Innovation Crush, where he hosts conversations with leaders in the world of innovation. This year, he also released his book, Crushing the Box, 10 Essential Rules for Breaking Essential Rules. In our conversation, we dig into several areas that we share in common: persistence in the face of adversity, curiosity and asking more effective questions, a willingness to live in a moderate amount of uncertainty, constantly learning through an abundance of ‘micro-failures,” and the positive and negatives of being multi-hyphenated polymaths.

Nicole Ogoff is the Chief Marketing Officer and a Managing Partner at Story Worldwide in New York, a creative branding agency known for authentic story-making on behalf of its clients. Nicole has built a reputation around her relentless pursuit of effective solutions for her clients which she does by giving enormous attention to details and setting high expectations for both her team and client relationships.Although I highly value intelligence, there are a lot of brilliant people out there, especially in the world of advertising and branding. Finding people like Nicole who are smart and excel at building deep human connections with their teams as well as clients is much rarer to encounter.As much as I’m obsessed with the story-making process and the impact that narratives have on our lives, I’ve found very few ways to measure their effectiveness for a business that uses engaging stories to connect with its audience and customers.Listening to a presentation at the 3% Conference by Nicole and Jacqueline Lieberman, the Managing Director at Story Worldwide, got me excited about sharing their approach with you on this episode. They talked about their process of business story-making and, more importantly, of measuring impact for their clients using an assessment process that I’ve not experienced. One of the insights was the way they use the twelve archetypes of narrative character development to identify a brand’s personality.

Humor is REALLY challenging to get right, and it doesn’t take much to have an advertising message fall far off the mark and turn people away from it altogether.Kate Baynham is an Associate Creative Director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco and has created work for clients such as Frito Lay, Adobe, Nintendo, Sonic and the Ad Council. For her work on an AD council campaign to curb bullying called, I Am A Witness, she's won awards at the One Show, the Art Directors Club, a yellow pencil at the Design & Art Directors Awards as well as a Cannes Lion.And most recently, Kate, along with her creative partner, Hanna Wittmark, was named one of the Next Creative Leaders by the One Club and 3% Movement. We talk about the importance of taking a strong point of view and her deft use of humor in the work she creates.

The process of composing music – not just writing a song, but composing and layering all of the music and audio effects that move our emotions along – whether it’s in a 30 second TV commercial, video game trailer, or a feature length movie score is a craft that, I believe, is vastly under-appreciated for its ability to move the viewer into and along with the story being presented. As I’ve moved increasingly more into the motion film area of storytelling - after most of my career producing still photographs alone - my appreciation of having the appropriate music accompany the projects we were filming started to rise considerably. But I also realized that I wasn’t alone in my ignorance of all the subtle aspects of effective audio production, especially the scoring and layering of original music.I’ve invited my guest, Andrea Saparoff, to talk about some of what goes on behind the mysterious curtain of music composition for commercial projects. Based in Los Angeles, Andrea is a composer and sound designer working primarily in the advertising and film/TV industries and has completed projects for scores of clients including Cheerios, Canon, AmEx, Nike, and City of LA as well as films for Lifetime and Hallmark. You can find examples of her work at http://saparoffmusic.com.

This is the second of a two-part series with my guest, Anissa Ferris, focusing on the power of the Enneagram personality tool to create awareness, both for yourself and others, that will transform your relationships and create opportunities for greater meaning and impact. If you’ve not listened to the previous episode, I highly recommend you do that first to give yourself some background on our discussion. In that first episode, Anissa provided an overview of the Enneagram and why it works so well to create awareness and understanding. But more importantly, she explained how that awareness can help you be more effective while burning less of your emotional energy to get your work done. In this episode, Anissa, a psychotherapist and certified Enneagram instructor, goes into a description of each of the nine Enneagram personality types and describes the strengths and challenges each type faces, and how they tend to interact with each other. We’ll discuss both the healthy and unhealthy versions of each type, and how each type uses core strengths to most effectively engage in the world. We’ll try to cover in roughly an hour the information Anissa spends a half-day or more going over in the workshops that she leads.

I first met Anissa Ferris at a birthday celebration for a mutual friend, but her reputation had preceded her since my wife Linda had already spent most of two Saturdays in Anissa’s workshop on the Enneagram, a powerful tool to increase self-awareness and help us understand others.After only a brief conversation, I was equally taken with Anissa’s enthusiasm for how understanding and applying the Enneagram process can transform lives.I immediately signed up for her next workshop.Anissa holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in social work. In 1998, she opened her psychotherapy practice in Raleigh, NC, focused on working with adolescent and adult women dealing with stress, anxiety, depression and grief.She offers practical guidance to her clients through support and insights that help them to solve problems and achieve positive change.Her chief aim? To help them develop greater self-awareness that then leads to making more conscious and useful choices and living a more fulfilling life.Anissa has also been a certified Enneagram teacher in the narrative/oral tradition since 2013. She finds the Enneagram very helpful in providing clients a paradigm for personal growth and lasting change.“The Enneagram is a powerful and dynamic personality system for self-awareness and understanding others. It describes the structure and dynamics of nine distinct personality patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that represents these nine strategies that we can relate to ourselves, others and the world.”As an avid gardener, Anissa uses the illustration of a kinked hose to explain how as human beings, we become equally twisted up and kinked.“We all do this. We lose our flow. We all have certain gifts that we can offer the world. The Enneagram really highlights what our gift is. When we’re kinked up – stressed out, angry, fearful, sad – that’s the kink in the hose. Instead of pausing and going to where the kink is and undoing it, we often jerk on the hose and try to pull out the kink. We all know how that goes. It doesn’t work.‘The Enneagram helps you identify where the kink is. Some of us are kinked up with fear, some of us with anger, and some of us are kinked up with a frustration that we’re not affirmed or seen. When you put the power of the Enneagram to work, you don’t have to walk all around the yard looking for the kink. You’ll know exactly where it is.”Building on the work of psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankel, Ferris explains that the Enneagram provides the awareness needed to make healthy choices in our lives. "Frankel said that in-between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is the power to choose. If we can learn to pause, for even a moment, as we make decisions about how to respond, we can lead a more intentional life.”Each of the Enneagram personality types offers a different lens on the world. “If we can understand how we see the world and then maybe understand that we can learn from someone else and how they see the world, that creates the potential to work together.”

I first encountered Nilofer Merchant’s work through her 2013 TED talk, “Sitting is the Smoking of Our Generation”. I then had the opportunity to meet her last year after her keynote presentation at the 3% Conference in which she laid out her passion for The Power of Onlyness, which happens to be the title of her most recent book. The sub-title of the book, "Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World", is what we talk about in this episode.Nilofer is personally responsible for launching more than 100 products, netting $18B in sales and has held executive positions at Fortune 500 companies including Apple and Autodesk as well as startups in the early days of the Web. She continues to serve as a consultant and advisor to numerous companies including Logitech, Symantec, HP, and Yahoo.She is also an avid hiker and wilderness backpacker as well as a lover of all-things-bacon and of dark-chocolate-covered-orange-peels, especially when they’re eaten in France.

I met Becky Buller after her band played at a bluegrass festival I was attending a few months ago. We had just wrapped up filming interviews with some musicians for a project when we slid into some seats for the start of her show. Several people had told me not to miss her performance and, holy hot-strings Batman, I’m glad I didn’t.Her smooth vocals and fire-y hot fiddle playing along with the tight harmonies and musicianship of a well-meshed band, she tore up the stage. The more I learned about her, the more I wanted to shoehorn into her calendar so that we could have a chat. This past year, Becky became the first person ever to win in both instrumental and vocal categories at the International Bluegrass Music Association awards, winning both the Fiddler and Female Vocalist Of The Year. In 2015, Becky was named Songwriter of the Year.In addition to writing for her own band’s originals, she has also had her songs recorded by some of Bluegrass’s best, including Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Josh Williams, and Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out.Becky graduated in 2001 with a public relations degree from East Tennessee State University, where she took part in their Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music program. If you love what you hear, check out the Becky Buller Band’s tour schedule online at her website BeckyBuller.com.

Here are two questions for you to consider. What will you do with the time you have left? And, are you willing to start right now?Those questions are central to the life and work of Kirk Souder. Kirk is the co-founder of enso, a mission-driven branding company partnering with companies such as Google, Kahn Academy, Pepsi, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy.He’s also a transformative coach and a co-facilitator of Soul Purpose 2017, a workshop designed to connect leaders with their next act in purpose, meaning, and impact.Prior to starting enso, Kirk was an Executive Creative Director with Wieden + Kennedy/Shanghai, as well as an Executive Creative Director with GMMB and Hal Riney & Partners.In 2006, Kirk completed his Masters in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. And since 2007, he’s been a volunteer with The Freedom to Choose Project in which twice a year he facilitates self-awareness workshops with women in a maximum security prison.

Karen Goodman followed an unconventional path into the world of advertising. She studied sociology and public policy at Duke University before deciding to explore a career in advertising after being inspired by Jennifer Anniston’s role in the film, Picture Perfect. Currently a Creative Director at Havas /Chicago, Karen has also led creative work at Under Armour, Pappas Group, Johannes Leonardo, and R/GA, working on projects for Google, Nike, and Walmart among others.Karen is a champion for female creative talent and leadership in the industry. In January 2016, she founded the Washington DC chapter of SheSays, a global networking platform for women and, along with hosting monthly panels throughout DC, has grown the community to over 500 people.A colleague said of Karen that she has an innate ability to explain complex issues in relatable terms, a quality that, in my view, is sorely lacking in most forms of communications today. I can also say that when we met in NY last fall, I was immediately taken with her gentle ability to put people at ease and draw them in to conversation.

I met Rachael O’Meara at the World Domination Summit in Portland, OR, a few years ago. She hosted a break-out meetup session around the topic of her current book, entitled Pause, in which she explains how pausing can boost your emotional intelligence and ability to act, feel, and communicate authentically and responsibly through the process of creating space in your life for rest and reflection. The sub-title of the book is, “Harnessing the power of giving yourself a break”, which well describes the book and her leading of the meet-up.Not only was, and is, the topic a relevant one for my life, I’m finding out that nearly, if not every, person I know needs a better understanding of how to take breaks, both large and small, in order to bring a fresh perspective and balance to their lives.In addition to being an author, Rachael is a sales executive at Google San Francisco for the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and trains colleagues on emotional intelligence and how to be more aware to enhance performance in all areas of life. She is also a regular contributor to Huffington Post, has a podcast on the practice of pausing, and speaks and leads workshops on the topic as well.It has taken me a couple of months to read Pause because I wanted to take my time and apply the principles as I was absorbing them. It’s been thoughtful and challenging, but a fruitful process to apply to my life.

Deb Lucke is a writer and illustrator of children's books with an interest in bad behavior and horribly embarrassing incidents. She says that since her own childhood had plenty of both, she is never really short of material.Deb is the creator of the graphic novel series, The Lunch Witch, the story of a failed witch turned lunch lady who is shocked to find her most evil intentions undone by a ten-year-old with thick glasses and unfinished homework. The second book in the series, Knee-Deep In Niceness, was released last Halloween. She is currently at work on a third book. The series has been optioned by Amblin Pictures.The School Library Journal placed The Lunch Witch on their Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2015 list and the New York Public Library included it on the Top 100 Titles to Read and Share 2015.In addition to illustrating and authoring several other books, Deb has done illustration work for numerous editorial clients. Her work was included in American Illustration 32 and The Society of Illustrator's 2015 Cartoon and Comic Annual.In a previous life, Deb was an award-winning art director at several ad agencies including Ogivly + Mather and Hill Holliday. She is also the writer and director of a short film, The Creation, which appeared in fifteen film festivals and aired in the US, Canada, and Japan.

Molly Scannell is a creative director who’s worked with a number of ad agencies including SapientNitro and Mullen. She has nearly 20 years experience working in visual and user experience design with a long and diverse list of clients including John Hancock Investments, Chrysler Group, Lane Bryant, Liberty Mutual, Smithsonian, Yale School of Management, and CBS.In addition to being a competitive rower for the past 20+ years, her abundant energy also flows into her role of mothering three amazing daughters. As a result of pursuing her own personal art projects and then posting the results on Instagram, she has developed a personal following that has not only encouraged more art work but also given her career a bump.

This show is a departure from my regular format where I talk with one guest about his or her mindset around the process of creating impactful work. In this episode I’ll be talking with five different creative leaders about their thoughts on one topic, the issue of how to get back on track creatively when you’ve been de-railed from your plans or process, for whatever reason. Whether you’re in the middle of your own creative process, consulting with a client, or facilitating a discussion in an intimate Mastermind group, the issue of how to create and ship your work is, from my experience, an ongoing concern. And one of the primary concerns is how to get back on track once you’re derailed.I’d love to have your feedback on this episode since it is a change of pace. If you have any suggestions, thoughts for future episodes, or possible guests to recommend, please email me at Charles@CharlesGupton.com. You can find out more about each guest on today’s show in the show notes for this episode at TheCreatorsJourney.com.

For more than twenty-five years, DeMane Davis has created national and international advertising campaigns as well as written and directed commercials and independent feature films. Her current production company is Sweet Rickey.Both of her full length feature films, Black and White and Red All Over and Lift, which starred Kerry Washington, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.She’s also a freelance copywriter and creative director who recently won a Clio Award for her work on the marketing campaign for the prescription medication Viberzi. A few of her long list of clients include Bank of America, Cigna, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and American Eagle

Victoria Maddocks, has extensive experience in publishing, advertising, design and retail, focused primarily in the beauty and skin care market. She is currently the Vice President, Global Creative Director of Philosophy, a beauty brand that inspires women to look, live, and feel their best.Prior to joining Philosophy, Victoria worked in a similar position with Kiehl’s, also a beauty brand. She was instrumental in taking the brand from one store in the U.S. to over 300 brand-owned stores in 35 countries around the world. In addition to running her own branding and consulting firm, The Victoria Maddocks Agency, she has also worked with Gucci, Estée Lauder, Victoria’s Secret Beauty, Saatchi & Saatchi and The Arnell Group.In short, Victoria understands the power of great design and how to turn it into sales and profit.In addition to her keen business acumen, she brings a vibrant energy and inspirational leadership, not just to The Creator’s Journey, but everywhere she goes.

I don’t know of anyone with more passion for the work they’re doing than Mara Lecocq. Mara is a former creative director at the branding agency, AKQA New York on accounts for Nike, Starbucks and Verizon. But she quit her high profile position to go freelance as a creative director so that she could devote more attention towards inspiring and helping to empower young girls through a project she launched called Secret Code, which we’ll discuss in detail.Prior to her work at AKQA, Mara worked at the branding agency BETC in Paris and at DDB in Toronto. To date, Mara has already been named one of the Next Creative Leaders by the One Club, one of Mashable's Rising Stars in advertising, and was part of the Cannes Lions 'See It, Be It' initiative focused on aspiring female leaders.

Lisa Congdon has been on my radar for several years.As a fine artist and illustrator Lisa Congdon is best known for her colorful abstract paintings, intricate line drawings, pattern design & hand lettering. She works for clients around the world including the MoMA, Harvard University, Martha Stewart Living, Chronicle Books, Simon & Schuster, and Random House Publishing, among many others. She exhibits her work around the country, including shows at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and Bedford Gallery in California.Lisa writes a popular daily blog about her work, life and inspiration called Today is Going to be Awesome. And she she seems to me to be quite a force on Instagram.She is the author of six books, including the starving-artist-myth-smashing Art Inc: (Which I thoroughly enjoyed...) It is The Essential Guide to Building Your Career as an Artist, as well as the illustrated books The Joy of Swimming, Fortune Favors the Brave, Twenty Ways to Draw a Tulip, A Collection a Day, and the first book of Lisa’s that I read, Whatever You Are, Be a Good One,. Her seventh book, A Glorious Freedom: On Being a Woman, Getting Older, and Living an Extraordinary Life will be released by Chronicle Books later this year. She was named one of 40 Women Over 40 to Watch in 2015. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.