and life you love. There has never been a better time to grow an audience for your products,

your services, and your ideas. But with all the noise out there, how do we not only stand

out, but also ensure that our work has real impact in the world? Well, my guest today

says the key is in finding our authentic voice, and he’s here to show us how.

Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday

brilliance. He’s the author of 3 books: “The Accidental Creative,” “Die Empty,”

and “Louder than Words,” which have been translated into more than a dozen languages

and he speaks and consults internationally on creativity, leadership, and passion for

work. His last book, “Die Empty,” was named by Amazon.com as one of the best books

of 2013. His latest book, “Louder than Words,” is about how to develop an authentic voice

that resonate and creates impact. International bestselling author Tom Rath called it, “One

of the best guides to living a meaningful life I have ever read.”

Todd, thank you so much for coming on MarieTV.

Thank you for inviting me.

So “Louder than Words,” you guys, I read this cover to cover. It’s amazing. I have

so many notes. I have, like, things circled and highlighted and things that I sent to

the team. It’s just brilliant. One of the things that you say that I loved: “Attention

for your work is not a birthright. To stand out you must develop an authentic, compelling

voice.” Talk to me about why you wanted to write this book.

So I’ve noticed over the last couple of years working with creative professionals,

people in the marketplace, there’s a lot of conversation about building a platform.

Right? And how can you create a platform, how can you grow an audience, how can you

get attention for your work? And I think that’s helpful to have that kind of conversation

going, but I think we often ignore a… I think a more rudimentary conversation we need

to be having, which is how do you develop a voice that’s worth putting on a platform?

So I think starting with platform and asking yourself how do I grow an audience, how do

I grow attention for my work is kind of putting the cart before the horse. I think first we

have to have the conversation about what is it that I want to be on that platform. Right?

What do I actually want to get out into the world? What impact do I want to have? I think

that’s the first and the most fundamental question we have to ask before you even begin

to think about how do I grow a platform and gain attention.

I agree with you 100%. So much so. We have the honor of working with tens of thousands

of creatives through B-School and that’s one of the things. It’s like, “Well, what

are you taking a stand for? What’s important to you? What is the message that you wanna

use this platform for?” And that’s why I’m so excited about your book, because

I think it is the most fundamental and important question and I think for any of us, whether

we’re just starting out or, you know, I’ve been doing this over 15 years now. These are

the questions in your book that I continue to ask myself. And I think it’s for people

that are… have been on the journey for a while and want to evolve their platform. And

there’s even more brilliance. Again, I have to quote you exactly because it’s so perfectly

said. On page 151 you write, “You have to allow the idea to breathe, which sometimes

means engaging in activity that is gloriously inefficient.” And you talk a lot about people

really don't give themselves enough permission, especially in the early stages, to wander

around. Can we talk about this? Because I feel like I see so much about this hacking

and mind hacking and productivity hacking and creativity hacking, and in my personal

experience there ain’t no shortcuts. You can’t be “efficient” all the time if

you want to do work that really matters. So what’s your perspective on this?

I think there’s a real tendency in our culture right now to sacrifice effectiveness on the

altar of short term efficiency. Right? And you’re right, there’s all this conversation

about hacking and shortcuts and all of these things. And that can be effective I think

for some things, but not about the things that matter. I think in the long term, I think

that we need to be carving out white space in our life, because innovation happens in

the white space. When we squeeze all of the white space out of our life we’re not allowing

our ideas to marinate, we’re not allowing them to breathe, we’re not allowing them

to emerge into their full potential. I think so often there’s a lot of conversation about

shipping and getting things out and pushing things into the world, and that’s great,

because I think some people because of a perfectionistic tendency they might hold onto ideas too long

and never get them out into the marketplace trying to make them perfect. But I think sometimes

on the opposite side of the equation, sometimes we push things out before we really have asked

the deeper questions about what is this, what am I really trying to introduce, what change

do I really want to see through this work or this project or whatever it is? And so

we push things out prematurely sometimes without asking those questions. And just stepping

back sometimes to breathe, to create some space around that project, can allow us to

sometimes make the project exactly what it needs to be in order to resonate.

Yeah.

Now, that’s not to excuse not shipping. Right? Because we all have to, you know, we

can easily slip to the other side of the equation and try to make things too perfect. But, yeah,

we need to create that white space. Sometimes we need to do things that are very inefficient

in the short run so we can be effective in the long run.

I love that. So much of my work, like, I have things that I’ve written, there are projects

that, you know, something that we have that’s been in the incubation for years. And there’s

a part of my brain, right, that wants to get it done and get it out there. But I think

there’s the wiser part of myself that watches it over time and watches it get better. And

whenever my brain starts to want to beat myself up because I’m like, “Look at all those

things I’ve wrote and I never use them,” I have to remember, it’s actually part of

the layering process, that wandering around that gets to the real good stuff. And I haven’t

heard many people talk about that because it’s just go, go, go, push, push, push,

so I was so happy that you created this container for us to say, “Yes, you don't have to be

so efficient all the time and the really meaningful stuff comes when you let yourself wander a

little bit.”

It does and you’re right, I mean, success I think comes in layers. It doesn't come all

at once. I mean, for most people and we, you know, we talk about unicorns, we talk about

the outliers, the people who just shoot straight to the top. And success often is not as substantive

and it doesn't last often as much for people who shoot straight to the top. They don't

have those layers of experience and learning. Their body of work isn’t going to be as

substantive. Sometimes it is, sometimes, you know, but I think that we have to… we have

to recognize that it takes time. Anything worth doing takes time.

Yeah.

Building a body of work you can be proud of takes time. And a lot of people, like yourself,

you make it look very easy because you’ve been doing this for a while. Right? And so

people look at you and they think, “Well, I wanna be just like Marie.” But the reality

is that it took you a long time to get to the place where you can make it look easy.

And I still struggle. I mean, I still go back into the writing cave, I still have those

same fears. Am I gonna have anything worthwhile to say? You know, am I gonna run out? And

so I think also too it’s really important to have that conversation, you know, this

is your third book, you know, so clearly this isn’t your first time out of the gate. But

I think it’s important for people that have been creating well to also say those things.

I personally never find it easy. You know? Even though whatever it looks like on the

outside, it’s still, there’s… but it’s good challenge.

It is. And I think we don’t… that’s the thing. I think we don't talk about the

struggle. The struggle of making things, the struggle of creating, the battle against ego,

the battle against pride, the battle against the fear of failure. And we don't talk about

those things. We show everybody the finished product and say, “Ta da, look what I made,”

but we don't talk about the, you know, the long slog that we had to walk through in order

to get to that place where we finally felt some resolution about who we are and what

we’re doing in the world. And the process of developing your voice is the process of

walking through that long slog. And it’s gonna be ugly, you’re gonna lose your bearing,

you know, you’re not always gonna know exactly where you’re going or what you're trying

to do. But it’s the courage to continue, the courage to continue taking small risks

day after day and pushing into uncomfortable, unknown places. The people who have the courage

to do that or the people who eventually wind up in the place where they’re building a

contributive body of work that really matters and that is ultimately unique.

Yes. And tagging off of that, one of the other things you talk about that I love is that

every creative project having a U shape and that so many people misinterpret the bottom

of that U when they are struggling as they’re being, you know, they’re doing something

wrong, they’re on the wrong path, maybe they should quit. Can you tell us more about

that U shape?

Yeah. So this resulted from a conversation I had with Lisa Congdon, who is a brilliant

artist. She said that one of her art school teachers told her that every creative project

has a U shape and it’s like walking into a canyon. Right? So when you’re on one side

of a canyon and you’re looking across at your destination, you can see the other side

of the canyon. Everything is clear. I mean, you can see the path and everything, you know,

because you have a bird's eye view of everything. And then you start hiking down into the canyon

and you get to the bottom and all of a sudden the bushes are scraping against your thighs

and the path becomes a little bit more murky and you can’t quite tell where you’re

supposed to go and you can’t really see your destination anymore. And when you’re

in the bottom of the canyon and you can’t really see your destination and everything

is more murky, I think a lot of people start to question their sense of direction, they

start to question is this a worthy trip to begin with? Should I have even done this?

Was this wise? And then the sun starts to go down and you hear animals, you know, all

around you and… at least that’s what I imagine what happens. And you start to get

afraid and you start to think maybe my life is on the line here. And then you start to

hike up the other side of the canyon and suddenly your destination comes in view. It’s a long

way off but you can see it again. And then right at sunset you’re standing on the other

side, you can see the sun go down, it’s beautiful, totally worth it, it’s amazing,

you can see where you started. We all go through that as part of a creative process. It’s

like hiking down into a canyon. And so you start off with excitement and enthusiasm and

it’s so clear, you know exactly where you’re gonna go. And when you get in the middle…

and I don't care who you are, I don't care how successful you are, I don't care how many

successes you’ve had before, how celebrated your work is, it always in the middle feels

like a slog. It always feels like I’m never gonna get out of this, should I have even

started this, what if I fail? Especially if you have eyes on you. Right?

Yes.

Especially if you’ve had success. In the middle you say, “If I fail, what is this

gonna mean?” because you feel like the stakes are really high at that point. And I think

sometimes people think, “Well, the more success you have the easier it gets,” and

I think it’s actually the opposite. I think that once you have a lot of eyeballs on you

and people are judging you and looking at you, it, in some cases, becomes even harder.

So the reality is that everybody feels that way, everybody questions themselves when they

get in the middle of a long arc project like that. And the only solution is to try to keeps

your eyes fixed on the direction you think you should be moving and continue slogging

up the hill. That’s the only way to get through it. And the reality is everybody goes

through that, we just have to keep pushing forward.

Love it. Totally love it. The other thing that really resonated for me in the book was

your stories about DJ Z-Trip and his comparison of the creative journey to climbing a tree.

Can you share that with us?

Yeah. So Z-Trip is this brilliant DJ who has kind of shepherded this movement called the

mashup movement, where he takes rock and he takes hip hop and he kind of mixes all these

different genres together into one composition. And I was asking him, I was at a concert and

we were kind of sitting around backstage and I said, “Tell me, how do you… how did

you find your voice as an artist? How did you develop your voice?” He said, “Well,

this is what it was like for me.” He said, “So we all have roots. Right? And our roots

are our influences and those roots grow up into a trunk, into a tree trunk. And so we

all start as artists, we all start by climbing the trunk. So we’re kind of hugging the

trunk, our influences, we’re staying close to our influences. And once we get a certain

way up the trunk we have to decide, am I gonna step out on a branch? Am I gonna move away

from the trunk? Am I gonna step away from my influences?” And so whether you’re

a writer, entrepreneur, whatever, we all reach that crossroads. We have to say, “Am I gonna

step away from my influences and start to find my own thing?” And he said, “So I

just started stepping out on a branch and I said I’m gonna choose a branch, I’m

gonna make myself unique, and this is what I’m gonna do.” And so thinking I’m being

really quick witted I said, “Well, what happens when you get too far out on the branch?

You get too far out and the branch breaks because, you know, branches are really tenuous.”

He said, “Well, the thing is, most people aren’t gonna follow you too far out on the

branch. They might follow you for a while, but if you have enough courage and you get

far enough out on the branch, people aren’t gonna go out with you because the branch gets

really thin and they’re afraid it’s gonna break.” “And so what if it does break?”

He said, “Well, that’s the beautiful thing. Once the branch breaks it falls to the ground

and it forms a new trunk and then people start following you. They start imitating you and

now you’re the trunk, you’re the influence.” And I thought that’s a brilliant articulation

of what the creative growth process looks like. Because we all began by imitating our

heroes, by imitating the people who inspired us, even closely imitating, emulating. Right?

Absolutely.

But at some point we have to be willing to make a decision. We have to make choices to