You Have the Right to Create, The Stories Behind Lessons in Creativity With Ben Rennie

Most people think creativity is about art. Ben Rennie thinks that's exactly the problem.

Ben is a designer, author, and now a lecturer at UNSW, and in this episode we go deep into the stories behind his book Lessons in Creativity. I read this book a few months ago, and it genuinely changed the way I think about creativity, confidence, and what it means to actually live a full life. Getting Ben on the podcast felt like a milestone.

We talk about writing the book as a promise to his dying mum, deleting 38,000 words and starting again in Byron Bay, leaving a $1M consultancy because it was destroying his mental health, discovering his Indigenous heritage in his 50s, and how chasing curiosity is the only antidote to fear.

This one goes deep. I think you're going to love it.

What we cover:

• Why creativity is not art; it's the belief you have the right to create
• Fear vs. curiosity: why you can only choose one at a time
• Writing Lessons in Creativity as a promise to his mum
• Deleting 38,000 words and starting over in Byron Bay
• Leaving a $1M business to go skiing in Lake Tahoe with his family, and why it was the richest period of his life
• Discovering his Indigenous heritage after his mum passed away
• The "poor vs. broke" mindset his dad taught him
• Writing your personal manifesto on a napkin
• Why 90% of his readers are women and what that tells us about creativity
• Execution: why intention comes before everything

Get Ben's book: Lessons in Creativity; search for it wherever you buy books.
https://benrennie.com/products/thepractice

Transcript

Ben Rennie 0:00

But my brain tells me, you're not going to sell 60 tickets. This is going to be embarrassing. You're going to turn up to a talk with eight people in the room. It's going to be very intimate, but it's going to be a nightmare. If I chase the curiosity, what I learned, fear dissipates. I'm either one or the other. I'm either really scared, which means I'm not curious, or I'm really curious, which means I'm not scared. But she told me at the end of her life that she always wanted to write a book. And I thought it was Yo's comment because she wasn't, she wasn't a writer. Um, and I I remember sort of just pausing at that and going, It's okay, Mum, I'll write one. I'll write one for you. People think creativity is art. I believe creativity is the belief that we have the right to do art in the first place. I think when we define abundance and scarcity, so being poor is being scarce, and my dad used to say we're not poor, we're broke.

Jack Graham 0:40

What is up, everybody? Welcome back to the True Form podcast. Two things before we dive into today's episode, all about creativity, we're redefining creativity. First, if anything from this episode vibes with you, I strongly recommend you check out Ben's book. I read this about three or four months ago, and it really did ref redefine how I approach creativity. Like not only in my business, but how I approach things in life and what I actually want to do and make what makes me happy. So strongly recommend checking out that book. Big thanks to Ben for coming on this episode and diving deeper into his stories, his insights, and his inspiration. Absolutely love it. Really enjoyed this conversation with Ben. I know I know you are going to as well. Also, second, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you copy the show link and send it to one friend or family member. It's not only gonna help them find their creativity, but it helps this podcast grow, helps this episode reach more people. So I appreciate you doing that. That's enough out of me. Let's get into today's episode. Well, Ben, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Ben Rennie 1:45

Hey, thanks for having me.

Jack Graham 1:47

I absolutely love the book. We're gonna dive into that for sure. I feel like you have some sort of superpower with going first of all, you have these great experiences, like moments in your life that you go through. I I feel like you do that more than with a regular person, but then also the way you take those lessons from those experiences is quite amazing. And that's what I want to dive into. Uh it's helped me. This book ri literally has redefined redefined creativity for me. Yeah, cool. Especially chapter nine. Uh that was just a moment when I was just like, oh like I wish everybody would actually get this book. And even if it's just chapter nine, it was just it uh you can tell it comes from a place of like your heart and your love and your passion. Yeah, thanks. So I appreciate that.

Ben Rennie 2:38

No worries. I appreciate that. Thanks for the feedback.

Jack Graham 2:41

Yeah.

Ben Rennie 2:42

Uh when did you write the book? Well, it's interesting because you talk about authenticity, and I never had any intention of writing a book, it wasn't the goal. And my mum suffered with cancer for 15 years. So at towards the end, when we knew she was like literally at the end of her life, um, we spent a lot of time reading. She would get old old poems and old bits and pieces of things that I'd written as a kid that I'd forgotten about, and she'd ask me to read them to her, which I found really interesting. So that came back to this sort of idea that storytelling and these moments in her in our history or our life are really critically important. So, in those when we were sort of going through that, and she couldn't really speak very well, but she told me at the end of her life that she always wanted to write a book, and I thought it was the oldest comment because she wasn't she wasn't a writer. Um, and I I remember sort of just pausing at that and going, It's okay, Mum, I'll write one. I'll write one for you. And a year later, after she passed away, it just sort of sat on me. That was probably the biggest weight. Um, it sort of I spent a lot of really quality moments with her at the end of her life, you know. We had time to talk and share stories of love and connection, all the things that she gave me, um, which I think a lot of people don't get, so I was really lucky. Um, but the thing that sat through the middle of that was storytelling. But when we went back and I I sat I sat with that for a long time, so I decided to write a book for her. Um, and the book, interestingly, wasn't about creativity. But what happens when you go back and you start to look at your stories and the things you do, I think we all have rich experiences. We all do things that are quite profound and are quite unique. Um, I mean, there's nothing in my book that most people haven't done, you know, it's really just surfing and but trying to find insight inside of what happened in that experience that connects back to something that I found that was life-changing for me, you know. Um, and then the thing that was interesting about the book was when I was writing about it, forcing myself to go back, um, you start to sort of join the dots around how did you end up in the room? And then I remember sort of talking to a friend of mine, a guy called Luke Shanahan, who's a filmmaker, and he said, What's the through line? Like you need a through line. Everything needs a through line. If it's a book, it's got to be about something, what's it about? And it can't be about me, because ultimately, I mean, like all of us, I don't think I've got a book in me that is of a value unless it connects to something that we can take away from. Um, and just my stories aren't enough, right? So when I went back and started to read it, and I actually wrote this book twice, but the second time it came back to this idea of creativity, you know, which has driven my whole life. And I don't think I really realized that until I wrote the book, and I started to see that thread. Um, but then I sort of started to understand um the creativity, my interpretation of creativity was very different to how I'd grown up being educated about creativity or creative confidence in particular. So yeah, that was where the book came from. It was sort of this idea of you know doing something, a a prom empty promise to mum that I needed to fulfill, and then trying to understand what this thing was about. And you know, I landed on at the very end of the I mean it was called Inhabit Us, but it wasn't called Lessons in Creativity, um, because I didn't really understand that's what it was about until the end. Um then when I did that, I had to go back and sort of rewrite a lot of it, you know, and try to understand what the insights were.

Jack Graham 5:38

So that was volume two. If you were to write volume three now, would there be anything you would add to it?

Ben Rennie 5:45

Uh yeah, I think there's a thing when you're writing your first book that people don't know you, right? I make the assumption that no one has any idea who I am. So you've got to sort of introduce yourself in a way that connects with people. Like you felt like you knew me through this book. It's what we said off air, right? So I think this two people have there's two approaches to this. One is I needed to sort of say where I came from, who I was, and why I was writing this and tell my stories in it. Um, and some people find that really powerful and they love it, and it's brave, and it's storytelling, and all the things that I that have shaped my life, right? Just telling stories and and trying to draw insight from that. Other people get it and go, what the hell is this? Is this an autobiography? I don't why am I reading about your life? But that's the first part. And if you can't get through the first part, so the next book wouldn't be about me at all. It'll be about insights and about how we find ourselves in the rooms we're in. And I'm actually I'm I'm writing another book at the moment called Beacon Rewind, um, and I'm halfway through that. And it's been interesting to remove me from it and just write about the insight, the story still, like where I was, what I did, what I learned from it. But I don't need to shape um who I am and how I became to be this person who's writing a book about it, which I felt like that had to be in the first book. Um, so I don't think I need to do that for the second book, and I and I think that's probably the hardest thing to write about yourself. It's easy to write about uh, you know, I went out to the pub and had a great night and we all got drunk, and this is where I ended up and I met this guy and we started a business together. They're easy stories to write about and they're fun to talk about. Um, but you've got to build the premise as to why are you reading my book in advance of that? Is really hard. Yeah.

Jack Graham 7:17

Well, I think you do that quite well. Like you have those stories, but then you also tie that in with insights throughout the book after each story. Uh was that the insights I think are a very valuable thing for creativity or just understanding who you are and what you want to do in life. Was that something you didn't you did before the book or until you started writing the book?

Ben Rennie 7:38

So I got to about 55,000, 60,000 words in the book. And a good mate of mine, Tim Ross, who wrote on the cover, um, Tim Ross is a comedian and talks now a lot about architecture and and modernist design and modernist homes and um great really good inspiration to mine and a really good friend. And then he's written about 10 books. So he's got a place in Byron Bay called the Writer's Room, which, if you ever want to rent a place to go and write a book, this is the place to do it. It's beautiful. And I rang him and said, mate, I'm gonna go to Byron. Can I rent the writer's room for a week? I'm gonna finish my book. I'm at 60,000 words. He was in Germany, and so his house in Sydney was empty, and so was mine up in Byron. But I got up there, it's just in the hinterland, it's really beautiful. And I decided to go up on my own, right? So I'm gonna go up there on my own, I'm gonna finish the book. I don't want to get my goal was 75 to 80,000 words, and I was at 58. So the end was in sight. I felt really confident. I'd written this book, I'd had a publisher who had already said yes, they'll publish the book, and which is a whole nother story, which I can share after. But I um got up there and I actually said to my daughter, I'm going to Byron, and she's Miff goes, Well, I'm coming. That's amazing. I can just surf all week. I'm like, okay, cool, no worries. So then Pip's like, Well, if Mip's coming, I'm coming. So I'm like, okay, cool, come with, be cool. And then Nicola's like, well, I'm gonna stay at home with other girls. Kyle was in America at the time playing basketball. So we end up all going up to Byron to write my book, so I might as well just read it at home because the goal was to get away. But this is my family, right? We can't escape each other in the loveliest way. So I get up to Byron, and in the first day, I started to read the book. Tim said, read it. Get up there and just sit in the writer's room and just read it. So I printed it out a manuscript, had it in my hand, and I hated it. It was awful. Like this thing was so self-indulgent, so awful. And I remember years ago, Seth Godin. Do you know Seth Godin?

Jack Graham 9:11

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Rennie 9:12

So I did an interview with Seth Godin. I've spoken to him a bunch of times about writing. And the best piece of advice he ever gave me was when you write something, the first paragraph is you trying to get into the idea of what you want to write about, and then write about the thing you want to write about, but then have the discipline to go back and delete the first paragraph to get rid of it. Yeah, okay. Because it's you trying to get into the flow of what you want to write about, and you'll see from paragraph two, you're probably getting stuck to something that's valuable for someone. The first piece is about you. And my whole book was about me. I was like, this is shit. This is so bad. And I remember ringing Tim, he was in Germany. I said, Oh mate, this is a nightmare. I don't know what to do. What would you do? I've written 58,000 words and it's awful. And he said, and he actually, it turns out he was joking. He said, I'll just delete it and start again, it'll be a lot easier the second time. Which I thought he was being honest and serious, but he was just sort of like, you know, oh mate, just delete and start again. It was like a flippant comment. So I remember getting off the phone to him after talking about his trip in Germany, and I got to my computer and went, I think I need to delete this and start again. And I did, I deleted probably uh I think I was left with that 20,000 words. Wow. Yeah, and so I wrote it again. Um, that those five next five days were critical because I felt like I really understood what I was writing about. I understood that you know there needed to be a through line. Lou could give me this sort of idea that find out what it's about, and I started to discover it was about creativity. Um, I started to understand that my life is inherently creative, but I needed to understand um what that meant, and that's where I got to this idea of create creative confidence and what does that look like? And I suppose where I sort of started to understand and looking at my life, there was two paths, right? One was this paralyzed by fear, which I am all the time, and then this idea of curiosity on the other side. So if these two things live in my life every single day, um, like I'm giving a talk tonight, you're coming, thank you. Um, and like the idea of trying to sell, it's a small room, 60 sit 60 tickets, but my brain tells me, you're not gonna sell 60 tickets. This is gonna be embarrassing. You're gonna turn up to a talk with eight people in the room, it's gonna be very intimate, but it's gonna be a nightmare. So, you know, it's so weird this feeling of I've convinced myself at every stage of every creative output that of everything I'm ever gonna do is gonna be an embarrassing failure. But curiosity says to me, but what if? You know, but what if it isn't? What if 25 people come and who are those 25 people? And what comes from those 25 people, or those eight, or those three, you know, what do we learn from it? So curiosity becomes really interesting to me. And through reading my book and rewriting it, I started to understand that there's fear over here, there's curiosity over here. If I chase the curiosity, what I learned, and this is in rewriting the book as well, was that fear dissipates, like it actually goes away. It can't exist, can't coexist together. I'm either one or the other. I'm either really scared, which means I'm not curious, or I'm really curious, which means I'm not scared. And what I was sort of finding that if I chase curiosity more and more, that that that's the thing sitting in between those two things is creativity, right? It's this creative um belief that we can make things that we are in control of, you know, the the people who govern us or the places we choose to live and operate and so forth, where I think sometimes we forget we have that agency and creativity gives me that confidence that I have that. And at the end of this sort of chasing creativity through curiosity, I discover this creative confidence, you know, this sort of belief that it's gonna be okay.

Jack Graham 12:20

Yeah. I I love that concept. I've spoken to a lot of psychologists, coaches, athletes, like around mindset, and they're always like, You can't be happy and angry at the same time, you've got to be one or the other. And that makes perfect sense. Like if you're scared, but you're also curious, you can't be both at the same time. So why not go towards that curiosity? Yeah, and you talk about that a lot in the book.

Ben Rennie 12:43

Well, I was the trying to understand, you know, like why was I at a at the launch of a Dolce and Gabbana nightclub in Milan? Like it doesn't make sense to me, right? So even now today, like why am I here with you? So, and that the I mean, we can answer that now. We can put the dots back to creativity. I decided to do an ad online that you saw and you bought my book, right? The fear in of doing that ad was real, and people see it and they go, Okay, this is a guy talking about creativity, it looks confident. He's he's written a book that's authentic. I might go and give it a crack, right? But behind all of that, there's a lot of choices you've got to make to get to that point of knowing that you've got the first of all, why would someone buy my book, right? And everyone tells you no one's gonna buy it. It's one of the it's an odd thing when you write a book. People literally tell you that first thing they ask is why. Like no one makes money in books. That's another thing they tell you. No one gets published. There's a lot of unwritten, you know, workout in the world. But the you've I think when it comes back to curiosity, it's like I wanted to write a book for my mum, and if I did that piece, then I've won. Everything else on top is a bonus. And in the journey of writing that for my mum, then I'm learning about my life. I'm discovering things about you know, how did I get in the room with Dolce and Gabana and Stefano and Domenico? Two or three years prior to that, I said yes to an opportunity that was a diversion from the the course I was on. And when I took that, my the path of my life changed and I started moving into this world of brands and you know, and so I'm not there anymore, but it was a choice, and I could sort of connect the dots back to making really tough calls that took me down the path of curiosity, right? That what if? And I think there's no real talent or no real reason why it was me doing that job, it was just a sales job. But I believe when I turned up to do it, I wanted to do it really well. I wanted to sort of leave something that was valuable, which is connection, conversation, more than just the nine-to-five energy, and that sort of takes your places, I think. You know, when you can try to understand the reasons why or what's valuable about that, and that shaped my whole my whole life, my design work, my creativity.

Jack Graham 14:43

You say you say you're just uh another guy, but going through your stories, your parents probably had a big influence, like they seem like absolute legends.

Ben Rennie 14:53

Yeah, that's cool.

Jack Graham 14:55

Uh like you were saying in uh chapter nine, how they literally just went out and created their own um what was it, indoor indoor cricket league because they weren't happy with the other one, and then for that a lot of people would peep be like, You can't do that, that's not possible. And they literally did it. And you said your mum sat down and just wrote the whole book rule book for a new association, yeah. And people just get so probably scared of or can't even think of that. So, and then like a lot of the stories you tell like the embarrassing moments, like when you're a kid and you recorded that tape of yourself singing Lionel Richie dancing on the ceiling, yeah, yeah. And then when everybody just started cracked up laughing, like it seems like your parents were obviously entrepreneurs as well and could understood that quite well, and then passed that on to you. Like when you recorded that tape, you're thinking it was gonna be amazing, you're gonna sound like Lionel Richie, yeah, but then you didn't, they didn't really say don't ever do that again. They just sort of laughed and had a good time with you, and then like almost like what's next, like what are you gonna do next?

Ben Rennie 15:59

Yeah, um, I find parenting really hard, right? I I I love being a parent, it's the most important job I've ever had. Job, it's probably the wrong title, but but it is work, you know, it is you've got to put into it, you know. And I think like the the one thing that I had growing up, more than anything, was just love, right? My mum, she left at school at 15 to become a hairdresser, she's from Dubbo. Um, she met my dad. He's he's a you know indigenous stolen generation descendant of you know, a very dark history in Australia. He grew up under the the guise of being Greek, you know, because you couldn't be indigenous growing up in Australia at the time, or his dad couldn't. So it was just it was just a dark history. So what what we had like more than anything um was absolute love. Like I always felt loved. Um I remember being poor. Like we mum and dad were poor. I remember having moments of just couldn't go to the movie. I remember being away, we drove to the Gold Coast, and I remember there was they were going somewhere and we couldn't even afford to go to see a movie for like seven dollars because none of the cards had work and we had no cash and the checkbook had run out of its last check, which probably wouldn't have worked anyway. I remember having moments of being poor, but I also remember moments of abundance. And I think when we define abundance and scarcity, so being poor is being scarce, and my dad used to say we're not poor, we're broke. But I think it was a really interesting diff like difference. Poor is this sort of inherited belief that we we we can't get out of this trap, you know. Um, broke is it's a moment that this time this two will pass. Yeah, um, and he would talk about that. Um, and it was rare because he worked hard and there was always a way to do you know, he did the paper run, he bought a m like a milk bar, all the things that you do when you're trying to find your way in the world with kids, you know. And but uh the the thing I only remember more than anything is just being really loved and this belief that you know I was a really good cricketer, and I was a good cricketer because I was talented, I was a good cricketer because of the access to the things we had, which is the indoor cricket center, which they end up building. And you know, I think you know, access gives us something really special. Like for me, I mean my kids are really good at sport, or actually, two of them are the three. The third one's really good at sport, but she has no interest in sport, um, you know, but I think it's always made about access, and the second part is love. Like, I feel like you know the the hardest thing, like being a dad is and being a husband and being married is a stressful, challenging thing that is every single day is decisions that involve more than you. Um and I think that's really hard. But if you can sort of put the thing in the middle of it, which is just we love each other and we want the best for each other, um, and we listen to each other, I think it gives us the confidence to sort of be really brave. You know, I was talking, I went for a walk this morning with my wife. We were walking through um in Fitzroy through the park, and we were talking about like my son Kai. I can't believe he's a singer. Like, I can't believe it. I could never do this. I can never, even if I could sing, I probably don't have the confidence to fight discover that. Yeah, and I'm always wondering, how do you know you can sing? Like, you obviously want to have a desire to do it. Yeah, um, and then you've got to have the confidence to sit up in front of someone and do that, and he sits in pubs and so forth. And today he got two gigs, um, booked um regular gigs. So he's a professional singer now, you know, he's getting paid to do this job. And I we were just walking through the park, and I said, I just can't believe he's doing that. And I feel really proud that I've raised the kid with a confidence to go, I'm gonna go and sit in front of an audience and sing, you know. And and it seems normal to some fam families, it's not normal to me because I would never have had that confidence. But at the same time, I'll go and talk about something I know in front of an audience. So I I think um I felt loved by my mum. I felt my dad was very strict with me, but it came from a place of absolute love, like super strict, you know, super strict. Um and you know, I felt I felt I had the confidence to go and leave school or start a business, or and they had my back, and that's the thing I've tried to give my kids this belief that they can. And I remember Mif. I mean, she's she's now she presented with Channel 9 on the weekend for um Wild Water Sports with Mark Taylor and who I know Mark Taylor and with um Tim Horrin, you know, and I sit there and watch that in disbelief, and I had no impact on that. There's nothing like we didn't it's just her and her life choosing. She wrote on her um vision board, you know, I want to present a major sporting event. She did the Olympics, I want to sit on a panel on a major sporting show and I want to be an anchor. She did the Olympics now, she on the weekend she did that. She's 22. And when she does a vision board, it's my job to go, yeah, you'll get that. You're gonna get that, you know. And thanks for sharing with me, because that's also a gift, you know, like what a dream to have your child at 19 come up and say, This is my dream for my life, what do you think? Yeah, because sometimes kids don't want to share that, they're too embarrassed. So that comes back to love, this trust that we've got, where I just think, tell me where you're headed and I'm gonna help you drive the bus. Know how to get you there. I have no idea how to if she said I want to be a channel nine presenter, I have no idea what that looks like, how to do it, but I can just drive her from A to B. You want to you gotta go to an audition? Okay, what time is it? One in the morning, great, let's get there, you know. And I remember like it's the same thing when she would go to parties and she'd be nervous at a party. My job would be to wait outside for two or three hours. Yeah, no, nowhere in the world was more important than me to be outside of her to make sure that if she was stuck or I'm unsure I could she could walk out and have an exit. Um, you know, and I feel like that with that's the commitment we make when we have children. It's this love and it's this presence and this intention that is universal forever, you know. Not everyone thinks like that.

Jack Graham 21:14

No. And I think like you said, that creates creativity and a well, probably allows it to come through more because you you're not worried about all these other things that could go wrong, like whether it's money, you know, is this person gonna leave me? Am I gonna be alone? Like what if I try and or fails, where will I live? Yeah, like if you have that maybe secure I wouldn't call it security, but just belief that yeah, somebody else has got your back, or it's okay to try it, fail because nothing else is like what's the worst can happen. Yeah. Like you tried, it didn't work, but you still have the things that matter. Well, if you've got love and connection, then it doesn't matter because you've got support.

Ben Rennie 21:56

Um I I if you think about this moment in the book I wrote about. I was in McLarenvale and I built this business and it was a really good business, right? With a really good business partner, a guy called Paul Breen, who's built in some great companies, and he's one of the smartest business guys I've ever met. And we built this company, it was good, but I was miserable in it. Like I hated it. Like I can't even explain the misery I had to and I and I also had a lot of imposter syndrome. Like I didn't know that I was worthy of being in the rooms I found myself in to go and solve problems that were quite complex. And I'm better at it now at 50. I wouldn't even doubt that now. Yeah. Um, because I've built the knowledge, I've built the I understand the process. Back then I was sort of learning through that. So the exit was sort of part imposter syndrome, but also part like, dude, how the hell did I find myself here? I'm other guy that's going to try and fix Australia post-digital mailbox problem. Like, what? You know, like there was a lot of fear in that. Um, but I remember when I left that business, you know, I I read a got the point of this story, and I'll swing back around to it. Yeah, was I read a review online of someone who read my book and went, what a piece of junk. Um, wouldn't who wouldn't love to be a rich guy who could afford to travel the world and snowboard with their kids for four or five years, you know? And the truth of that is my whole life savings, everything we earned went into that. You know, we had nothing. Like, and like we were literally, and I think think there's something really noble about this idea, and this is me giving myself sort of props and being really proud of this in hindsight, was you're foraging for food. Um it's like the old days of gold mining, you know. We were we moved to America with the kids to go skiing for three months because I had to exit something that was giving me mental health problems, which is my business that I built, and there was no, I couldn't lose. So I'm if I stay in this business which is paying me a salary, but I'm miserable, yeah, my relationship with my wife would suffer, my connection to my kids would suffer. So leaving that business that I built to go out in the world and find a new direction, which was nature and and and connection to country. So going out into the world with my kids to go and spend a month in snow, which we could afford to do, probably three months before we ran out of money, right? And we did three months. We went for a month, it became three months in Lake Tahoe, the most amazing place on earth. We rented a house on Airbnb. Um, but running out of money meant I've got to find work. And as I had design skills, I had advisory skills. So you go to the websites and you go to tenders and you start to find jobs and you forage, you know, in the same way when you built your business, you find people who need your service. So I started to find one at a time, two at a time, three at a time, and then you go back to friends and family and say, Does anyone need a website or an app? Because I'm doing that now. And someone backs you and says, I need a website, see what you can make, you know? And off the back of that, we survived through that. We built this little business. It's it paid for our life, but it was rebuilding. Like we had nothing, like it was zero. We we couldn't, we we had a two and a half thousand dollar car, which we bought in America. Um, and but this choice, like this period of my life, this period is was the richest I've ever been in my life. You know, when you're with your children in nature, I'd get up at seven or eight in the morning with the kids, we'd be on mountain skiing, you know, all day, two o'clock, I'd log into work in Australia and work with clients till midnight. I was exhausted, but it's the most rewarded, most present, most engaged I've ever been. And I and I understand now that my relationship with my kids came from that. Yeah. It came from being present on in on in nature, them learning new skills, developing new skills, sitting down with my wife and doing education in school at night, not with me, because I'm hopeless of that shit. But there was this sort of real connectedness that came from all of these four years. Plus, there was social connection, there was events. You know, we we became really close with my my daughter's one of her best friends is Eileen Goo. You know, we we trained with her in Lake Tahoe. There were friends from the age of 12 and 13. She's now the third highest paid female athlete in the world. They're really close. You know, when Mia was working at Channel 7, the only interview Eileen gave was to Mia at Channel 7, you know, to Miffy. So there's just these things that come from putting yourself out into the world, into these hard moments, you know. And someone's review of that was, oh, I'd love to be as rich as that guy. You know, it's like it was the opposite of that. It was like just a choice to make that was, you know, but I I think I've had friends go, I couldn't do it because of my nest egg or my retirement or my, you know, and I get all of that, and that is risky. Um, but I don't know, we don't have much time, you know. Like, I don't know what's the what's the value of love and connection with the people you love and being in nature and rebirthing yourself, you know, and your mental health, which is what I did, you know. Yeah.

Jack Graham 26:14

And that's sort of like but before we hit record, like I was saying, like the worst thing I get scared of is people living through their life, but not taking those times, advantages, spending time with their family, all those scary moments, getting to 65, 70, retiring and going, what just happened. Yeah. That that scares me. Like, I'm like, obviously, I'm not doing that. I'm trying to my best not to do that, but it scares me for the people that are doing that. Yeah, and that's why I want to do this.

Ben Rennie 26:45

Yeah. I just think it's the choice, right? Like you as long as we're choosing the direction we're heading, and we can choose to go down the business that I was in. And it's it was an amazing business. I mean, the clients we had were amazing, it just wasn't right for me, you know. And I remember talking to Vashdi Whitfield, who's one of my coaches, life coaches, and I was chatting to Vashti, and you know, people say to her that her husband was a famous Hollywood actor. Beautiful, right? His name is Andy Whitfield, he was from um Spartacus, the TV series. Beautiful. And people say to her, it's like, you know, he died, he died of Hodgkin's lymphoma um really young. And she's moved into this sort of um, oh, she you gotta meet her, she's incredibly aspirational. You should get her on your podcast, she's next level. And but I think what happened was people talked about her her loss, but she's always like, that was then, this is now, and everything, and like my relationship with my wife then is different to now, and I think everything's in chapters, and I think we get paused in this moment in time, you know, with Vashti and her famous husband as a moment in time that was like from the outside looking in, it's like, oh my god, that's amazing. And that was taken from her. What was taken from her was love and connection, not the life we saw as this famous human, and and she's got to rebuild that. And I chose to exit the life I had in the same way. Sometimes you can choose to exit a relationship because it doesn't work for you. And you know, I think the thing I've got to be really conscious of and is the choices I'm making for me. Are they including my children? That's a conscious thing, yes, because some people, like my brother, doesn't include his children. It's a conscious choice, too, right? He doesn't love him the same way I love mine, and that's a whole different conversation. Probably another podcast we could have. Um you could get him on, but I don't know if you'll find him. I've been searching for it for years. But I I think the um the the choice is I choose to love my wife, I choose to be with her, and if I'm gonna choose to be with her, it's like in what capacity? And that changes all the time, you know. Sometimes it's um physical, sometimes it's emotional, other times it's academic, sometimes it's it's to be completely separate from each other to sort of find some space. Um, but the chapter, like she's the different person that I met when we were 22, completely different. Yeah, she's loose, doesn't flash people anymore with a you know, with a bum in the air. This she's an academic and she's a different person, um, in the same way that I'm a little chubby or a little grey and a little bolder, you know. So I just think that we sort of get fixated on this forever choice, and I don't think anything should be forever. I think we've just got to go where our where our connection lights us up or where where this, you know, scarcity versus abundance, which I'm having a lot of conversations with with a good friend of mine. And scarcity is I'm doing something from this position of I don't have the resource or the energy or the capacity or the money or the relationships or the so it's really hard. So we're reactive and we're sort of doing it from a position the wrong whereas abundance, and people think of abundance in the old sense of abundance of money and access. Abundance is this can belief that first of all, I can, I deserve it, I'm worthy of it, and I've got people in my life who can help me because we love each other, right? And that could be a relationship, mean you might form a relationship where you go, hey Ben, through this, we have coffees, we become mates, and you might need help around ideas and something. Ideas are free, right? So the idea of connection and evolution um is really important. So I don't know, I just think we've got we've just got so fixated on this. I'm a lawyer and I'm gonna be a lawyer and be on forever, whether I like it or not. I mean, my wife was a lawyer and she hated it, so she left. So that means when I get to my chapter of my life and I do something that I hate, I'm inspired by that. So I can go, well, it worked, we were okay. She left. I mean, I wish she was still doing it because the money's really good, but she left that and we survived through that and we got stronger for it, you know. So I don't know, and she's still academic, she's doing, she's she's at RMIT doing a PhD at the moment, and she's a PhD candidate. So, and again, that's just another chapter, you know.

Jack Graham 30:33

That's um yeah, that identity piece is quite big. Like you said, people just identify as their work, and it's a conversation I've been having a lot recently as well. I think maybe with AI is gonna change that a little bit because people are all scared of AI taking my job, yeah, taking my work. It's like, well, that's okay because you aren't your work, and people are so afraid of, oh, if I lose my work, then what? Yeah, and it's sort of like it's gonna be a transition period, but I think it might be a good transition period for humanity because we're not gonna tie ourselves with what we do for money. We're gonna have to sort of look at what we like doing and tie ourselves to life and our skills and what we want to achieve, rather than that, like turn up, earn money, leave, and that's who I am and that's what I do.

Ben Rennie 31:24

Yeah. I don't know how to have a good conversation about AI yet. I'm still trying to work it out. I I really like Scott Galloway, his take on AI. I think it's interesting. You know, he was talking to um the dire of a CEO. Do you remember? Do you know his name? What's his name? Bartlett. Yeah, Stephen Butlett. Stephen. Um, he was talking to him, and I only listened to this the other day, so it's fresh in my mind. But he was sort of saying as Stephen Butlett uses AI to evolve his business and grow his business, he's he's hiring people still. Yeah. Um and AI is giving him sort of fresh thinking, it's just sort of speeding things up. And I think we've got we've got an obsession with efficiency and speed, right? We're just sort of like my only benefit to AI at the moment is it's just speeding me up. Yeah, it's giving me access to do things. I I I started to write with it. I know that your question is not about AI, but um, I started to when it came out, I got all excited that I can write quicker. And it you just can't, like I cannot write because what I find about writing is it's good for me, it's good for my mental health, it's good for my process. I like to get up in the morning and write. I like to open the screen, get to a blank page, put ideas into a page. So when I used AI for it, first of all, I read it back. It was a bit like my first ever bit of writing. It was just vomit, it was so bad, and it didn't sell at me. So it I sort of missed the point. Um, but I can use it for understanding connection between ideas and um research to ev to evolve ideas. I think it's really good for that. In the same way Google is good for doing research. So I think um there's massive benefits to it. Right now, I don't I don't understand. I don't think we're losing our jobs, I think it's gonna create different jobs. Um, but again, I I I think this is a conversation we need to have with someone who's a a bit deeper into the journey than me. Yeah. Um but around identity, you know, we've we've always said to MIF um from a very early age, you're myth who skis, not myth the you know, myth the skier. Um, you know, so they used to always call uh um myth from the riff the skier, right? Penrith, you're born in Panrith. And we always used to remind her though, you're not myth the skier, you're myth who skis, and does a lot of other amazing things well too, you know. And I think this is really important that we're not attaching ourselves to the thing we do, we're attaching ourselves to the to the journey we're on or the things we want to create or the or the choices we make. Um, you know, and my research coming back to creativity, when I started to understand that my journey was creative, uh, again, I didn't want to attach myself to creativity in a sense of I'm a creative researcher. I wanted to try and understand how that impacted my life. And when I'm drawing my future and I'm putting my vision board together and I'm trying to understand where I'm going, I need to understand what role creativity plays in that, in particular creative confidence. So when I'm shaping my choices around the next chapter of my life, I'm doing it in a way that is coherent with the belief that I understand creativity now, because I think schools have confused this around what it means. Um, and creativity is just bravery, it's just the it's it isn't this idea that people think creativity is art. I believe creativity is the belief that we have the right to do art in the first place, or the right to create a business in the first place, or the right to go and coach people on how to get fitter or or mental strength, right? That's creativity. It's this belief that um because a book can do it. The book can do what you can do, but at the same time it can't, because it can't see and feel and touch and move and understand emotion and understand when someone's not understanding what you're talking about, or so creativity is this sort of it's a very um modular, is this sort of idea of fear. Do I have a conversation with this person who's going through a tough time, or don't I? And curiosity probably says, maybe we should and we'll see where it lands, you know, and sometimes it's just listening, which is also creative. Um, you know, you talked about identity, and um one of the things that was interesting for me when mum passed away, we started to go through her things and I started to find pictures of my dad in corroborey, grew up in Marubra. I started to find these pictures of dad in um, you know, indigenous paint. And and growing up, um, you know, people always would say, Is your dad is your dad a black fella? Is he? And I'm like, no, he's Greek, because he always told us he was Greek. And but it was just common in my life, my whole life, someone would ask me that. And I'd always go, and I'm like the whitest Australian you've ever met, you know. So I go, no, no, but his dad was really dark, you know, really dark. And there was always conversations my whole life about our heritage. Are they Aboriginal? Are they First Nations? And I'd ask Dad, he'd say no, and I asked Pop and Pop would be like, Oh no, I'm Greek, you know, I came from a Greek sailor. And but then you go through these these um articles and the the bits and pieces from mum's life, and you start to see pictures of my daddy corrobory. He's in Marubra with his you know Aboriginal mates, and and you start to sort of ask a few deeper questions, and then you go through the family tree and you see all these name changes, you know, and you start to go back to um the there's sort of you know the family in Rutherglen who, you know, Nenaphiz. Was her name Nenaphiz? Because I grew up thinking her name was Nenaphiz, and it's not Nenaphiz, it was something else that we couldn't pronounce because it was Greek, but she was never Greek, she never had no heritage to Greek. So I do a blood test and there's no Greek in my genes, right? But but apparently I'm 25% Greek, nor do I look Greek. Um, but I I don't know, so you start to dig into this heritage and this sense of identity, and we then join the dots back to Yordior, back to um Rather Glen, which my kids have embraced really quickly. For me, I love this connection to country, it's it's been a really important part of um the evolution of me as uh in at mid-age. I really needed to understand this. My best mate is indigenous, um, and he's known that for a long time, you know. And I think it was really important to go through this sort of journey and try to understand identity, but also try and understand why it was important to change it. Like, why did my grandfather change his name twice? Um, and it was because he wasn't accepted, he wanted to join the Navy, and apparently Aboriginal people back then couldn't, but so he changed his name to Greek, Gianopoulos, obvious, right? And then that became Spaulding, and then that became Rennie. So there's really weird history, you know, and he started to dive into it. But I'm really enjoying this. So part of my journey with this is trying to understand, you know, 60,000 years of heritage that I'm a small part of. Um, and growing up in Western Sydney, I talked about cricket bats and footballs, right? I never talked about this. Um, so I've we've been going on a bit of a journey, and we were up in the Dane Tree um 10 days ago. We went on country, we met with with elders, First Nations elders, we went, and Dane Tree was this is the charity that's doing some work on the Dane tree. So we went back to Rutherglen as well, and we met with people there. So we've been going on this sort of journey and trying to understand and um what this looks like and trying to understand how does um that heritage, 60,000 years of storytelling, um, influence our lives. And it's sort of shaped, reshaped my work, like completely reshaped my work around um, you know, what does creativity mean from that? How do they, how do they know how to weave? How do they know how to make bowls? How do they know? And it's through storytelling and through conversation. And, you know, there's there's um fishing traps they build in rivers where small fish survive and big fish get caught, you know, and how do they know that? You know, it's through storytelling and through um, so I've found this sort of connection back with my mum, the stories that she'd asked me to read back to her. Um, and and just trying to understand this sort of, you know, my daughter is, you know, she's yoda yoda through and through. She's reading the story, she's meeting with the people up on country, she's you know, she's hanging out with the girls up there, spending the nights sort of talking about their elders and where does your body go, where does your spirit go? Who am I going to become afterwards? How do I talk to country? What's welcome to country? What's acknowledgement of country? So she's learning at a really high rate around that. Um, I'm still trying to understand what it's like as a white, very white Australian um to have that heritage and connection. Um, and I'm really proud of it, like I love it. That's really interesting. But again, it's this is a country that wanted them just to be disappeared, you know? It's interesting.

Jack Graham 38:54

I'm glad you brought up storytelling because I think like I said at the start, this book has changed my opinion on creativity because I I thought it was you have to create something, but I do believe it's mostly storytelling, and it's a feeling you can have from those stories that gives you the emotion. I'd say it's almost like more of an emotion that you use to then go create something physical or maybe just create more stories. Yeah. Was like like you just said, your father changed his identity to fit in with the norm. Was storytelling still a thing for him back then? Like would would you sit down, talk about stories, communicate like that? That like you would now?

Ben Rennie 39:43

Uh yeah, my dad was always a really good communicator, great at telling stories. It was actually my dad's dad and his family that changed their names. Um you know, we we never we always grew up with the idea that you know there was there was a there was questions over my dad and my dad's dad and that that line around Indigenous Australia Forever. So um, but in terms of storytelling, um, yeah, we've there's been a lot of love and connection in our family, right? And I think that those the thing we talked about at the start, on the right hand side lives fear, on the left lives curiosity. These are both both emotions. So, and when we sort of try to understand which one we're gonna listen to the most, fear, and both are really hard to to listen to um and to follow, but they're all emotions. So, and then when we follow curiosity, we move into creativity, which is also emotional. It's like, do I believe I have the right to do this? Do I have the believe I have the right to make this podcast for people? Even though people might not listen. And you know, I probably I mean I'm assuming you get the question all the time how many people listen to your podcast? Of course. And the answer is who cares? Yeah, right? One or a million, it doesn't matter. And you know, I I think um Kevin Um Wide magazine, Kevin, hmm, Kevin, someone um who I love and can't remember his last name, always says, you know, a thousand true fans. If you've got a thousand true fans, then that's a really, really powerful life to live, you know. And I've sold over five thousand copies of my book. My I think my sub stacks at 7,000. You I have you have no idea how protective I am of that and how proud I am of that. Yeah. And I don't take it lightly, and I think, excuse me, God, peppermint tea. Um, I think within that, um it's like there's a couple of people in there who probably love my writing, who find it valuable. You said it's it's changed how you think about creativity. What's more important than that? Yeah, a book that changes them, reshapes something. And I think it changed, hopefully, it changes creativity in a way that's positive, that gives you the belief that's valuable to you. And there's a lot of kids and a lot of young people come out of school believing they aren't creative because someone told them they weren't. So I think for me, when I went back and rewrote my book and sort of started to dive into this idea around um what is creativity and what does it mean to me? How does it influence my life? Um, part of that, and I do work, I'm now lecturing at Union New South Wales, but before that, I was working with Bully High School with the NeuroDiverse kids on trying to use their confidence to build and solve problems for the school. So we started building bike racks for electric bikes, and I go in on a Wednesday afternoon and we have these conversations because I don't feel like that schools give kids the tools and the confidence to go out into the world and make things, and what better environment to nurture creativity? But some reason it gets stolen or taken away, and we're either teachers who don't think they're creative, even though they are, or accountants who sometimes are creative, probably the wrong word for them. But they they are inherently creative, they're problem-solving all the time, but we don't see that. So the the most interesting thing about my book, and this is probably the biggest outcome apart from the subscribers, which is really exciting and something I'm really proud of, is about 90% of my readers are women, right? So you're in the minority, you're in the 10%. And out of those readers, this I get two things happen. One is um I get between it's slowing down now, but for about five to six months, I'd get between one to ten emails a day, a lot, significant amount of emails, mainly off the back of my online book sales and and my website. So, but people would and an email, I don't know when you if you got this, but when you buy the book, I send an email with a trail of um creative ideas, right? And the first one is what brought you here and tell me what you you know what why you're reading this and why you wanted to read the book. And women are really good at sharing, and they reply, and I get this one, I could probably get one or two a day now, but there was at some point it was up to 10. And they'd be really vulnerable and really honest and say, Um, I'm in my 60s or I'm in my 50s, and I never knew I had the right to create, but now the kids are growing up, I need to go out to the water and do something, right? So I need to reconnect with my creativity. And the funny thing about that, when I read that, and as a consistent, I well actually the flip side of this is I get an email from men and they go, Hey mate, love your book, want to catch up for a beer, I think we'd be good mates, you know, it's just so different, but um, which I love. But I with the with the women piece, I find it really interesting, and I don't want to generalize. But out of the emails I get, most people it's consistent. I I'm now in my 50s and I need to go and create. I raised kids, I was a mum, or I had or or I was an I was in this business, I left it to go and raise children. And I'm like, what is more creative than raising babies? Yeah. What is harder? There's nothing harder than that. So I just don't understand why at the end of raising young adults to go out into the world to live a life that a mother would think, I now need to rediscover my creativity because I haven't got any. It's like so we're misunderstanding creativity, or somewhere along the line, someone said to them that that's a different thing, right? But you know, if you can nurture and love and raise babies, you can do anything.

Jack Graham 44:40

Yeah.

Ben Rennie 44:41

Like anything. That is the hardest thing. I cannot be a dad without my wife. This is part of my love of my wife, is that I'm better with her around because I'm a better dad. Take her out of it. This shit's hard. This shit's really hard. And there's no doubt that you know 78% of the work is done by her. I just turn up for the great moments at the end to go, yeah, little polish on the side, you know. So it's this shit is tough. So I don't know. I just sort of it's hard. And I don't have it, I'm not a therapist or a psychologist, right? So I can't give people the knowledge or the tools, but I can remind them that you've you are inherently creative, you've done that. And it's an interesting response because people go, I didn't thought of, I never thought of life that way, you know, and and hopefully you can take that confidence into the next thing you build because if you can create life and you can nurture life and love, then you can do anything. I think. Um, and and then you just gotta work out what problem you want to solve, you know.

Jack Graham 45:32

But 100%, like people just don't realize the skills, they're acute, crude, with whatever like you could call it father, mother, like but the jobs, like you've you said you've left a couple of jobs, and there's a few examples in the book. It's not like you're going into the next chapter at zero, like you've created all those things, you've learned all these skills, you you're more confident in yourself, so you can go into that next chapter, and like I said, a lot of people think they're just starting over or starting at zero. It's like, well, no, you're starting at 250%. That's right.

Ben Rennie 46:03

Yeah. So I I always look at it this way. I think um, you know, the work that scares you is the work. So if it's scary or there's naysayers where people go, oh, that's a bad idea, or or someone's done that, that's the work. So if if your if your inclination is to come out of, you know, use let's use a a parent who's coming into their 50s who wants to go out of the world and do something new, um, the work that scares you is probably where you need to go because it means there's a gap, it means it's it's all it's an opportunity that exists, you've seen a pain point, which is why it's sort of scary. Um, and I think there's naysays in it because people don't understand it. And if people don't understand it, it's a problem that needs solving, right? So creativity is a good example. I mean, there's a micro business in my book, which I never saw. So when the book became about creativity, it started to resonate with people, you in particular. And off the back of that, I'm selling books, right? So there's a little micro business in there. And when I set up, when I decide to write a book, it's course everyone says, Why are you writing a book? That's insane. No one's gonna buy it, no one's gonna publish it. And both things would prove wrong. Not because I did anything different, but because I wrote it and put it out into the world. And without it, then they're they're right. If I don't write it, they're right. So when you write it and you finish it, then maybe a publisher will publish it, maybe they won't. One the only way to know if they were right is by not doing it. So do it for yourself or do it for a higher purpose. For me, I wrote it for me and for my mum. And then once I finish that, I'm very I I'm it's rewarding. I win. Now I want to share it with the world. Is this the right book to share? Only the market can tell you that. And you bought it, a bunch of other people bought it. So, what I learned from that is that creativity is a business for me now, right? I could sit there and go, okay, I'm gonna sell books off the back of that, but now I've got to continue to evolve and research my knowledge on that and talk about it. So, my next book, which is Be Con Rewind, is trying to understand um why do we lose our creativity? Why do we not believe in that? What was and it's a deeper level, it's trying to go into the research as to why do schools steal that from us? You know, why did creativity get stolen? Why does creativity creative confidence get stolen? Like if we all had it as kids, 96% of kids believe they're creative, you know, like 26% of adults agree with that. Why is that? Who stole it and how do we get it back? You know, and I think that's a really interesting conversation. I think it comes out of this book a little bit, but what I'm trying to do now is go into the research and the academics sort of logic around that, borrowing a lot of work from the Institute of Design, Chicago, RMIT, uh, and and just trying to piece it all together in a way that is digestible and we can sort of hopefully get some insight out of. And a lot of it's coming back to friction, this idea of touching and feeling and you know, um connecting with things that are physical rather than through a screen, you know, and we could talk about that for hours if you wanted to, but well, like I think, yeah, I'd love to dive into that.

Jack Graham 48:50

Like we said before how people are using AI net, speeding things up to get all this time, but then they're not doing much else with the time than adding more stuff in with screens, all that sort of stuff, and like they think it's more creative, but it's actually less creative because they're spent not spending enough time talking and communicating, sharing stories. And I I don't know, maybe it'd be good to get your opinion on this. Like, why are people all like you said, we always want to do more and we're trying to achieve more. What uh we use AI to make more time, but then we add more things in to achieve more. Like, what are we trying to achieve there?

Ben Rennie 49:29

Like, yeah, I don't know. I I used to write this column. I had a blog years ago called Uncluttered White Spaces. It's a really dumb name for a blog, but it was off off the back of I Googled Google, and when I Googled Google, um it said the owners of Google, when they went to look for their first Google office, were looking that their brief was we're just looking for an uncluttered white space to set up our office. I was like, that's a good name for a blog, it's just an uncluttered white space. Um, and so I wrote this for years and years, and what I found is I had about 20,000 readers a week at its peak. It's back when blogs were cool, right? So um, and when I'd write a really good article with full of insight that I was really proud of, I go, This is really good. Like the the engagement was really low. So back then you'd sort of track your engagement through sharing, you know. Oh, 600 people shared this on social media or Twitter or and so there was this really low rate of sharing around really insightful articles. And when I'd write something that was really dumb, like a I don't know, something that was sort of funny or or a the picture of a new coffee mug with a heater on the bottom, it'd get shared like 600, 800 times, or if it was a joke, it'd get shared heaps. And what I found when I did a survey years later, and I said, Well, why aren't you sharing this stuff? And what I found out was that when people got it, they used it for their own advantage. So if I wrote an article that was quite insightful, there was knowledge or insight, they'd get this and go, Well, I don't want to share this with my boss or with my team because this I can use this in a meeting. I can go into the meeting and claim this as my own.

Jack Graham 50:45

Yeah, right.

Ben Rennie 50:46

And I think this is important, and I think they should do that. So, but it was sort of new for me, and I was like, Oh, this is really interesting that I'm writing something that was at the time more research, it might have been about behavior or sales or marketing, whatever. And someone would get it and go, Great, when I get when I'm in my review or I'm sitting in my sales meeting, I'm gonna use that as energy. And we do this today with AI, right? The same thing. So the AI gives us efficiencies, gives us new knowledge, it's very generalized, but we can with good prompts draw insight out of it. So, and then I'm gonna take that into a conversation, I'm gonna take that into a meeting, which is what we all do. Like a lot of the things I'm learning about creativity are coming from AI, right? Generalized, and then I'm trying to dig a little deeper and scratch a little harder. So I think we're all looking for something that sort of shapes us in a way or elevates us, and I think elevation is really important, but I feel like there's two parts to it. One is this sort of idea of um I I want to elevate and learn, but at which point do I then does it shape me and my values? And I think sometimes we don't have the value set um or our manifesto clear on why. We're just always adding and adding and adding. And one of the things I wanted to do, and this came off the back of the book, you know, I'm giving this talk tonight um for Melbourne Design Week, which is seven ideas about creativity and design that will change the world. And I really think they will change the world, and they're really simple ideas, right? There's nothing in there that someone's gonna get and go, oh my God. But I mean, one of them is I I can read your one I've got in front of me, is you know, process is a place to hide, right? And what that means is when you go to a client and you run workshops and think tanks and you've got post notes on the wall, we're really just hiding in something that we always already knew, which was we just need to make a brave decision at some point. Someone in the room probably already had the answer, but we're sort of giving everyone a voice. So we're sort of creating this sort of space to sort of give equal opportunity, whereas sometimes we just need to move and we can move, but we don't. AI can help us with that, right? To move into a certain direction quicker. So I think there's efficiencies. But um if it comes back to a manifesto, I I wrote this probably four years ago, my own personal manifesto, seven things. And then I wrote this seven ideas about creativity, uh, which is essentially a value statement. And if it doesn't align with my values, then don't do it. So when I'm learning with AI or when I'm learning through research, or when I'm getting research reports from universities for a new book, the pieces that are going in align with my values, align with the person I want to be and the life I want to lead. And that comes back to, you know, country, connection, storytelling, creative confidence, love, you know, there's a lot of things that relate about that. So when you go out and write your manifesto and you try to understand, then you can use all these tools with absolute, you know, authority to come back and say, does this shape the things that I believe I am and how I want to show up in the world? But if we don't have that, I'm not clear on who we are or what we want to do, then these just become tools of just efficiency and noise. They don't really help us because we don't know who we are. So it always comes back to this sort of feeling to me as like, you know, what sort of parent do I want to be? I know that. I know the answer to that. Um, what's my responsibility to my children? I know I know the answer to that, and to my wife, I know the answer to that. And if I can't be that, then I'm probably not, she'd probably leave me because I'm not showing up in the right way. So these things become really important. And look, at the same time, it doesn't mean you're perfect because I fuck up all the time. I've had businesses that have failed, I've set up ideas that have gone out in the world and just cost us a fortune, you know. So you do these things that sometimes you think are good, but they just don't work. And that's also okay too. But you gotta sort of learn how to understand that, you know, I used to sit on those as failures and that would shape me. Don't ever do that again. Yeah, don't ever start another business again because that one was really bad. I remember when my first business went bad years ago, my my mother-in-law said, Would you ever do it again? I'm like, Never. I would never do another business. I'm just looking for a job and that's all I'm gonna do forever. Yeah, and what an odd thing to say, you know, I was very young. And it's um, and I've done 10, 15 businesses since, and most didn't work, you know. But I think they're just learning this journey.

Jack Graham 54:38

I'm glad you brought up that one slide because execution is coming up a lot in the conversations I'm having at the moment with especially coaches, because a lot of people are using ideas and they, like you said, they'll sit in the maybe the creativity mind and not take action on it. Like your book has a lot of examples of action. Yeah, but before we go back to that, um like you said you wrote your manifesto. Would you be able to write that when you're say 30, 40? Like, have you written that time and time again, or is that just one time you just I think it changes all the time and it should change.

Ben Rennie 55:14

I I didn't write it then because I didn't know any different. Um, you know, it's you I get a lot of clarity with age. You know, I'm 50. I like being 50, you know. I didn't like being 40. You know, I took three days off work when I turned 40 because I thought I was like over the hill and done. But I like being 50, I like the clarity that comes with it. I like the relationship I have with my family. I really love the relationship I got with my friends, you know. Um, but I I think can you write the manifesto? Yeah, you should. My daughter does, she journals every single day. Um, I don't tell her to, she just learned that. You know, I journal a lot, I write down everything. Um, my son can't journal, he's tried it and doesn't like it. Um, you know, my other daughter, Pip, she writes and does art, and she she's the most curious human I've ever met in my life, you know. Um, she's drawing shapes when she watches a movie. She goes and goes home and draws the character into her journal, and she's got this this journal of characters, and it's the same thing as a manifesto. She's reminding herself that she likes this person's values, that she liked that character, why she liked them. And I rarely go through a book and see uh the you know, an evil character, it's always the good ones, the influences that change that win them that win in the end of the day in the movie. She's 16, but I think that's also journaling, and what you're doing is you're shaping sort of your value set. So, you know, I think the answer is yes, you should write a manifesto. I remember years ago we did this work from for a really big organization, and they'd been through all these workshops, like massive amount of workshops. And I won't mention them because I think it's a bit embarrassing, but they would have spent 100 grand on these workshops and they came and sat down with me and said, Oh, we're not landed there yet. We haven't got to our manifesto and we need to get some work. I wrote it on a napkin, right, after the meeting. Went into a coffee shop, wrote on a napkin and came back and said, Is this it? Is this what you want? And they said, Oh, three out of five are amazing. I said, What about what's wrong with the other two? And they, because it sort of everything had come out and all the things they wanted and all the things. And I was just listening, going, This is so simple. Like, this is and they were like, Okay, the other two I don't like them. I said, Well, what do you like about it? And we talked about it, they went, Oh, actually, they are perfect. So it's what what more do you want to be as an organization than these five things, you know? And they went, Great, this is it. And you know, and I said, that's free. It's on the house, that one, you know, there's your manifesto. And I think it should be that simple. It should be as simple as that. And we overthink everything. We should be able to sit down today and go, what sort of personal trainer do I want to be? Empathetic, honest, you know, um proactive or reactive. Like, what how do I want to show up in the world? Do I want to be early to meetings or late? You know, do I want to be on time or what sort of person do you want to be? And I think write them down. And when you screw up, you know, all right. And when my business fails, I know. Maybe it wasn't aligned with my values. Maybe I didn't give it the energy and time. Maybe I had one foot in the other camp and only half a time in that one. So you start to know. So it's not just like we don't just blame the market or we don't just blame AI. We come back and we start to understand. Like, I've had a business fail recently that was just I loved it so much, right? I love this business so much, but it was just a shit business. It was just a bad business. And also, too, like I've got like I work in digital. Like, what's gonna happen to digital with AI? Like, we just don't know. But if my values are set and and I can start to understand how do I want to show up in in the world, then hopefully I can be proactive enough to sort of forage for an alternative way to work through that, you know, or reactive enough to say that I can see this coming, I need to change. But I I it comes back to values, man. So I think, yeah, I I think write the manifesto, just get out of napkin and do it at the end of this podcast. Not you, whoever's listening.

Jack Graham 58:32

I I definitely need to do it as well. Yeah, it's it's something I've always tried to do, but like you said, it changes all the time. And I I guess I've been like I said at the start, like the last 10 years have been a big growth for me. I've learned a lot. So if I had written it, written it 10 years ago, it would be very different to now. So now's probably a great time to actually do it.

Ben Rennie 58:52

Yeah, we talked about this at the start of the podcast where we were saying, um, my relationship with my wife is different now than it was you know 20 years ago. It's very different. You know, we're different people, we're different humans, different goals, different everything. Um, the one thing that sits through the middle of it is this sort of commitment and trust, like your friend, that you know, we went through this together, that was hard, and she stood by me. That's loyalty. That was hard, I stood by her, that's loyalty. All these things, we raise babies together. That's an amazing thing to do. But that doesn't mean that's not enough reason to stay together. What you need to stay together for is love and common mutual respect. And if that point that something changes where she doesn't love me anymore, it's like, well, what's next? What's the next chapter? You know, we can still be friends and be mutually agreeable on the things we've achieved to date. Doesn't mean that's going to be the future, you know. And I feel like we get so caught up in this sort of thing that we agreed on at the start. And, you know, creativity says to us that um, you know, it's a it's a it's a civil act, it's it's a big responsibility, creativity, you know. I think um it we owe it to communities, to the cities, to the towns, the people, to our friends, to our family to turn up in a way that is respectful of the places and the environments that we're in, and that includes our relationships. Uh, and that means that it's it's respecting that things change, you know. So your manifesto when you write it should be different to what it was a year ago or five years ago because times change. We evolve.

Jack Graham 1:00:11

Yeah. And like you said, as you should, because if you got stuck in that same period, like I definitely didn't want to be in that period forever.

Ben Rennie 1:00:19

So I was an idiot at 25. Yeah, like I was an idiot, like an absolute idiot, you know, and I and I I like me now at 50. I was I didn't like me at 40. You know, that's why I left my company because I didn't like the work I was doing, I didn't like the time I was spending, I didn't like the fact that I didn't feel like I was generally solving problems for people paying me to solve them. I didn't like that feeling, so I left it, you know, and and it and it was a really hard thing to leave. And people think you're mad doing it, and no one's gonna support that. Oh, by the way, I built this business, it's a million-dollar consultancy. Our clients are Westpac, Gulf Oil, you know, um, Australia Post. It's a it's a list, it's a banging list of clients, you know. And this is a like, I don't think anyone doing it. Like, I'm not I'm not I'm not leaving this because I don't think people should work in that business. That's it's a cool business, they're cool companies doing great work. Hopefully over time they evolve to do better work because the world is actually just destroying itself. But at the same time, I didn't want to do that work. I just thought I'm gonna I can put my energy into something else. Um, but I wasn't sure what it was, but you can't you you're not gonna find it by doing the old thing. You've got to step out of it, you know. You know, I mean you're a personal trainer, you always weren't that, right? Yeah, you know, yeah.

Jack Graham 1:01:26

It's um well let's talk about execution. Like obviously, that was a big thing to execute, leaving a big company like that. Like I said, you got all the brand names, like what are you doing? You're stupid, yeah. But as you spoke about before, like it wasn't really worse day for you because it would have just ruined your life. Mental health is it affects every part of your life. So you got a lot of good examples there of you just executing, like it seems like you didn't really think, it's just like you felt it, you know that was right, I'm doing it. Yeah, and I have to give you props. So I've been with a friend, we're trying to we were trying to come up with a sort of sort of an idea about trying to help coaches coach better. And last weekend, like I thought of the idea and I just started, and it's never really happened, and then I referred it back to this. So again, I appreciate that a lot because I was just excited, so I started. I didn't sit there doing a roadmap of what what what I just started building it out. Yeah, it's the best way, and a couple hours in, I was like, Oh, hold on a second, I've never done that before. Usually it's like do the business plan, like do all the yeah, fluff.

Ben Rennie 1:02:32

I I think this is what the world gives us now, and this is what AI gives us, and we've got a lot of tools now where we can start early and lean, like we really can. Like, I think I think it's a really cool thing to do. Um, execution. I I wrote down so uh Simon Williams is a really good mate of mine. You like Simon, he's he's a mindset performance coach, um, ex-cricketer. And I spend a lot of time every week I chat to Simon, we talk about life and goals, and he always reminds me to write down this vision board or write things down that you want to do. And go back a year and a half ago, and I wrote a couple of things on a board that I'm as I'm hitting 50, I'm like, well, what do I want to do in the next three to five years? I want to sit on some advisory boards, which I do. Um, I want to get paid for that, which I don't. I sit on charity advisory boards, but I want to move that into a paid advisory role. Um, and the other thing I want to do is write another book, and I want to get uh do better with the next book. I want to sell more of them. Um, and the other thing I want to do is move into university work and start to do lecturing. I th I love this idea of being a writer who's giving some public speaking and can work at a university and do lecturing. This idea was really um aspiring for me. Like I found it really inspiring. And someone who wasn't academic, who left school early, didn't finish year 12, to go and work at a university. So I wrote all this stuff down, and that led me to this research around a PhD, which is um which as a non-academic is a very hard thing to do. It is possible, but it's really hard. And so I come up with this sort of reimagining of design. I think this left-to-right theory of design thinking is just sort of rubbish. We we we hide in processes a bit. Um, and I think that you know we're we're if if design was so good or we're so good at it, I think the world wouldn't be as broken as it is because I I think 80% of the world's design of climate challenges started the design phase, right? Someone somewhere sat down with a pen and paper and took penned out something that we use and make, right? So design's a really important thing, and I don't think we realize how important design is. So for me, it was trying to reimagine design as a process and try to understand how do we design better, and there's a way to do that, um, which I can talk about after. But so when I wrote down my vision board, it was like, okay, let's reimagine design, let's work in universities and start talk about what that looks like for students going into design, and then let's write another book. So the PhD led to my wife going, Well, I'd like to do a PhD. I'm like, fuck yeah, because she's got a master's, she's so much down further down the line than I am. So I said, you should do that. And she started doing, we we've always we've been really focused on clean creative, right? So building digital websites that are low carbon and through our agency. Anyway, so she she moved into a PhD with RMIT and she's doing that. Um, and she started getting offered jobs like, Hey, do you want a lecture at the university? I'm like, Oh my god, your vision board is mine. You you didn't write that down. And interestingly, she got offered a job with University New South Wales and they said, Do you want to lecture for us in the design school? And Nicholas said, I can't because she's got to go to London for the World Design Congress. And um, and then they offered it to me, you know, like so oh my god, never mind, we've got someone else on the list. And then next day I get an email from the design school. And I don't know anyone there, and it's so interesting when you write it down, and so I didn't do anything to get that, it just sort of fell in the lap. But I feel like it's this same idea you're talking about. It's like you want to coach coaches, it's the intention, right? You want to improve the process of coaching coaches, the intention alone is the thing that creates the momentum to continue to do that, and one person will fall into your circle, a coach, who will tell one person, right? So it's the intention is everything. And I the my intention to become a lecturer, I had a three to five year plan. Like, how am I a non-academic and become a lecturer, right? I write a book, cool. But it's it's for academics, but it turns out it's not, it's for people with good ideas who believe they've got the right to do it. And you know, I start there in June, you know, as a lecturer at the university, and I think um like I'm super proud of that. And I even I say to my wife every morning when I wake up over coffee, I'm like, I can't believe I'm gonna lecture at Union New South Wales, you know? Yeah, it's such a cool thing, and but it's the same thing. I think the um what was the word you said? What are we talking about again? Execution.

Jack Graham 1:06:33

Execution, yeah.

Ben Rennie 1:06:33

Yeah, so the execution is the intention in the first place to understand what is it we're executing, why we're doing it, what's gonna happen to our lives as a result of it, not just because it looks cool. Yeah, you know, I think it's a really it's really important. And and I think with you know, coming back to the thing about you coaching coaches, that's where you'll end up. If that's the intention, is I think I think there's a better way to coach, and you become a voice on that. Yep. In the same way, I want to be a lecturer, it just sort of falls it, you fall into that place that you believe you deserve to be. And that sounds a bit utopian, but it's happened to me over and over and over by stepping into curiosity, chasing creativity, and then chasing creative confidence. Creative confidence is the belief that you can continue to do that over and over again and go, I have the right to be a lecturer, irrespective of the fact that I didn't finish high school, you know? Like it makes no sense to me. Like, I I think you know, like if I go by the general rule book of I want to be a lecturer, it's like, well, you gotta get your masters, you know. But no, you don't. You just gotta turn up and do good work or reimagine your thinking. Or so I think there's there's alternative paths to everything, and it all starts with intention and and a good why. Why am I doing this? 100%.

Jack Graham 1:07:42

Well, Ben, we've come up on time. So I appreciate your time. Um, we didn't even get to touch on the book. So I strongly recommend everybody go out and get a copy. Like I said, it's inspired me and changed my opinion on well, my whole thought process on creativity. So I appreciate you right taking the time and writing in as well. I appreciate it catch up. I really like it.

Ben Rennie 1:08:05

Thanks very much.

Jack Graham 1:08:06

What is up? Thanks for being here at the end of the episode. Obviously, you've enjoyed it and it's helped you find your true form. And I bet you know somebody that's gonna help find their true form as well. So I'd appreciate it if you could copy this show link, send it to one friend or family member and say, hey, have a listen to this. It's gonna help you find your true form. They'll probably have no idea what you're talking about, but it will help them. And I'd appreciate if you could do that. Uh, also, all podcast platforms these days have some sort of algorithm. So the more you interact with this episode, the better it's going to perform and help reach more people and help them find their true form as well. So, five star review, positive comment, like, share, comment, however, you can interact with the episode. I'd appreciate that. And everybody listening that hasn't heard of the true form podcast is going to appreciate it as well.