Jay Clouse [00:00:14]:

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. I am thrilled to share with you today's conversation with the wonderful, one of a kind Tina Roth Zenberg. Tina, also known as Swiss Miss, started Creative Mornings in September of 2008 in New York City. She wanted to create an accessible, inspiring morning event for creative people to meet. Some have called it ted. For the rest of us, here's how Tina would describe Creative Mornings.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:00:42]:

Imagine that breakfast one Friday morning a month for free for the creative community, with a 20 minutes talk like super quick 830 till ten, and just a really warm, heart centered community that gets together in a radically generous way.

Jay Clouse [00:00:57]:

Today, there are Creative Mornings in more than 200 cities, about 70 countries across the globe, and it reaches 25,000 people per month. And I can tell you, I've attended many Creative Mornings events here in Columbus, Ohio, and I've even spoken at these events before. These meetups are unlike any other meetup I've ever been to. And it isn't the format, it's the people. The people you meet at a Creative Mornings event are some of the most kind, warm, and generous creative people you will ever meet. I'll let Tina describe them, too.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:01:28]:

2014, we, for the first time ever, gathered our volunteers. We only saw these avatars on base camp talking to each other, and then we invited them for a two day conference in New York City. And I will never forget at the time my COO, my first hire, Kevin, who helped me scale Creative Mornings from four to 111 chapters. He and I were standing in the room in Brooklyn with the 175 people that flew in from 45 countries, and I remember looking at Kevin, and I remember breaking down crying. There was a love palpable in that room of unmatched proportions.

Jay Clouse [00:02:04]:

In addition to Creative Mornings, tina is the founder of the designer temporary tattoo brand Tatley, and the coworking community friends work here. In this episode, we talk about the beginnings of Creative Mornings, how Tina has scaled it into the global brand that it is today, why we need to get back to making things just for fun, and why you may want to consider financially supporting the organizations you love. I'd love to hear what you think about this episode as you listen. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram at j. Klaus Tag me. Say hello. And now let's talk with Tina.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:02:40]:

In 2008, it's been nine years that I chose New York City as my home. I grew up in the Swiss Alps. I'm a born and trained Swiss graphic designer. And in 99, I came to New York for what was supposed to be a three month stint. I graduated graphic design, and I had this dream of living in New York for three months. And I came and within 16 hours found an internship. It was pretty epic. And that resulted within a few weeks, in a full time job offer and a visa. So he was just sort of destined that I was staying in New York City. And then so when I worked in New York as a designer, I was like, where are my people? I'm a super outgoing person, super social, and I didn't know a soul. And so in 2008, a few years later, I basically created the organization that I wish existed when I first moved here to find my people. Because what I noticed when I moved here, 90, 99, and I made a horrible salary, so I just literally could not afford buying tickets to industry events, conferences, was completely out of question. And I just noticed that we were all meeting in Silos, the graphic designers in that corner, and then the art directors and the photographers and the information architects, and I just didn't understand. I'm a firm believer that in the end of the day, we're all believing in living a creative life. We're all sort of creativity is the overarching umbrella. So in 2008, I started actually a co working space when I started my own company and I started a co working space. And the hook to get in was that you had to be in a creative field, and you had to be a really kind, heart, center person to qualify to be part of that co working space. And what I basically noticed is, like, the magic that unfolded when you're sitting in a space every day with really kind, creative people. And we're talking, there's a developer over there and then designer over here and an illustrator back there, and you can just turn around and say, like, hey, can you help me with this? And it was really magical, which then made me realize there's so many more of us in New York City. And as a trained designer, I love nothing more than prototyping an idea. I scrappily prototyped it. I was like, I just want to invite people in. And I invited people in for coffee and bagels and a talk and a 20 minutes talk. I mean, it was so simple, it was so scrappy, and it caught on, and people wanted to bring it into their cities. And now we're all over the world.

Jay Clouse [00:05:14]:

I love to talk about the very beginnings of things because I think especially now with everything that we can see online, we often compare our first version to somebody's 10th version. So it's really nice to drill into people's first versions a little bit. So you're saying this first event was in the co working space that you had? Yeah, and it probably did it have a name at the time?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:05:35]:

Yeah, I called it creative mornings.

Jay Clouse [00:05:37]:

Really?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:05:38]:

From the beginning? Yeah, which is actually amazing. And I have to thank my friend Jennifer, who used to be part of my space. She was working on a proposal. She's an interior designer. And I was like, because first I have a pretty popular blog which called Swissmiths. And I was like, should I call it Swissmith social? What should I call it? And she's like I was like, Jen, what do you think? And she was kind of stressed out. And she's like, what is it about? I was like, well, we're meeting in the morning and it's for creatives. And she was like, creative morning. And she was on our proposal. And I was, like, sexually good.

Jay Clouse [00:06:12]:

I love it. Sometimes the best ideas you need that headspace where you can't even overthink it, where you're just like, this is what I'm hearing. This is what it is. Yeah.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:06:21]:

No, it was a great gift that she gave me.

Jay Clouse [00:06:23]:

So good. So when you started that first event, did you anticipate it being an ongoing thing at all?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:06:29]:

No, I had no expectation whatsoever. I'm a big fan of just following my hunches, my intuitions sort of the wouldn't it be fun feeling. And it just had a thing that that will be fun. And then, you know, 45, 50 people showed up. And funny, like, funny enough is actually that I oftentimes don't mention this because it's kind of a detail, but it's not because the very first event did not have a talk. And my favorite thing is to you put an event together and then you go, what worked? What didn't work? What was awkward? And not having a talk. I have no problem talking to people in a room, but there's just a lot of people who feel a little introverted. And I was like, you know, this felt a little networky. And the last thing I wanted to do was a networking event, even though in the end of the day, all I want is people to meet. So then I was like, how would it be less networky? And I was like, well, let's put a talk on top of it. So then the second one was actually hosted at Huge, the agency, which at the time was not huge, which is so funny. They were tidy at the time. And we had 75 people show up. And I was like, Wait, what? And then because I was posting these events on my blog, which reached a pretty large audience, agencies started reaching out to me and say, hey, we would love to host you. And to the point where six months in we were hosted at Google, where I was like, I have a real I think I have one superpower. And that is noticing when something needs to be nurtured more. Like, I just realized there is something here. And I basically just became the conduit for it. I was like, I'm not really sure where this is going, but I'm going to keep showing up. And I think I oftentimes thank sort of my Swiss upbringing for that. Just doggedness to just keep showing up and just not giving up right away. I'm so grateful I did because now it's 14 years in. And it's the thing I'm that I've built a lot of cool things, and I have two amazing kids, but I have to say, the thing I'm most proud of and I think has the most impact in my life for other people is Creative Mornings.

Jay Clouse [00:08:36]:

So you did this in your co working space, and I believe I've heard you say before that in 2008, that might have been the first co working space that was in Brooklyn.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:08:44]:

Yeah, the first creative co working space. This was before we worked. None of that existed. And it's interesting, I started it out with six desks, and we were in this kind of crummy building in Dumbo, right on the water, right on the East River overlooking Manhattan. And thank God it was such a crummy building. I mean, just to give you an example, we had no heat. We had all these space heaters in the winter. It was brutal, but we were able to break down walls and expand the space. So we went from six to 65 in the course of five.

Jay Clouse [00:09:17]:

Wow. So in that season of life where you have this crummy building and you're in New York expensive city, you're providing free breakfast to these people, was that coming out of your pocket?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:09:28]:

Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:09:29]:

Did that feel like a leap at the time?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:09:32]:

No. I don't know. Not that I was, like, swimming in money, but what was it? Maybe cost me $200, but that was so worth it. Seeing the community getting together, my currency is really I am the happiest when I can gather humans, when I see kind hearted, creative, good people in a room and they light up and they meet each other and their friendships being made, that, to me, is my currency. So I never even thought about it. And interestingly enough, again, along the lines of what I call the universe was cheering me on. Four months into running this, I got an email from Ben Chestnut, the co founder of MailChimp, who at the time at the time, the company was 13 people. And it's like one of the funniest emails I've ever got. And he literally said in the email, my team would pee their pants if we were teaming up, and can I support you? And I remember sitting there going, I don't know. I literally just wrote back, do you want to pay for breakfast? Then MailChimp started paying for breakfast four months in, and they've been our patron for over 14 years. And without them, creative mornings wouldn't be like they literally are a patron. I mean, Ben Chestnut has been has become a good friend, and it's just been such a supporter of he just really believes in the creative community meeting up and supporting the underdog.

Jay Clouse [00:11:00]:

So huge. Ben Chestnut google you're mentioning names that have a lot of recognition now. Of course, they were smaller at the time. When you were starting this, how strong would you say your personal network was?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:11:14]:

Well, I was really lucky because I ran, which I still do, my blog, Swissmus, which was so popular at the time, and because of the deck network that Jim Kudal started, made me a substantial amount of money that allowed me to actually go client lists. I had a design studio and then realized that the things that really, really lit me up and made me happy were the things that I did on the side, Creative Mornings. And actually, my studio mate Cameron always said to me, like, tina, why are you doing client work? Why are you not doing your own thing? And so I must say, I attribute my successes and sort of the daring to take big, scary leaps to the community around me, my co working space. And in the end of the day, Creative Mornings is basically just another circle, a larger circle of my co working community. It's exactly the same thing. It's kind of self selecting. You have to get up early in the morning. You probably a kind person, otherwise you wouldn't vibrate with it or resonate with it. And you're probably a curiously creatively minded human.

Jay Clouse [00:12:22]:

You just mentioned that because of this deck network. What is that?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:12:28]:

Jim Kudal is the guy that started field notes. He's just a really remarkable human. I remember seeing him speak at south by Southwest, I don't remember, maybe 14 years ago, but he was one of those pivotal moments where oftentimes I get that now after I give a talk, where people come up to me and it's just like you could just see the light bulb went off. And Jim was just a super creative guy that he ran an agency and he just did really cool shit. Like, he just had an idea and he went for it. And he created this DVD packaging system because they made short movies. And then so he created a product to make DVD packaging really cool, but you can do it yourself at home so you can distribute your movies. And then he realized he wanted to advertise it to the creative community, but he was like, how do I reach them? Where do I go? And he was such a smart guy, and then he was just, like, hand picking the design blocks, the design centric block half his audience and started an RSS feed sort of network ad network. And at the time, it was unreal that I was invited to be part of that. And he just did really well. And the larger your blog, the more money you made. And it gave me the freedom to go client list, which was a game changer for me.

Jay Clouse [00:13:45]:

After a quick break, Tina and I talk about the early days of the Internet and what we seem to have lost today. So stick around and we'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Tina Roth. Eisenberg. I hear about this era of the Internet. There's a word I forget the language. I forget the word, but there's a word for the feeling of nostalgia for a time that you didn't experience. When I hear stories like this, that's like, what I feel. I feel like these are my people. And I so wish that I had that experience because I'm sure it was like, I mean, we have a lot of this now, but it seems a lot more competitive and agendaed now.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:14:26]:

I don't think we have it now. I mean, I just a few weeks ago, saw Cameron Cozon, who I just mentioned, who always pushed me to Go client list, and he and I, over a lunch conversation, actually created a to do app called To Do. It's like, if you, like, lists. It's like super simple, super minimal. He's the kind of person that has an idea and built a thing. And in the early days of studio mates, I remember he met Chris and they created Brooklyn Beta for the super nerds out there. Brooklyn Beta was like the coolest web conference that they did put on. It was just I remember the first Brooklyn Beta. I sat there and it was literally my Twitter stream that came to life. I sat in my Twitter stream and everyone was building fun, quirky, weird stuff. And it wasn't all about monetization at the time. There was this playfulness on the internet. It's probably what you're mentioning, and I must say, all I want is to bring those days back. I remember logging on every morning to what was that site design? Is Kinky K ten K or something. I know there were these sites that had really my tiny type. Every morning I would come on and I would look like, what is out there? What cool thing have people built?

Jay Clouse [00:15:54]:

There's so much pressure to not use that as a motivation. You look at the opportunity of the Internet as a financial model, and it seems like, well, if you're not optimizing for that, what's the point? You're kind of wasting your time. So we'll we'll expand on that because I have a lot of questions along those lines.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:16:14]:

But I actually can I just hook in for a second? Because I think that's the problem. I've built multiple companies. They came out of the sheer wooden epiphanous existence and the joy out of building it. And guess what? The money came on its own. And I truly believe if we went back there a little bit, just building things for the sheer sake of it's fun that this thing exists, I think it would do all of us good.

Jay Clouse [00:16:44]:

I agree with you because I hear you talk about radical generosity as the business model, and I think to myself, how can that exist in today's world, and especially in New York where things are so expensive? And I aspire to the courage that you have to leap into that. Part of the reason I wanted to have you on and talk about it.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:17:05]:

Is because Jay, maybe it's not courage.

Jay Clouse [00:17:09]:

Well, I don't know, because on the other end of this we're talking about Creative Mornings that has it's in 224 cities, 67 countries. How many?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:17:19]:

226.

Jay Clouse [00:17:20]:

226 cities, almost 70 countries, maybe 70 now gathering 25,000 people a month. So you have some experience of taking these leaps of wouldn't it be fun and seeing that close the loop and work out. One quick question I have for you in terms of how you compartmentalize things. Even if you're not optimizing for a financial return, there are still opportunity costs, right? Like anything that you say wouldn't it be fun and start putting time into that's time that you can't put towards to do or your blog or Creative Mornings. So how do you think about that? How do you think about when you say wouldn't it be fun? And in fact I think it would be fun and I'm going to explore it.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:17:59]:

Well, to me I'm a fairly spiritual person, so I don't know if this is awkward, but I am a big believer that we are like in the end of the day it comes down to vibration and joy and love are really high vibrations and they are just super attractors of all of the good things. So to me, if something really lights me up, if I can sleep at night because that thing needs to exist and come through me and it's just so much fun to do it, I will do that. Even if monetarily it might not make sense because I have proof after proof that it works. I mean, just to give you an example today the To Do app that's really, really super simple list based to do app that came out of a lunch conversation with my friend Cameron where I saw him use one that I really didn't like. It has too many bells and whistles. Right before we sat down for lunch and I said dude man, you like that app? And he's like wow, you have like strong opinions. And I was like yeah, you know exactly what I want and I'm a user interface designer and I sketched it out. And then he just looked at me, he's so cool, come and he's like Tina, design it and we'll build it for you. And 48 hours, right after lunch, for 3 hours I sat down, I designed it. 48 hours later we had a working prototype and we started like people started using it in their browser. So you saw it on everyone's screen as the landing page. It's like a week in front of you and it's really great for organizing your week and everyone was asking for it and eventually he and I just said, you know what, let's just give it a we had to hard code people in super awkward and then we made this really ridiculous, probably politically a little incorrect website. He made a video that was hilarious, basically saying, if you use this app, you'll have more dates. And you know what I mean? And we launched it to the public saying, hey, take it, use it. This was a gift to the world in December of like December 10, I think, in 2010 or twelve. And I remember a few hours later looking over to Cameron and he was green in his face and he's like, Tina, I don't know what's happening, but we didn't out. The servers are going to melt. So within 2 hours of launching, fast Company wrote about it, an article, and said it's the best to do app of 2010. Seth Godin shared it. It was just exploding on the internet. And I was like, whoa. And eventually we made it free for years. But for people that don't know but server cost is real, maintenance cost is real. And then we switched it to a really affordable paint model and people love it and we're using it. And it was completely accidental business. But to me, it's like the universe showing you when you build something from a really pure, excited, loving place, people just sensed it. It just vibrates on a different level than something that you purely built for the sake of making you rich.

Jay Clouse [00:21:04]:

Have you found that you need to surround yourself with people who feel the same way about energy and spirituality? Because I imagine if I'm on the Creative Mornings team and you're like, hey, team, by the way, I just had this idea over here and I've got to follow it. Some people might feel a certain way about that, like, well, what about what we're working on over here? Have you found that it's changed or necessitated a certain type of people around you?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:21:29]:

Well, that's a really good question. I mean, I would say you don't have to be spiritual to work with me, but you have to respect my deep, intuitive way of navigating the world. And if I have one superpower, like if I have one freaking superpower when something keeps me up at night, when I'm excited about something, I will enthusiasm bulldoze you to the point where you don't know what's happening to you, and you just go like, she's onto something. I cannot say no, I can get people excited about something. Sometimes that's all you need. Because confidence is impressive and enthusiasm is contagious. I mean, I'm sure you must probably remember some moments when somebody was so excited about something, yet you kind of get kind of it's contagious. You cannot not think, okay, let's do it.

Jay Clouse [00:22:22]:

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I used to be really focused on confidence. And more and more that has evolved into the concept of belief instead. And I feel like enthusiasm comes from a place of belief. Like, I believe this to be true and this to be a good idea and this to be the right next step. And I think people are attracted to enthusiasm, belief. People like certainty. They like feeling like this person has certainty, because now I feel more comfortable having certainty as well.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:22:56]:

Yeah. And also, this is a bit of a tangent, but it was one of the biggest, AHA, moments of my life is Creative Mornings is currently still built entirely on partnerships. And so I am the person talking to the CMOS of big, giant tech companies or their founders and trying to convince them to support the organization. And at one point, I was sort of like having a down day. And I was talking to my dear friend Sharon, and I said, Sharon, I just don't like sales. And she laughed and she looked at me and she goes, tina, you need to reframe that. And she says, Sales is nothing other than a transfer of enthusiasm. And I just sat there and it hit me, especially when you're trying to sell something that came out that is so deeply ingrained in your own personal values, it's super easy to do. And that always stuck with me.

Jay Clouse [00:23:54]:

I love that. I love that frame because so many people struggle with sales, but we're all selling something constantly. We're selling ourselves, we're selling our ideas, we're selling why you should care about whatever it is we're trying to say. This is something worth caring about. Love that reframe. I would love to talk a little bit more about the growth and expansion of Creative Mornings, because you don't reach these scales of 226 cities, 70 countries, ish without really empowering other people, which I know is hard for a lot of people, myself included. I don't know what your journey with that has been like. So as you had the success and you're getting invited to help the MailChimp employees pee themselves and go into the huge offices, how did you think about expansion?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:24:42]:

It was interesting. So when I started this out in New York, I never, ever thought it's going to go beyond New York. I ran it scrappily just myself for two years. So MailChimp supported us, just one chapter, didn't expect anything. And because I go back to Switzerland every summer, I took it. And in those two years, I was just boldly thinking, let's take it to Zurich. Why not, right? And I had two really great events, which then resulted in a crew there that came to both events basically after the second one, not letting me leave until I said, okay, you can run a chapter here. Which was again, so interesting. When you build something and then the universe comes at you with like, this needs to grow. And funny enough, in this exact same moment, my friend John, who used to come to the events in New York City, moved to La and asked me out for coffee and said, tina, would you trust me to take this to La? And it's one of those moments just like wait, what does that even mean? I did really deeply care about it because it is an extension of my values, the way I have set up these events, the way they feel, the warmth I care about. So I was wondering, how would this translate if I give this to someone else? And then sort of realized I had to create some conversations with friends. They helped me sort of figure it out. And what I had to create is basically say, yes, I knew these two people. They were good people, and I had to give them the non negotiables. Here are the things that you have to adhere to. Like, it has to be on a Friday in the morning. It has to be free. You have to provide coffee, you have to upload the talks, and you have to thank the partners, and it has to be free. Sort of the non negotiables. And then I always said, but then go experiment. Make it your own, and tell me what you find out and tell me what works. Which then when people that want to run this, they have drive, they're excited, and they want to put their own stamp on it. And I have learned, even as a boss, through this experience, when you trust people, when you make someone feel seen and trusted, they grow and expand and surprise themselves. Like, deep trust. To me, like I always say, trust braids magic. And Creative Mornings is that what we have learned over the years is just to really figure out who is the right personality, what is their value system. To make someone a host, like, you have to really jump through a shit ton of hoops to become the host of a city. But, man, once we realize, oh, think you're the right person, we give you what I call the key to the Porsche, to our back end, to everything you need. You're being supported. And we say, Go have fun and report back, right? And that trust. I mean, all of a sudden, you have this global brand in your back. You can go and knock on anyone's door and say, like, hey, I'm so and so. I'm the host of Creative Mornings. This is a global brand. People have like, there was one chapter we had to shut down in 14 years because they abused it. One chapter. Can you imagine that? The goodness that comes out of people, to me, is just a testament that people are inherently good? That's one of the reasons why I put on this event series. Like, Creative Mornings is a celebration and a reminder that people are inherently good. And I feel like in our day and time right now, that is lost. Like, people feel pushed down, they feel sarcastic. They feel like there's no hope. They feel alone. I do feel like that there's two states of operating in life. You're either operating out of a place of love or out. Of a place of fear. To me, there's nothing in between. And if you want to live a courageous, beautiful life and design your life like sort of heart center in a heart centered way, you need to be in a place of love and you need to be in a place of feeling safe and feeling like that. You can be yourself. But if you're, like most of us these days are operating just plain out of fear. And you don't make any good decisions, you don't attract anything good, you don't make decisions that expand you out of fear. So I feel like sort of creative mornings. I don't know if you've been to an event, but I have. Yeah. So when you go, I see it. I see it in people, how they come with their guard up and they're like, what's the catch? Why is this free? What are they going to do? Are they going to bombard me with emails? And then it just feels really good and you kind of relax into it and you go like, oh, shit, this feels good. This could be life. My work could feel like this.

Jay Clouse [00:29:41]:

I love that, and I agree 100%. Last time we spoke, I shared with you that it's a fundamentally different experience going to a Creative Mornings event because it's not agenda, it's so genuine, it's so warm, it fills you up. It just genuinely feels different in such a wonderful way. You said so many things that opened up three different loops for me that I'm going to try to traverse here to go to go through the first thing you mentioned actually, it was the second thing you said. People have to go through a lot of hoops to become a chapter leader for Creative Mornings. Can you talk about what some of those hoops are? Because I imagine you went through some iterations to find out what are the best ways for us to identify if this is a good fit or not.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:30:25]:

Yeah, it's been a really long process and I'm so proud of my community team, how they really honed this process. Let's say if you're in a city and there is no Creative Mornings chapter and you want to bring it to your city. So if you go to our website, on the very bottom of the site, it says, start a chapter. And it gets you onto a page where we basically say, here's what you need to do. And I might miss a few things because they've been updating it over and over, but basically it comes down to put together a video. Tell us, do you have a team who will be on your team? Introduce us to your team, introduce us to your city. Why does the city need this? I tell you, Jay, when we get these applications, they are love letters to their cities. I mean, every time I'm like, we need to send this to the tourism board or the mayor of their town, because these are people who are volunteering their time. A host puts in a good, I would say, 40 hours a month to put on together their creative community. That is just so radically generous. We made it so complicated. We set the bar high and make sure that you have video capabilities and whatever and whatnot, so you don't apply on a whim. These applications come in and people have been working on them for weeks, for months, and then we interview them afterwards, and we have just, like, a few questions where we really get to sort of the core of who they are. And in the end of the day, you need to kind of be a servant, leadership kind of human, someone who really is in service of their community. And that's a very specific type of human. And I tell you, Jay, the biggest moment that just moved me to tears was when, in 2014, we, for the first time ever, gathered our volunteers. We only saw these avatars on base camp talking to each other, and then we invited them for a two day conference in New York City. And I will never forget at the time my COO, my first hire, Kevin, who helped me scale Creative Mornings from four to 111 chapters. He and I were standing in the room in Brooklyn with the 175 people that flew in from 45 countries that run the events around the world. And I remember looking at Kevin, and I remember breaking down crying. There was a love palpable in that room of unmatched proportions. And I'm really not somebody who talks about world peace, but I heard myself say to Kevin, I said, if we manage, if society humanities manages to create more pockets like this, I believe eventually we can have world peace. And I'm not saying that we are the organization. I'm just saying values, like, deeply, deeply, generous, heart centered communities, whatever they are. Like, if you're a turtle group, I don't care if you're like the hiking community. To me, anytime I see somebody copy Creative Mornings, but so many people have copied it, and then people would email me, did you see that? I was like, yes. People gathering. I love it.

Jay Clouse [00:33:39]:

When we come back, we talk about how Tina built a global team of volunteers that she genuinely trusts. You'll hear all of that right after this. And now back to my conversation with Tina Roth, eisenberg of Creative Mornings. You also have said a couple of times, deep trust with your team. And I'd like to dig into that a little bit more because I would love to hear in your mind what it actually means to fully trust somebody so that they feel trusted. Because it's easy to hire somebody and say, no, I trust you, and let them run off and do things, then come down on them with all the feedback of things that they did that you didn't like or that you wanted to change and lose that trust. So how do you embody that? How do you share that?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:34:22]:

Well, I think what it comes down to, maybe I need to take a step back. I grew up in a somewhat emotionally unsafe home, and I think I am hyper aware when there is a lack of emotional safety. So to me, as a boss, the most important thing and as a mother, as a leader, is to make sure that the people that work with me feel emotionally safe around me. Because I think that's the base. If they know that at all times I give them the benefit of the doubt, I have their best intentions at heart, then you can push yourself out of your comfort zone. Of course we make mistakes, I make mistakes, and then we laugh because luckily, it's not that somebody dies on the operating table. And I have figured out so many things. I started another company called Tatley. It's a product company. I had no business running a product company, knew nothing about it. But I just figure everything is figureoutable. And if you have people who are resourceful and you give them the feeling you can do it, then let's go and let's do it. It might take longer because if you had someone who's done it for years, but whatever, it's fine. But to me, my personal definition of success is when I see people growing around me. My license plate says expand. My life is all about expansion. I want to grow as a human on every level. And to me, work, work needs to be part of that. Work to me, is a playground of your future self. And we should not accept anything else other than having loving environments at work where you feel safe and that you can go out on a limb and you can take risks. I don't know if this answers your question, but I think it all starts with me being just a really heart center boss. And if you heard how we talk in our team meetings, the word love is something that we say a lot. We have these weekly check ins where one of our favorite things that we do, it's basically just undercover heart alignment. I call it Cherries and we call it Cherries and Pits. So we start our weekly meeting by saying share something good had happened since last week and share something that's maybe a little hard. And I remember some of our people that joined us, maybe from more traditional, more like corporate backgrounds, they were so rattled by that because they were like, oh, it has to be professional or whatever. And then they realized very quickly, like, no, we share deeply personal things in those meetings. We show up. We show up as who we are with the messiness of our personal lives. To me, there's not really a difference between who you are at work and who you are at home. I know a lot of people roll their eyes right now. I don't care. That's how I roll. And that's how I've created very loving and very warm hearted work environments. So that's just my approach to it. And I do have a lot of former employees that moved on to other companies and come back to me and go like, wow, there is nothing out there like this.

Jay Clouse [00:37:43]:

I believe it. That's part of what drew me to a life of entrepreneurship and doing my own things. Because then you can control your environment and build the environment that you want and want to give to other people. And I'm so deeply interested in the model that you have and the way you empower people because these chapter leaders aren't full time employees. You are putting a lot of trust in them, carrying the brand of a thing that you care about a lot. If you could go back, is there anything that you would do differently or sooner in the way that you allowed different chapters to spring up and grow the brand as wise as it has today?

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:38:24]:

Well, the one thing that this is not a regret, but what I am thinking a lot about right now is sort of the sustainability, the future of our organization. We built Creative Mornings, it's free around the world on partnerships. So basically, companies like MailChimp and Adobe and big tech companies have sustained us, their marketing budgets basically. And that world is changing, everything's changing, and it's much harder to come around these days to get into these budgets. And so I've been thinking a lot about sort of the future and how can I make sure Creative Mornings is going to be around in another 50 to 100 years? To be very honest, Creative Mornings, I would have not dared to say these words a few years ago because I know that that word can trigger people. But in the end of the day, Creative Mornings is church for creativity. We have all the elements of church. We gather on a regular basis. We have a sermon, we have like a prayer, which is our manifesto. And it's deeply community based and it's free. I want this to exist for another 50 to 100 years, but I can't do that. I can't hold the partnership conversation. So I'm thinking a lot about is there something I could have done sooner to sort of make people help sustain the organization? I feel like we've been trained that a lot of things are just magically free. And I have unfortunately seen businesses that I really care about die during the pandemic and I wish I would have known they were struggling, honestly, there's some businesses like that. Just to give you an example, there was this community acupuncture center a block away from my office, from my home that I went to every week. It was grassroots, it was amazing. It was sliding scale. If I would have known they were struggling, I would have deeply grabbed in my pocketbook and I would have supported them. And I was like, Damn, why businesses are dying and we don't know and we love them and we're going to miss them. So I feel like there's something that needs to happen. This is something I think about a lot right now, is that this notion of what is something I would miss if it was gone? An organization, a coffee shop, a blog, whatever it is, and what am I doing to support it, what am I doing to make sure it doesn't disappear? So I've become very intentional in actually really paying my NPR donations, in supporting blogs, in doing the patreons. And I feel like there's a shift that needs to happen in society if we don't want to end up just with the giants of the Googles and the Amazons. But that's a shift that I think that will take a moment for us to really get there. But that's the one thing just to go back to your question is like, I think I wish we would have started a little sooner to say, do you want to support us? Because we have never let the community support us. And I just want Creative Mornings to be around for a long time.

Jay Clouse [00:41:44]:

I appreciate you sharing that. That's a vulnerable thing to share. So thank you for saying that. I think we're actually in a unique moment in time where, because we're all media companies actually a Seth Godin talk at Creative Mornings, because we're all media companies, we're in the unique position of appreciating patronage differently and better than ever before. Because we know what it feels like to get a heart on our photo on Instagram, and we know that we can give that feeling to other people's, too. And I think that kind of fractals or like chains all the way up to understand that, oh, we like feeling supported. We have that power to support other people. So it does seem like if there is a time to nudge society and culture in that direction, this might be a uniquely good time for that.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:42:35]:

Yeah, I think so too. But it will take some heavy lifting in ongoing educating off the people that to be very honest, I am worried about the year ahead of us. I really am. It keeps me up at night, but then I'm like, have I ever told our community that I'm actually not sleeping at night? No, I haven't. Would a lot of people say, Are you kidding me? Creative Mornings gives me so much. Of course I'm going to help you. There's also a bit of a pride thing and how are we going to do it? But that's the sauce I'm in right now trying to figure out.

Jay Clouse [00:43:12]:

It is interesting. There is still some cultural I don't know if it's ingrained in us to think that you have all these TV shows and movies growing up, we're like, well, we don't accept charity. We think of any form of financial support as charity and somehow have a negative connotation to that. Every time I'm on Wikipedia and the box pops up and it says, please support Wikipedia, I'm like, Absolutely.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:43:39]:

But you're unique if you're already there, I think you are ahead of your time. But it goes back to typing. There needs to be a new word that doesn't have such a weird connotation. Right, but that's what it needs. Or let me put it this way. So we are starting to experiment with last week, for the first time ever, we asked our field trips community that's our peer to peer university layer, which you have given a few very generously have showed up and have given some field trips. We started asking like, hey, because a field trip costs us at least $1,000 to put on to everything, and we make no money of it. We're just radically generously and we're putting it out because I just believe this needs to exist. It puts so much goodness out. So what I'm starting to realize is that something like Creative Mornings, that is like a living, breathing blob, right? And there's the people that attend, so they contribute by showing up and they get inspired. There is like, sort of osmosis of giving and taking. And there's the people like you that generously show up and offer a field trip and teach your knowledge that there's energy exchange on so many different levels. And I feel like what we need to do is it's not necessarily open your wallet at all times, but that you show up with a sense of giving and not just taking that every time. Let's say you interact with something like Creative Mornings, you ask yourself like, oh, wow, I've been attending a lot of these events. What can I contribute? Like, sort of an energetic exchange in this big field. And then we start asking ourselves, okay, I actually don't feel comfortable teaching something, but you know what? I have the funds, so I will support it, because in the end of the day, money is just another form of energy.

Jay Clouse [00:45:32]:

Sure.

Tina Roth Eisenberg [00:45:33]:

So I do feel like what I said before in general is maybe a bit of a what am I contributing back? If you can't do financially, that's totally fine. But maybe you can bring three friends to the next event or you can tell your CMO, like, do you know about Creative Mornings? And I think, imagine if we all start showing up like this in our life, with our friends, with the coffee shop, with like, whatever it is that would radically transform how we show up in society and in community.

Jay Clouse [00:46:15]:

If you want to learn more about Creative Mornings, visit creativemornings.com and search for a local chapter. If you've never been to a Creative Mornings event, I highly, highly recommend it. And if you want to learn more about Tina, you can find her on Twitter at swissmith. Links to both of those are in the show. Notes thanks to Tina for being on the show. Thanks to Nathan Tod Hunter for editing this episode. Thanks to Emily Klaus for making our artwork, and Brian Skiel for creating our music. If you like this episode, shoot me a message and let me know. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram at JCLAUS. And if you really want to say thank you, please leave a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week.