573 - Need More Joy? How Creativity is the Discipline in Optimism Tina Roth Eisenberg
Creative Pep Talk
In this episode of Creative Pep Talk, host Eddie is joined by creative icon Tina Roth Eisenberg, founder of SwissMiss, Tattly, and Creative
Key takeaways
- Creativity thrives not from inspiration alone but from discipline, deadlines, and supportive communities.
- Releasing creative work is an act of bravery, especially amid today's culture of cancelation and negativity.
Main topics
- Release Day creative challenge
- The role of deadlines in execution
Notable quotes
"It's an act of bravery to put your work out there."
"You don't need permission. You just need a deadline and friends who cheer you on."
Conclusion
Tina Roth Eisenberg's journey and the Release Day initiative remind us that creativity is not just
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Is your creative flow feeling damned up right now? I get into that zone sometimes where it just feels like, oh, I was in a zone where everything was clicking and things were coming together. And I just felt like I'm right at the center of my creative path. And then just a few things throw me off and all of a sudden everything feels kind of out of whack. Today on the show, I have a creative legend in my books and probably many of your books as well, Tina Roth Eisenberg, the founder of Swiss Miss and Tatly and Creative Mornings and so many amazing creative projects that have inspired me over the years. Creative Mornings in particular had such a huge impact on me. The talks from that pulled me out of a really big rough patch back in 20... It must've been 2011, 2012, something like that. Ended up helping me find out that I was ADHD. Just played a huge role in my life and in my creative story. And I just owe so much to Tina. She's been so inspiring over the years. We have a chat about lots of different things. Very ADHD episode, which has become kind of my go-to way to interview recently. I just go through so many different things that I want to cover because I like. Listening to podcasts that have tons and tons of different things. You never know what's going to hit or connect with different people. So I like kind of sprawling and especially when I'm talking to somebody that just has so many creative gems in their brain. So we're going to talk about all kinds of things. First thing we talk about is this project that she just did called Release Day. We're going to get into that. That just happened, but I was so curious about it that I wanted to ask and see if we could learn anything about how to get projects out there into the world, which we do. And I did. At the end, I'm going to come back with our creative call to adventure. It's called Open to Adventure. And this is something we talked about in the episode. And then I have been practicing and it's had such a massive impact on my. whole energy, all of my life and how I feel about life and my creativity. And so I'm coming back with that. So if you're feeling damned up in the creative flow, this is something that can help open you back up. But for now, my very dense and fun and enlivening chat with Tina Roth Eisenberg. Speaker 3 (2:30) It's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep Speaker 2 (2:40) talk. Speaker 2 (2:47) Well, the first thing I wanted to tell you was a huge thank you. I feel like you already have heard me say this in some capacity on the internet, but your projects have been so inspiring to me over the years. And then especially Creative Mornings really helped me in a dark time early in my practice and even really was a huge contributing factor. to me getting diagnosed with ADHD from someone's talk about ADHD back in the day, something like 2012, 2013, which ended up really having a huge impact on me. So I just have to start by saying thank you so much for all the work that you do. Speaker 1 (3:25) Thank you for sharing that with me. That's like rocket fuel for my chat pack. I love that. I love that. Speaker 2 (3:31) And I just had, I know you've probably heard me on the internet talking about it, but I had to just tell you since you're- It makes me so Speaker 1 (3:37) happy. You know, like creative mornings just makes me so happy when people tell me the impact it has on their life. That really makes me, keeps me going when days get hard. Speaker 2 (3:47) Yeah. Well, I'm happy to share that with you. So I have a bunch of stuff I want to talk to you about, but first- I want to talk about your latest project that's sort of a partnership called Release Day, which just happened. Yes. Speaker 1 (4:00) Could you Speaker 2 (4:01) just tell us about that? Because I think there's a lot of interesting stuff to dig into with that. Speaker 1 (4:06) This was the first prototype of what we will hopefully do every year in May. And that is that last year I saw our dear friend Sam Furness, who's one of the most creative people I've ever met. He's like a creative unicorn. He's in England about an hour outside of London. I follow him and I saw him in a very scrappy way put together what was the very first version of Release Day. And basically he realized he used to work in the... in the music industry and, you know, and release day when you release your album as a thing. And, and he realized that he had some side projects he wasn't really working on. And he was like, what if I give myself a deadline and I invite my friends to participate and work on that thing that you're neglecting or never started. And so he did that last year. I saw that and I thought it was brilliant because it really gets you back into your sort of this innocent creativity, just. creating for the joy of creating. And so I invited him this year to bring Release Day to the global stage with Creative Mornings with the help of Adobe, who's our global partner. And it was the largest campaign I've ever worked on, the most beautiful, in-the-heart, creativity-celebrating invitation to our global community to say, what's that thing? What's that thing you have neglected to work on or you haven't started or you haven't finished or you have finished it, but you haven't really shown it to the world. And we had over 2000 people pledge that they will participate. So the entire month of May. We basically ask people to work on the thing and then on May 29th to release it to the world. And it's a real act of bravery to show your work. And I think more than ever now where there's so much cancel culture happening and so much just negativity. And so to me, it's an act of bravery to put your work out there. And it was the most beautiful thing that I think I've ever created with Creative Mornings together with Sam and Adobe. We're already scheming to do it again next year. And the cool thing is you can now see everyone's work online. So if you go to creative mornings.com slash release day, you know, people have uploaded what they worked on, what they started. And the beautiful thing is that a lot of people have told me that. it got them back into whatever it was they have neglected. For example, I used to go to art school. I used to draw every day. I had a sketchbook with me all the time. I mean, I was hired for illustrations. I had one, I had a spread in Elle magazine. So I was, I was serious about illustration. Speaker 2 (6:49) But Speaker 1 (6:49) then, you know, you get busy and you have kids and whatever, and it just went away. And it got me back into drawing. Just, I just tasked myself to draw every day. And so those stories where people come to me now and said, hey, it sparked it again. It's back. and I repicked up the practice, that makes me really happy. Speaker 2 (7:07) That's amazing to hear. The thing I loved about the idea is I think that it really addresses the bigger problem that most creative people face. Because I think there are a lot of books out there about how to be more creative. Some of them are really great. But a lot of the creative people I know don't struggle with the creativity. They're naturally creative. They have all these ideas. They have all this stuff. But they don't. execute. And if they execute, they don't share it. Like there are these huge obstacles in the way of putting this stuff out in the world. What do you think it is both from release day, but then also your experience doing all these other projects? What are the things that have helped you continually ship bigger projects? Speaker 1 (7:49) That's such a good question. I really do think the secret to me creating so many different projects and makers of love, as I call them, is that I surrounded myself with extremely supportive, entrepreneurial, cheerleader, creative types. I started the first creative co-working space in Brooklyn in 2008 and didn't realize that surrounding myself with kind, creative people from different industries, creative industries, It was so empowering. Like most of my business ideas came through lunch conversations. And then when you have really smart people at your side that kind of push you and say like, you should try that and you should, you know, that sort of that collective support that you get is what I think we have created with Creative Mornings now with this campaign. And I sort of this collective invitation. And then giving a deadline. Those two things really work. Speaker 2 (8:49) Yeah, I think that's totally true. I definitely need deadlines. That's my biggest problem with like book pitches is that nobody's asking me to do this. No one's saying this is when you need