Tune in to learn more about the work happening in our region to support citizens returning to the workforce, and how local employers can get involved. You’ll also hear about Sean’s involvement in PechaKucha Dayton, Mr. Rogers’ enduring influence on his life, and what it means to show up for your community. This conversation is a powerful reminder that creating a better future can start with something as simple as being a caring neighbor. 

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Episode Transcript

Evelyn Ritzi:
Welcome to Creating the Future. I’m Evelyn Ritzi.

David Bowman:
And I’m David Bowman,

Evelyn:
and today we’re joined by a passionate community advocate and a favorite neighbor to so many in Dayton. It’s Sean Mitchell!

Sean Mitchell:
Thanks. Thanks for having me. Super excited to be here with you guys.

Evelyn:
We’re so glad you’re here. We’d love to start with just you and your story. If you could tell us a bit about your background and how you came to call Dayton home.

Sean:
Sure. Yeah, I don’t think it’s too unique in the sense of I did what you know, all good millennials do. Grew up kind of Ludlow Falls, West Milton area, so Miami County, pretty small town, not a lot of diversity there. So ran off to the big city of Toledo for college, right? And had wonderful experiences, but in a less than stellar market, graduating at that time, and did what all good millennials do, and moved in with my roommates, Mom and Dad, and then just kind of started looking for a job, and I started working at our youth homeless shelter daybreak, which was funny, because growing up, I was involved in school and community, because my parents kind of really pushed that and supported that as well. And so all of my teachers, you know, folks at the school, would be like, you’re going to be a social worker. You’re going to be a social worker. Well, I’m happy to note I’m not a social worker, but I did fall into the human services world. So working at daybreak, I fell in love, and then was like, well, here we are. So started falling in love and with Dayton and what the city has to offer. And once you start looking and uncovering those rocks, you really find some neat gems in the city.

David:
So you are now the returning citizen coordinator at St Clair Community College. So tell us about the work you do and why it’s so important for returning citizens and for the entire region.

Sean:
Yeah. So a big thing to kind of start when I was working at Daybreak. You know, we’re working with youth. These are young adults, many of them around early 20s, right? 1819, 20, and some of them may catch a charge for you know that might be a felony or misdemeanor, but that on the record really affected opportunities for these individuals, and I just started realizing that the justice system that we have really always isn’t that just and so really sparked a passion to want to do more, and then really kind of led to where we are now, which is Sinclair is arguably, probably the second largest education provider in prisons in the nation. Yeah, average person has no idea that that’s the case. And so one thing I really noticed is education has kind of become an equalizer for our students really build some social capital. In the state of Ohio, we have a lot of really cool things going on when it comes to it’s shocking to say, well, we have some really progressive ideas around formerly incarcerated. And one of the big things is with education. Specifically, I joke that I’m not a higher ed guy. I just worked for him because that kind of equalizer that you might not necessarily know what a cqe or CAE are, right? And we can talk about those later. But ultimately, that’s kind of just Jarvan jargon, if you will. But really we with by telling somebody you have a degree, I have a college degree, or some college this certification, it really whether your housing provider, whether your employer, it just opens up opportunities and really kind of gets people on a level playing ground.

Evelyn:
What are some of those, those barriers that returning citizens are facing, and where do you see some of the opportunities for change and for solutions?

Sean:
Yeah, so there are over 40,000 what we call collateral consequences nationally, that’s just in, you know, the US, and those are things from not being able to get certain credentials and certified to do certain jobs. It can be barriers on attaining housing, obviously, employment, some neighborhoods that where you can live or not live. It just really those collateral consequences can get in the way. And one of the things. Really works well here in Ohio, the you know, I was talking about that cqe cAe, that’s called the certificate for qualification for employment, or certificate and achievement of employability. It’s unique to Ohio, but it is a specific document that someone who is formerly incarcerated that may not be eligible for record expungement or ceiling. Can apply to that actually, will now take civil liability off of an employer. So if I go and I have a background and, you know, David hires me and I steal something from Evelyn, David doesn’t have to worry about Evelyn saying, Well, I’m gonna sue you for hiring Sean, because you knew that, right? It takes that risk off. What it also does is it opens up some of those licensure options. So it takes away that instant, no, you have this felony background, you can’t get this licensure to support people, or, you know, be involved in fire safety, right? What this also does is it now creates almost like that appeal process. So it forces that licensing board to pause and do an independent review of that individual. They could still say no, yeah, but it forces them to not just say no because of that background. So those are some really cool things that we have in our community. On top of, I have to be honest, montgomery county is probably the best re entry town that I’ve come across nationally so far. We have a dedicated office of reentry, we have an entire coalition with subcommittees that are doing the work that’s important. And then you have places like education, which play a huge role. You have care sources involved. You do have fair chance employers that are getting involved. So it’s really neat to see all those wrap around services for folks.

David:
Taking a quick step back, right? Because language is important. So when we’re saying returning citizens, that might be a term some are not familiar with. So explain that to folks if they’re listening.

Sean:
Yeah, for sure. So terminology kind of matters for a couple reasons, right? Because it’s funny. We’ll talk to some of our students about this, and they’ll be like, well, you know, I don’t care if you know, you consider me an ex con or a felon, but the reality it kind of helps guide where places are. So when we talk about formally incarcerated or returning citizen, it’s somebody that’s coming out of the legal system, which could be jail or prison system impacted. Could be somebody who maybe has a legal charge but didn’t actually spend any time in jail or prison. And then when we talk about things like fair chance or second chance, that’s actually because for some people, they might have applied 19 times to a place, and now’s the time that I really want to bring you in, right? And that really plays into some of the things that are out there for employers to help identify. Because a big thing we hear is, Well, how do I know the difference between that person and that person the same way that you know the difference between that college graduate and that college graduate, you really don’t, but there’s some little things you can look at. So, you know, when we talk about, you know, formerly incarcerated, you know, second chance, fair chance, tend to be more along that language line than maybe ex con or felon friendly, those are kind of some outdated terms.

David:
Yeah. And so I actually just got done reading a really good book called Flourish by Daniel Coyle. And in it, one of the things that they talk about within community is asking people the question, well, what’s the thing you’re going to go and do about it? Right? So if you were going to, you know, leave this meeting with one thing on your to do list, having heard, like, what is that going to be? So along those lines, like, if someone is listening and wants to know how they can help or get involved, right? What’s, what’s a simple thing they can do to start?

Sean:
Yeah, definitely a simple thing is investigate what’s out there. Ask yourself, what really are, you know, the barriers for an individual coming out of incarceration. You know, to throw some numbers out there, in Ohio, we have 18,000 people released every year from incarceration. Those 18,000 people need jobs. They need places to live. They need community and connecting. Some big factors that play into that is how involved people get with services and supports. From my role, we talk a lot. About geography is the biggest factor. You know, Montgomery County, we have a lot of wrap around services. Adams County and Scioto County, they don’t have squat. They got a dude in a computer lab at their community action partnership. And so those communities are going to struggle a little bit more, but they do have people coming back there. So how do you open up, kind of the flood gates or open up that opportunity? And especially, I know a lot of companies are struggling when it comes to hiring people into the workforce and retaining people. Lot of HR organizations, Nash nationally, have come out and said formerly incarcerated and returning citizens tend to have a much lower turnover than most other employees.

Evelyn:
From your perspective, I know you had the chance to attend some of these like graduations and ceremonies. Could you talk a little bit about what it feels like to see folks complete a program, and what does that feel like?

Sean:
Yeah, that’s that’s probably my favorite part. I joke pretty regularly. I kind of hone and moan of Sinclair’s big graduation, right? Just because it’s around dinner time on a Friday night, I’m hungry and it’s hot and it’s just me whining, right? But the reality is seeing our graduations in the actual prisons, because we will hold them. I was just at one this past Friday at Pickaway Correctional Institute, and families come in, and one of the nice things about Pickaway is we happen to have a culinary program there, so we also have students that have prepared all this food to show off for their friends and family. The warden comes. It involves ODRC, Ohio, Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. It involves their staff and the site staff. It involves Sinclair staff, and then all these students and family where, you know, we hear a lot. The president of Sinclair talks a lot about, you know, how many people said this wasn’t for you? Raise your hand. How many people said college wasn’t for you? And here you are, and that shines so much more when you’re in a prison setting. Another graduation that I will just give some kudos to is our Office of re entry here in montgomery county. They do a monthly cohort for folks coming out. It’s kind of a 11 day intensive folks have worked through. And they also hold a graduation, and I think that’s like every last Thursday of the month, something around there. But it’s really cool. It’s open to the public, and you just see that same feeling that we see inside of just students lighting up. You see, kind of one of the hardest tasks of this role is really rebuilding hope in someone. Because I think the greatest direction that leads folks into that incarceration is that loss of hope, right? And it can come from so many places and ways and trauma, but seeing that start to blossom again is really exciting.

Evelyn Ritzi 13:22
Well, something else you’re involved in locally. Here is PechaKucha or PK Dayton, because you’re just a man about town, really…Could you tell us a little bit more about PK and why people should check it out?

Sean:
Yeah. So gush all day about PK. So for context, what PK is, is it is also Chaka Cha is Japanese for chit chat. So it was a group of architects that got together and said, Hey, we want a succinct way to present the stuff we like, the stuff we think is cool. So it’s a 20 by 20 format. You have 20 slides, all photos, and each one is up for 20 seconds. And you don’t control the slide deck, though. So whether you’re excited or not, you’re up there for six minutes and 40 seconds. That’s it. What I love so much about it is, these are not expert speakers. You know, you can come in. I know Evelyn. You’ve done one. You know David. I don’t know if you have any favorite hobbies, anything that excites you.

David:
Many, many, many

Evelyn:
Too many to count.

Sean:
You could just get up on that stage and say, I want to talk about my favorite butterflies, and just have 20 photos of your favorite butterflies. And I like this one because it’s this and it does this and comes here. It’s like kids talking about, you know, their favorite Pokemon sometimes, right? But we’re adults sharing how much we love this thing. And. And it’s the greatest audience in Dayton, Ohio. It really is. We had somebody get up once and talk about their story, but kind of froze and super nervous, but just had these beautiful slides. And at the end, the entire audience standing ovation, as they were, kind of like freezing up, and it just, it’s a great place to share who you are, and our community has a thirst. And then the best part is, you see those people in your grocery store, and they’re like, Evelyn, I loved your talk. Can you pass that cream over there? But it’s really good.

Evelyn:
Yeah, it combines so many different things. Like, there’s an education piece to it. Like, I know you’ve shared one about your re entry work, and like, you can learn so much from these talks. They can be entertaining. They can be playful and fun. But also, like raising some serious awareness in front of a huge crowd, like the crowd is always completely sold out and it’s always free. I say sold out, but it’s free,

Sean:
Yeah, but I will say, with our problem we do run into now is finding a space large enough for 300 to 400 people, sometimes 450 people that are just coming out, to be a part of a community, to learn to hear people talk about what they care about. It’s really beautiful. And I’ll also add, I was just at a conference last month or last week, and we were invited to this research day, and they had a PK style lightning presentation so that 1520 people could talk about what they were doing work on in a very succinct, easy way. So it works really well for companies and businesses too, to say you got six minutes and 40 seconds to tell us what you’re working on.

Evelyn:
It’s perfect, because if you’re like a more introverted presenter, like having that structure helps to give you enough space to fill what you want to say. And if you’re more excitable, extroverted presenter, who just want, would rather go on and on, it gives you that structure so you cannot do you cannot go on and on. And there are many of us, self included that need that structure and compression. Big talker.

David:
So as someone who’s so involved in the community, what’s one small step that somebody could take to just be a better advocate for where they live?

Sean:
I would say really for this one. You know, I had some ideas and thoughts but, but I think the biggest thing is actually investigating getting involved in what’s in your community. How does it work? How does it run? You know, it’s easy for us to say, Oh, I’m mad at the city for this, or I really hate that nonprofit for this, but then get involved with that nonprofit, get check into the city and say, Hey, what are the rules around this? Is it a law? Is that a law that could be changed? Is that something that had unintended consequences, and could now you get to be the catalyst of making that adjustment. You know, we hear all the time, and I’m sure you guys are aware of the the keyboard warriors that are out there, right where it’s even real easy, really easy to complain about the things I don’t like. But let’s flip that and say, let’s talk about, what are the things I do like, and then let’s talk about, okay, what are the steps I can take? Because at the end of the day, we talk a lot about accountability, but accountability starts with us, and so at the end of the day, I’m just as responsible as somebody in that seat if I’m sitting back and not actually doing something or getting involved.

Evelyn:
Yeah, you show me a lot of just showing up, like being there, being in the room, if you care about something like be there.

Sean:
So you can learn so much from the people doing the work. Because people want to talk about what they do, right? They like it. They typically are enjoyed by it. So therefore, you just strike up a conversation. Tell me about the water management of Dayton Ohio, and you will realize how amazing the water in Dayton Ohio is something that seems so mundane that we just use every day. It’s just interesting and it’s really exciting.

Evelyn:
I like really cannot interview Sean Mitchell without talking about someone very important to you, which would be Mr. Rogers. Can you tell us a little bit about what? What about Mr. Rogers resonates with you and and what does it mean to you?

Sean:
Yeah, I probably appreciated this guy way too much. My only tattoo is a sweater with the number 143, under it, because it represents it was Mr. Rogers favorite number, which stands for, I love you because you have the one letter for i Four letters for love and then three for you. So I say that because I think that, shockingly enough, I watched Mr. Rogers as a kid and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, but I. Didn’t really fall in love with him until late into high school, early college, and that’s when you start looking at what he actually represented. He was a man that was so devout in his personal faith, but never pushed that on anyone else. The only kind of hate mail that he ever got was from other people of faith, saying, You need to be doing more with your platform. And he would always say the same thing, with grace and poise and kindness and compassion, I’m doing my work through how I live my life, and I can only hope that others might want to emulate that or walk their journey their way. And it really it emphasizes how much emotional intelligence, things like kindness, has, such a level of empathy, the ability put yourself in someone else’s shoes, intelligence, the ability to pause before you react and think, if you find someone with kindness, that is the greatest ability and power that someone has. And what I think is so beautiful is we think about, you know, power, success influences. I worked my way to the top. I put in hundreds of hours, or I, you know, screwed people over to get where I needed to be. Or, you know, lost out on things, when the reality is Fred Rogers had tons of power and influence just because he was a genuine, kind human and liked people. So kindness is power, yeah?

David:
And, well, I’m someone who is old enough to have more than one Mr. Rogers album, ooh, collection, so for sure, now a couple of them also haven’t grown up in the 80s. Might be scratched up for my attempts at DJing and scratching, unfortunately, but we still have, nonetheless,

Sean:
Maybe you should do a PK about your DJing.

David:
There you go. Very short, two scratch record pictures and then six minutes of silence. But you know, one of the things with Mr. Rogers was he wasn’t afraid to have difficult conversations, but do them really respectfully, right? And hold space for people, even with kids, right? Like he’s talking about death or he’s talking about loss or talking about things, but doing it in a way that’s both curious and compassionate, and looking into those things with kindness, right? And trying to understand and create a space for understanding. And I think that’s what like, I’m just always fascinated by that. And then also, like, the just every episode, they’re touring something or doing brand fact, right, right? Like, when you see, like, oh, it’s one big ball and crayon that chops that like, Oh, my God, so cool.

Evelyn:
Like, the soothing nature of how each show starts and

David:
Yeah, like, he’s very calm.

Sean:
I love, there’s an episode where he just simply says, Do you guys want to know how long one minute is? And then he sets a timer, and you sit there for one minute. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if your audience is gonna sit here for one minute of silence modern day, but a kid’s gonna be like, I do want to know how long one minute is.

David:
I think, just that courage to again sit for a minute in silence, just to see what it’s like.

Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah, he was, he was a neat guy and and he was very routine and regimented. He he made sure that what he was talking about, he created all the music for the show. But just, I don’t know you hear some of the stories. One quick favorite is his car was stolen. And this is after everybody knew who Mr. Rogers was. And of course, the he’s from Pittsburgh area, La Trobe, and in Pittsburgh, it hits the news that Mr. Rogers vehicle was stolen, right? So a couple days after it was stolen, hits the news. Couple days after that, Fred’s walking out of the studio, and he notices his car is sitting there, and on the dash was a note that said, if I known it was yours, I’d have never taken it. I mean, those kind of things that comes from being a genuine, decent, kind human being, absolutely.

Evelyn:
Yeah, well, you embody that neighborliness. Sean, one final question for you, what’s the future that you want to create?

Sean:
Yeah, I think it plays into kind of what we talked about around Fred and just things that, like Ohio is doing in Montgomery County and Sinclair when it comes to formerly incarcerated individuals. But really we’re a. Helping community. I mean, we have two domestic violence focused organizations in our community when most have none, and I think that plays into what I think we need to create. What I would like us to create and be a part of, are truly safe spaces for everyone. I’ll be up front specifically, we have to do a better job when it comes to women, people of color, individuals out of sexuality and kind of these folks that we talk about on the margins, there’s constantly news articles and updates of you know, areas where you know, women are unsafe in our communities. People of color, trans population, like these individuals, are unsafe where they live. And I think it it again that accountability, it is on us as a community to provide that safety, to make those spaces more approachable, to open up access and opportunity. You know, through incarceration, we see it’s throwing money away for no good reason. You know, cost like $35,000 in the state of Ohio to house somebody that’s incarcerated when you can provide mental health services, housing support and education to get somebody into a workforce that’s building up tax revenue. So if you want to do it by the numbers, that makes sense. But then if you look at it as just the humanistic approach to people, that’s where we’re really doing ourselves a disservice if we’re not supporting individuals and opening up safe, truly safe places for people.

Evelyn:
Thank you, Sean, for sharing so much insight into the work you do in your job and in the community. We appreciate you.

Sean
Thank you for having me. This is great. You guys have the best guests. So I’m honored to be here with all the others. I want to come in and just be like I want to hang out with you guys.

Evelyn
Welcome to the club.

David:
Like a get-together.

Evelyn:
Thank you.

David:
Thank you.

Your company’s executives are the living embodiment of your company’s values. We’ve seen a clear shift from behind-the-scenes leadership to public-facing accountability over the last decade. We see this most clearly when an executive behaves badly – see the Coldplay kiss cam debacle. However, if utilized correctly, your executives can be the greatest asset to your brand’s reputation and your communication strategy.

A great leader manages business development, people, and strategy expertly. But do they know how to think in soundbites or bridge questions effectively? Can they do those things under pressure? It’s our job as communications professionals to help our company’s leaders feel confident when that hot mic is pointed at them.

The Defensive Play: Navigating Crisis Communications

The communications team has a plan for when things get rough. They have messaging templates, press conference locales chosen, and a list of appropriate spokespersons. Many times, the CEO is not the right person to put in front of the camera, but sometimes they are. I would go so far to say that if you are utilizing your CEO during a crisis, the stakes are high. In the heat of the moment, media training should have already built a strong foundation so that your CEO – or anyone in the C-suite – feels prepared.

Media training is not about theory. It’s an opportunity for the highest level of leadership to practice and learn in a judgment-free environment. We recommend using a camera and someone with journalism experience to practice real-world interview scenarios. You should dive into the questions your leadership is most afraid of answering, as well as practice short explanations for complex processes.

The Offensive Play: Proactive Storytelling & Product Launches

You may wonder why you should budget the time and money for media training for the rare crisis scenario. I would argue that just as you say, “It could never happen to us,” it will. However, even if you’re lucky enough to never experience a reputational crisis, effective and consistent media training maximizes positive visibility. Executives who are confident in front of the media speak in soundbites that are easy for editors to keep in the final cut, giving journalists that human hook they want. This proactive preparation also allows executives to consistently build their reputation as go-to industry thought leaders.

A great communications strategy can and should be tied to business outcomes. In our society of short attention spans and infinite information, it isn’t enough to share a product launch or philanthropic effort as a press release. Our audiences want to see a face; they want to know the people behind the product. A pitch is more likely to be picked up if you’re offering an interview with someone from your C-suite or a VP. Your leadership will be more comfortable saying yes to these impactful interviews when they feel prepared and practiced.

Ready to Set Your Executives up for Success?

Ultimately, if you want better press, mitigated risk, and a strong brand, media training is your winning edge. At Ohlmann Group, we help leaders feel prepared in interviews and tie communications to business outcomes. We have facilitated media training with all levels of management across multiple industries.

Let’s talk about how our communications experts can help your team feel confident in front of a hot mic.

If you’re tired of the “create, post, repeat” loop, I have good news: you don’t have to churn out high volumes to win at content marketing. It’s all about creating with quality in mind and maximizing the content you already have.

Here are three ways to make your content go the extra mile:

1. Slice and Dice Your Long-Form Content

Think of your content the same way a great chef thinks about using ingredients. If you took the time to prep a whole roast chicken à la Ina Garten (my personal favorite celebrity chef), you wouldn’t just trim off the drumsticks and toss out the rest. You’d find a way to use every part. Shredded scraps become chicken salad. The bones become broth. You get the point.

Good content is meant to be remixed and repurposed.

A single blog post (or white paper, case study, client testimonial, podcast, or long-form video) can become: 

• Short-form videos: Turn each key point, stat, or insight into a 15–60 second Reel, TikTok, or YouTube Short and make a series. Record yourself speaking to the camera or film b-roll and add a text overlay.
• Social media carousels: Break your main points or tips into infographic-style slides that encourage users to scroll to the end.
• Email newsletter content: Tease the top takeaway and link readers to the full post.
• Text-based graphics: Pull out a punchy line and pair it with a scroll-stopping visual.

One big idea. Many formats. Now you can make your content stretch across multiple platforms over weeks or months, not just days!

2. Revisit Evergreen Content

Not feeling inspired to create something new? Start by taking a look at what you already have. Chances are, your website is home to a library of blog posts that haven’t been touched in years.

Evergreen content has the power to continue driving traffic and building credibility long after the original publish date. The key is to keep it current, especially because today’s AI search tools prioritize accurate, relevant content.

Take some time to revisit older posts to:

• Update dates, links, and sources: Broken links harm your website performance. Outdated stats or sources can harm your credibility.
• Add new photos, graphics, or video:  A visual refresh can make an older post feel brand new. Adding “rich media” is a great way to help boost SEO, too.
• Optimize for SEO keywords: Research current terms and ensure your content continues to target the keywords your audience actually uses.

If you come across a post that’s simply too outdated, irrelevant, or off-brand to be salvaged, it’s okay to delete it. Just be sure to set up a redirect link as a best practice.

3. Measure What’s Meaningful

Creating content consistently is only half the job. You also need to understand how it performs once it’s out in the world.

What’s worth tracking? It ultimately depends on your goals. Some key metrics we look at include:

• Traffic and time on page: Are people finding your content? How long are they sticking around once they do?
• Keyword movement: Are you moving up in the rankings for words and phrases tied to your brand?
• Engagement rates: It’s not all about followers. Likes, shares, comments, mentions, and saves can all signal that your content is connecting.
• Conversions: Is your content moving people to take action, whether that’s filling out a form, picking up the phone, making an online purchase, or stopping by?

It’s important to remember that not every platform will be a fit for your brand. You don’t have to be everywhere. Data helps you know when to double down on what’s working and when to let go of what’s falling flat.

Ready to Make Your Content Go Further?

At Ohlmann Group, we help brands build content marketing programs that go the extra mile. As a full-service marketing agency, we think bigger than just blog posts, creating a content lifecycle that can extend across social media, video, digital advertising, internal and external communications, and more. 

Let’s talk about what your content could be doing for you.

In this inspiring episode, Crystal shares about her leadership journey, her unexpected path to Dayton, and the future she wants to create for the next generation. You’ll also learn about her vision for the new Boys & Girls Club of Dayton facility being built on the same land, featuring a first-of-its-kind Life & Workforce Readiness Center designed to empower Dayton’s teens with the skills, certifications, and confidence they need to succeed in the careers of tomorrow. 

Listen Now:

Episode Transcript:

Evelyn: Welcome to Creating the Future. I’m Evelyn Ritzi

David: And I’m David Bowman

Evelyn: And today we’re joined by an incredible community leader, Crystal Allen, who’s the CEO and President of the Boys and Girls Club of Dayton. Crystal, thanks for being here.

Crystal: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Evelyn: We’re so happy that you’re joining us today, but we’d love to start with you and your story. If you could share a bit about your background, your journey and what led you to the work that you do.

Crystal: Absolutely, I often start by saying, I’m a kid from a hard place, hard space. I grew up in Cincinnati, in the West End, and over-the-Rhine, and had a wonderful life, raised by a single mom. There, I have two younger brothers, and my very first job was at Lincoln Recreation Center 13 as a summer camp leader with little kids. And honestly, from that moment on, you know, I fell in love with youth development. Graduated from Central State, proud alum of Central State, go marauders, and I majored in English pre law. I was going to go to law school, and commencement. Day of commencement, Tom Joyner was our commencement speaker, and he said, anything that you would do for free is what you would do with your life. I know I said, there goes my degree, right like and so it was really at that moment, President Garland was our president at the time at Central State he and he was adamant about me applying to Ohio State law school. And I told him that day. I said, I’m not going to law school. I would not practice law for free, but my heart, even throughout college, I’d always worked with young people, and I knew that this is the calling, you know, that I had. So I started in Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Cincinnati in 2010 and I started out as a part time program leader in a classroom with middle schoolers, and then was promoted to be a program director. Did that for about a year and a half, and then I was promoted to be a club director. And I did that for about six years, almost. And I was promoted to be the vice president of HR, and did that for about five months, and then was promoted to be the vice president of operations in Cincinnati. I was the first woman and the first African American person in that role. And so did that for about four years, and then my shoe broke, and that’s how I ended up in the role that I have now. So a quick story about my shoe. I had resigned from Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Cincinnati, April 1, with the intent to leave. August 31 this work is really, really hard. Had a daughter that was going to be going off to college, and I was like, you know, I need to, like, maybe take a different journey. Here was post covid, you know, reevaluating things that I thought I needed to be doing. So April 5, I was walking into the State Capitol in Columbus for a big meeting with boys and girls clubs from across the state. And as I’m going into the building, my shoe broke, and so I’m going into the restroom to fix my shoe. And as I’m going into the restroom, another lady is coming in there with me, and we’re laughing about my shoe. And I say to her, I say, are you here with Boys and Girls Clubs? Because I genuinely love to talk to people. And she said, Yes. She said, My name is Shonda McKinney, and I’m on the board for the Boys and Girls Club of Dayton. And she said, I’m here because we just lost our CEO March 29 and I said, Oh, well, I don’t know anything about being a CEO, but maybe these are some things that you could consider until you get a new CEO. So I kind of ran down a bunch of operations things. And she said, You need to talk to my board chair. So I talked to the board chair, tell the board chair the same thing. Well, two hours later, Boys and Girls Club representatives, Boys and Girls Clubs of America representatives are also at this meeting, and our National Vice President of the Midwest said to me, he said, Crystal, we hear you’re leaving Cincinnati. There’s a project we might need your help with, and we want to talk to you tonight. So we talked that night. The project was to help out in Dayton until they found a CEO. He had no idea I met Shonda and Mika in the bathroom. Okay, wow. So we talk Wednesday, I get goosebumps every time I tell a story. We talk Wednesday. We talk Thursday, Friday. I’m driving home from Columbus, and I call my executive coach, who just so happens to be from Dayton. I was paired with this executive. Coach by one of my board members in Cincinnati. At the time, my executive coach was Dr Karen Townsend. So I called Dr Karen, and I say, Hey, Dr Karen. I decided to resign from my role last week. I know we haven’t had a chance to talk about it and yada yada yada. And so she said, Well, Crystal, what else did you do this week? And I said, I’m leaving Columbus for this meeting that I had, and she said, I have to stop you and tell you something. She said, executive coaching is really about you, so we don’t spend a lot of time talking about me, she said, but a little while ago, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dayton asked me to join their board. My husband is a former board chair, and our family has been involved with Boys and Girls Clubs for decades, she said. And I’m telling you this because this morning, we got an email from one of our board members about this girl that they met in the bathroom in Columbus, who they think might be able to help us until we find a CEO. So we drove in silence for a couple minutes. Okay, God, I guess I’m not going anywhere. So I came up for the first time to see Boys and Girls Clubs of Dayton. It was April 11, I think it was somewhere around there of 2022 and stayed for a couple weeks just to observe and to offer some recommendations. And at the end of April, at a board meeting, I was asked to be the interim CEO by the board. So I was the interim CEO while still the CEO in Cincinnati, because I had to fulfill that commitment, right? And so was able to split my time. Had a great support from my Cincinnati team, which I’m grateful for, and the leaders there was able to support both, both organizations, and I applied for the role, and they kept me.

David: What a story. Oh, my goodness.

Crystal: almost four years ago.

David: Yeah, that’s just one where the universe just comes together.

Crystal: Absolutely.

David: Well, for those who may not know, what is the Boys and Girls Club? Who do you serve? What kind of programming Do you offer? Tell us about it.

Crystal: Sure, so Boys and Girls Clubs. We are Boys and Girls Clubs of Dayton. We are part of Boys and Girls Clubs of America. It’s our mother organization locally. We were founded in 1930 so we’ve been around for almost 100 years. We serve young people kindergarten all the way up until their 19th birthday. And there are some boys and girls clubs across the country that even serve youth up in youth and young adults up until age 24 and our mission is to enable all young people, especially those who need us most most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Our vision is to become the premier out of school time program of choice for teens and young people and caregivers and community partners. So when young people are out of school, we want them thinking about Boys and Girls Clubs, but when we mesh those two things together, really, we exist. Exist to help break the cycle of generational poverty and so every single day in our clubhouses, we could say clubhouses now because, and I’ll get into that in a minute, but we operate our programs really in four pillars. So our first program pillar is really centered around health and well being I often say we’re not interested in creating athletes. If that happens, that’s great. I’m most interested in helping our young people understand what happens to their beautiful brains when they move their bodies. Yeah, so 45 minutes every single day, they’re doing some sort of physical movement. We also provide a snack and a hot, nutritious dinner every single night. Last year, we served more than 37,000 snacks and meals to our young people. We also ensure that they have access to mental and behavioral health support, full time mental and behavioral health support on site for a lot of our young people, they may not have access to those resources. And so we do that, along with a lot of prevention programs and anti bullying programs as well. And then the second bucket is really centered around academic engagement, right? And we, I get a lot of questions about, you know, why don’t you start with academics? Because the data shows us that when young people have a lot of trauma, right? It alters their brain. And so it’s difficult to learn if you have so much trauma. So we work on when we think about meslow’s hierarchy of needs, right? And the basic things that we need as adults to thrive, that’s why we start with that health and wellbeing bucket. So academic success and recovery, 45 minutes of academic enrichment every single day. You know, a lot of our young people do not receive homework, so we hired a full time education director who is there ensuring that young people have a better linkage to the school day during after school time. The third bucket is really centered around character and leadership development. I tell the story often growing up, you know, where I did, we weren’t told to stay in over the Rhine in the West End. We were told graduate from high school and get out. No one told us that the over the Rhine in West End today would be the place that it is right. And so we’re empowering our young people to own their space and their place. In their community and their city, and to be engaged and have a voice and what’s happening in that space. And so every week, they’re participating in 45 minutes of some sort of civic engagement, right? We we often talk about to our young people, you know, cleaning up the glitter mess you made is not community service. That’s reasonable service, right? That’s the mess you made, friend, so you have to clean that up, but we are engaging them in the community, and the last bucket is really around life and workforce readiness, right? All of us had someone ask us when we were five or six years old, what do you want to be when you grow up? Right? The challenge is a lot of times when you come from a hard place in space, no one’s asking you that question, and if they are, it’s difficult to see a pathway to get there. And so we are ensuring that every single week, our young people are engaged in life and workforce readiness programming as early as age five, right 1816, is too late to ask young people, what do you want to do, right? So we’re starting at age five. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

David: That’s spectacular.

Evelyn: Yeah, it seems like it’s just very holistic.

Crystal: It is holistic. And when we think about the needs of our young people, they are ever, I mean, ever changing. And so at Boys and Girls Clubs, we are often soliciting feedback and input from our young people, from our caregivers, from our community partners and all of our stakeholders about how do we better prepare our young people to be great contributors to our region?

Evelyn: I think it’s unfortunate, but there’s so many misconceptions that adults often hold about our youth, and especially teens. What do you wish more adults, more people understood about the young people that you’re working with on a daily basis?

Crystal: That’s a really good question. I think the one thing I wish more adults understood, and this is directly from the young people that we serve. I wish we would listen more, listen without judgment. Yeah, sometimes I think it’s it’s hard to support young people based on our value systems, right? So we go into these conversations and spaces with young people with our own value systems, and being able to lay that aside and really lean into where they are at the moment is really important. That’s the one thing I hear from from teens. I hear from my kids like Mom, I just want you to listen. I don’t want you to necessarily solve it. Our young people are resilient. They rise to the occasion. You know, when we raise the bar and they just want us to listen. They want us to listen.

David: Yeah. So working with youth every day, it must give you a unique perspective. So when you think about that next generation, what is it that gives you hope?

Crystal: So this is this question is perfect timing. So last night, we hosted our annual Youth of the Year contest, or competition. Youth of the Year is the highest honor that a teen and Boys and Girls Club can receive. So they compete at their local club. They go on to compete for the state competition. From there, they go to regionals, and then they go to Nationals. And I was thinking about my hope for our young people as I watched them tell their story. There we had six candidates tell their story about what the club meant to them and how the club has changed their life. And I think what gives me hope is the resilience of our young people, but also how we at Boys and Girls Clubs, are preparing them to utilize their voice. We’re empowering them to utilize their voice, right? I think a lot of times, you know, organizations, social service agencies, even education systems, sometimes can cross the line telling kids what they need to do, or telling caregivers what they need to do for their child. I think we’re learning to partner with our young people for their future, in lieu of telling them what they need to do, and through that, they’ve developed this, this big, strong voice of advocacy. And so the fact that they can advocate for themselves in in amazing ways, intentionally, authentically and unapologetically, I think that that gives me a lot of hope. That’s what your question was.

David: Yeah, I think back on that, that period of life, for me, like it’s a time when you are told to sit down and be quiet, like you’re not always encouraged to use your voice. So to not only make that okay, but to promote that, I think that’s just a beautiful thing.

Crystal: Our kids are. They’re not going to be 9, 10, 14, for, you know, forever, right? I think about my own daughters, right? My girls, I have five daughters, and at 1213, you take them to the doctor and the care. As a parent, a caregiver, I’m asked to leave the room, yeah, so that they can have a conversation with the healthcare provider. Well, if I don’t have that conversation up front with my daughter, she may not be prepared to advocate for her health needs, right, right? So really, what we are doing is empowering them to become self-sufficient adults, and that involves us listening as adults, but also giving them the tools that they need to be successful and advocate for themselves.

David: Yeah, and that sense of agency and responsibility at the same time where absolutely, hey, you can your opinion matters, but also it has consequent, like absolutely, so, you know, get out there and speak about things, but make sure they matter.

Crystal: Absolutely.

David: Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Evelyn: Speaking of giving hope, there’s something really exciting happening at the Boys and Girls Club as you undergo building a cutting edge new facility. Could you tell us a little bit about that, including the life and workforce readiness center for teens? Why this makes you so excited?

Crystal: Yeah, oh my gosh. I’m so excited about this. So you know, in 2022 our organization was looking to do, really a renovation, just a partial renovation, of the top floor of our facility, then a 42,000 square foot facility, the envelope of the building, HVAC and a few other things. We had a lot of challenges in that facility. We didn’t have air, didn’t have heat, a lot of wasted space, water leak, I mean, all kinds of challenges. And so as an organization, right, we recognize that our young people need and deserve a better space. And so we plan to do renovation, which was like $1.9 million for just that partial piece. So we thought, let’s look at what a total renovation would look like. It was $9 million for a building built in 1968 and we did not know what we’d find when we got behind the walls, right? And so when we really started thinking about our workforce, our regional workforce, and what the needs of our young people are and that facility, and what the limitations that we had in that space. We made the right decision to build a brand new Boys and Girls Club, and so we’re looking to the building is demolished. So we demolished the building back in April, and we’re almost ready to start construction. It’s a $16 million facility that includes, it’s about 37,000 square feet. 5000 square feet is a traditional office space with, you know, a space where Emma, our resource development director can, can be and not have to be in an electrical closet like she was before. So we’ll have some office space along with a sensory room for our young people. We have some of our young people have exceptionalities, and they just need their own space. So we’ll have a sensory room on that side of the building, also about 25,000 square feet of traditional club space with program classrooms. We’ll have an eSports arena. Wow, I know, I know, right. We’ll have an eSports arena. We’ll have a dance studio, an art studio, cafeteria space, lounge space for our middle school preteens. But really, the bread and butter of this building is a 7000 square foot life, and we’re foot life and workforce readiness center. We had great conversation with our teens, and our teens told us three things, they want to work, they want to game and they want to drive. And so we spent time, a lot of intentional time looking at the workforce needs of our region, connecting with other partners and workforce in our region. We spent a lot of time at other boys and girls clubs, particularly in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin, Louisville, just really understanding what their workforce spaces are looking look like, and so we decided to build this, the 7000 square foot space that will include five industry pathways. So the first industry pathway is really around entrepreneurship, and when we think about that, it’s more than just learning about a business, right? It is providing the foundational tools that our young people need for any career pathway, right? So we have a teaching kitchen in that space, we’ll have a space where they can learn about financial literacy. There’s a space for business acumen, if. They want to take business classes. We will also have their career portfolio housed in that space that includes Yes, a cover letter, yes, letters of recommendation, yes, your high school transcript. But also as a teen, how do I learn how to access my MyChart? How do I make sure I have a copy of my birth certificate and social security card, right? And so thinking holistically about the things that a young person will need, it will all be housed in that space, in addition to drivers, drivers ed program. From there, our young people will be able to select one of four pathways. So those four pathways are digital innovation and aviation, everything. It AI, robotics, coding, all the things in aviation. You know, we had a wonderful partnership with Commissioner Shaw and air camp and the city of Dayton in the Dayton airport, and a lot of our young people thought that the only thing to aviation was just flying a plane, right until we did this wonderful program, and they realized there’s so many other components right in aviation, so it just makes sense for us to have an aviation program. The second pathway is really around health and biological sciences. So looking at STNA, CNA, phlebotomy, dental hygienist industries that have a shortage right now, and the shortages are projected to that gap is projected to grow. The third space is around traditional college and military services. So we have some students who are doing college credit, plus they want to take college courses. We have several members who are interested in the military, but their schools may not have ROTC programs. So we want to bring that, that program to us. And then the final pathway is really centered around skilled trades and manufacturing, yeah, so, you know, welding, carpentry, HVAC, those sorts of pathways, and we’re really, really excited about it, right? We understand that exposure is key. And I think sometimes when I talk about the pathways, people think we’re gonna have these big machines in the space that we won’t have, that it’ll be a mixture of our young people partnering with local businesses and local colleges to do some hands-on experiences. But a lot of this now is happening, you know, through VR headsets. I changed oil on a car on a VR headset. It was the coolest thing ever, and a truck, dump truck simulations, and things like that. So, yeah, it’s really exciting what some of the other clubs nationally are doing and even what some of our organizations, other organizations here locally are doing.

David: If people are listening and wanted to get involved with the Boys and Girls Club as a supporter here in Dayton as a volunteer, how would they do that?

Crystal: First of all, thank you for anyone who is interested in coming alongside us, we are always looking for more blue door champions. You can visit our website, www, dot BGC, D, A, y, t o, n, b, g, cdaton.org, to find out all the cool ways we have a line for volunteers to join us on this journey.

Evelyn: Yeah, I think we did a group volunteering effort at the club a couple years ago, and it was just, it was really special to see the environment, to see the work that you’re doing for kiddos. I think we did something creative. We did like finger painting or something made a big mess, but, but it’s just very touching that kids, students, young people, have a safe place to go where they can be creative, they can learn to read, they can interact with each other and the amazing staff, and it’s just the work that you’re doing is in this community is very inspiring and important.

Crystal: Thank you, and thank you for coming alongside us on this journey, we often tell our young people there are 1000s of people that you will never meet who are cheering for you to win in life, and some of them, they get to meet through a volunteer project, and some, you know, give and contribute, you know in other ways. So thank you for saying yes and joining us on this journey.

Evelyn: Before we go, there is one last question that we ask all our guests, and that is, what’s the future that you want to create?

Crystal: The future I’d like to create is a future that provides every young person in our region access to a Boys and Girls Club that needs it. Right now we have two clubs. We have one we’re operating out of Walkman middle school while our facility is under construction, we just opened a team Workforce Development camp in the Dayton Public Library. They’ve been a fantastic partner for us as well. And then we’re going through a merger right now as well, with another organization that’s going to be joining Boys and Girls Club. But that’s not enough. It’s not enough regionally, locally, in Dayton proper, we should have at least eight Boys and Girls Clubs. Regionally, we should have at least 22 we had our very first national visit from Boys and Girls Clubs of America. A couple years ago. Lorraine, our National Vice President, came to visit us, and I asked Lorraine to do some mapping for our region, to really lay out what that should look like. We should have eight clubs in Dayton proper, and 22 regionally. And so my hope is that any young person that needs a safe place, that needs homework assistance, that needs encouragement, that needs a pathway forward, will have access to a Boys and Girls Club, and they won’t have to drive 1015, 20 miles to get there.

Evelyn: It’s amazing. Well, thank you so much, Crystal. We really appreciate you.

Crystal: Thank you.

Here at OG, our awards season includes the annual AAF-Dayton Hermes Awards, the first of a three-tier national competition for excellence in marketing, advertising, and design.

This year, our team received a total of 5 individual awards, including a “Best in Class” Hermes Head in the highly competitive Film, Video & Sound category for Cleared for Adventure — an ambitious video campaign highlighting our client Hartzell Propeller’s advanced carbon fiber composite airplane propellers in action across the country. The cinematic video also received a Judge’s Choice award, a special distinction and a testament to the storytelling and creativity behind the piece.

We are so honored to share these awards with our valued clients and creative partners. Together, we create the future! Keep scrolling to see all of our creative pieces that were awarded this year.

GOLD Hermes Head + Judge’s Choice Award
Category: Film, Video & Sound
Hartzell Propeller – Cleared For Adventure Campaign

WATCH HERE:

MERIT
Category: Cross Platform
Wright State University – WSU “Further” Admissions Packet

MERIT
Category: Elements of Advertising
Hartzell Propeller LLC – Hartzell Temporary Tattoo Poster/Signage

MERIT
Category: Advertising/Media Industry Self-Promotion
Ohlmann Group – “Celebrate Every Day” Calendar

As huge fans of Todd’s work, we’re excited to share this conversation with you! Tune in as we chat about creativity, AI, and the empowering future Todd hopes to help create for leaders and creative professionals everywhere.

Listen Now:

Episode Transcript:

David Bowman:
Welcome to Creating the Future. I’m David Bowman.

Evelyn Ritzi:
And I’m Evelyn Ritzi.

David:
And today we’re joined by one of our favorite voices in creative leadership, someone who helps us learn to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy every day. It’s Todd Henry. Todd.

Todd Henry:
Hey, no sound effects. Okay.

David:
Todd, you have such a fascinating background. It spans music to agency leadership to entrepreneurship. Walk us through your background and your career journey.

Todd:
Yeah. Um, I’ll, I’ll try to, I mean, it’s been 30 years, so I’ll try to be as, uh, you know, brief as I can, but, um, I, uh, I was born in 1970. Um, so I, uh, grew up, I was a lover of music, um, always loved music, always love, you know, creative endeavors. So I went to school at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio to study marketing, but, um, I paid my way partially through school by performing music and thought, well, hey, this is kind of cool that I can actually go do something I love and people give me money for it. That’s kind of a cool thing that I’d never considered that growing up. Like you can actually go do work that you like and people will pay you for it. They didn’t pay me much for it, but at least I made money doing it. So after school, I decided I’m going to make a run at trying to be a musician full time. I did that for a few years as I tell everybody, including I did an interview with my buddy, Lionel Cartwright, about this on his podcast. I was as successful as you could be without being successful in the music business. Meaning I was playing tons of big shows and always like right on the verge of something really cool happening. and I won’t go into all the details, but, got to the point after several years where I realized like, know, Seth Godin talks about these two concepts of the dip and the cul-de-sac. And he said,

You don’t want to quit in a dip because a dip is just where it gets hard. But the cul-de-sac is where you notice I’m just kind of going around and around and around and around like year after year. And I realized after a handful of years, like I’m kind of in a cul-de-sac here. I’m going around and around and around. like, something’s going to break any minute. Something’s going to break. wasn’t cause I was, it was hard. was because I wasn’t willing to do the work. was just, nothing was changing. Right. So around that time I met, met a woman as the story goes and she convinced me music business, gainful employment and marrying an amazing woman. You can have two of the three, you can’t have all three. So I chose gainful employment, marrying an amazing woman through a series of circumstances ended up as a creative director for a nonprofit in Cincinnati where I grew a team and we were doing great work and really enjoying myself and was really struggling to try to figure out how do I keep my team like healthy and engaged. We were growing like crazy, doing tons of work. And as many people will know, Cincinnati has a strong presence of creative agencies, brand design firms, advertising, marketing, because of, you know, the presence of a couple of little companies called Procter & Gamble and Kroger. And at the time Macy’s was based here and you know, it’s kind of, you know, a couple of decent sized marketing firms, right? Little startups.

Todd:
And so I would get together with these, my friends from some of these brand design firms and agencies and say, hey, how are you keeping your people healthy? And they would say, what do you mean? We just burn through them and bring in a fresh crop. And I thought, well, that doesn’t feel right. Like just, and they’re like, well, know, hey, there’s always plenty of talent out there. And I thought, yeah, but if you’re not taking care of your talent, you know, over time, your culture is gonna devolve. And so I started experimenting with some things, started working pretty well.

Um, started sharing those with my friends and then right around that time, this thing called podcasting became a thing. This 2005. And I thought, well, Hey, I’ll start, I have an audio background because I did music. So, um, this is a great platform for me to experiment with sharing some ideas. So I did, I started a podcast called the accidental creative. Um, I put it on iTunes, which most people didn’t even know what that is now, but it was the precursor to Apple music and Apple podcasts and all that.

They had just launched a podcast directory where you could go in and search for podcasts. So I put it on iTunes and kind of forgot about it, honestly. And about a month later, there may be like three or four episodes I launched with, I came back about a month later looking for podcasts and there was a podcast called the Accidental Creative that was one of the top podcasts on iTunes. And my first thought honestly was, no, I stole somebody else’s idea. I can’t believe I didn’t check first to make sure there wasn’t already a podcast. And it was my podcast that was one of the top podcasts. And I thought, well, this is kind of interesting. It seems like there are a lot of people who want to have this conversation. So that happened for a few years. After a couple of years of doing this, I started getting invitations from companies, from leaders who were listening to the podcast, you know, from Mattel and Intel and Intuit and these amazing companies saying, hey, will you come spend some time with our team, just talking about these topics? So you don’t want to like just come share what you’re sharing on the podcast. This is the part of the story where it’s like, and then, and then US News and World Report did a feature article about my podcast. That’s kind of the, oh, well, and then like happens to everybody. And out of that came up, a literary agent approached me. We signed a book deal with Penguin Random House in 2009. And at that point I decided it’s time for me probably to go do this. Like this is what I need to be doing.

launched my business, the book, The Accidental Creative came out in 2011, fortunately did very well. And that was kind of the beginning of my scaling, getting to a point where I could go out and teach and speak. now for the last, I guess, 17 years, I’ve been traveling the world, teaching and speaking. I’m seven books in, have books in some like 18 languages now, which is great. yeah, so I teach and I speak about creativity leading talented people and how to do work with passion, how to be brave in the face of uncertainty. That’s primarily what I focus on and it’s been a real joy.

Evelyn:
I do want to talk about accidental creative because that’s the first book that David was like you need to read this one when I first started my job here and that was transformative for me so I do want to talk about creativity a bit and like how you define creative work because it might not be what what people think and maybe what you would say to folks who say well I’m not creative.

Todd:
Yeah. Um, so I would say, well, first of all, creativity is problem solving. So if you have to be creative, then congratulations, you are a, you know, you’re, if you have to solve problems, you’re a creative. mean, you are, um, especially if you have to solve problems under pressure. Um, all you’re doing is pattern forming. All you’re doing is finding connections, intuitive leaps between concepts. That’s what creativity is. And the designer does that one way, but a strategist does it a different way or, uh, you know, a writer or.

an entrepreneur or an engineer. mean, all of the, anybody who has to solve problems for a living is creative. And so that’s, you know, think we often conflate creativity in art. We think that because I don’t paint or I don’t make music that I’m not creative. Well, no, that’s, that’s not true at all. If you solve problems in any capacity, you face all of the same pressures and dynamics and pitfalls that the traditional quote unquote creatives face. You just face them in a different format in a different way. And so I think people do themselves a great disservice by saying I’m not creative because really what you’re doing is saying, well, none of this applies to me, but it does. You still feel fear of not getting it right. And that can sometimes prevent you from taking risks with your work. Well, that’s the same thing a designer feels when they’re thinking about making a non-intuitive suggestion for a design, whether that’s a strategy or an engineering project or whatever it is, you’re feeling those same dynamics. And so when you say I’m not creative, you’re selling yourself short and you’re also ignoring a huge part of what happens underneath the hood when you do your work, which is pattern forming, intuition and problem solving.

David:
Yeah, thinking back to it, there’s a book, Creativity, but it’s by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which everybody knows him from Flow, which is a masterful book.

Todd:
Yeah, right.

David:
But he’s got a different book titled Creativity and it talks a lot about, I think he interviews like a janitor who he terms as wildly creative, but based on his mindset and how he approaches his work. And I think it’s a great book, but it’s not an easy read. And I think your work makes that notion just so much more accessible, a little less academic and a lot more just everyday understandable.

Todd:
So Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, well, we all stand on the shoulders of people like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, right? Because he is one of the preeminent researchers in this space. And when you say, you know, his book is a little more technical, it is a lot more technical. Whereas what I do is more anecdotal, right? His is coming from a research background, from a research perspective. so,

When I’m making suggestions, they’re often rooted in understanding of that research, but I’m not doing the primary research. Instead, I’m saying, Hey, you know, you and your teammate have to do this thing and this, and this thing happens, well, here’s how we deal with that. Right. and so I, I like you, that’s one of my favorite books of his actually, or one of my favorite, things I’ve read of his, cause he’s written a lot of papers and whatnot as well. and people often confuse the concept of flow too. I think people when people talk about flow, they just talk about, I was in the zone, I was cranking out so much work, but that’s not really what he means by flow. What flow means is that it’s just difficult, that it requires incredible focus and incredible, like it’s just maybe beyond your skillset to accomplish it. And yet it is accomplishable and it captures you and immerses you in a way that causes you to kind of lose track of time and your sense of.

Any other priority, right? And that’s when people tend to do their most contributive deep work to borrow a phrase from Cal Newport is when they’re in that state of flow, but that requires time and commitment. requires discipline to block off the space to do that. You don’t do that operating with what Linda Stone calls continuous partial attention. don’t do it with half your brain tied behind your back. You have to be fully immersed in it, which is why most people never experience that. So they’ll say, I was in flow. I cranked out so many emails today. No, you weren’t in flow. You were just, you were just cranking out work, which we all have to do. But flow is an entirely different thing because it engages parts of your brain that aren’t active when you’re doing the more administrative type work.

David:
One of the things you and I have talked about in just the various conversations is AI, right? And the various uses of it, what it can, can’t do. And I know a recent podcast episode you had really dealt with that a little bit. But when you think about that, why in this age of AI, why is creativity, creative thinking so important now, maybe more than ever?

Todd:
Yeah. Well, so we can, we can approach this from a couple of different levels. we can approach it from the practical business level and we can approach it from sort of, could call it the metaphysical level or the spiritual level. because I think there are answers on both fronts and I think they’re actually connected. It’s a circle, but, let’s, let’s call it from the metaphysical, from the spiritual level first, which is, I think that to create is a fundamentally human thing.

David: Yeah.

Todd:
It’s so human in fact that we have, we are now creating devices that can mimic that human capacity that no other being on earth has. No other being on earth contemplates its own mortality. No other being on earth can look at the environment and ask, what if, what if I built something over there? Now people will say, well, but beavers build dams. Yeah, but that’s biologically hardwired. Like beavers aren’t.

thinking, know, if we use oak instead of cedar, we could double the capacity of, know, they’re not, they’re not thinking straight. They’re just, they’re just doing what’s biologically normal for them. Right. whereas humans have this ability to counter entropy, to counter the dissolution of things in a way that no other being can. So I think.

From that standpoint, if we cease being creative, if we abdicate that creative mandate, I think we forfeit a part of our humanity. So, yay, on that happy note. So we have to keep creating or else we will forfeit our emotional being, our emotional soul. From a business perspective, we’re gonna get to a point pretty quickly where everything is reductive, where everything starts to feel vaguely familiar.

David:
Yeah

Todd:
Because AI, we call it generative AI, but it’s not really generating, it’s just pattern forming and using what it’s been trained on to form patterns. And so it feels new because it’s new to us, but it’s not new. And so I think that there’s always going to be a need for human intuition, for human taste, for humans to be able to,

to be able to exercise emotional logic, which is different from the kind of logic that comes out of machines. It comes out of AI. AI cannot do emotional logic. And by emotional logic, what I mean is a piece of work makes us feel a certain way. We have a reaction to it that’s rooted in our memories, that’s rooted in our aspirations. When we can tell that somebody has suffered for their work, it moves us in a way that you know, that we don’t often experience. So, you know, when I, when I hear things like Christopher Nolan doesn’t use CGI, he actually creates every single special effect that you see in any of his films. And he doesn’t use word processors to type his scripts. He, he has his scripts. He has physical copies that he hands to everybody for that. You these are his, and his notes are all pen and paper.

When I hear things like that, I’m like, I want to go see more of his films because there’s something, it’s not just the output, not just the product, but the process itself makes the work special. And so I think we’re going to see a tremendous use of AI for things like, and I just, today’s episode, podcast episode was with a couple of, one of the interviews was a couple of people who have started.

David (15:16.397)
Yeah.

Todd:
An AI for film editors to help them get through the grunt work of the early part of the process to get the quick edits faster so that they can use their intuition to do better creative work. Get the grunt work out of the way, use it like trucks, right? To help you like move the rocks. But then, okay, now I have to put the rocks in order. I think it’s gonna be a pushback against completely AI generated content in the next handful of years might take a while and not by everybody because some people are perfectly happy with AI generated slop They’re perfectly happy with it, but I think we’re be craving real human art Art that costs nothing means nothing If it doesn’t cost you something to make it if you just type the prompt it doesn’t really mean anything in the end So I think we’re gonna that’s always going to be it. There’s always going to be a desire for that

David:
Yeah.

Todd:
For friction. And by the way, that friction, sorry, I know I’m going on and on, but that friction is important as well. We move because of friction, cars move because of friction, music is made because of friction, whether it’s air rushing through something or vibration of strings, whatever it is, there’s friction that causes…

Art that causes sound that causes sensation and we’re trying to remove all the friction from our creative process But if we don’t have anything to push against then There is no art. There is nothing creative. So that would be my response is I think there we need to Yes offload the infrastructure parts of our work offload the grunt work. That’s fine But don’t offload the emotional logic. Don’t offload the the intuitive part of it because I think that’s what makes our work uniquely ours. And there’s gonna be more of a demand for that in the future.

David:
Yeah, it seems like AI is really good at delivering the expected answer, right? And I mean, based on its pattern recognition. And so that’s kind of what it’s about. And there are times when you want the expected answer, minus hallucinations. But where creativity shines, human creativity is, I’ve never seen that before. I’ve never thought, like that’s something I’ve never heard or seen.

Todd:
Mm-hmm.

David:
And that really is that uniquely human piece. I too, you mentioned the metaphysical, right? The very first word and verb in the Bible is created. And so if, you know, as a human notion, God is what we aspire to be, that represents perfection. Like, okay, well, that was the first thing our notion of God did was create. So there’s something in that deeper level to that where you’re really connecting with just something in the universe through that.

Todd:
Yeah. And I mean, if we, if we, if we want to get theological about it, we can also get theological about it and say that, you know, I mean, if you want to talk Genesis, you can say that, that, you know, man and woman are made in God’s image. and what does it mean to be made in God’s image? It means to be made with the attributes and the, qualities and the character, right. Or something about, so.

David:
Go then.

Todd:
If we know that in according to the Judeo-Christian heritage that God is a creator and if we know that humankind is made in the image of God, that means we are made as creators. We are wired as creators. There’s something about us that is unique. We are creators that we are able to generate from nothing. And so if we want, if we wanted to get on that road of being theological about it, we could say there is something fundamentally hardwired in us that is driven to create.

And when that drive to create is stagnant or when it’s taken away from us in some capacity that we feel the effects of that as humans. And so if we’re creating Andy Crouch, who I love as a philosopher and a tech expert and I had him on the podcast last year and he talked about AI. And he said, there are three things, three kinds of ways we can think about it. said there are tools.

He said, tools are great. Tools are like hammers. know, like I could hammer a nail with my hand, but it’s a whole lot easier if I have a hammer, right? It’s an extension of my capacity. So yes, I can try to hammer it with my hand, but a hammer gives me an extension of that capacity that makes it easier. Then he said there are instruments. An instrument gives us the ability to express our way, ourselves, our ideas in ways that we, that humans can’t. So think like a clarinet. I can imagine a clarinet solo, but I can’t make that sound with my body. But an instrument allows me to make that sound. Like an instrument gives me the capacity to do things I couldn’t do on my own. And then we have devices. Devices are like calculators, right? So I don’t know about you, but like when I was growing up, like we weren’t allowed to use a calculator in math class, we had to do the arithmetic in our head or we had to write it out.

David (20:21.335)
Yeah.

Todd:
And I was really good at doing that. I think at this point, it’s probably been 30 years since I’ve done math in my head, like hard math in my head, because I don’t have to. Why? Because I have a calculator with me everywhere I go. Well, what Andy would say is devices replace human capacities. And because we no longer have to, we no longer can. And I would say that’s true about me doing math. I would say if you gave me hard math to do in my head right now, I would struggle to do it. And the reason is,

I’m out of practice. I no longer can because I don’t have to anymore, right? I think the crossroads we are at with AI is we have to decide if we’re gonna use it like a tool, or we’re use it like an instrument, or we’re gonna use it like a device. I think there are creatives out there that are using it like a tool, which is fine, right? They’re using it to augment their capacity. Hey, take this thing and turn it into, give it 300 more words or something, right? That’s a tool. But the core of it was already written before.

An instrument, hey, give me seven things that I haven’t thought about that I probably should be exploring with this essay. my gosh, that’s really good. And then they go and they write the essay. That’s like using it as an instrument, right? It augments your capacity. helps you think about or express things that you would not have been able to do on your own. But then, it’s like, it’s like having a really great inspiring partner, right? Creative partner. Kevin Kelly called it an alien brain in an interview I did with him, right?

Or we could use it as a device, which is, hey, I have to write this 300 word thing, write it for me. There are times for that, for sure. I use AI to write my show notes for my podcast because honestly, like who cares? All it’s doing is describing what’s in the episode, but I would never use an AI avatar to interview my guests, right? I would never use an AI avatar to write my books or to be on videos of me. Why? Because

That’s the creative part of what I do. I’m using AI to describe the thing I already did. That’s fine. Like there’s nothing wrong with that, right? So I think we have to make a decision as creatives. Are we gonna use it as a tool, as an instrument or as a device? I think the highest use of AI right now is as an instrument. It’s to enable us to do things we couldn’t do on our own because we don’t have the capacity, the time, the energy, the focus to do it.

David:
Yeah.

Todd:
But AI gives us that ability because it augments our capacity. So I think that’s something we all need to be thinking about as leaders, as creative pros is how are we using it? And where are we using it? And where are we using it strategically?

Evelyn:
That’s a great perspective. I want to bring it back to another of our favorite books, is Herding Tigers, which is all about leading creative teams and working with creative people. And I feel like there’s some myths and just thoughts about quote unquote creative people and working with them and managing them. Are there any myths that you’d like to dispel?

Todd:
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the general, like one of the, one of the most frustrating things I experienced is like, creative is just flighty. They just, they just, they don’t want rules. They don’t want you to tell them what to do. And I think that that is a really damaging myth because first of all, you’re, can’t just lump a group and say creatives, right? Because like, again, we’re all creative and also like there are

healthy and unhealthy, functional and dysfunctional people in any category. So are there like creatives who are like, don’t give me any rules, man. Yeah, of course, of course there are, but also there are like bankers and lawyers who do that, right? So I think that’s one myth. The reality is most creative professionals that I know by the way, that’s important, creative, professional. There are two parts of that, creative, yay, we get to make things professional. You’re a mercenary. You’re making things for somebody else, right? Which means sometimes you’re gonna love what you make and sometimes you’re not, but your job is to do the thing that you’re hired to do. So most creative professionals that I know, they want boundaries. They want people to give them a sense of what to aim for because otherwise it’s like, I’m just spinning my wheels here, man. Trying to figure, I’m trying to get inside your head. I can’t figure out what you want. And there’s nothing more frustrating than working with a client who can’t even tell you what they want, right? They can’t even give you, they can’t even get you in the ballpark of what they want. And so I think that’s one of them is just creative pros often get a bad rap for pushing against authority, pushing against boundaries. But usually that’s because you won’t give me any direction and then I give you something and suddenly you come in and say, not that, go do this thing over here. And they’re like, wait, what? Like, you know, it’s, usually a reaction against.

bad leadership when I’ve seen it. But most creative professionals that I know are, they want boundaries. So that would be one big one, I think, is recognize that talented people need bounded autonomy, freedom within limits. They need boundaries to know where to focus their energy, but you need to give them freedom to think on their own and not try to control their process. And also not just coming at the end and say that’s not working for me. Try again, right? So you have to be leading them strategically influencing them throughout the process, but with clear direction.

David:
So one of the things you’ve written a lot about Todd is the idea of establishing like a creative rhythm. Talk a little bit, if you would, about like what are some of the daily rituals of the routines that you have that sort of get you in the place where you need to be to create consistently?

Todd:
Yeah, so there are five areas I wrote about in the Accidental Creative that form what I call creative rhythm. The first one is focus. Focus is about how you allocate your finite attention. We all have finite attention, so we have to choose very strategically where we’re gonna allocate that finite attention, which really comes down to how you define problems. A lot of us think we do projects. We don’t really do projects. We solve problems. That’s what we’re doing. And as we work, those problems get redefined.

So in that area, I’ll give you one example of a discipline I have right now that I didn’t even write about in the accidental creative, because this is a new, this is a new way of thinking about this for me. But I keep a list of what I call a list of tensions. most creative work is not about resolving tension. It’s about managing tension. Most leadership is not about resolving tension. It’s about managing tension. Those tensions are always going to be there. You’re always going to have a pushing a pole between deployment of resources and the quality of the work that you can do. How many resources should you deploy versus how great does this project need to be? That’s always a tension we’re gonna experience, right? Like how do we need to hire more people against this project or can we try to get fewer people to do more work, which means we have to move them away from other work.

It’s all about managing tension. So I keep a list of what I call a list of tensions and those are really problems I’m trying to solve. They’re open loops for me typically. And so that’s one way that I, and I review that every single morning. So this is my list of tensions. That’s one example of what that is in the book, in the book, the actual creative, talked about the importance of writing them, what I call your big three, which is a similar concept, which is what are the three most important open loops in your world right now and keep them in front of you. Consistently. the second area is relationships. We need other people in order to understand ourselves and in order to do our best work. But most of us aren’t very purposeful about building relationships in our life. So, it’s important that we have a discipline in our life of connecting with other people inviting input into our process, making sure that we’re not growing stagnant. the third area is energy management, which means managing our ability to bring what, what Lewis Hyde calls emotional labor to our work. all do labor, labor and mental labor, but emotional labor is discretionary energy that we bring to our work. and so I’m constantly looking at my list of priorities and asking myself what needs to be pruned. What good thing have I been doing that needs to go away? So something better could be born in its place, right? The fourth area is stimulus. So focus relationships, energy, stimulus or stimuli. These are the dots that we bring into our process to connect dots so that we can generate new ideas. Every single morning for the last 25 years, the first hour of my morning is sitting and reading and studying and thinking and writing and journaling and processing whatever I’m reading. And it could be anything. It could be. right now I’m reading a book called existentialism from Kierkegaard de Sartre, I think is what it’s called. it’s basically a book about existentialist philosophy. Does that mean I want to be an existentialist philosopher? No, but it fires my brain to think in new ways, right? It forces me to have to think about, I don’t know elements of my being that I don’t have to think about otherwise. So that would be one example of that. So You know, are you filling your mind with valuable stimulus consistently? And then finally hours, hours is about how we allocate our time. But most of us think about spending time. We don’t think about investing time. So do you have anything in your life where you’re investing in future returns? This can look like dedicating time for I did generation. I have blocks on my calendar every single week. Now, listen, I am immensely gift gifted in the sense that, I basically get to determine the work that I do which is a blessing and a curse because also nobody is telling me what to do. And so I pretty frequently make the wrong choices about what to work on because I do what is interesting to me, not what is going to provide for my family and build the business. So anyway, that said, we all need time where we’re investing in future returns. So I have regular time on my calendar every week where I am doing what I call basically strategy work or inventive work where I’m thinking, Hmm, what would I want? If I had all the resources I could ever want, what would I want to build? What would it, and one of the projects that came out of that is something that you’re both involved in creatively to round table, right? That was the result of me thinking about if, if really like, what would I want to make if I could make it? Well, I would want to make a community for.

leaders who feel alone and let them connect and you know and that came out of that sort of strategic thought time. So anyway focus, relationships, energy, stimuli, hours those are the five areas of rhythm and I encourage everybody listening to think about how they put a discipline in their life in each of those areas.

Evelyn:
Yeah, you brought it up briefly, but I want to talk about it a little bit more about the Creative Leader Roundtable and how it came to be, but maybe how it’s going so far, because we’re in the middle of it. It’s really exciting. We’re so thrilled to be a part of it.

Todd:
Yeah, well, we kind of just kicked off, And I’m intentionally keeping it small, smallish at the beginning because we need enough people for it to feel like there are enough voices, but we need it to be small enough where we can still build a culture and define what it is and kind of shape it before we scale it more. But it really came about because every single conversation I would have when I would go to speak at an organization or I’m talking to leaders in a pre-call for a speaking event because I do Handful of dozen speaking events a year and all over the world All of them revolve around this thing of like This is so great because we just never have anybody to talk to about this stuff and I’m like It’s so interesting to me that everybody keeps saying, we don’t have anybody to talk to about this stuff. And I’m like, you should meet the person I talked to yesterday who also told me the same thing. And so I just realized the reason is because we have, there are all kinds of groups like Vistage, which is a great group, but it’s for like CEOs of like reasonably large companies, or we have like YPO, but you have to like hit a certain mark to get in. You know, you have to have like a certain revenue mark or whatever. And then those are great organizations, but like, what about the creative director at an agency in Dayton, Ohio, or in Wichita, Kansas, or in whatever, where did they go? Who did they talk to? Let alone the unique work that they’re doing in the creative field. Who understands what they have to do every day? And so I just thought, wow, maybe somebody should create that. And I think part of the reason, honestly, somebody hasn’t created that is because…It’s a really hard group to reach. A, because, and I say this with all love, agencies are notoriously like hesitant to part with their money, with their resources when it comes to training and development. And I know not you, I’m not talking about the Ohlmann Group. Of course I’m not talking about that. But like, historically, like it’s just a really hard group to reach, right? Because they’re so busy and there’s so much on their plate. Which is exactly why they need it, but also why it’s so hard to reach them. So I think that’s a big reason why this is kind of a little unique in this space. And B, because anybody who was trying to start it was like basically trying to make a million bucks, you know, doing it. And so it’s like, well, if I can’t scale it to a certain point in a certain amount of time, then it’s not worth my effort. And I’m like, well, that’s, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m not, I mean, I hope it’s big and scales and whatever, that’d be fantastic.

But like I’m not primarily doing it just to make a bunch of money. I’m trying to do it because I see this real need that’s not being met. And I have incredible compassion for this group of people who have nobody to talk to. And I just want to connect them all and let them have conversation. And yeah, of course it’s my time. I have to make money, but like that’s not my primary concern. My primary concern is let’s just connect these people and let them have that conversation. So that was the impetus. And I think it’s gonna be really great before it’s all over. I think our first meetup went pretty well, feedback was pretty good and we’re gonna have some hiccups along the way but I’m very excited about it.

David:
Now it was, from my perspective, fantastic. And it was really interesting. There was enough difference between the folks in my group that it was interesting. You weren’t just talking to yourself, but there was so much, I don’t know if it’s empathy or sympathy, because we’re all dealing with the same things. And again, having somebody to talk to that’s living it and struggling with the same challenges. It’s just really, I don’t know, it’s affirming and just helpful, right? And just that ability to just talk through those things. It’s fantastic.

Todd:
100%. Like in part, part of it too, for me is like people ask me all the time, like what should I do? And I’m like, well, I’m happy to give you my opinion, but here’s a person right here who’s going through the same thing. And they’ve, why don’t you listen to what they have to say? Cause they’ve figured a couple of things out, right? Like we’re not sharing resources. Like, you know, it’s like if I was sitting at a table and you know, you had, you know, you had this terrible example, you had like a giant cup of water and I had a sandwich and that’s all we had. I’d be like, hey, I’ll give you half my sandwich if you give me half your cup of water, right? And then we both have a meal. I think there are a lot of people out there in the creative space who have like a sandwich or a cup of water. And they’re like, I just don’t, I want to share this with someone. I just don’t know who to share it with. And it’s a really weird analogy, but I think it, but I think it applies. Cause I think, you know, you have something to share with all the people in your group.

Todd:
That maybe they’ve never thought of before because they’ve never been in your shoes. You might have the unlock that completely changes the trajectory of their organization. So yeah, that’s my goal. I just want to connect a bunch of people and we’ll see what happens.

David:
Yeah, there was a lot of that dynamic and a lot of dynamic of just like, I got a glass water and no sandwich too. Like, okay, well we’re in this together.

Todd:
Right, Yeah. Anybody know a good sandwich shop? Right. Yeah, exactly.

David:
And if someone were interested in the Creative Leader Roundtable, where might they find some information about that, Todd?

Todd:
You can go to creativeleader.net and you can apply. We’re not actually accepting new members right now. As a matter of fact, we had, I think a hundred and something people apply. We only invited less than 25 to actually join this first round because we’re trying to keep it small and tight and focused at the beginning. But we will be inviting more people over the course of the year. we’ll probably, I imagine we won’t get any bigger than 50 this year. so we might double in size, but we’re not going to like quadruple in size this year. cause again, I’m trying to grow it strategically and make sure that we keep it at a, at a good, at a good pace as we grow, have the right people, not just a lot of people. That’s really important.

David:
So this question I suspect might be a hard question, but we’ll see. You’ve written several books that have really shaped how people think about creativity, about leadership, just really great stuff. I own all of them. I think I own all of them in print, Kindle, and Audible.

Todd: Hehehe.

David:
If you had to pick one that’s the most you, like this one is just near and dear to my heart. It just represents me in the best possible way so far. Which one would that be and why?

Todd Henry (39:07.726)
That’s a really hard, it is a really hard question to answer.

David:
It’s a Sophie’s choice.

Todd:
Kind of I mean it would be easy to say Daily Creative because it’s a reader that captures like so many little fragments I won’t say that one I Would say that the one I feel the most urgent about is the Brave Habit which is my latest book and the reason is that I really believe that right now There are a lot of people who know the right thing what they lack is the courage to do it under pressure and that applies in the business world that applies in our neighborhoods that applies in everything. Right. So I think that that’s the most urgent for me and the most personal message right now. and that’s really, the book is about integrity under pressure. It’s about like how to do the right thing, even when confronted with, you know, potential personal loss. But I would say the book that most expresses me is probably louder than words, which is ironically also my worst selling book of all of my books.

David:
Hey, I bought three, I did my part.

Todd Henry: Hey, well, thank you. You bought a third of all the copies that were sold now. I’m just kidding. and it’s funny when I say it was my worst selling book, like it still has sold more than like most business books that are released. but that book, that book was about how to identify and develop your unique voice, how to make your voice resonate in the marketplace. And I thought I was writing the one profile of person. And it turns out I was writing to an entirely different profile of person because that’s the book of all the books I’ve written. Even though it sold the worst, that more, like you’ve even called them famous people, well-known people have reached out to me and said, hey, thanks for writing this. This really helped me. This really helped me refine how I talk about what I do. It really refined how I present myself, really refined how I make my work matter, reconnected me with why I do what I do. So I wasn’t.

Like if I had set out to write a book that was targeted at like famous musicians or famous filmmakers or famous, you know, business leaders, I would have written a different book, but it turns out that’s the book that I wrote and I didn’t mean to. so I’m grateful for that. So I think that’s probably the one that most does that. Most resonates with who I am. and it should, it’s about finding your, ironically, it’s a book about how to make your voice resonate. And it sold the least of all my books.

David: Hahaha.

Todd:
But I think it did resonate deeply with the people who read it and that matters as much to me as anything.

Evelyn:
A lot of people, famous people, regular people like myself and David, we look to you for creative inspiration from books, podcasts. But when you need to refuel your creative tank, who or what are you looking to for inspiration?

Todd:
Yeah, I I do the same thing. I listen to podcasts, you know, I go out and I try to find interesting thinkers. I, as much as I can, try to go back to original sources or I try to go back to original thinkers from the past because I find that there’s a kind of zeitgeist, a recycling in the zeitgeist, you know, like I’m hearing, so funny, like I know that they’re not doing this on purpose, but like I’ll hear people share ideas that are like, just had this amazing thought and I’m like, yeah, I wrote about that like 20 years ago, you know, or whatever. Like I’ll hear that all the time. And I’m sure when I put my first books out, there probably was somebody reading them going, yeah, I was writing about this in 1978, you know? So there’s this kind of recycling that happens in the zeitgeist that where everybody thinks that they’re original, because it’s really about like, hey, pay attention to me more than it is about like contributing to original thought. So I go back to, that’s why I’m reading the existentialism book. Like I want to read what Dostoevsky was thinking about, you know, in the mid 1800s about culture and society. And, um, you know, I want to know more about, uh, how Kierkegaard saw, you know, the decline of Europe in the 1800s. so it’s, I don’t know. It’s just helpful to me to go back to those. Uh, one of my favorite writers of all time is a mystic and a monk from the mid-1900s Thomas Merton, who was cloistered outside of Louisville, Kentucky, and I think wrote some of the most profound stuff about life and art and creativity and business even. He wasn’t writing about business, but he was writing about business. And just really profound stuff that really just made me think in a new way about life and work and all that. So I try to look to those kind of voices because, A, their wisdom has stood the test of time. And B, it’s something I can react against that doesn’t feel contemporary, it doesn’t feel like a kindling that you throw on a fire and then kindling burns up pretty quickly. It feels more like a deep substantial log that you’re putting on the fire that’s going to burn for a while. So like everybody, I listened to, I listened to all the podcasts, right? he’s trying to absorb the zeitgeist, but when I really want to stop and think, I go back to as much as I can, like the original, not the original, but the, like the, the sources that have stood the test of time.

David:
One final question that we like to ask every one of our guests. What’s the future that you want to create?

Todd:
I believe that we, that all of us, the one thing that’s going to be required of us moving forward is going to be the discipline of bravery. And then we talked about them when I talked about, the brave habit, but, I want to create a world in which people are connected to one another in which they’re sharing their aspirations, their dreams and their ideals with one another in which they have a support group where that can help them accomplish that. And, in which people feel empowered to.

Express their ideas in a way that can resonate and serve the world around them and that could be through any medium It could be through any forum any whatever but I just want to create I want to create a world in which people don’t feel inhibited by their own fears by aimlessness that they’re rooted in their productive passion. They’re curious. They’re growing there. They understand who they are They’re not limited by fear. They’re connected to others, they’re leveraging their platform. That’s the future that I want to create. Cause I think that’s when everything gets beautiful is when we’re all operating in our area of productive passion. We’re all, we understand what we’re willing to suffer for. That’s when the world gets really beautiful.

David:
Amen, I love that. Well Todd, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. It’s fantastic.

Todd:
Great, thank you. Yeah, this is really fun. It’s been great getting to know both of you more and looking forward to seeing you in the round table. And thanks for all the great work that you do there.

Trust, Visibility and Credibility

LLMs don’t “crawl” your website like search engines do. Instead, they create responses based on licensed sources, training data, APIs, and content that is publicly available.

Imagine you ask your closest 50 friends if the sky is blue. Now imagine 47 of those 50 friends answered that yes, the sky is indeed blue. You would see that as a strong enough pattern that the three friends that said the sky is pink can be disregarded. Putting it very simply, that’s how LLMs work. They gather all pertinent information and synthesize based on pattern recognition.

Linguistic Authority – LLMs measure linguistic authority over structural, meaning that backlinks aren’t as important as covering a topic fully and naturally including relevant content

Depth is key – Gone are the days of briefly outlining the “Top 5 Tips”. Diving deeper into relevant context will set you up for greater GEO success by creating contextual links and establishing you as an authority.

Writing for humans – LLMs are trained to mimic human judgement. That means that creating content that works for humans also works for AI.

How does Public Relations fit into GEO?

The more content around a topic that establishes your business as a solution to a problem the more opportunities for contextual depth, engagement, and pattern creation.

Strategic Media Relations & Placements – To create a successful GEO plan bring your communications team to the table right away. Take a moment right now and look at your business plan for the year. What are the key milestones you expect? Do you have product releases coming up? Will you be making a large donation to a local non-profit? Make sure you have a media plan around each of these.

Prioritize Expert Commentary – LLMs like experts, so set yourself up as one. Beyond the press release, set up leaders in your organization for interviews. Traditional news is a great, but also explore leading influencers in your industry.

Owned media – Don’t underestimate leveraging what you own. Whether it’s your website, LinkedIn or Reddit, deeply discuss topics related to your industry often. Be sure to weave in relevant content to your business and clearly state who the author is.

Prepare for the Crisis

Now, you’ve spent a great deal of time creating owned media and placing earned media, all establishing you and your business as a trusted source that AI will pull from. Don’t waste that because of a reputational crisis. Protect the trust signal that AI relies on with a comprehensive crisis communications plan.

The landscape is constantly evolving

As AI continues to evolve, the team at Ohlmann Group is here to help craft, implement, and measure your new GEO strategy. Let’s talk!

In the book “Chief Crisis Officer”, author James Haggerty shared the results of a review of more than 12,000 public statements issued by companies facing a range of crisis situations. He found:

 “In every case where the event caused sustained reputational damage … it was clear the company didn’t have a plan in place for communicating publicly when a negative event or incident happened. They were making it up as they went along.”

It’s impossible to anticipate every crisis but organizations can develop a playbook for potential scenarios and set a foundation for an efficient and strategic response that will help support the organization’s long-term reputation.

Ohlmann Group has worked with organizations of all sizes to train teams and develop crisis response strategies. Here are our top recommendations to stay crisis-ready:

3 Ways to Stay Crisis Ready

1. Build a team

In an initial crisis response, uncertainty about who is in charge and who has the authority to declare that the organization is facing a crisis can cause an unnecessary stumbling block.

In Chief Crisis Officer, Haggerty makes the case for identifying a leader in the organization, usually in communications or legal, who has the “authority to act, the willingness to act and the background, experience and communication skills to act effectively.”

The core crisis team should be supplemented with operational experts relevant to the crisis. The facilities director, for example, if there is damage to a building, or the IT team in the case of a data breach.

2. Create a playbook

When you’re in the middle of a crisis, having a written playbook lets you cut through the inevitable emotion of the moment and move to action. The best crisis playbooks are succinct, well-organized, regularly refreshed, and accessible anywhere.

Your playbook should include:

• Contact information for the crisis team and operational experts
• Locations (and alternates) for the core team to meet and to stage media
• Passwords and access to all communication channels
• Statement templates for potential major events.

3. Practice

It can be difficult to find the time for a crisis tabletop drill, but in order to manage a crisis professionally, it helps to work from muscle memory of thinking through the scenario and how to respond.

Working through the challenges and unanticipated issues of a crisis scenario will help the team respond quickly and effectively during a crisis.

Don’t underestimate the after-action review. You weathered a crisis or had a near miss. Now, gather your team and discuss what you did well and what could have been done better. Then, don’t forget to update your playbook! 

The steps you and your team take today to stay crisis-ready will shorten the duration of future crises and help you restore your organization’s reputation more quickly.

Ready to build your organization’s crisis plan and get crisis-ready? Get in touch with our team to schedule a crisis training or media training session.