124. How do you nurture creativity? (f. Judy Stakee)
Wondering how to become the most creative version of you? 💡 This episode has you covered! Brand Therapy hosts Phil and Lauren meet with legendary songwriter coach and long-time client Judy Stakee to discuss all things creativity. This episode covers the power of presence, consciousness, voice, and tools to create a system that develops your creative potential. Judy shares her proprietary methodology for songwriters, including caring for your body, mind, and soul, which will help creatives of all types!
Episode transcription
Phil
Hello there, welcome to brand therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is the podcast where we help you do three things, position your brand, build something to show for it, and promote the heck out of it. You know how this works. I mean, I'm hoping you've been here before for an episode. Sometimes it's Lauren, and I talk in solo about things, and other times we get particularly excited about episodes like this one, where we call our friends, our past clients, also friends, back on. People we know that are the smartest at what they do, they come and join us. And let me tell you something, and I have a feeling Lauren Moore is going to agree, today's episode is a discussion with one of our very, very favorite people. Would you not agree Lauren Moore?
Lauren
Without question, Judy, is a treasure. She's a genius. She's also got the most soothing voice in the world. And I wish that Judy, as a side note, I wish you would release a meditation series because I would listen to that non stop. I am so excited to have Judy on the podcast.
Judy
Thank you.
Phil
You're here, Judy, you're on Brand Therapy. I love the idea that Lauren just said. What if you were my alarm clock in the morning. So instead of that noise the wakes me up at 6:15. I instead want my alarm to be Phil, it's time to get up. Morning, it's time to get up and time to be creative.
What a segue. We're talking about creativity today. And I just have to paint the picture, first of our relationship and our friendship over the years, it would take the whole podcast to go into detail on it. But let me give an overview. I'm always quick to say that Judy Stakee’s significance in my career was the first person that I ever did a brand audit with and came back to you with all kinds of ideas on ways that I wanted to help you. You were the first person in my career that looked at the list and said, yes, let's get started. You just trusted me right from the beginning.
Judy
I did.
Phil
And I did. That is your significance in my career. So isn't that a cool moment?
Judy
It is a very cool moment, because I did everything on that list was like that's reasonable it I understand why you're asking me this. And it was just you talked in language that I understood.
Phil
Yeah. We've always talked in language, like we have this special little bond and you're one of our you're on our all time favorite roster. You have just played such a significant role, I think in our evolution and growth and success. And I'm so proud of you, you know, the book, which still is incredibly successful, the YouTube series, door to door all of these started as little ideas, Judy Stakee. And now they're successful, and they continue and you persevere and you inspire so many people. And you're just one of our favorites. So I couldn't start the episode without saying that.
Judy
You helped me plant seeds for my company.
Lauren
It's amazing. You work with creatives with songwriters specifically, but they are creatives. And I feel like you're so skilled at nurturing creativity. And I'm curious to know, are you conscious of the energy that you're bringing to conversations or to the room? Is that something you think about?
Judy
I believe consciousness is one of our most precious commodities in the world. And being aware and being conscious of how I approach someone and how I talk to them, and what I bring up is very intentional. It's very intentional. I'm given the honor, it is an honor to guide other people to their dreams. Now I happen to do it through the process of songwriting, but through the process of songwriting, they are accomplishing the goal of taking care of themselves. They're accomplishing the art of storytelling, they're they're learning the art of taking care of themselves. I mean, there's so much more to it than just songwriting. But that's a huge responsibility. So I'm very aware of how I enter a room and how what I say and yeah, it's it's very intentional.
Lauren
So interesting.
Phil
It transcends just a physical room. I'll let you in on a little secret Judy, Lauren, and I have said multiple times after hanging up, we've said this first years ago, we've said to one another after hanging up on a phone call with you that you have this magical way of leaving things better than when they were found. So at the end of a phone call with you, you feel better. You just have this effect on people and I know that it's not just us. We've heard from your team, we've been in touch recently with your team working with them. And we're working on some stuff, some secret stuff. And I think it's such a talent and such a skill, particularly in such a vulnerable world, I think. You're working with songwriters, you're working with people that want to be singers and songwriters. And it's incredibly artful and vulnerable. What an interesting thing to be able to not knock someone down, even if they need some work. Maybe elaborate on how you do that, even if someone was bad, you know, about objectively or subjectively, but you can still identify a way or approach that is constructive. Can you elaborate on how you do that?
Judy
Absolutely. We are all people. There's 7 billion of us on this planet. And we're all just people trying to go to work and make a living and go for our dreams and have a family. And we're trying to do this every day. We all make mistakes every single day. I mean, talking on this phone, we've all started a sentence and stopped and we've all made mistakes, even on this call. And so the thing is, is that we live in this world, I believe that is very, you have to be perfect. If you're not perfect, and if you don't do it exactly right, you get punished for it. So I believe that when you're trying to create anything, you need the room to be able to fall down. And you need to be able to do it without shame. Shame will freeze you. To be shamed in ‘oh, I don't do it as well as everybody’, ‘oh, I can't sing as well as everybody, so I'm gonna go, oh, my God’, that will freeze somebody right away. So the trick is not to shame somebody into doing something. This goes back to the first question, am I aware of my voice and what I tell, your voice is your power, Without my voice, I would be writing, you know, cards to you so you could read them, right? But my voice is my power. It's how I order a salad at a restaurant, it's how I talk to my clients, it's how you ask somebody out, how you propose to somebody. How you use your voice is very, very important. So what I do with my clients and with my community, is that I create a safe container. And I believe that's what you're talking about with my voice is the first thing is I create a safe container. With my words with what I tell them and how I speak to people, I make them feel safe. This is all goes down to my methodology, but I create a safe container. You give them the time to be able to do what they need to do. And then I give them tools. And part of the tools is me also. Because the way I believe that you get better, especially being a creative, or an anything is you have a mirror in front of you. You have somebody who's going to correct your paper, someone who's going to go, you missed three of these and you really need to figure out you know, the answer is because otherwise everything else is going to make sense. You need someone who's going to taste the cake after you bake it to tell you there's too much sugar, go do it again. You need someone to try on the shoes that you just met, you need someone there who is going to say I'm sorry, but your story doesn't make sense. Let me show you how to make sense.
When you're writing a song, you are writing something from thin air. It's not like you take a photograph and you've got a photograph that you print, you are writing something out of thin air. It's an emotion, it's a melody, it's words, those are now I know we can put them down into a form, but you're writing something out of thin air. So it's not like I can sit somebody at a table and go, okay, hammer this into this. And you know, here's the instructions. It's okay, let me make sure that you are in the right space so that your heart is open, so you can access it, that you have all the words and language that you need in front of you, so you can put the words together. I mean, let me make sure that your body is in shapes, so your voice can be as great as it can be.
These are all things that they need to figure out, and that's what I provide. I provide a safe container like I said, so these kids can come in there and figure out what they want to do without the shame. I want them to be the best songwriter that they can be. That's my job to make sure that they have the tools that they can become a great songwriter. Because once you become great at what you do, you can kind of go anywhere, you can do anything, and because you're great, people are going to want to be with you.
Phil
You can wear polka dots and plaid.
Judy
Yeah.
Lauren
So this might go back to your methodology, and I think it would actually be useful for our listeners to learn a bit about your methodology. When you are saying and asking someone if they're in the right space for creativity, what does that mean? Okay,
Judy
Let's go back to my methodology. I believe that in order to create what you want to create, I have developed a filter to look through your life. To make sure that certain things are in place so that you can create. So I liken it to, if you're going to build a house, you've bought up a lot, five acre lot of dirt, you're not going to build the house on the dirt, you're going to build it on a foundation. And then that foundation is strong, so that you can build a one story or two story or three story, you can build out that foundation is going to last you forever. It's earthquake proof the whole bed. So my methodology is the foundation that I pour for a career.
And like I said, you have to have the time and space and in order to do what you want to do, but you need tools. The six tools that I provide, or that I offer people are the that's what lays the foundation. The tools are, if you want your song to be great, you're gonna have to know and take care of your voice, your lyrics, and your melody. Those three things, even if you're not singing, even if you're not going to be an artist, you're going to write for other people, you still have to make sure your voice is great, because you're still gonna have to go to meetings, and do podcasts and talk to lawyers, and your voice, the difference between singing and talking is just a little nuance. So you have to know how to use your voice singing and talking. You have to know how to be a great storyteller and your melodies, that comes from your emotions. If I sat here, and when I fell, what do you want? You know, that would be another melody to the words that I say, hey, Phil, what do you need, what do you want, you know, that takes on a whole different attitude. The other three tools are, you have to take care of yourself, which means you have to take care of your body, your mind and your soul. So you have to take care of your body because your voice doesn't exist without it. And if you're in a crappy mood, believe me, your voice is not going to be pretty. You have to take care of your mind because the mind is the computer, and that's how you learn all your words and your stories and put everything together. And your soul. that's who you are. That's where your melodies come from. And if your soul is closed off, and you're not, you're just fine, I'm fine, and I don't want to talk to anybody and don't tell you, that's what your songs are going to be. That's what you're going to access. So to be able to access all of you, the good, the bad, the ugly, that's what I want. I want to get people into a creative space, where they're not thinking about what they just did at work, but how do you come home, get the work out of your mind, get your body ready for the co-write for your writing session.
Let’s go back, let's say you've worked all day, all right, you come home and you have a six o'clock cco-write for three hours that you have to be ready for. When you get home at five o'clock, believe me and you don't do anything, you're going to walk into that co-write closed, still at work, just cramped off, okay. You have to be able to be open to access, whatever you need the access to your your whole, the whole palette of colors that you're writing with has to be open. Well, how do you open that? So if you get home at five, and your co-write is at six, you need to take care of your body, mind and soul in that hour. What I teach is, I teach these little tricks and tools so that writers have these accessible. So when they come home at five, they're not just like, what do I do? It's like, go do a handstand, go take a walk, go make sure you eat, go take a bath, go get ready for the session. Prepare yourself.
Lauren
I love that. It's like filling the tank of your car.
Judy
That's another analogy I use every day. I mean, if you don't eat three times a day, how do you think your car is going to work?
Lauren
Yeah, I love that I since moving to Vancouver about a year ago, I made this promise to myself that I was not going to be checking my email when I first woke up because my email would run my life. And I go for a 45 minute to one hour walk where I listen to a podcast or just think, sometimes and don't listen to anything, and just take in the sights around me. And on the days that I don't do it, I feel depleted. It's amazing. It's crazy how much of a difference it makes. So I am totally in sync with your recommendations.
Judy
Thank you. It does make a difference. Yeah, it does balances you out. When you're sitting in front of a computer all day. That is just you know, first of all, it's drying you out all this electricity is so, so depleting on your system. And we're sitting all day, you know, there's all this equipment. So the first thing I do is I'm outside in the dirt. You know, I'm taking Bailey for a walk and yeah, before and after I work.
Phil
Do you have any advice for people that struggle with prioritizing that. I'm one of those I look at my to do list for the day and it's ambitious because we're a two person business plus obviously contractors for specific tasks. We love our jobs. We love our work. So we like to do the work which is good, but it can be hard to not only prioritize your own projects work related, but also prioritize you personally, when you're looking at a massive to do list. Any tips for people that maybe they don't even now carve out time to be creative? How do you suggest someone go about doing that?
Judy
Well, my invitation would be to look at the story that you're telling yourself. You don't know how to prioritize, because you've got so you've got this to two lists, and where do you prioritize yourself, but you know, all of this. The statement, I mean, the one I make is that I am the priority, I am the priority, I run everything. If I'm not taking care of this, the To Do List doesn't get done, because I am the priority. If I don't feed myself well, if I don't take my walk, if I don't sleep well, then I'm going to rob myself and all my clients and everybody else of what's what's happening. So it's prioritizing it that my walk is very, very, very important to me, you know. There's probably twice a week that I don't go on that walk, and one of them is because I take my housekeeper home at the end of Tuesday. So I have a dog walker for Bailey. And it's the same thing, I miss it, but I'm the priority. And I prioritize my time, so that if I have to get up a half an hour earlier than I do, because I want to make sure that I get my walk in, because I'm the most important thing in my life. Not my clients, not my to do list, not anything else, is I am the priority, I got to take care of me because if I get sick, then none of this happens.
And I'm really very proud to say that in the six years that I was putting on in person retreats before the pandemic, I only missed two days. And that was a family emergency. That's when my husband died two years ago, but I had never missed one because I was sick. And I never missed getting up and being the first one at yoga, you know, going come on everybody, let's you know, it's because I have such a high, I put myself at higher priority.
The other thing is scheduling. It's just scheduling. Like Lauren, you said, it's like, first thing you do is this and then you go for a 40 minute run, and then your day starts. And you have to you just have to be diligent. And again, it's changing the story, that you're the most important thing in your life, and no one else is going to do it for you.
Lauren
That's true. I would be very interested to hear if people actually tell themselves, I am the priority in my life. Because I don't think I really do it. I try. I'm really trying, but I don't I don't think Phil does that either.
Phil
My immediate thought is okay, who's in my orbit? And who needs a piece of it? You know, not in a bad way.
Judy
It's what I teach to all my clients that if they don't, then they're not being conscious. How can you be conscious of how are you taking care of yourself, you have to be so aware of how you're taking care of yourself, and I believe that carries also into how you take care of everybody else. Yeah, it also you become a leader in that in taking care of yourself.
The other thing is, I've done a lot. I've done a lot of work around it. And one of the things that I've done with a group that I'm in that really helped, is I've done it twice now is that I've written a love letter to myself. And it's really interesting when you have to really turn it on you and go, okay, what do I love about me? You know, why am I so in love with myself? And it's not something that our society shines a light on. It's what have you done for me lately? Have you done all this? Have you done? But no one says, so did you do your yoga class today? Did you take it? You know, how did you sleep last night? Did you get your eight hours in you know, and it's something that I've just again, it's something that I teach, because in my line of work, and it should be everybody's but if your voice is not there, then I can't teach, there are of no good to me. And it starts with a body.
So I mean, at the very beginning of these retreats, it was very interesting, because you're doing a couple of retreats. And so they're, you know, we served wine on the last night and you know, it was we're in France and, and the next day, and not the first retreat, but I think was the second retreat that they'd started drinking the night before the night before we ended. And, you know, a couple of them came in the next day, just like they couldn't do anything, you know, they were just gone. And it's like, there's your example, okay, there's your example right there. And I know it's like you're away from home and you know, it's like you're it's summer camp, and let's have fun and but if you're going to do this every day of your life, there's got to be some discipline, so that you can be as creative and as productive as possible. You know, I get in the office about eight and I'm eight to 12, I got four hours of really great work, and then I have an hour lunch. That's when I watch my shows. That's when I turn on my Netflix stuff, you know, and I watch my shows. And I'll take a walk. But I'll take an hour off and then I'll work from one to five another four hours. And I have plenty of and I take a snack or you know, I get up and pet Bailey and stuff. But that's my time to work because I've taken my hour lunch and I fed myself so well. And I love what I eat. And so there's just this joy I have in stopping.
Lauren
Wow. Fascinating. Now I want to block off an hour lunch been such a good idea.
Phil
I've thought about it before. I've thought about it recently, because on Tuesdays and Thursdays we stack our calls, but we don't take time to eat. Even just on the call I had right before this I ate even though it's probably not as professional, I get away with it, Lauren would never eat on a call because she's like, maybe he holds a higher standard than me. And I'm like, playful on calls, and I’m kind of the little shit that gets away with things. And I do it because I know no one's going to be bothered by it. But I've thought about that, Judy. So it's so interesting to hear.
Judy
Well what you want to hear is that I do these retreats that are five days long. And at the end of the retreat on that Friday morning, I stand up in front of 21 writers and I say look at what you accomplish. This week, you did three yoga classes, you took a vocal lesson, you had 12 hours or more of education and lecture from me with videos and homework and exercises and all that. You wrote three songs, you performed three songs, you got to know 21 other people, you had songs critiqued. And you took three hours out of every day to eat. And that's what that they're like, I said, you accomplished all that. And you took three hours out of every day to eat, it can be done. And you exercised every day, it can be done. It can be done, it can be done. Think that's my new, there's my new motto, Phil, it can be done.
Phil
It can be done. Let's take it and run with it. I have so many questions for you. But one that's lingering in my mind is when someone says I'm not creative. And there are people who say that, I'm not creative. What would you say to people, and maybe I don't know, are there songwriters that have said that about themselves? I'm not creative. You've had how many songwriters that you've worked with? 700 plus? So I'm sure there's been a couple but right. What do you say to people who say that I'm not creative?
Judy
Well, I don't usually get that from my songwriters, but I get it from people maybe who are looking to be a songwriter, you know, I'm not a creative person. I could never do that. And I'm like, did you wake up this morning and get out of bed? And they're like, yeah, I said, and then did you, like have breakfast and get to work? And they're like, yeah, I'm like, well, you just created your day, you got up and created your day. You get up every day and create your life. Every single human being on this planet is a creator, we are creating. Again, there's this society of like, if you're not an artist, and you're not a photographer, you're not creating, but look at a an archaeologist. Look what he creates, you know, look what he's creating. He's creating this journey in this process, to go and dig and find old, everybody's creative. It's just how much time and effort do you want to put into a passion of yours to express it? I think that's why we're all here on this planet is to be creative, to be able to show our expression, or what are we here for?
I mean, one of the things that I know that I'm here on this earth, because I am so passionate to the core, is teaching songwriters, giving them an education and giving them a language and giving them the tools that they need to be successful. Right now I'm mentoring two high school students, you know, because I want them to have as much fuel as they can at 16, so that when when they get to be 25, they can have their career. If they can start now, by doing exercises and learning what they need to know. Then they have a chance.
Hmm, but yes, I think every single person is creative. It's just what do you want to do with it? Not every client of mine wants to be Britney Spears. I have a client who wanted to come back and figure it out, learn more about songwriter and he was taking guitar lessons at the same time because he had kids. He had three girls and he wanted to have a music night. And he wanted to teach his kids how to write. And he wanted to have music in the house. That was his goal. Fantastic. He's creating, he's creating songs, he's creating music and he's creating a space for his kids to learn and to be able to express themselves musically. That's beautiful.
Lauren
Now we've talked about creating the right environment for creativity. And by leading from a place of, I guess, like honesty instead of shame, now, on the flip side of the coin when it comes to finishing your creative work, I feel like when you're striving for excellence and you're pointing out what's wrong, then that might reintroduce shame and a whole bunch of other emotions. So how would you recommend someone approaches that?
Judy
My method is that I never, I would never raise my voice. I would never say, Oh, that's terrible. I wouldn't do that. I think that encouragement, offering a compliment before you go into how you could do it better. My methodology offers a great tool for critiquing. And so what I teach my songwriters to do, I mean, I want them all to come to me for the rest of their lives and pay me money to critique their songs, but I'm giving them the tools and the education to do it, so that they can help each other.
So basically, when you're looking at a song, I look at it and I first hear, okay, how is the voice that's singing the demo? Oh, you know, it's like, well, maybe let's start there. You know, your songs really good. But the demo singer is not selling it as much. Let's talk about who you Who did you hire? Did you sing it? Oh, you're just singing? Okay. Maybe we should, you should hire somebody else, you know, because you're a good singer, but to have somebody who can really sell it, because we want to give it to Kelly Clarkson, maybe it's time to do that. Let's experiment with that. So you can look through the lens and go, wait, you're oh, my God, whoever was singing this demo is fantastic. Oh my god. Okay. But let's look at the lyrics, huh? Your story's not quite clear. I get that he broke up with you, but then you go off on this trail about your mother, are you talking about your mother, you're talking about the book. So then you can go through the story. And I ask questions. I don't say that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. It's what motivated you to write it? Why did you bring the mother in it? What do we stay right on the boyfriend? Instead of going? You only have four minutes and 200 words to tell a song to write a story. So yeah, maybe the mother can be you can tell that in a different song. Then you go to the melody. If the lyrics and the and the voice are great, then you go to the melody and say, you know, your melodies are a little bit flat. Let's put some intervals in them. So you get some highs to them. You know.
Lauren
I love it.
Judy
There's the famous stories of Sheryl Crow and Katy Perry, both my clients, back at Warner Chappell. Sheryl Crow did her first album, and they didn't think that there was a hit on it. And so she had to go do it again. So the Tuesday Night Music Club was their second album. Katy Perry did a first album for Sony and then left Sony and then did a whole new album for EMI because they didn't think they had the hits on them.
Lauren
Well, it just shows that that your talent doesn't need to be defined by the one thing you create, you can continue to improve and which is interesting.
Judy
Yeah, that's what happens.
Phil
Listeners do not agree with me that this conversation has been the fuel you needed for your day, for your career, a little pep talk? Well, I'll just say that every conversation with Judy Stakee is like this. And I'm just so happy that we got to bring our listeners in on this one. Because really, you do provide this fuel, this recentering and focus and optimism and positivity that is just so wonderful. Thank you for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy today. Really, this is such a valuable conversation for everyone. And I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks of it.
Judy
Thank you so much, guys. I just, first of all, I love talking about this subject and we could talk all day about it. So thank you for giving me the platform to share it with your listeners. I appreciate it.
Phil
We appreciate you Judy Stakee. Thanks for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy.
