CreativeMornings ™

The way we start our day, determines the way we finish our day.

We need people around us.

Are those people speaking in to your world? Or are you speaking into their world?

Who is your circle of influence?

We need to surround ourselves with the right people.

The most important part of any talk is the Q&A: questions and application, not just answers.

We live in a society that deems the feminine as a negative—don't be a pussy, stop being a bitch, to be female is to be weak. I was told yesterday that I had balls because of the way that I run our company—a male attribute assigned to my strengths and successfully coding three businesses. Men in business, please understand that this practice is bullshit; it's hurtful, demeaning, and it's not me being a whiny bitch by saying it.

It was the best experience that ever could have happened to us because it was the worst experience that could have happened to us. We needed it to happen because we needed to be humbled.

We live with the repercussions of just existing with the melanin in our skin, so just speak the truth.

It's okay to get to a point in life and realize what you're doing isn't for you anymore.

Just because I'm different from you, doesn't mean I owe you an explanation for my difference.

I threw myself into a totally new role at the age of 40 was, to say the least, very humbling. All of a sudden I had to find myself asking for help, saying I didn't know how to do things, and crying a lot.

When you go through adversity, you shouldn't pity the life you have; you should respect it and don't question it.

Just because I'm different from me doesn't mean that I owe you an explanation for my difference.

I used art as an escape.

We have to work a lot harder at intentionally building relationships so we can get to know one another – so that we can destroy racial implicit biases we all have.

Be a mathematician of the spirit.

We make a point at Shut up and Dance to just say all those silly, out there, weird, funny ideas because sometimes they are weird and funny and it doesn't really make sense but it will spark another idea from someone else.

We realised that all decisions are based on love and fear and that you should always say yes (to Goldings), because you know that by saying yes you're going to take opportunities and see potential in everyone you meet. It will manifest in a happy accident somehwere, like Shut up and Dance.

All in all, failure just isn't failure. It's the not trying that's the real failure.

It's not that I wanted to fail, but it was just part of becoming who I am.

So like any kid right out of school, I thought "Well, I'll just take tomorrow off."

That was an early lesson to me, in that you can still fail in things, and its not even really your fault. Sometimes its just a bad situation.

Temporary autonomous space is a space where you suspend the rules and the consensus agreements about culture and behavior and you make new ones to try out and I think about studios as temporary autonomous spaces.

What would be the scariest thing to do next.... use that to figure out what to do next... If I am really terrified of it there's heat there.