In this milestone episode 250, host Mark Stinson re-issues one of the first interviews in the podcast series from 2019. The early guests exemplify the world of creativity in business.

Bob Baurys, CEO of 83bar, and Cristián Saracco, founder of Allegro 234, shared their insights and experiences in nurturing ideas and growing successful enterprises.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

·      How to grow your business through the power of branding

·      The value of personalizing your product or service when making business decisions

·      The reason why the employees you start your business with often times are not the same employees you’ll need to scale your business later on

·      How to successfully sell your ideas to clients

·      Why Bob feels that “Speed reduces risk at every single level”

Bob is known for his entrepreneurial spirit and innovative approach. He emphasizes the importance of empowering patients to take charge of their healthcare through systematic and personalized approaches. By personalizing the idea and envisioning the individuals they aim to serve, Bob and his team maintain focus and passion for their mission.

Cristián and his company emphasize helping clients grow through their brands, and they continuously evolve their services and products to cater to changing customer journeys and experiences. By considering a triple-bottom-line approach, Allegro 234 integrates social and environmental factors alongside profits, ensuring a holistic approach to branding.

Both guests discuss the challenges of scaling businesses and staying true to the core idea as they add more team members and clients. Bob emphasizes the need for different types of people in different stages of a business. Early on, independent thinkers who can break the rules and develop new pathways are vital. As the business matures, structured thinking and replication of systems become crucial for scaling.

Cristián highlights their process of building a team that not only possesses the necessary capabilities but also shares a personal connection and alignment with the company's culture and purpose. This approach has led to a stable and cohesive team that has worked together for an extended period.

The episode concludes with a discussion on idea generation. While both guests acknowledge that ideas can come intuitively, they also actively seek inspiration by exploring history, art, and other sources. Urgent needs and pressure often spark the most innovative ideas, pushing them to think outside their normal toolbox and find creative solutions.

Throughout the episode, Bob and Cristián highlight the importance of personalization, passion, and adaptation in keeping ideas alive and transforming them into successful businesses. Their stories inspire listeners to embrace creativity and evolve their approaches in the ever-changing business landscape.

Highlight quotes:

- "When you focus on the core constituency, the idea burns deep and passionate." - Bob Baurys

- "Ideas come by compression, the accumulation of stuff that really moves the needle." - Bob Baurys

- "We go to look for ideas, ideas come by intuition." - Cristián Saracco

In the second half of this interview, the group discuss the process of creative problem-solving and how to generate innovative ideas. Bob mentions using a three by three grid. He explains that he puts the problem in the upper left corner, potential solutions in the left column, reasons why they would work in the middle column, and reasons why they wouldn't work in the right column. Bob finds that the solution often comes from a hybrid of the first three ideas.

Cristián talks about their methodological framework called A B C D E. They establish objectives, create tension to stimulate new ideas, anticipate trends, blend ideas, create different concepts, and finally, execute the chosen idea. They emphasize the importance of setting achievable goals to avoid frustration and involve clients in the ideation process to ensure understanding and excitement.

On the subject of developing creative capabilities. Cristián believes creativity is not just inspiration but also requires effort and work. Bob suggests getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, as it enhances the brain's elasticity and intuition.

Regarding selling ideas to clients, Cristián mentions tailoring the communication style to the client's deductive or inductive thinking approach. They engage clients in the creative process, making the idea more obvious and tangible for them. Bob adds that finding the right client and showing how the idea benefits both their business and career can build momentum and ownership.

In terms of cultural and global differences in creativity, the guests highlight the need to adapt to different clients and markets. They emphasize the importance of understanding clients' perspectives and working collaboratively to overcome traditional thinking and cultural barriers. The world is becoming more interconnected, but there are still variations in approaches to creativity based on different cultural contexts.

Thanks to my friend, G. Mark Phillips, for helping start this global journey of creativity.

(c) BSB Media

auto generated transcript

When we talk about a world of creativity, we've got a great example of it today.

Bob Baurys in Austin, Texas and Cristián Saracco in Madrid, Spain.

Bob is a founder and c e o of a company 83 Bar. But that only begins to describe, his business and serial entrepreneurship. And we're gonna get into a lot of this, but Bob has an idea minute for a business . I love it. And he's one to keep up with.

I've always admired Cristián's brand leadership in this regard. .

Bob: 83 bar’s the idea was about five years ago that there was an interesting way and a systematic way to get patients to not only learn about new things, but also take action and begin to manage their own healthcare.

And through the course of the last five years some with some of your help actually as well we've developed a pretty programmatic, systematic way to make sure that patients are empowered, that once they learn about something, they can actually in a predictable manner begin to take action and better their own health.

And it's gone fairly well. We have. Significant. We got several significantly large pharma and medical device companies engaging us now. And a fair amount of new patients going on therapy that probably wouldn't have found out about it. And if they found out about it, wouldn't know how to even begin to start the process.

Mark S: That's fantastic. And Cristián you're a founder of a consulting group called Allegro 2 34 but you also have another variety of interests. But I'm curious how things are developing right now for you at Allegro 2 34.

Cristián: Yeah. Hello. Mark. Mark and Bob. I could say that things are going well in, in Allegro 2, 3, 4.

And we began doing that. We developed. Beautiful cases. And right now we are also developing beautiful cases where we are not only talking about branding, but also about a new way of understanding the customer journey, the experience they are living. And in that sense, we are also developing new products and services in with neobanks or also with a business school here in Spain.

So we are doing well, I could say.

Mark S: Yeah. That's fantastic. And I think one of the things that you both have in common that I wanted to explore a little bit is that what you said, Cristián, that you started this business from scratch. The business itself was an idea.

I could say

Cristián: that we don't only nurture our idea, but we discover that although we are maintaining certain purpose our concepts of how we serve our clients are evolving. It's not only a question of looking for new products and services, but also. We are evolving in the way we are serving traditional products and re redefining those services but actually maintaining their souls.

So we are considering several issues in addition to profits but the concepts behind the isin. I would say that are clearly evolving and changing. I don't know if every day, but certainly twice or three times per year,

Mark S: right? Yep. And Bob, what about you from idea to a real company and making it an enterprise how do you stay focused on the big idea?

So to the point where I feel like I'm obligated. And all decisions and obligated to make it work for them. So in the case of what we're doing now at 83 Bar, I think about several of my relatives who needed access to medic medical devices or medication, and didn't really know where to turn, didn't have before I intervened.

They didn't really have anybody in the medical business that they knew and how lost and out of the mainstream they felt. And I think about them almost every decision we make with the company, because I figured that if you focus on the core constituency, the idea burns deep and passionate because you're actually helping in your mind, you're actually helping some, an individual.

And really every decision was based on trying to focus back on realizing what they were going through and trying to help them get through it.

Mark S: So this idea of really making it personal so that you can envision the individual, the person that you're trying to serve,

Bob: right? And then so it becomes personal on a level of building the business to a critical mass,?

So you're getting to a level where you can actually help take care of that person in your brain. And then what it becomes after that is you take that person and start multiplying them. And that's how you start to think about how do I scale? How do I help many of these type of people? And that becomes the next level of scale.

But if it's a, if you work on the art at the small level, the science becomes an art by itself. Yeah.

Mark S: And, and what about translating that passion or that personalization, to a team, to a staff, to a company? How, let's talk about that kind of scaling.

Is it finding the right people? Is it instilling that mission into them once they've joined the organization? Maybe there's a bit of a chicken in the egg there, but h how do you get everyone to buy into that idea?

And so I always say this and it's probably the worst part of running businesses. By far it's the worst part for me. And that is that the people who can get you to the first through the first part are oftentimes not the people who can get you through the second part because they're two different people.

And quite frankly, I'm limited even in the second part. The, when you're building, when you're building one of these businesses that has a personal stake and you're trying to get something done that's big and hasn't been done before or has been done very poorly before, the early employees you need are people who can think.

Independently make, calculate at risks, not be afraid to take chances and situations, and also focus on not what's been done before, but what can be done. And so at the end of the, so as you're coming through that development period, you're breaking all the rules and you're developing new pathways.

Now as you come through the initial startup and that startup can range anywhere from, when you hit 5, 10, 15, 20 million worth of revenue depending on the business, then you get to a point where it needs to start to scale and become predictable. And that's when you have to figure out, there's a couple people.

A small minority of people can transfer from that unstructured free thinking environment to the environment that comes next, which requires structured thinking and predictability and replicate the ability to replicate systems. And so that's always the tri I think to me, there's two parts to these businesses to keep an idea alive.

Mark S: Two different kinds of thinking and approach. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Now, Cristián yeah. You've founded the company with kind of a small group of senior consultants. Tell us a little bit about how you're organized. And again, the question being, how do you keep the central idea, in focus as you grow and add people and add clients?

Cristián: . When we began actually we established I could say to make it simple a two step process to to have people on board. The first one was Anis actually to know the person and know their capabilities and to see if we can work, stay, and drink a beer with that person.

I would say that 80% of our little team, because a, as you said we, we are a little professional senior staff. 80% of it. We are working together during the last, in average, during the last 12 years. So it is a very stable team, and actually we are friends. And that's the good reason that why we are in the same frequency when we are talking.

Mark S: That's very helpful. So I'd like to to turn to the idea generation process for a second, and thinking about, where ideas come from.

And we often have this phrase, the idea came to me as if I was a magnet and the idea found me. But I know, Cristián, you also, you include sort of anthropology as a skill or a capability in your group that, where you're not waiting for the idea to come to you, you're going out to find ideas, how do you balance those two?

Do ideas come to you or do you have to go out and find the idea?

And we try to discover what was happened hundreds of years ago. And we discovered that we can evolve those concepts and translate into new ideas. And there it begins a kind of ideation process, which is good. So most of the time we go to look for ideas. Ideas come by intuition.

Yeah, they could come by, but I would say that most of the time we are looking for and not waiting, that the ideas come like something. They're in the era.

Mark S: Bob, what about you? How does it work for

And I always find that the best idea is the accumulation of the stuff that really moves the needle always happens because of a significant urgent need. Whether we're trying to get a client and we're trying to figure out how to be differentiated or we're trying to do something that's really struggling with the client.

If you go to your normal set of toolbox and your normal toolbox not working, that's your default brain position, right? So once you run through all the tools and none of the tools work, it creates another spark that we have to go and figure out, okay, how am I gonna get this done? Or the other thing in, in terms of doing startups my whole life, there's always that whole.

Moment where the business, I think every one of these startup businesses has two or three life or death moments where you're either gonna make it or you're not gonna make it. Yeah. And I find those I find those to be really compelling moments for you to be able to develop concepts and ideas.

And that's when you start this

Mark S: idea that you're looking for a solution. Some something's gotta fix this problem. I like the toolbox analogy.

G. Mark Phillips, co-host: Yeah. And I can certainly relate to that. When the pressure, are you saying that when the pressure is on you, you dig deeper, Bob or you find a new path to find a new solution?

Is that kind of what you're saying?

Bob: Absolutely, and I think it's even a little bit more than that. I think you're forced to, right? There, as we go through our normal lives, our normal business lives or any part of our life, things become complacent and they become easy. And so you, when you're not, your brain gets stretched when it needs to be stretched, and when you're up against the wall and you need to make something happen and or somebody has a problem and you're really trying to solve it, but nothing else normal solves it.

What ifs there, there's a lot of really interesting genius type stuff that's found in those desperation. What ifs. That's

Mark S: very, yeah. And like you said, some of it might come intuitively, but let's talk about the tools for a second. Do you have a go-to thinking method or I draw nine boxes on a piece of paper or I draw a triangle and, here's the three points.

What, even if you don't do it physically do you have a mental, like a process? A process that you feel like is a problem solving creative

And then I typically tend to think in threes. And so if you think about on the left hand side, I'll put down what I think might work. The right hand side, the next to the middle column, like a tic-tac toe board. The middle column would be why it would work. And then the right side of the column would the outside part of the tic-tac toe board is be why it wouldn't work.

And that's the scoring system that I use for myself. And part of it is because it, when the boundaries and the restraints are off, you start to, I don't, I guess I'm sure this sort of happens to everybody, but the amount of idea flow starts to become significant. Like it feels like you can't think of anything to do, and then all of a sudden it becomes significant.

And it usually comes from figuring out why it will work and why it won't work, and working those combinations together. I, it's just something that I've done for a long time. It, I'm sure everybody else has a different pattern or methodology to do it, but that has worked fairly well for me. Yeah.

Mark S: Cristián, do you have a g a go-to method or tool?

Cristián: Yeah, it's, I could say that we have some sort of, of methodological framework or some, or something like that. The first step is we try to establish certain objectives and goals to, to be achieved and see if we can create with those calls what we call a creative tension.

And then we began to debut, which is blending ideas. And in that way we use kiddish processes as making collage or playing with Legos and building blocks to to try to convert our concepts into physics ideas. And then we began with the C, which is create different concepts. And we work with those concepts till the moment we say we are going to follow this path, and we begin to design this new brand idea and then come the E, which is execution, [00:22:00] and we execute what we were thinking and make a used to make a beautiful prototype of our thoughts.

Wow, that's great.

G. Mark Phillips, co-host: Yeah. These are

Mark S: great. And I ask about these tools because, and I'm sure you, you both have heard this before, but people might say to you, oh, you're so creative, or, you're, you've got so many good ideas, or you must be very, I don't know, different than me cuz I'm not that creative.

But it's interesting, Cristián on this, a, B, C, d, E, you know it, yes. It might come intuitive to you, but couldn't. Couldn't anybody look at this and improve their own creativity? And maybe this is the basis of my question, can one become more creative? How can one develop their creative muscle?

Cristián, maybe you

That's why before this A, B, C, D, E, we establish certain goals because if you are not extremely creative and you. Establish high demand of ness in your goal. At the end of the day, you are going to be extremely frustrated. So the, I think that the first step and before getting into this A, B, C, D, E, is to establish a goal that, that you see that you can achieve in terms of creativity and sometimes to do that with certain clients.

They have to look for a very simple solution. And after that solution, we look for another. And they began to work and actually in certain cases, they arrived to beautiful solutions without feeling the restraints or that they are not enough creative or something like that, which I think everybody could be as creative as they want.

So it is question of effort and work and patience.

Mark S: Bob. , how do you see it? How can people improve their creative capability?

Bob: I value Cristián's very systematic approach to it. I think it probably works very well in an unsystematic approach that's on a day-to-day of as a business operator.

That sense of being uncomfortable is not very pleasant the first time or the 10th time, or the even the 100 time. But if you can get your brain into being com very comfortable, being uncomfortable, it tends to feel like it enables your brain to have much more elasticity in your thinking. And I've gotten to a point I think in my life where I'm just, I'm o I'm okay being uncomfortable, and that seems to help a lot.

G. Mark Phillips, co-host: Yeah. I agree, Bob. I know that the brain has the capacity to produce infinite ideas and it, until you put it in a corner and say, get to work.

It sometimes just gets a little bit lackadaisical,

Bob: doesn't it? Yeah. Gee, it's just a day to day-to-day, right? Your day-to-day life, it's fight or flight, right? We're genetically pre-programmed for fight or flight. It's really hard to keep yourself on on that level of awareness.

And the only time you're really that aware is when you're really that uncomfortable with what's going on in your life or what's going on around you. And so if you could trick your brain into being that uncomfortable sometimes it certainly treats itself to you. You get some of your, I, I think what happens more than anything is when you're uncomfortable, you get your native intuition becomes much stronger.

That's a good

Mark S: point. That's great. And then Cristián both of you have mentioned clients, as an end customer, so to speak. So you've come up with the idea. You've gone through your three columns by three, Bob Cristián, you've gone through your A, B, C, D, but now you have to sell the idea to the client.

It seems so obvious to you, I'm sure the client, the creative process you've been through, it's like, Hey, this is it. This is the solution. It's so obvious. But not everyone might see it as quickly as we did. Cristián how do you, I'll say, how do you sell an idea? But how do you then communicate this and instill the same kind of excitement and enthusiasm you might have for the idea into those that are ultimately going to pay for it, fund it, and execute it?

We, we make a beautiful story and we begin once upon a time and we begin to build the story with them till we arrive to the idea and they say, oh, that's great. I, if they are very inactive. We begin with the idea itself. We say, we have this idea. And then we give the reasons or and the rational behind the idea on how we arrive to that anyway, in both cases and to assure certain level of success in our specific case, we [00:29:00] used to build those ideas together with our clients.

So when we arrive to a big idea, it's not an idea coming from a black box. It's coming very obvious for them because they were working with us in the whole process.

Mark S: I see what you're saying. So you've been bringing them along little by little as you go. Yeah.

Cristián: Yeah. And we work with them and we sit during hours discussing each part and creating with them. I very much agree with Bob when he say people has to feel uncomfortable because that when we are uncomfortable, we used to use our intuition. And actually our intuition at the end of the day is a rational non-executive process of our brain.

Bob: think the first thing is you have to have the right client, right? So if you're gonna test an idea you have to, everybody has early adopters and everybody has people who are, they wanna make sure that everything's correct and right before they do anything.

In their shoes and then try to present it so that they show benefit. I think sometimes you could show benefit to the business, but there's two, there's really two things you need to be thinking about. I, you have to be showing the person, the sponsor. You're trying to pick up the idea that you're thinking about not only their business and how you can make their business work better, but you also have to be thinking about how you're gonna help their career.

It tends to make the situation work a lot better. When that person, the sponsor's thinking of you, is this my partner, this person who's coming to me with this idea is thinking about thinking in a way that can help me. Both. Today and tomorrow, and he's working on my behalf. So what that does psychologically, I think is a co-opt into a co-ownership of the idea really quickly.

And at that point you can feel the momentum flip. And when that momentum flips, then you now have an inside champion that will help you carry it home. Doesn't happen all the time. And I think with every business, sure Christan has sees the same thing. You have probably 25% of your client load is going to be people who can see and are willing to look around the corner without knowing what's around the corner.

They're the people you have to isolate on first.

G. Mark Phillips, co-host: That's fascinating, Bob. But you're diving deep into the psychology, not only selling the idea, connecting with them as a human being and as a career person. That's fascinating. I haven't heard that angle before.Mark S: like you say, filtering it. Yeah. And sometimes, how do I turn it off?

Bob: Yeah, I ask that question.

Mark S: That's right. I've been asked that a lot. I drive down the street with my wife who you guys know, but it's oh my God, turn it off.

Mark S: yeah, but thinking also then to our theme of a world of creativity, I'm curious how you guys see cultural, global similarities or differences.

What's been your experiences?

Bob: I just think the internet changed everything. I think creativity was probably stifled by knowledge spread. And knowledge spread has become the currency of the world right now. So the ability for anybody at any place to get access, and not anybody's an overstatement, but a willing party in a reasonable country can literally get access to all the information that's needed to be creative and understand a process and figure something out.

So that's the democratize the whole knowledge spread. And by doing that, there's different viewpoints. And I spend a fair amount of time in Central America and what you're seeing now is, Where countries like that would really normally adopt from the US or Europe, they're now creating a lot of their own products.

They're starting to build a story and a brand behind that pineapple juice and they're starting to sell it on in an at least a regional market versus where it was just very much inward looking before. So I think it's coming along. I think you're starting to see it spread faster and it's accelerating and I think the gap between.

Places that are set up and wired for technology and wired for innovation like the US and Europe, and the gap between those places and the rest of the world is closing quickly.

Mark S: Cristián, you're working in central and South America as well. How are you seeing differences in, in the approach to creative thinking?

If you go to the south, if you go to Argentina, which is almost in crisis country people is so creative because they need to survive to what is going on. So they have to be extremely creative and their minds running in a high speed. If you come to Europe and see the south of Europe, the south of Europe is very creative, but not too much, I would say business oriented.

As an example of that, I remember in 1995 I was talking with, some people working in Mercedes Benz and in 1995, they were developed a nitrogen engine with nitrogen fuel cells. And they continue developing that. But the reality is that Toyota already developed that kind of solutions. There are different solutions in the middle.