Why Productive Passion Is Your Advantage (keynote)

Todd Henry [00:00:02]:
A few years ago, my friend Harris invited me to speak at the Story Conference at Schermerhorn Symphony hall in Nashville, Tennessee. The audience was filled with creative leaders and pros from brands and companies striving to do brilliant work. And I wanted to deliver a talk that would help them understand just how important that work is and to give them what they needed to go back and cause a ruckus in their own organization. To borrow the words of Seth Godin, I speak to several dozen groups a year. But getting to spend time with talented, ambitious leaders is always my favorite forum. So today, I thought for something different, I would share that talk with you in hopes that it will spark a fresh passion, maybe a fresh insight for you, for your work and for those you lead.

Todd Henry [00:00:44]:
Of course, if you want to know.

Todd Henry [00:00:45]:
More about my speaking and teaching, you can do so@toddhenry.com now here's my talk from Schermerhorn Symphony hall in Nashville, Tennessee. Enjoy.

Todd Henry [00:00:57]:
I was reminded of a story of a young musician as I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you. July of 1967. This musician was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. It was the chance to tour as the opening act for one of the most popular bands of the day. I mean, this band wasn't just popular, they were drawing thousands of people to arenas all over the country. So for a young, relatively unknown musician, this is quite the opportunity. So of course he said yes. The night came for the first show.

Todd Henry [00:01:21]:
The arena fills, the lights go down, and he walks out on stage and he begins to play. And the crowd goes silent for about three songs. And then after the third song, they began to liven up. But it wasn't quite the response he was hoping for. Instead of cheers, it was booze. Booze as in booing? Not as in that would have been more fun. Not that kind of booze. But like a pro.

Todd Henry [00:01:46]:
He finished the set, put down his guitar, walked off stage completely distraught. Could you imagine how this would feel to be booed off stage? This is my big moment. And I got booed off stage in front of thousands of people. But the people around him said, listen, it's one city, it's one night, it's going to be totally different in the next city. And it was in fact different in the next city because in the following city, the boos began from the very first note and continued throughout the set. And this went on the third night and the fourth night and the fifth night and the sixth night and the seventh night, until finally the eighth night of the tour. July 17, 1960. Apparently, word had traveled from city to city, and before the first note was even played, the boos began and continued throughout the set.

Todd Henry [00:02:29]:
And by this point, he'd had enough. I think any of us would have had enough by this point. As legend has it, he put down his guitar, may or may not have waved a profane gesture at the audience, and turned around and walked off stage and quit the tour. Never again to open for this massively popular band. Can you imagine how that would feel? Now, if you were present that night, you might have thought you were witnessing one of the greatest failures in music history. It doesn't get worse than being booed off stage by thousands of people. But I would submit to you, you were witnessing something slightly different. If you were present on July 17, 1967, when a young Jimi Hendrix took the stage to open for a band called the Monkees, I would submit to you, you were witnessing a very natural phenomenon.

Todd Henry [00:03:15]:
You were wit. What happens when a new idea, a dangerous idea, an idea with rough edges, is introduced into a marketplace that craves conformity? You see, we say that we want innovation, we say that we want new ideas. But the reality is the moment that we introduce something new, something dangerous, the response of our organization and of culture is taboo. Monkees fans had no grid. No grid for what? Jimmy Hinton? Is he playing with his teeth? What is he doing? That's weird. But we all know how this story goes. How many of you have ever been to a party and heard, woo, play me some monkeys, Right? I gotta remember that one. Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:04:04]:
But Jimi Hendrix went on to transform generations of those who followed because he refused in the face of resistance to monkey eyes, his Hendrix music. Do you have that same courage? Friends, there are a couple of forces we have to fight if we want to do this. Well, the first one is comfort. Comfort. Early in our career as a create on demand professional, we often hook into the most valuable and precious narcotic known to creative pros. External validation. Somebody says, you're really good at that, and they begin to feed us. Ah, that's the good stuff, right? And we lock and we load and we ride it out.

Todd Henry [00:04:55]:
And eventually we wake up one day and we say, I am nowhere near where I intended to be. See, the thing I've had to learn the hard way, and I know many pros that I work with have had to learn the hard way as well, is you can easily succeed your way into failure. You can accomplish a lot. You can accomplish external validation. People can praise you for what you do. You can look like you're on top of the world. And deep down, you know I am very far from the person I intended to be. Let me illustrate this by uttering the most terrifying words ever uttered by a human being.

Todd Henry [00:05:31]:
Let me show you a card trick I just learned. Sorry, Harris. All right, I'm gonna put five cards up on the screen. I want everyone to choose one card, Just one card. I'm gonna mind meld with you. All right, Everybody have your card. All right, I'm gonna remove the cards. Now, I know you people.

Todd Henry [00:05:47]:
Listen, you are my people, right? You are my people. So I think I can predict with great certainty the card that most of you chose. I'm gonna put four of those cards back up on the screen. I'm gonna remove one of them, put four back up on the screen. How many people see your card? Nobody. Four people. Greatest trick ever. Thank you, story.

Todd Henry [00:06:08]:
Have a great. Actually, these are four entirely different cards than the ones I put up the first time. Those of you who raise your hand, come see me after I have people I can refer you to. It's no problem. It's fine, right? Why does this trick work? It works because I gave you a problem to solve, and you performed brilliantly. With a few exceptions, you performed brilliantly. You did. But in so doing, you ignored the context.

Todd Henry [00:06:35]:
You forgot what it is you're even trying to do. Friends, you can succeed your way to failure. What are you trying to do? And are you doing it? Don't monkey eye us. Your Hendrix music. The second dynamic we have to be aware of is fear is fear. Fear is the thief of dreams. And the sinister thing about fear is it often comes disguised as wisdom. It often sounds like, are you sure you want to? Wouldn't it be better if you.

Todd Henry [00:07:14]:
Maybe you should wait until. Fear is the thief of dreams. There's a guy named Neil Fury who does research into procrastination, and he often brings people into a room like this. And he'll put a wood plank on the floor, 10ft long, 6 inches wide, and he'll ask people, could you walk the length of this plank if I ask you to? Well, of course it's a wood plank on the floor. You'd have to be drunk not to be able to do that. Great. Now, imagine I take that plank and suspend it 100ft in the air between two buildings. Now, could you walk the length of that plank? And they look at the imaginary plank, and they look at him and say, no way.

Todd Henry [00:07:45]:
Are you kidding? I'd have to be drunk. No way. Am I walking a wood plank 100ft in the air. Well, what's changed about the technical skill required to walk the plank? Absolutely nothing. If you can do it on the ground, you can do it in the air. What's changed are the perceived consequences of failure, which in this case is plummeting to your death. So I kind of get it right? But listen, I would submit to you that many of us go through our days artificially escalating planks, artificially escalating the perceived consequences of failure. To the point that we don't act, to the point that.

Todd Henry [00:08:19]:
And this is. Listen, this is important. To the point that we don't ask dangerous questions. We don't ask dangerous questions because we're afraid of the answers we might get. And when we get those answers, we know it's going to create accountability to act. And so we'd rather just shrink back and listen to the voice of fear. Fear is a thief. But as my friend Brian says, fear is also often the smell of opportunity.

Todd Henry [00:08:49]:
The place you're most afraid to go as a team, as an individual, when you're commercializing your work, is also the place that you know you need to go. So how do we begin to countermand these dynamics of comfort and fear? I believe that the way that we do this is by identifying our productive passion. Productive passion. Now, the word passion is used, I think, out of context a lot. We talk about it as something we like, something we're interested in, something that gives us a thrill. Like, I'm passionate about ice, right? I find it helpful, which I am, by the way, very passionate about ice cream. But I find it very helpful to reclaim the original meaning of the word passion. The word passion in its root form comes from the word patty, which means to suffer.

Todd Henry [00:09:37]:
When we say we're passionate about something, it means I am willing to suffer if necessary to see it happen, because I care more about the outcome than I do about my temporary comfort. I care more about the outcome than I do about whatever fear is whispering in my ear right now. I care more about that than I do about this. Productive passion must be your compass if you want to avoid the lure of comfort and fear. And you want to refuse to monkey eyes your Hendrix music. Another way to say this is we need to identify the place where we say, here I stand, here I stand. And never shall anyone cross this line. Over my dead body am I going to compromise these principles.

Todd Henry [00:10:25]:
I'll change my mind. I'll do what's necessary to succeed. That's fine. But over my Dead body. Will I change these principles? So I want to give you a couple of questions you can ask in sort of a practical sense to be able to identify your productive passion. I call these the notables. They're questions we can ask to begin to look for patterns in our life, to identify that productive passion for us. And by the way, I've walked teams through this as well.

Todd Henry [00:10:49]:
It can be very, very valuable in making decisions. The first one is what angers you. Now, I'm not talking about road rage, right? Like, somebody cut me off on 65, you know, I'm talking about compassionate anger. Compassion means to suffer with what makes you feel compassionate anger. Somebody needs to do something about that. Yeah, that somebody is you. What fills you with compassionate anger? And what are the patterns there that point to your best work, to the body of work you can be proud of? The second question you can ask is, what makes you cry? Or, guys, what makes you feel like you got something in your eye? Right? Because guys don't really admit that they cry. So I am a huge fan of this movie, Rudy.

Todd Henry [00:11:35]:
Do you guys know the movie? Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. Right, okay, for those of you who haven't seen it, I'm about to totally spoil it for you, but Rudy is about this little, tiny guy that wants to play football for Notre Dame. True story. Can't make the team. Can't make the team. After all of this effort, he finally makes the team. It's the climactic moment. He gets in the final game of the year.

Todd Henry [00:11:53]:
He gets in, he makes this amazing play. Everybody's cheering for him. I'm watching this movie. My wife comes downstairs. I've got lots of stuff in my eye, right? She's like, why are you crying? You've seen this movie 100 times. Why are you crying? I'm like, I know, but he's so tiny and he plays so well. He's beautiful. It's beautiful, right? I am profoundly moved by the stories of underdogs.

Todd Henry [00:12:16]:
I am. Some of my best work is done with David's taking on Goliath. And I know that about myself. And so I seek out opportunities to operate within that productive passion because it prevents me from falling into the lull of comfort, of just working with people who can pay my bills. No, No. I refuse to allow comfort and fear to rob me of my productive passion. What is that for you? And what is that for your team? The third question you can ask is, what gives you hope? What is the thing that you believe and hold onto even in the face of Resistance. Even when everybody around you says, that's crazy, you're nuts, you're crazy.

Todd Henry [00:12:55]:
You have fire and brimstone falling from the sky, cats and dogs living together, and you're like, I think it's going to be okay. It's going to be fine. What is that for you? What is the thing you believe that few people around you believe? Great clue to your productive passion. Once you begin to identify these dynamics, you can begin to define your battle lines. You cannot fight every battle, friends. You can't. You will lose. But you have to fight for something creatively.

Todd Henry [00:13:26]:
And the answer is going to be different for every person in this room. It is. Where are your battle lines? What is your productive passion? What are you willing to suffer on behalf of? Because the outcome matters more to you than your temporary comforts. The outcome matters more than any artificially escalated plank that fear is whispering about in your ear. What is that for you? About 15 years ago, I was in a meeting, and the person leading the meeting was about kind of a really dangerous or dangerous and risky thing we were doing. The person leading the meeting asked kind of an out of the blue question. He said, what do you think is the most valuable land in the world? That's a weird question. I don't know.

Todd Henry [00:14:16]:
Most valuable land in the world. So we started throwing out a bunch of guesses. Oil fields of the Middle East. Wrong. Gold mines of South Africa. My colleague was from South Africa. Wrong. Manhattan.

Todd Henry [00:14:28]:
Wrong. So after throwing out a bunch of guesses, we said, well, what do you think is the most valuable land in the world? And my colleague, quoting the late Miles Monroe, said, I believe that the most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. Because in the graveyard are buried all of the unexecuted ideas, all of the unwritten novels, all of the unreconciled relationships, all of the ideas that people carried with them day after day after day. And they said, you know what? Tomorrow I'm going to get around to that. Tomorrow I'm going to start. Tomorrow is the day I'm actually going to push myself to get moving on this thing that is a splinter in my mind. And they pushed it and they pushed it and they pushed it into the future till one day they reached the bookend of their life. And all of that value was buried with them, dead in the ground, never to be seen by human eyes.

Todd Henry [00:15:27]:
That's why it's the most valuable land in the world, because all of that value, the unrealized potential, was buried with them. And that day I went back to my office and I wrote two words on an index card and I put them on the wall of my office and I put them in my notebook. And those two words have defined the last 15 years of my life. And those two words were die Empty. Because I want to know when I reach the bookend of my life, I'm not taking my best work to the grave. I'm not going to get to do everything. Of course not. None of us do.

Todd Henry [00:16:03]:
But I will know. I have spent my days purposefully putting work into the world where it belongs, where it can be experienced by others. I've refused to monkey eyes my Hendrix music just because it was uncomfortable or because I was afraid. The rough edges they decry you for now are the very rough edges they will celebrate you for later. I want to know that when they put me in the ground, my best work is out in the world where it belongs. Will you be able to say the same? Be purposeful, friends. Be diligent. Be brave.

Todd Henry [00:16:44]:
Confront the lull of comfort. Know who you are. Discover what you're willing to suffer on behalf of and use that as your framework for making creative decisions. And if you're purposeful and if you're diligent, and if you refuse to monkey eyes your Hendrix music, then someday in the far distant future, when they put you in the ground, you can die empty of regret, but full of satisfaction for a life well lived. I think that's all any of us could ask for. Be brave. You've got this. You do.

Todd Henry [00:17:24]:
Thank you very much.

Todd Henry [00:17:30]:
Hey, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this talk again, you can find more of my speaking and my teaching teaching my training@toddhenry.com you can also find my books anywhere books are sold, including my latest book, the Brave Habit, which is about how to lead courageously in times of uncertainty. Daily Creative and all of our work is available at DailyCreative app. There you can find the back catalog. If you would like to get full interviews, daily episodes, coaching and more, you can do so at DailyCreative app. Thanks again so much for listening and until next time, may you be brave, focused and brilliant.