If you want to create a positive difference in the world with your unique skill set, dive into Sam Seidel's new book Creative Hustle: Blaze Your Own Path and Make Work That Matters. Sam, an internationally known educator, speaker, and author, and the K12 Lab Director of Strategy + Research at Stanford's d.school, sits down with Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, to talk about creativity, hip-hop culture, strength through vulnerability, and the joyful feedback loop of self care and inspired results.
Scroll down to the bottom of these show notes for links to any of the resources Sam mentioned.
Discover Who You Are -- Then Show Others.
As someone who lives and breathes design, Sam advocates for creative thought and practice:
"Having a strong arts education starting at a young age and up through our school system would be really helpful in fostering us all having creativity and bringing it to the world."
He's frustrated to see constraints around creativity:
"Depending on what you're studying or what your job is, you might get the message that within this particular small area, we really want you to be creative, but we don't want your ideas about other things."
In Sam's work, he encourages everyone to push against those constraints. With his co-author Olatunde Sobomehin, he draws on hip-hop culture to envision the creative hustler:
"To have hustle means ambition, essentially, and being willing to work for something. So if creativity is about seeing things in new ways, we wanted to get to the rubber-meets-the-road part of putting those ideas into action: marrying creative thinking with applying it to change in our own lives, our communities, and the world around us."
Receive Better So You Can Give Better.
Sam observes that community interaction is a powerful element of personal growth, citing the Kula or Reciprocity Ring, a cultural tradition from the Trobriand Islands that he and Tunde taught in their Creative Hustle class:
"We asked our students to put up some things that they want or want to do, and then help each other find ways. One piece of feedback we've gotten is it's much easier to offer something than it is to request something that we want."
He shares the story of Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, the community organizer student who asked for help in finding the resources to attend college, and later built on her experience as a model for helping others (featured in chapter 7 of Creative Hustle):
"She's so clear about the way that being vulnerable and receiving help has allowed her to turn around and open doors for other folks. Having that mix of vulnerability and ambition is a really powerful blend. She talks about speaking from her heart and being raw and vulnerable, trusting her audience to hold that with her, and the amazing things that have happened in her career as a result."
Don't Let Productivity Kill Creativity.
In addition to the leadership lesson of how asking for help can improve team effectiveness, Sam talks about Tesa Aragones, a marketing executive who focuses on self-care to help her sustain and improve on her deliverables (featured in chapter 12 of the book):
"She shares some personal rituals that help her to not be so focused on productivity that she doesn't do the regenerative work that keeps her excited to do the work she does. Sometimes it's positioned as antithesis: 'Either I'm being productive, or I'm doing these things.' What Tesa helps us see is the way those things feed each other, amplifying the creative endeavors. Most of the people that I talk with, their problem isn't that they're not doing enough. It's probably that they're doing too much. It's said often in the design world, 'Great design is as much about what you keep out as what you put in.' I think that's true with our creative hustles. How do we slow down, focus on the important pieces, and build rituals in our lives that are regenerative?"
Whether you’re an EdTech professional or educator wayfinding to your why, or anyone else seeking to jumpstart your creative hustle, consider beginning your efforts from the whole and authentic place where you're at your best.
What We Talked About
Use this to jump to parts of the conversation you want to listen to more closely.
[00:01] Introducing Sam Seidel
[04:25] How Sam's early work contributed to Creative Hustle's framework
[08:50] Creativity (and the lack of it) in schools and careers
"One of the problems, not the only problem in our school system when it comes to fostering and encouraging creativity, is the way in which the arts have largely been pushed out over the last several decades."
[12:35] What it means to be a creative hustler\
"It's a lot to ask ourselves to both be creative and coming up with new ideas and ways of being in the world, and then at the same time operationalizing those. So I think it's important that we have patience and grace with ourselves and each other as we try to do that."
[17:53] Design and background of the Creative Hustle book
[24:13] Connecting with the creative people in everyday life
[27:28] Sam hopes to share inspiration through the Creative Hustle book
[33:30] Embracing vulnerability as a leader
[35:25] Don’t let productivity kill creativity
[40:43] Moving ideas into actions, from classwork to life change
[45:49] How Sam refuels himself
[49:27] How people can contact Sam
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Creative Hustle, the website for Creative Hustle: Blaze Your Own Path and Make Work That Matters, by Olatunde Sobomehin and Sam Seidel
Hip Hop Genius, the website for Hip-Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education, by Sam Seidel, Tony Simmons, Michael Lipset, and David "TC" Ellis
Changing the Conversation About School Safety guidebook, a school safety initiative coauthored by Sam Seidel and Barry Svigals with Stanford University's School of Design (d.school).
K12 Lab, the public education innovation program that Sam helps lead at d.school
The High School for Recording Arts (HSRA), the St. Paul, MN school that engages students through music, exploration of the music business, and other creative endeavors; Sam's Hip-Hop Genius collaborator Tony Simmons serves as executive director
Where EdTech Meets Pedagogy: A Conversation With Lisa Highfill, Elana mentions this LCG podcast about an educator who was tasked with redesigning a school
Teaching Math, Teaching Equity: A Conversation With José Vilson, Elana mentions this LCG podcast about an educator who is teaching equity through math instruction
How Teachers Can Expand Their Impact Beyond the Classroom: A Conversation with Lily Jones, Elana mentions this LCG podcast about an educator creating a community for educators who want to work outside of the classroom
Sam’s personal website, featuring all of his work
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Sam Seidel, Guest
Sam Seidel is the K12 Lab Director of Strategy + Research at the Stanford d.school and co-author (with Olatunde Sobomehin) of Creative Hustle: Blaze Your Own Path and Make Work That Matters (Ten Speed Press, 2022). His previous books include Hip-Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011) and Hip Hop Genius 2.0 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Sam speaks internationally about design, race, culture, systems, and education, and has taught in a variety of settings, from a public first-grade classroom to Ivy League graduate programs. He has built and directed programs with and for young people affected by incarceration, and has led design strategy projects for organizations throughout the country. Sam’s writing appears in publications such as Education Week, The 74, Voices in Urban Education, and UnBoxed. A graduate of Brown University, as well as a Scholar-in-Residence at Columbia University's Institute for Urban and Minority Education, and a Community Fellow at the Rhode Island School of Design, Sam is always learning.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase reach, relationships, and revenue.
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