Dan Balser, veteran creative and department head at the Creative Circus, has a pretty cool podcast, where he interviews people from the business and gets insight into how things look from their persective.

His most recent guest on the podcast was our very own Jonathan Cude, who gives some background behind the five words that inspire this blog (and pretty much everything we do).

Take a listen to the podcast at Dan's website or search for "Dan Balser" on iTunes.

Toward the end of the podcast, Dan asks what advice Cude would give to himself back when he was starting out. His answer hit really close to home for me:

"I would have told myself to shut up. To listen more. To not be so consumed with being right and with having the answer."

Words to live by, for sure.

But, man, it's so hard to do that when I've got this tiny little newborn idea in my arms and I'm trying to protect it from what feels to me like an army of people who don't understand its fragile wonder.

Every day, I struggle to keep my mouth shut. Because it's tempting to ignore the possibility that someone might have a valid point and instead assume that they simply haven't understood my brilliance and if I only explain it to them in another way, they will suddenly be like, "oh how did I miss your genius the first twelve times you interrupted me to say what you really meant? I was wrong and you were right and thank you for showing me the way!"

You can imagine how well that works out.

There's a passage in one of my favorite books, Paul Arden's It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be that I turn to again and again, whenever I need a reminder to close my mouth and open my ears.

In the slim possibility that I'm not the only one who struggles with this challenge, I'll share it with you:

Being right is being boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant...

Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible.

You're no longer trying to be infallible.

You're in the unknown. There's no way of knowing what can happen, but there's more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right.