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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.

Both of these guys are really idea machines. In my mind[00:01:00] I've known Bob for nearly five years, had a chance to partner up with him and his company.

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 known Cristián became acquainted with him probably since 2008. I have a sense that Cristián dreams in brands. He is a very prolific writer. Many articles many points of view. He's got some great newsletters.

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.

It, as consumers become more, more the drivers of their own healthcare in the United States, I [00:03:00] think it becomes really important that if you're a consumer, you have to know how to be a consumer. It's not an innate thing in a very complicated industry. That's the mission we think about every morning when we wake up.

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.

We began something like 16 years ago here in Spain. An foreigner here. So I began from scratch and with the idea of not talking about branding as something which is completely un understandable by our clients. So we began to talk in terms of business about branding, telling them or explaining them how they can grow [00:04:00] through their brands.

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.

And to turn that idea into a seed of a business, and then you have to nurture it and water it and tend to it and grow it and keep the mission and keep the [00:05:00] vision. I'm curious to hear from both of you how you keep the idea in focus over the years and all and over the changes in the business climate.

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.

I'm not I really don't know if I'm extremely clear with that. But the idea is we had an idea was to talk about branding under a business point of view. [00:06:00] We maintain that with a clear purpose because when we are talking about business, for example, we are talking about the triple border line.

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?

Bob: I think what I found works for me personally is that I just personalize the idea. I, when we get into a market, whether it's this or some of my previous companies in my brain, I try to figure out exactly who that person or persons we're going to be [00:07:00] helping are and create that persona in my brain.

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.

In reality, if you do that for that individual, in your mind, it's really translating to helping many people that are in that same situation. So that tends to keep it focused. It certainly worked for me in this business and has worked [00:08:00] in. Previous businesses that I had since like fibromyalgia, fatigue centers, that was all focused on four or five of the first patients we saw.

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.

And then obviously the last level of scale is, how do I help, thousands of these people. So if you think about it in magnitudes, it's single. And then tens to hundreds. And then how do I help thousands? And if you keep that focused, it changes the [00:09:00] idea a little bit because obviously as you scale up to help thousands and thousands of people, it has to become much more regimented, much more systematic and predictable rather than it has to become science rather than art.

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?

Bob: It's interesting because I think all businesses go through a metamorphosis and a process that in the beginning when you start a company you're looking for a specific type of person that can focus on a goal without a lot of roles and without a lot of [00:10:00] constraints.

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.

It's like somebody who has a heart attack. Oftentimes you get arteries will start to rebuild around the heart and flow path. Blood flow pathways will start to [00:11:00] rebuild. That's what you have to do in the beginning of a business. You have to just make sure that you're not just repeating what somebody else did, but you're off oftentimes fixing what they did or building new pathways to do what they did.

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.

The first part is you need the people who can create it and nurture it and grow it to a teenager. And then you need the second team is really the people who could take the 20 year old and [00:12:00] matured into an adult. And that's the way I look at keeping businesses alive. They're not necessarily the same people, unfortunately.

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.

And we spend a lot of time in that. Talking and looking for if we [00:13:00] personally can be connected. And the second step, obviously is to see if they have the capabilities. And the kind of professional level we are expecting from that person. And actually that approach is at least working with us.

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.

And when we are working [00:14:00] together and when we try to tell other people what our culture is, how we manage the projects and all that stuff, we are in the same line. And so that's good.

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?

Cristián: I think we are using both ways. Actually the, there are in certain moments needs for inspiration in, in, in all this process. And we have to go and [00:15:00] look for new ideas. And what is interesting on that is that some, sometimes we go to look for those ideas in history and art.

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

Bob: you? I think it comes by compression and [00:16:00] compression, meaning that we go to, you go to a client or you're underneath significant pressure to something's not working.

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.

So I always [00:17:00] thought about it as ideas, as a compression type thing. When you run out of the toolbox or you're at a life or death moment, the normal playbook's not gonna work, and then all of a sudden things that you wouldn't have normally thought of become viable. That's what you start to reach.

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.

That's when the constraints come [00:18:00] off. And when the constraints come off when everything around you is not working and everything, and your recall is not working well then all you're removed to those boundaries. And when those boundaries leave your brain, there's all kinds of interesting stuff that starts to happen when you start asking about when this, the what ifs start to become the desperation.

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

Bob: tool? Yeah, I tend to do use a three by three grid. If what I'll do is I'll take a pen and paper and just draw out a three [00:19:00] by three grid, and the upper left hand point will be the problem, above the grid will be the problem.

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 when it becomes significant, you want to get the number two, number one, number two and number three, that's out of your head, and then start to work through the flow. And I often find that the solution comes from those fir first [00:20:00] three that I write down, and it's usually a hybrid of those three.

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.

Is to create enough tension to move our brains to generate a new idea, but not too much tension to block people and generates a sort of frustration. Having those [00:21:00] goals in mind we follow what we call the A B C D E process a from anticipation where we look for trends and what is happening in different industries, sectors and whatever to understand what is going on.

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

Cristián: I think you, you can develop certain brain mos to, to be more creative. Creativity is not a question of inspiration. It's, [00:23:00] it is a question of working. It's obvious that you need certain inspiration in certain moments. But I think you, you have to work on that.

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.

And specifically when we are working with I could say hard minded people, not soft minded people with that people we used [00:24:00] to split their needs in little chapters. So we work with them in little evolutions and not in the telling them that they don't need to create the new iPad.

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.

I think [00:25:00] you just have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Riding on the theme of compression beforehand, the, i the idea is that compression really is the most uncomfortable position you could be in. It's typically, like we discussed a life or death situation with the business or stuff's not working and you can't get it to work and you're out of ideas.

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.

So when people say I generate an id, a lot of ideas, I think it's just because I'm not typically, I don't typically fall into a zone of being very comfortable for very long periods of time, very easily anymore. [00:26:00] Yeah.

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.

Cuz if you genetically we're pre-programmed to figure out a situation so you don't get eaten or, hurt by animals or you survive. So if you're uncomfortable, I think that brain gets to [00:27:00] that first of all, that first reaction, native instinct. Your gut instincts faster and thin splice is very much quicker.

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?

Cristián: I could say that, it depends this [00:28:00] is a very consultant answer. It depends of the kind of client what we try to see. I, if the way they behave are inductive or deductive and depending on that we take the decision of how we are going to tell this new idea. I, if the person is very deductive.

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.

We are connecting different ideas to, to produce things. So if you [00:30:00] go step by step with your client, creating those new ideas and using their intuition, in addition to all the information you can gather to, to solve the problem you have between hands. It used to work very well, and then we decide if we are going to tell a beautiful story or we are going to go directly to the results and then give a rationale.

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.

And so what I try to do is I try to work with the early adopters as much as possible because they're risk takers. Even in the corporate environment, there's usually one or two or three people you could work with that will take a risk. The [00:31:00] second thing is you try to build it. We always take these ideas and we try to think of ourselves.

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.

[00:32:00] And I, you could, you can always see these ideas get traction. You're pitching it and you're showing them why it works for their business. You're showing 'em how they would benefit from it ultimately. And at some point you'll see them latch on and you'll see them start to take the ownership.

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.

You're working across borders you're certainly worldly in, in your scope. I, is the world becoming smaller or are there still, whether it be, culture or whether it just be traditional thinking. H how do different countries, how [00:38:00] do different markets maybe approach creativity?

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.

And I go down and I see not their own sort of physical brands because they don't have the manufacturing capability, but they're starting to create their own service brands [00:39:00] and they're starting to produce products and services that actually originate from there. And you'll even see it with some of the agricultural products that come out of those countries instead of just a poor example, but Senna just being pineapple juice.

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?

Cristián: Yeah. First I agree with Bob. Right now there are certain changes happening due to [00:40:00] internet and the access to, to knowledge. There is a huge democratization of knowledge, however, culturally I see certain differences. For example, if you go to Central America, they are very creative, but they go a little slower than the rest of the world because they, they do not have the need.

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.

So [00:41:00] you have a huge amount of creativity, but in certain cases without a huge intention. If you go, for example, to Germany, you are going to discover that they are very creative. But after the creativity comes they put the creativity in a strong and very mechanical process, and they spend a lot of time with that.

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.

And they [00:42:00] spend a lot of time because they continue following a process which actually kill their creativity. There are certain difference. There are if you go, I don't know, to Asia Pacific, that they are very creative, but they used to base their creativity in their own legacy. So there are cultural things that change the way they are understanding their creativity and the way they innovate.