IAM1441 – Artist Creates a Collaborative Drawing Experience to Amplify Creative Expression

Entrepreneur, Speaker and Artist, Chris is the founder of Piccles – a collaborative drawing experience to amplify creative expression. Winner of the MIT Creative Arts and the Hacking Health competitions, he can be found running workshops, running companies, or running through the woods in his free time.

• CEO Story: Started his entrepreneurial journey at an early age mowing their own grass and then offering the same to his neighborhood to earn cash with his lawn mower. And that really planted those entrepreneurial seeds in him. Chris not only enjoys the time and freedom but also the responsibility of doing the job and the opportunity to hire his friends. And it solidifies his mindset on being an entrepreneur and building his own company.
• Business Service: Letting the clients express themselves through drawing. Workshop and team building.
• Secret Sauce: Creativity and approaching things by best practices. Having a creative lens that brings color, fun, and energy. Simplify life.
• CEO Hack: Following up. Following the leads. Building a network and following the threads builds connections.
• CEO Nugget: Resilience, requires keeping going on the roller coaster. Get those ideas started earlier and start cheap. Don’t beat yourself up.
• CEO Defined: Being at the bottom of the pyramid. Supporting everyone and allowing their best work. Do not run out of money or enthusiasm.

Website: www.piccles.com

Linkedin: chrisbent

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Transcription

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00:22 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:50 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Chris Bent of Pickles. Chris, super excited to have you on the show.

00:59 – Chris Bent

Excited to be here, Gresh.

01:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yes. I love everything that you're doing. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Chris so you can hear about some of those awesome things. An entrepreneur, speaker, and artist, Chris is the founder of Pickles, a collaborative drawing experience to amplify creative expression. Winner of the MIT Creative Arts and the Hacking Health competitions, he can be found running workshops, running companies, or running through the woods in his free time. Chris, excited to have you on the show again, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:29 – Chris Bent

Let's do it.

01:30 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started. What I call your CEO story.

01:38 – Chris Bent

Yeah, my CEO's story, I would say, got started from an early age. Really the first job that I ever had was being an entrepreneur mowing lawns in my neighborhood. I wanted to make some money. I had a lawnmower, and my parents were paying me in Pokemon cards, so I figured I could take that around, and see if I could have some people pay me in actual cash so I could buy more Pokemon cards, obviously.

And that really planted those entrepreneurial seeds in me because I couldn't imagine having a life where I could make my own hours, hire my friends, and be responsible for my work. It just seemed like I had found what I wanted to be doing from an early age. Obviously, entrepreneurship can take so many different forms. But from early on, I knew that I wanted to start companies to Be my own boss and to take my ideas and try and manifest them into the world.

02:41 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that and especially love that it started very early in the payment of Pokemon cards and then it kind of manifested as from there. But you often hear that once you kind of see the other side of the coin or start to do things from an entrepreneurial way, it's really hard to kind of cut off that spigot and to stop the flow and the freedom and just all the creativity that kind of comes from running your own thing.

03:05 – Chris Bent

Absolutely. And that's really what led to the founding of my current company because I did get a full-time job and I was getting a salary and basically had to lock myself in a phone booth and get through a hundred calls every day just being a sales business development representative. And it was soul-crushing. So having that experience, I got to see what it was like having a more corporate job. And that inspired me to create Pickles as a way for people who might feel like they're trapped and letting their creativity wither to reengage that creative spirit that I think everybody has within them. And it's really just dying to break out of so many people.

04:01 – Gresham Harkless

So I want to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about Pickles. Can you take us through exactly what you're doing there, how you're making a dent and helping people unleash their creativity?

04:10 – Chris Bent

So basically when I started it, I was looking back through my notes and over 10 years ago now, I had written on my iPhone, just like I think a lot of people who have tons of ideas, they got to capture it somewhere. And I had written, what if we could have a thousand people collaborating on one piece of art together, where every person spent a minute doing one tiny little piece and having that come together to form this collective mosaic? And so that was the initial idea. Because I cannot paint, I can't color. At the time, I didn't really think that I was that creative because I stopped doing everything as soon as it stopped getting taught in school, whether it was music art, or dance.

So I had this idea that could just make it more accessible for all of those non-creatives to just get the wheels turning again. Because that's the hardest part going from 0 to 1 I'm just going to do what other people are telling me to. I'm going to use my imagination, I'm going to create something that didn't exist before me. And so that was the premise of the idea, was that we can just make it so simple, put constraints around creativity, and let people get started much easier within those constraints so that it could hopefully create that inertia that would lead to more creativity and more aspects of their life.

And so we started withdrawing because, honestly, everybody can draw. If you ask someone whether they can draw and they say no, they actually misinterpreted you. They thought you were asking, can you draw well? And so they answer no because they've seen amazing drawings out there. But that wasn't the question. The question was, can you draw? And everybody can express themselves in this visual way. I mean, even writing is a form of drawing. We're using letters as little symbols that refer to other things. And so we started withdrawing just because it was so easy for everyone to get onto.

And we basically asked questions like, how are you feeling today? What are you grateful for? What does your future look like at this company? And by allowing people to draw, we're able to visually see all of the themes that are emerging in responses. We're able to allow everybody to express themselves on this even playing field. So by drawing, you kind of just let your soul come out, and that's oftentimes what you truly feel. So we've found that just through some of the workshops we've done, the team building events, the icebreakers, and networking, that we've really achieved a level of engagement and vulnerability and just fun as people are kind of reconnecting with that inner childhood, that inner child that is always eager to get out.

07:35 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that and absolutely appreciate that. So what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:48 – Chris Bent

It's a great question. I would say part of it is creativity and just always trying to approach things through that lens of, let's not just do things by the best practices or the way that they've been done, but let's actually think about other ways that we could do this. Instead of just sending an email, you don't have to respond that way. You might send a video and just attach that in the link. So I think that having that sort of creative lens on everything to try and bring more color and playfulness and fun to the work that we're doing, that is a huge edge. I would say my energy as well, workout routine, standing, and just staying in motion, can really just help keep my energy levels high. And I think that is so important.

Because your energy, your passion, that is the engine that when you're an entrepreneur, it's powering your business. And hopefully, we get to the point where I am not as integral to Pickles as I am today. But when you're starting out, you are your business and the energy that you have is what is going to give your business traction. Um, I would also say simplifying as much of life as possible. So in terms of energy, I think what you eat is super important. One way that I've been able to simplify my life, it's something healthy. I think that the more that you can simplify, the more that you can open up your day and your decision-making for those unique challenges that come into your path.

09:36 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that so much. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. You might have already touched on some of these, but it could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have. But what's something you feel makes you more effective and efficient?

09:50 – Chris Bent

When I think of the hacks, I mean, some of those hacks are just some things that are so standard that people stopped doing. For instance, it's not sexy. But following up and following every rabbit hole that you might get sent down, I think is so critical. So you meet someone new and you ask them, who else do you think I should meet? And you get those introductions, but then you follow those introductions. I can't tell you. I mean, I'm on this podcast right now because we both know Alex Schulman at Barometer. And so it's just following those leads that people give you. That's where my curiosity comes in.

And it's like, I love people. I love talking to new people. And so it's easy for me to send LinkedIn connection requests and just try and find out more about what other people are doing because I'm genuinely curious about what everybody is doing, especially entrepreneurs and people who are doing their own thing and bringing new things into the world. And so I think that just building that network and following those threads that people send you in, can always reveal some gems and some connections and opportunities that you would have never found otherwise. I think in terms of hacks, though, that's usually something a lot like, simpler, a lot easier.

And I mean, one might be to have not an alarm that you wake up to in the morning, but an alarm for when you go to sleep. Because I think that sleep is so important. If you're stressed, you're not going to be creative, you're not going to be at your best. And to not be stressed, you need a good amount of sleep. And to get a good amount of sleep, I think going to sleep at the same time every night, that is how you can get into this rhythm where you can just fall asleep faster, sleep deeper, and then you wake up when you're rested.

I mean, another thing that in my personal life, and I think it just expands, is that I stopped complaining about anything and it made me a happier person. It makes the people around me happier because nobody wants to listen to people just complaining. And it honestly gave me a lot less to complain about because verbalizing what you might not like around you, gives it more power and makes it more real.

12:39 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely appreciate that. So you might have already touched on this, but this is what I was going to ask you for as a CEO nugget. It might be around the follow-up piece, which I absolutely love. I usually phrase it as something you might tell your younger business self or you might tell your favorite client if you were to talk with them.

12:56 – Chris Bent

One of them is just resilience because it requires keeping going through the roller coaster. And I was going to give the advice like don't hire that developer, you don't need him. And you can just start working on designs for free and customer development and do all of that first. But I think having some skin in the game and I would just tell myself to get started earlier and get those no's earlier, get failing earlier, get just as much traction as possible to know where we should be going and what the product should look like.

Because you really have to start to start to iterate because that first idea that you have is definitely not going to be the final idea that people are going to jump onto. In addition to that, I would say don't beat yourself up because I think it's so easy to not feel as though you're doing enough because I mean, there's no end to the work when you're an entrepreneur. Even when you're a CEO, you feel like everything is resting on your shoulders. Because it does to a certain degree.

14:19 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love those nuggets. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Chris, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:32 – Chris Bent

Being at the bottom of the pyramid where yeah, I don't think everybody is there supporting you. I think you are there to literally support everybody and you have to really be there to support everyone and make sure that you're leading the organization in a way that allows for employees to do their best work, brings everyone together so they can align along a mission that the vision is clear and everyone is excited about. More tactically, I would say the role of a CEO is to not run out of money or enthusiasm.

15:17 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Chris, appreciate that and obviously, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get a hold of you. Find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:31 – Chris Bent

I can help anyone, I would love to connect with you. I'm on LinkedIn. You can just search Chris Bent and you should be able to find me. You can also learn more about pickles@piccles.com just feel free to connect so I can help you out or perhaps send you down a rabbit hole of other connections that might be able to help you out in your business. Absolutely.

15:57 – Gresham Harkless

I truly appreciate that Chris. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up. Hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:05 – Chris Bent

Thanks so much, Gresh. This is a blast.

16:07 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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