The Creative Edge - Redefining Leadership Through Intercultural and Neurosomatic Strategies with Genein Letford

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Rusk Genein welcome to the show. So honored to be here. So honored to have you here. I love how we connect these days on the internet. It was weird 15 years ago. Now it's like the norm of what we do, but specifically on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is a special place. Number one was the first social media platform out there. Not a lot of people know that they always think on my space, right? But yeah, first one's on the block. I want to say 2002. Yeah. Okay.

Sebastian Rusk

LinkedIn. I just brought up a picture of me and, um, and Alan blue, the founder of the co-founder of LinkedIn. Um, I actually met him, so I, I didn't know he was one of the first platforms. Cool. Yeah.

Genein Letford

Yeah. They can, then later on sold to Microsoft and, you know, are very well funded now and have become really the go-to for the B2B platforms. But what's really cool about LinkedIn is that you almost immediately know about someone or at least the purpose of what they do based on their profile, if they're doing LinkedIn correctly on there. So when you make these connections and you reach out to people, you're like, wait a second, I think this is somebody that I want to know and somebody that I want to, to initiate a relationship with. And of course the beautiful part about what I do. and what podcasting affords people to do is you get to know people through great conversations on a podcast. So excited that you took some time to hang out with me for a few minutes today, and I'm excited to learn a little bit more about your journey. On this podcast, I like to tell people's story. I like to, for context purposes for our listeners, back up a little bit to the beginning of the story. Now, the beginning is always somewhere different for everyone, so you can go ahead and define that, but let's back up a little bit to the beginning of the story, where it all began and what really brought you to present day with, with what you're working on. I know you're working on some really exciting things in the world of music and children and education. So I'm excited to dive into that, but let's back up to the beginning of the story.

Sebastian Rusk

Yes, yes. Before I back up, I want to make a quick point with what you said about podcasting. My research, I'm going to get to the end of the story as I go to the beginning, is the brain and creativity and what does it really make a creative brain. And I tell people my podcast helps me be more creative because I get to talk to people who I would not normally interact with. And now with Zoom and being, you know, I used to do my podcasts with the person sitting next to me before COVID hit. And then, you know, then that went off, went off. And so, I just want to support your comment of people who podcast get that extra creative hit because you are relacing your brain with other pathways of people's stories, and the brain is built for story. And I use my podcast to show credibility. Like, I'm sitting here, you know, interviewing the director of neuroscience at Wharton, you know, and so people see his face and my face together, right? There's so many advantages to doing that. But the beginning, me, I was born on a warm day. And I'm a twin birth, actually. Two girls. I'm Janine and she's Janae. But I grew up with a stutter, you know, and my twin did not have one. In fact, won speech debates and poetry contests. But she's brilliant and very kind. It's one thing as you're a speaker and a podcaster to be able to struggle with the gift of with the communication, right? The way you show you're alive is you are able to communicate your ideas and express your ideas through multiple forms. And I couldn't speak. Basically, I couldn't even say my name without stuttering. It was very rough because I call it an iceberg issue where you see the stutter at the top of the water, but you don't see all the identity struggles under the water. of confidence, of missing opportunities to share your creative idea. It was very damaging to my creative identity, right? And as well as some other areas. But I remember my mother signed me up for music and I got a trumpet and I was able to communicate fluently and emotionally and effortlessly after a while through music. And it really, really basically saved saved my life. And it made me just realize that there are multiple ways of expressing your ideas, you know, musical ways, theatrical ways through poetry. And, and yeah, and then I enrolled in theater, and I realized that I stutter less when I memorize my ideas and practice what I'm saying, sorry. And and dance. I stutter less when I move, so if you see me on the stage, I'm an international keynote speaker now, so isn't that interesting? But you'll see me move and use my body a lot, and you know good keynote speakers, they use everything at their disposal to tell the story, right? Well, I was moving because it lowered my stammer, and I speak with my body and my hands almost like a dancer, and I enrolled in dance class and everything, and so things that were just like, oh, normal things that kids do were actually vital for my development because of this impediment. And so now I knew I wanted to teach. I fell in love with the brain when I was at UCLA. I got into an MRI to kind of help with with, you know, the research because UCLA is a big research institution. And so I saw my brain on the screen and I fell in love with it. But I went into elementary ed and I knew that even though I taught third grade, I want to bring in music. I want to bring in the arts because every human being has a right to learn this. And maybe it'll help one of my students like it helped me. Who am I to know, right? Of course, I didn't know the hard science behind it that I do know now. And of course, back then, some of the science wasn't even available back in 2005, like it is now. And I just kept teaching and integrating the arts, and I ended up being the whole music director and arts director at my elementary school. which was great because I didn't have a music credential. I was a general ed teacher, but I took on the challenge and it was great. I got to implement, you know, the general ed concepts under the music. So, hey, we're learning about Beethoven. What's this about fractions, you know, or learning about Beethoven? How do you increase your resilience? Because he lost his hearing. How did he? And so I always made those connections because that's how my brain worked. It was always connecting across multiple fields and disciplines. And so it was a hard decision, but I left the classroom in 2019. I tell people I got it like a divine push. I realized I wasn't leaving the classroom, I was just expanding my walls. Instead of being a teacher to these amazing classroom of 20 kids, or I taught the whole school for about 500 kids, I was now a teacher to practically, possibly billions, you know, with the internet. And yeah, it was it was a walk of an act of faith, you know, because I didn't have a job to go to. And my husband's a free entrepreneur, a freelancer. So I was the one with the regular job, regular paycheck and health insurance. Yay for health insurance. And but I took a risk. And you know what? You're a creative thinker, you know, about taking risks. Right. What that looks like. And it I realize and let me know if you have to jump, jump in if you if you want to make a point.

You're doing great. You're making my job so much easier.

So yeah, after 15 years of teaching, I took a risk and said, you know, this thing about creativity, and I do separate creativity from art, artistry. They are connected, but a lot of people think they're not creative because they're not excellent in the arts. And so I want to make sure that so I redefine creativity with looking at all the research. And I believe creativity is your process of problem finding and problem solving. with relevance, value, and novelty, right? And it can happen in any field. But we also do believe, and here's the kicker, that having a background in the arts increases your creativity and your creative thinking in non-arts areas. So if you're an accountant, if you're a marketer, if you're a speaker, if you are an entrepreneur, you know, if you sell cars, whatever you do, having an arts background, you know, going to improv class, doing pottery, playing the recorder, you know, playing the guitar. dancing, you know, doing different types of dance, just what it does to the brain, how it laces the brain more intricately and helps the hemispheres have a stronger connection, which is needed for creative thinking about getting these ideas back and forth and recombining ideas in different situations. And so, yeah, I looked at that and and we are looking at intercultural creativity, which is how culture affects creative thinking, and not just your ethnic and national culture, but just your culture of what type of school you went to and what type of field you're in and what type of maybe a faith-based culture. You know, these different social cultural groups we are finding highly influences your ability to be curious and think creatively in different situations. So we're looking at that relationship. and we're looking at neurosomatic creativity, which these are all trademark terms by the way, so I quote unquote own these terms, intercultural creativity, neurosomatic creativity, which is the brain's ability to connect with the mind, which I believe they're separate. They're connected, of course, because if something happens to your brain, your mind could be skewed, right? But it's the connection between your mind, your brain, and your body, right? Neurosomatic creativity, how does that connection inform creative thinking? So the people who dive into different experiences such as the arts that better connect their mind, their brain, and their body, how does that help them be a better accountant, you know, be a better programmer? Like, what does that look like, right? And I just knew this was it. And I feel this is an idea that has met its time, especially as AI and, you know, machine learning and All of that is rising very quickly exponentially. It's us getting back to our low tech skills, which I think are going to bring the leaders who are going to lead to the top, right? They're not so dependent on the high tech skills. They know the low tech skills of how does my brain operate in different situations? How can I be resilient? How can I be adaptable? How can my brain automatically see the patterns and connections that other people are missing the arts? and neural semantic creativity has that built in, like you can't go through the arts and not train your brain to think that way, because that is a must if you're going to be able to grow in the artistic journey. Yeah. And then that's here I am now.

I love it. I love it. So the first thing that showed up for me when you said you made the jump from, you know. The stable one of the family, your husband's an entrepreneur, contractor, and you're the one with the job and the whole nine is that We've all made that jump as entrepreneurs. You have to, or you never make it to the, to the other side of entrepreneur ville on there. But a quote that I heard a long time ago, and I don't know if I heard it right around that time or after, but when I look, I've been an entrepreneur for about 23 years, but it still feels like yesterday. And I made that decision on, I can, I can, I can do a couple of things here. I can keep doing what I'm doing, or I can go build my dream. And I made that decision then, but I heard a quote right around then or after then, doesn't matter. It was still relevant to that situation. That's when, speaking of faith, when we jump off the cliff, two things are going to happen. God's going to teach you how to fly. He's going to get you. But both require the same amount of faith and courage to be able to go and do that. But once, along with that jump, comes a tremendous amount of obviously our own nonsense in our head of fear and what ifs and all of this other stuff. But it also comes with a tremendous amount of momentum and unexpected things. Coach I work with, newer coach that I work with, Dan Martell, you might've heard of him, wrote a great book called Buy Back Your Time. Brilliant, brilliant entrepreneur business owner. enrolled me in this group about a month ago. And I was in a sea of uncertainty with business. It's been an interesting year and election year and the whole nine, everything's kind of like, what's going on here. And as things returned to normalcy, um, over the past month, and it wasn't that crazy, just your normal entrepreneur stuff. He enrolled me in his group and I'm like, what am I doing? I'm like joining another mastermind group, hiring another coach. But I'm like, isn't this what you do when things start to get a little wonky and a little uncertain in this entrepreneur journey on here. So I joined for a couple of months. I was like, let me just stick my toe in real quick. Let's see what's going on before I go full on in. And on one of the calls, he said, a lot of you signed up for 60 days. And A, it's a lot more expensive when you do it that way. But B, that's not how we do things around here. We go all in and we commit. Because when we go all in and commit, it tells the world, it tells God, it tells the universe, it tells whatever, that we're ready. And when we make that declaration, the doors start to fly open, the opportunities start to come to us, versus the opposite of having to go look for them, or the ones that we're actually looking for, the doors that we're looking to walk through. actually open on there. So that was what showed up for me when you shared that of making that jump. And I'm sure it's been quite the adventure for you over the past five years on here, but you probably wouldn't trade it for anything, would you?

Well, you know, going going back back to to that, and I can connect to faith based on that, and I can connect to just business based and neurologically based. Right. The brain learned from experience. And so we have to understand that, that going through that uncomfortable process actually builds the brain and it helps the brain stay healthy. If you're in a comfortable place your entire life, your brain is missing out on some key, key learning potentials. That's why I said during that scandal where the parents were paying for the kids to get into college, going through the back door and taking the kids SATs, you know, hiring someone to take their SATs for them and all this stuff. We were looking at the parents like I was looking at the children saying, that's child abuse because you're robbing the child of falling. Right. And getting back up, say, OK, well, that didn't work. What's plan B? OK, well, let me rearrange some stuff. And hey, I didn't get into my dream school. That's OK. I'm still valuable in who I am. Let's let's figure something else out. Those are critical lessons for life. And as a mother, it's hard. You want to protect your child from hurt and everything. But I started to see it from the bigger picture of he needs to feel disappointment to know that in the future, when I'm not there, he can still be resilient and get through. And so jumping is a part. You know, there's people who don't work out at all unless they're jumping to conclusions, right?

Yes, exactly. No, that, that, that's a huge part. I raised my daughter on my own, um, had her at 20. Everybody told him it was a terrible idea, but it worked out real good. Cause she's in grad school now and completely self-sufficient 23. And, uh, just a beautiful story. But, um, I learned early on from Tony Robbins has been a mentor of mine for, for long, long time. And I befriended his son, Jarek about 15 years ago. And, um, I remember having Jarek on the show and he said, um, When I was 18 years old, my dad kicked me out. Now for context, could you imagine being Tony Robbins' son? And he's like, you're 18, you gotta go. And he said that was the best gift that he ever gave me as a parent. And I never forgot that. And my daughter went away to college. She goes, well, I can stay here locally and go to Phoenix. I said, go as far as you possibly can go, because it's an experience. It's probably one of the best experiences of your life. I didn't go. I'll live vicariously through you. But promise me one thing. She said, what's up? I said, just don't come back. And she's like, ha, ha, ha. And I'm like, I'm not kidding. And she didn't, she went, she's in Dallas now and just, just really embracing her, her early twenties and master's program, et cetera. But I, I attribute a lot of that to being able to, we're not doing fifth place trophies and we're not, we're just, you know, sometimes you just don't get picked. You know, I've done, you know, when it comes to the world of talent and, and, and auditions and things of that nature, you know, if you heard your name step forward, if you didn't, thanks for coming out. And sometimes when you don't hear your name called and you hear the thanks for coming out, that's part of it. You know, every time I hear a no, I was like, let's go. Yeah. Before it used to be like, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, Hey, you know, I firmly believe that it's not always a no, sometimes it's a not now.

Mm hmm. Not yet. Or go this way. And that's a part of art, too. If you know dancers, I'm a big I know a lot of people in the entertainment industry living in Los Angeles. And yeah, auditions. You know, you can't crumble with the first no you get in the first door slam. And, you know, in the work that we're in, we're pitching our ideas. We're trying to get on people's stages. We're trying to get hired. You know, you got you get no's. I got one. Yes. Yesterday. It's like, oh, we went with a different speaker. It's more local.

Especially with our world. Yeah. Especially with our world. It's like you almost send the email going. I mean.

Yes, but it's that frame of mind that says, you know, I know this idea is going to be huge. You don't know it yet. So I can do as much as I can to share with you the work, share with you everything. And if you're not ready yet, you're not ready. Seth Godin actually taught me that. Do you know who Seth Godin is?

Absolutely. Yeah.

He was like, you know what, it's not for them. And that was the most freeing phrase, right? Okay, it's not for you right now. Especially if you're someone who writes books and you put your work out there, especially really original work, you know, it's like, this is my baby.

Yeah, well, we can also miss opportunities. My dear friend, you've been one of the world's most known motivational speakers to this day. Um, Eric Thomas, ET, the hip hop preacher. I don't know if you've heard him or not, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely incredible. Got famous through his, used to teach at Michigan state and did that. If you want, when you, when you want to succeed more than you want to breathe, you'll be successful. And that just set him on a new trajectory. But I actually had heard, had the opportunity. I've known him forever and a day, but I'd never seen him live and saw him live a couple of years ago. It's part of a group that I'm part of brought him in as the, as the main keynote. And he told a story about, He prefaced it with saying, stop going after stuff that's not for you. I'm from Michigan. I taught at Michigan State. I'm a Michigan guy. I love my Detroit Lions. And I was so hell bent on getting booked by the Lions. I wanted to get in there, and I wanted to work with the Lions. It's my organization. It's Michigan. And I was so consumed that it was just no, no, no, no, no. And meanwhile, the phone was ringing, and it was the 49ers. And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So sometimes we're going after something that we think is for us and we're missing out on what's really for us. And I thought that was interesting to see because sometimes we get so we dig our heels in so much and we, we swear we're right. And we're just not at all because there's something else for us.

Yes, that's the one thing about being creative and observant. You know, I have my seven gems of intercultural creativity that I talk about in the book. And observation is key. But part of that observation is being sensitive to pattern shifts and where energy is, you know, if you're coming from a faith based position or not. It's yeah, I'm very sensitive to see where the message is needed most. And sometimes there's times when I've taken, you know, a free gig, you know, of course, I'm a paid speaker, but I felt like I felt being led in that way. And that gig opened up this whole thing over here. Right. That if I would have said, you know what, I only do paid speaking engagements. So I have to be sensitive to to that. And that's a huge thing with your audiences. We're in a in a workforce, in an age right now where people with intuition and they're sensitive to patterns and flows and and connections, right? And partnerships. Yeah, that's there's new there's new. Skills that are needed.

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. I totally resonate with what you say on that as well, because I think that it's not actually taken into consideration, you know, as much of being able to now that I'm more in tune, the more that I've been on a healing journey myself and tapping more into who I am as an individual and becoming the best version of myself and continuing to peel back those layers. I often tell the story, and you may have heard it before, of the Statue of David and Michelangelo creating this incredible piece of art and people just being in absolute awe of this. How in the world could you create something so beautiful and to which Michelangelo replied, I didn't create the statue of David. I simply chipped away at everything that wasn't David. David appeared and I was like, wow. I mean, what does that say for us? I'm being able to chip away from everything that's not us on a daily basis and constantly evolving into who it is. But when it comes to alignment and that whole, there's that quote, your energy introduces yourself before you even say anything, as you do when you enter the room. It is so true. You just know, there's some people that you immediately meet and you're like, this person is going to get on my nerves forever. exit stage left. Then there's some people who are like, oh my gosh, you are my people. I bring that back to the business world a lot. First thing I want to do when I talk about doing something and doing business with somebody is, are we aligned? And that's what the speaking business, that's what starting a podcast, that's with gigs, brand deals, whatever it may be. If I can get excited about it and I can get excited about who I'm working with on here, that alignment is absolutely key because we've all been there before. We've taken gigs we probably shouldn't have taken. Because what was an opportunity, but we're really aligned with there and it ends up being a disaster. But like you said, the brain remembers those real quick next time it comes around and we course correct.

Yeah, and we're energy, you know, and this is a scientific fact, right? We're vibrations. This is why the music training is so big. And I love how you talk about evolution. Our big project for 2025 is lyrics and leadership. How do we use music and the lyrics from music to increase our leadership skills? And we're choosing an icon to be our initial lyricist. I don't know if you know him. His name is Prince. He plays the guitar.

No. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, are you talking about the art? Like, yes, the art. I was like, I met him one time on South Beach randomly. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I was walking out of his club glam slam. I was like 15 years old. He was walking with a cane. He was like two and a half feet tall. He just nodded his head at me. I was just in awe. I was like, my gosh, that's him.

yes yes yes well um well yeah but just looking at his his genius but how do we use music to um increase people's you know human skills literacy skills uh leadership skills and bring people together um to collaborate and grow to together but that evolution that he went through throughout his musical career because he was in front of the spotlight since he was like 18 19 years old very young and all the way till his last day. And so it's really like, I mean, that's me being sensitive. Like there's huge research coming out with the brain research and then all this arts and the brain research. And then I'm like, okay, well, what if we need leadership skills? Why don't we combine the arts and the brain with icons that people already know and love, right? You may not go to a leadership conference about resilience, but you'll go to a Prince event and learn resilience through that gate. So it's just me trying to be more creative with getting people the tools they need to live a well-lived life. And I believe lyrics and leadership, and it's unique. Who goes to a training event where arts is the main focus. Arts and leadership is the most focused. I haven't seen it done. There may be like small things out there, but on the global scale, because, you know, Prince was a global artist. And yeah, so I'm just trying to think more creatively in how do we get people excited about upskilling, which people need to keep learning. Lifelong learning is a must now. If you stay stagnant, you will get left behind.

Yeah, you will. Absolutely. Well, I absolutely love what you're up to. I mean, as a peer and fellow speaker, and also just deeply passionate about using your gifts and what you're passionate about and helping people really understand, better understand what they don't know, that they don't know. Those of you listening, she just wrote a book called Seven Gems of Intercultural Creativity, Connecting, Creating, and Innovating Across Cultural Lines, and her first children's book. I am creative. She wrote with her three-year-old son. I didn't know three-year-olds could write books, but hey, anything's possible these days, ladies and gentlemen, but we're going to, we're going to link, uh, both of those in the show notes. That's the description of this podcast episode. In case you're wondering what the heck a show note is on here, uh, connect, uh, what you need, uh, on socials. And I'm sure she'll be coming to a stage, uh, near you, uh, wanted to encourage you to keep continuing doing the work that you're doing. You're clearly doing work. that matters, it's impactful, it's leaving the world a better place. And I just love conversations like this and meeting humans like yourself. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Just step into the power of your own creativity because the world needs what you've got.

That's fantastic. I love that as a final thought. Thanks again for your time, Jeanine. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.