This conversation is with Marilyn Barefoot, Founder of Barefoot Brainstorming. Classically trained in tier-one companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, General Mills, Nike and Microsoft, Marilyn combines a wickedly smart and analytical brain with an intuitive gut. Having worked at major advertising agencies like Vickers & Benson, Bozell Palmer Bonner, Cossette Communications and BBDO, Marilyn is obsessive about originality. A hands-on leader, Marilyn’s high-energy brainstorming sessions (trademarked as BigStorming®) lead to powerful results. As a three-time nominee for the Rotman Canadian Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, Marilyn Barefoot is also a much sought after speaker.
Tell us about Barefoot Brainstorming.
Barefoot Brainstorming is 15 years old and it came out of my love of the blank page. I come from an advertising agency background and when a client would come to us with an issue, we were faced with a blank page and had to figure out how to fill it with smart, interesting, strategic, and creative breakthroughs that would solve the client’s problem in a really neat way.
I had worked in the advertising agency business all my life and I had my own agency for 10 years called Square Peg. Times got tough and I saw the water rising so unfortunately, I had to close that agency down. People kept telling me that I wouldn’t be able to go back to working for someone else after working for myself for so long. I didn’t believe them but it turned out they were right. I worked with Cosette for a while and then with BBDO but I realized that my happiest place is being my own boss and being an entrepreneur.
I knew that brainstorming was my passion. It was a service I had offered at my own agency and I knew it was what I really wanted to do. Most people said, “There’s absolutely no way in hell that’s going to work. Who has a line item on their budget for brainstorming? No one. Good luck with that.” But it did work. I went for the low hanging fruit of clients who had experienced brainstorming sessions with me before and slowly but surely word of my services began to spread.
What is the problem you’re solving?
The big problem in the marketplace is that there is an incredible amount of creative talent inside every single person on the planet but not everyone knows how to access that. I believe that every company already has all the answers and creative solutions they need. They don’t necessarily need an agency to generate the best creative ideas for them, they can do it themselves. But sometimes, they need someone who can tease the ideas out of them, someone who has the right facilitation skills, the right training, and knows the right creative exercises to bring that creativity to the surface.
When you give them the right exercises and tools to unlock the creative instinct that’s inside of them, the ideas they come up with are amazing.
Let me give you an example—Burger King wanted to come up with new ways to increase their breakfast business because sales were starting to slide in comparison to their competitors. They knew that they could brief an agency and have them come up with some ideas, but they were also smart enough to recognize that everybody who works within their organization has great ideas of their own. All they needed was somebody to come in with a set of keys to unlock the creativity inside their own teams. Every client knows so much more than what they can put on an 8½ x 11 brief to an agency. When you give them the right exercises and tools to unlock the creative instinct that’s inside of them, the ideas they come up with are amazing.
What kind of companies do you usually work with?
Any size—Fortune 500 right down to start-ups, it doesn’t matter. I’ve worked with companies like Viacom, MTV, and Country Music Television in New York City and with companies like Hain Celestial, a consumer packaged goods company here in Canada. My clients come from all different backgrounds but they generally tend to be bigger companies. Most of my business comes through word of mouth because people have to experience the work that I do in order to understand it and really believe in it.
In bigger companies, do you work with different divisions or are you typically brought in a C-Suite level?
My entry point into a company is generally through marketing and communications since that’s where my own background lies. But once marketing has experienced the work that I do, I’ll often be referred to other divisions, including C-Suite. For example, one of my clients is Whirlpool, which started out as a marketing ask but from there, I ended up working with the finance, supply chain, and operations departments as well once the different teams saw the value in what I do.
Is there ever a time when the group struggles to come up with ideas?
It never happens. My business tagline is “big ideas guaranteed” and I say guaranteed because if you’re not thrilled with the outcome of the session, do not pay my invoice. In 15 years, that’s never happened.
Years ago I was sitting with one of the senior-level people at General Mills and I was explaining my process to him and what it is I do, but he was not buying it. I was at my wit’s end and finally I said, “Ok, what’s it going to take?” He said, “You’re gonna have to prove it to me.” I said, “Give me two hours, 20 employees, no phones, a boardroom with some windows, and we’ll solve whatever problem you like. If you’re not thrilled with the result, don’t contract me to do any more work with your organization.” And he was thrilled. It worked out really, really well. But he needed to sit through one of the sessions and actually experience it for himself to see how it went and what kind of quality ideas would come out of it.
Do you find there are certain types of people who are more successful in these sessions?
What I generally do before a session is to ask participants to do a short quiz to chart your brain operating system. It’s a quiz that was developed by Doug Hall who wrote the book, Jump Start Your Brain. It takes like one-to-two minutes to do online and it gives participants a score that tells me whether they are a realist, a builder or a dreamer. From there, I break the group into several smaller teams and I make sure that there are realists, builders and dreamers inside each team. To the best of my ability, I stack it so that we have very high functioning mini-teams. If we had a whole group of realists working together they probably couldn’t get out of each other’s way, but if we have a nice mixture of different kinds of processing styles, it works beautifully.
Do you find that people have to work into getting the right mindset?
Generally, every single time I do a session I get one or all three of the following reactions:
1) Somebody will walk in and see the room set up with Mr. Sketch scented markers, Play-Doh, colouring sheets, rubber chickens and things like that. They get very excited and say, “Wow, this is awesome. I can’t wait.”
2) Somebody walks in and thinks, “Uh oh, I think she’s going to ask me to be a creative person and I’m not a creative person.” That is a fear-based response. Fear of not being able to do whatever’s going to be asked of me.
3) Somebody walks in and thinks, “This is absolute BS. I’m such a busy person, I have so many emails to send and meetings to go to, what am I doing in a room with a bunch of toys?” That’s usually a senior or C-Suite level person who doesn’t recognize what they’re walking into and it’s also a fear-based reaction. I believe they fear that they don’t have control, that they might not be able to rise to the challenge, that somehow they’re spending their money on something that could be perceived as a waste of time and that their reputation is going to be compromised.
So the first 15 minutes of a session is used to explain the science of exactly why everything is the way it is in the room and exactly why this process is guaranteed to work. That seems to get all three reactions on the same page. The people who are excited are still excited, or even more so. The people who feel like they’re not creative are feeling a little better about it, and the sceptic has heard enough of the science that they start to believe there could be something to this.
I didn’t want to be the HR person and the admin person but I wasn’t big enough to hire admins and HR so I had to do it all myself. That meant I wasn’t doing the work that I really love, which was the reason why I had started the business in the first place.
Do you have any partners?
No, I am 100% on my own. I have strategic alliances and I work with freelancers, contractors and suppliers as I need them, but I do not have an office of people anymore. When I had an agency, having a staff of people was one of the things I found really difficult. I didn’t want to be the HR person and the admin person but I wasn’t big enough to hire admins and HR so I had to do it all myself. That meant I wasn’t doing the work that I really love, which was the reason why I had started the business in the first place. It was one of those “between a rock and a hard place” situations so these days I’m happier being on my own.
What kind of roles do you bring in from a freelance standpoint?
I bring in writers because I have a website and do press releases and sometimes I need a little bit of help with blogs. I’m not a writer and I recognize that, so I definitely bring in writers when needed. I’ll bring in a graphic designer if there are new aspects I want to introduce to the website, or if I want to do graphics or video production for some of the work that I do. I have a great financial partner and I work with a wonderful social media person who keeps me up-to-date on what’s trending and the best places to post to and all of those kinds of things to stay relevant in the marketplace. She also helps me to use the material I have in a smart and engaging way.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned so far as an entrepreneur?
As an entrepreneur, what you have is your personality, your soul, your spirit, and the quality of the work you do. No matter what happens, that has to be stellar. We’re all human—if you make a mistake, own it. As soon as you realize you’ve made one, figure out a solution, because your reputation is everything. The world keeps getting smaller and smaller and you cannot burn your bridges. More and more I think that owning up and being a creative problem solver or being absolutely willing to do anything it takes to surprise and delight the client is the most important thing you can deliver.
As an entrepreneur, what you have is your personality, your soul, your spirit, and the quality of the work you do. No matter what happens, that has to be stellar.
Another lesson I’ve learned is to never get yourself into something you can’t scale both ways really fast. When I had my agency, which employed 16 people, and the economy hit a bad bump all of a sudden, I found that I couldn’t scale down fast enough. I wish I’d had the opposite problem where I had to scale up because that would have been an easier problem to solve. To be nimble and to be able to pivot—those two skills are critical as an entrepreneur. Do you need to get bigger faster? Do you need to get smaller faster? Do you need to turn right when you were expecting to turn left? That doesn’t mean be all things to all people, but it means you better be ready to pivot. As much as you want to be able to say you can see the horizon line, there’s always going to be stuff thrown at you that you’re not expecting and you have to be ready.
What are some of the most pressing challenges your business faces?
Getting really well known out there in the world. I feel like if I went out and advertised what I do, I probably wouldn’t be taken as seriously. I say that because, in the kind of service industry that I’m in, if you have to advertise then you’re doing something wrong. You’re almost supposed to be considered a brand’s best-kept secret or someone who is recommended to others. You want to get exposure and get your name out there, but it’s more about publishing articles or books or getting called to speak at some big conferences. Being one person, it’s really hard to figure that out. When you’re doing the client relationship-building and delivering the work itself, where do you find the time to go and speak at conferences? So my biggest challenge is becoming better known but I struggle with how best to do that in a very authentic, value-added way.
If you could remove one task or responsibility from your day-to-day what would it be?
I would say doing all of the comprehensive reports after the brainstorming sessions. I gather up all of the raw materials and ideas we’ve generated in the room and I bring them back to my office, where I embellish upon them and clean them up. By the time I give the report back to the client, it’s a beautiful thing but it’s also hours and hours of painstaking work. Of course, this is what the client is paying for, but all those hours could be spent trying to figure out how to be discovered in the world more easily. I’ve tried farming the work out but unless the person has been in the room with me, they don’t understand the nuances of what actually happened or what the people in the room meant when they said X, Y or Z.
When it comes to your operations, what are some of your more specific pain points and how do you tackle them?
Getting paid enough money for what I do. When it comes to brainstorming, people feel like they can just get someone in their office to stand up in front of a group of people and lead the session. Why should they pay anything for it? Money’s tight everywhere in the world, let’s be clear on that, but I do deliver an outstanding product and it’s very difficult in a new client relationship for them to appreciate that when they haven’t experienced it yet. There’s always a bit of haggling that seems to go on and it’s exhausting. At the end of the year when you look at how many jobs you’ve done and what you likely should have been paid for them versus what you actually were paid it can hurt.
If you’re doing a really good job, you make it look easy.
I quote my clients a price that I believe is fair and I’m very clear about what that includes. It’s a “tip of the iceberg” type of situation where clients see me on my feet during the session and that’s all. They don’t see the hours and hours of prep that goes into it—selecting the teams, designing the session, and getting all of the materials ready and they don’t see the hours and hours of work afterwards to create the report. I put together a proposal for every single client that I’m about to do work for or have asked to consider me and I’m very clear about everything that’s included in my price. If you’re doing a really good job, you make it look easy. It’s like watching Olympic athletes, they’ll make it look really simple but you don’t see the zillion hours of practice they had to put in to make it look that way.
What’s the best part of being an entrepreneur for you?
The ability to design a life where you can follow your passion and be paid for it. I can’t imagine doing something for a living that’s not my passion. Also, the ability to do it on your own terms. And I don’t mean working at home in my pyjamas! There’s no politics, no games, there’s just you and your work and delivering a quality product to your client. There’s nothing getting in the way of that.
What are some of the tools you use to inspire you or to make your life easier?
I was first exposed to this style of brainstorming in Scandinavia when I was doing work with Tetra Pak. It’s a method of divergent and convergent thinking that draws from the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process which was developed in 1947 at the State University of New York Buffalo. Every year in June, SUNY Buffalo holds the CPSI (Creative Problem Solving Institute) Conference and that is the Mecca. It’s where you go to learn from some of the best creative minds in the industry and to hone your craft. You always have to refresh your offering for your own sake as well as for your clients’ sake—you never want to just get up there and be robotic. So I always try to attend that conference.
Doug Hall who I mentioned earlier has written a number of books and the one that I read years ago called Jump Start Your Brain was the book that changed my life to the point where I would say, “This is what I want to do for a living.”
I like going to art galleries and museums to get inspired. If I have a job in New York City, I’ll try and come in early enough to go to the Museum of Modern Art. Personal interactions with art inspires me to think differently about things and gives me a fresh perspective which I can then bring back to the work that I’m doing and the life that I’m living.
What’s next for Barefoot Brainstorming?
15 years ago, I started out just doing brainstorming but then clients who enjoyed my work started saying to me that I should offer other services as well. I typically start my brainstorming sessions by telling stories around horrifically bad brainstorming sessions I was involved in, in the agency world and people said, “You tell such great stories, why don’t you do more on storytelling?” The big buzzword in the world these days is storytelling so I developed a program for storytelling and I tried it out with some university students and they gave me great feedback. I’ve gone from just offering brainstorming to offering storytelling and presentation skills training as well as strategic planning because strategic planning is taking the best of brainstorming and inserting that into a planning process.
So what’s next for me is that I would love to write a book and I would like to have more people that could help me do what I do. I think that would open up a lot of different types of opportunities. I’m also working really hard with a couple of people to figure out how to do this brainstorming work in a virtual environment because it’s a question I get all the time—“This is great, but we have 55 offices around the country and we can’t afford to bring everybody to Toronto or New York to do this with you. How can we do this online?” I can’t really talk about it quite yet, because it’s still kind of a big secret but I think I have figured out how it can work. I’ve got a job in February with a big client and they’re going to let me give this a try. I’m really excited about it.
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If you want to learn more about Marilyn and Barefoot Brainstorming, check out her website: barefootbrainstorming.com
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