How Hobbies Make You More Creative | Stories With Traction Podcast

SUMMARY: In this episode, Terence Farrell and Matt Zaun discuss how our hobbies can make us more creative in life and business.

TERENCE FARRELL BIO: Terence served as a Chester County Commissioner for 12 years, and before that, he was the Recorder of Deeds for 8 years.  Today, he is the President of For Real Solutions, a consulting firm that brings value to its clients through leveraging Terence’s knowledge, experience, network, and creativity. Two of the major focuses for his business are on reducing healthcare costs for various organizations and mitigating loss in pension funds that occur because of fraud or other illegal activities.

For more info, check out Terence HERE.

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun HERE. 

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I'm very excited for this conversation. I have one of my favorite people in all the world.

Terrence for L joining us again. I'm excited because I got to witness a lot of Terrence's journey over the years.

I've known Terrence now for well over a decade and I got to see him in multiple leadership positions and learn from him as a leader.

And he is in the strength of Danger to the show. He's been on a few times. He's becoming a regular guest because there's a lot that I've been able to unpack regarding his journey.

We've done three episodes so far. I will include them in the show notes so people can go check those out.

We talked about stories of leadership. And we really unpack Terence's journey and rise into the political arena. Then we did an episode on how to get involved in politics for anyone looking to get into public service.

And then the last one that we had shot was how to change your community. That was an awesome episode where Terence unpacked for us how to be a successful someone that serves on the board.

So a successful nonprofit board member as well as contributing to nonprofits. How to really have a positive effect on your community.

Today's episode we're going to talk about creativity, the power of creativity. lot of times in business and the political arena and the nonprofit

Right now, we like to talk about innovation. How do we innovate for our clients, our constituencies, our community? But it's very rare that we talk about internal creativity.

And I want to unpack that with Terence. So I'm excited to talk to Terence. If you are not from like Terence Farrell, Terence served as the Chester County Commissioner for 12 years.

And before that, he was the recorder of deeds for eight. So a decade or two decades worth of public service.

And today, he is the president of Four Real Solutions, which is a consulting firm that brings value to its clients through leveraging Terence's knowledge, experience, network, and creativity.

Two of the major focuses for his business are on reducing healthcare costs for various organizations and mitigating loss and pension funds that occur because of fraud or other illegal activities.

Welcome back to the show, Terence.

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

Thank you very much, Matt. Great to be back again and good to see you.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah, it's good to see you too. And the last episode, at the very end, I learned something about you that I didn't really know before.

And I want to unpack this, right? Because lot of people have seen you in leadership positions. They've seen you at numerous meetings.

They've seen you, you know, on stage connecting with all with large audiences. And I knew that you had played a musical instrument.

But I didn't understand the depths of how long you played, why you played, and I want to unpack that.

And toward the end of the conversation, after the episode was recorded, it really got me thinking about this aspect of creativity, how you leaned into creativity over the years.

So can you just share with us your musical journey, if you will, over the last few decades?

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

Well, thanks for asking. let me just tell you where I am now, first in my musical journey. I'm playing the bass guitar now.

And I actually play in the contemporary band at a couple different churches, one up in Westchester, Pennsylvania, where I live for a bunch of years.

And then now at a contemporary service at a church right up the road, my wife and I moved to Lewis about four months ago, and I just, about a month ago, auditioned for the band here was accepted.

And my first gig is toward the end of August. So I'm playing bass now. But you asked about the musical journey, and it's really symptomatic or emblematic of, you know, the whole topic of creativity, because I just didn't start out picking up bass and playing it.

I've got a journey that got me here and it really began with my mother and her creativity. She insisted that all three of us kids take piano lessons.

And I did not like to take piano lessons because the teacher was a Stern University professor. I'm talk of talk in Oregon.

If you can imagine I'm leaning over you like Count Dracula and forcing you to play and to do I did learn to read music of these treble hand and understand bass and I convinced my mother that if I could pick up another instrument, she would let me quit taking piano lessons and I did that and my instrument was guitar.

I picked up the guitar and I was fortunate enough to have a teacher from Lincoln University, a student who taught me in that sense, the teacher.

My parents were professors at Lincoln University as you know, and I played the guitar off and on and then in junior high school.

I joined band and I played saxophone. I don't know why I picked the saxophone, but that was my primary musical focus.

In high school, I still had a guitar and pick up every once in while, but in college. I had a couple of students who lived down the road, when I mean down the road, was down the dorm, who played various kinds of folk music.

One guy taught me Picking. I always loved folk music. My year was the 60s and 70s, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, R&B for Motown, so on.

Those were the sounds I loved. picked up the guitar again and played that. actually played a song in my roommate's wedding, like that.

Then that sort of went by the wayside for a while. When I met my wife, we've been married now.

What is it? 14 years? met her family and they were very musical. We used to go down to North Virginia, where her brother,

Others lived and we'd have food and drink and then the guitars would come out and they'd play Hank Williams.

They play the Beatles. They played various folk songs. And I said, you know, I could add another, another guitar to this group, but what would really, you know, underscore emphasize and help it would be a bass guitar.

So I decided that I was going to learn how to play bass. And bass is just the bottom four.

I strings of the guitar. EA, DNG tuned down an octave. So it wasn't completely foreign to me. So in 2019 I picked up the bass started taking lessons.

I had gone to the contemporary service for the Westminster Presbyterian Church, which was just outside of Westchester. I liked that service.

I liked the church. I liked the mission in this world. And I would go up after the service and ask the bass player,

You I'm not trying to learn how to play guitar and you know, you're seeing to be a good bass player.

Maybe we could get together and you could teach me a couple things in the response. Yeah, yeah, sure sure never happened.

And so one week the music pastor John Frost said, why don't you bring your guitar? We practiced on Wednesday.

Why don't you bring your bass guitar? Practice on Wednesday. We'll plug you in and see what you can do.

So I was given a chart. It was basically cold, but you know, I could read the chart, just the root notes and I could find them on my base.

And so afterwards he said, essentially, why would you join the rotation? And I did that. I played for about a year and had my debut in early 2020.

And then. COVID hit and everything flows down. So I didn't practice much. Um, stayed at home. Things picked up again in 2021.

I picked up a new teacher. Um, Leon Spencer, who's he was a music student. He played upright bass and he is a great singer and great musician helping in the community musically down in.

Um, the Kennett Square area. we meet once a week by zoom. Um, as I say, uh, I've been able to join the rotation of the, of the local, um, non-enominational church here.

But, um, you know, face and playing bass, practicing bass, playing in, in the group really is a great joy and, um, stress release for me.

You know, I, I just, it's a different part of my brain that I'm using. It's. That's non-analytical kind of skills.

And then once I get to the band practice and actually the band performance, there's a whole new energy that's released.

can be tired on Wednesday night when one of the band practices take place and I'll get there and we'll start playing.

then by the end of the practice, which is an hour and 20 minutes, 30 minutes, I'm rejuvenated. And I don't know where that energy comes from, but I really enjoy this, the sound of the music playing with a group, playing based by myself is not exciting per se, but practicing to be able to contribute to that group is really what it energizes me.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah, so thank you for sharing all that. So there's something that I really want to unpack with you with what you said, that I don't want people listening to this to mess.

There's elements of patterns. So, I'll mention my wife regarding music. She's also very musically inclined and she's also masterful at understanding different patterns.

And a lot of that goes back to her being brought up with music, know, singing in the choir playing an instrument really understand the different patterns of music.

And I don't want people to miss this because this was a little bit of a hobby for you, right?

So throughout your life, this became, you know, hobby for you. It became a pressure relief valve, if you will.

So relieving stress. also, I wonder how much subconsciously you were picking up on patterns through music because watching you now for well over a decade, you, you really know how to connect with people.

Clearly, there's patterns with how to There's patterns when it comes to effectively to people. Running a successful meeting, there's patterns when it comes to business.

And it amazes me, people that really focus outside of what they do day to day on a hobby and unpack elements of those patterns, they could really use it for good.

You also mentioned Bob Dylan. I'm a huge fan, as you know, Bob Dylan. I think he's one of the best lyricists of all time.

For anyone that has studied his lyrics, there's patterns when it comes to the poetic nature of Dylan's lyrics. So, would you thinking about it consciously now, can you think about how maybe subconsciously this really positioned you to unpack different patterns around you based on music?

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

Well, I think the first pattern of music and music understanding and a pattern really was the ability to listen to music.

My mom played the piano. Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons she insisted that we take musical lessons and, you know, that it would be good to understand music from an early age.

So the first pattern was just listening to her play. You know, we had record machine in the house and so I was able to listen to records.

hearing her play live music, I think. I think a tune my ear really to listening. I think, you know, I don't know whether it's a speech is actually better if you think of it as music that you're actually, you know, making music with your words and the rhythms of your speech.

But, you know, I've studied as you have studied, I've studied speaking, you know, the ability to be able to speak to multiple people to groups, mass communications.

So I think there is something about tuning your ear to sounds, to whatever patterns exist in speech, in good speech.

I'm a huge fan of Bob Dylan also. And, you know, he actually studied some of the great poets. He was a, you know, he could have been an English professor as much as he knew about all the, particularly British poets, but American poets also.

So, so I'm not sure whether there's any direct correlation between, you know, the scales that I'm starting to learn now major minor, major and scales that I'm starting to learn now.

But one of the things my teacher said is not only know, you know, where the fingering goes and it's easy to learn.

Turn the finger patterns because on the guitar, on the bass guitar, a lot of what you do is just patterns.

if I'm playing, know, two, four, I'm talking about my fingers, two, four, one, three, four, one, three, four. Or I'm talking about playing one, three, four, one, three, four, one, three.

You know, I can start anywhere on the guitar fretboard and it'll be the same. It'll be the same pattern that I use to create a particular scale.

I'm not sure if that answers your question, but certainly there are patterns, a lot of patterns in music. Oh, and there.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

No, that absolutely answers my question because I think it's really important to really prepare our mind to listen. That's such an incredible skill, that active listening, not to just respond, but really listening so that we can connect with someone.

So I want to, I want to take it another route. Because very, very few people are going to reach the level of public speaking that you have gone through in the last two decades.

just to kind of paint the scene for people, to be an individual that is a commissioner running a very large, very important county, you have to do a lot of talks.

I can only imagine if you're really backtracked and you connected all the dots, mean, I would probably eventually say you have done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of speaking events.

And I think a lot of leaders like fantasize about being on stage and connecting with an audience and holding an audience in a palm of their hand and being inspirational and persuasive and memorable.

And you've done that. I've seen you speak numerous times. have an element of humor, but you have an element of inspiration and connectivity and empathy.

Do you think because of all the reps that you have? And when it came to based on that creativity, being on stage, do you think that all those wraps really position you to understand about stage dynamics so you can carry a room?

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

Well, when I knew I wanted to be a commissioner when I was a quarter of these. I started to study public speaking.

Well, every opportunity I was at a conference with a breakout session on public speaking, I would attend. One of the session sessions was in using theatrical techniques to enhance your public speaking.

I was active in theater in college and as a youth on a link universities campus. I'm not sure that the music itself, you know, directly into my ability to speak to others, although, you know,

Oh, in terms of listening, when I'm speaking, I'm listening. I'm listening to myself. You know, I'm listening to the cadence.

I'm listening to the room. What's the reaction of the room? But I'm also visually scanning the room, connecting with the people that are giving me energy, realizing who's not giving me energy, noting to skip over them the next time.

And the ability to, you know, read a room, to understand, and I'm sure you have this ability also from all the speaking engagements you've participated in.

You draw energy from that crowd, that group, and you're able to give that back. Whether it's reps from playing guitar, I'm not so sure, but it's the same ability to study.

Public speaking is an art anachract, you have to learn it over a period of time. No one was born being a public speaker.

So, I think there's the same emphasis on practice and then using that practice to come to your stage performance when you're, you know, you go up and beyond what the practice has brought you to that level when you've got the adrenaline there, when you're in the moment, when you're listening to all the various elements and you're able to create something in that moment.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

That's a really good point. And also, again, it goes back to one of your hobbies. You mentioned theater, right?

So, another hobby outside of music that really get those creative juices flowing. I think a lot of leaders view that as maybe silly, right?

Because a lot of leaders want to look stoic. They don't want to do get involved in theater and sometimes get on stage and perform when it comes to music.

But it's amazing that putting ourselves in a position to maybe look silly to others can really position us to have those reps to connect.

So can you kind of talk about the difference that you've seen regarding innovation and creativity when it comes to people's hobbies?

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

Well, I was an English major in college and I always enjoyed writing. But in college, it was pretty much an analytical study of English.

It wasn't creative writing and I missed that in my college career. afterwards, I took a couple of creative writing courses on my own, but I also took some of the other artistic skills to classes and some of the other artistic skills.

For example, oil painting. I took a class of oil painting. My mom, you know, did some oil painting. She never really taught me about it.

But one of the things I took away and I have taken away, you know, takeaways from a lot of different artistic genres.

One of the things I took away from this oil painting class at the University of was, fill the canvas, paint, change what you don't like.

So the creative process, some people think of the creativity as you know you sit down and all of a sudden full blown, this short story or this novel comes out of you, but writing and a lot of the crafts are just rewriting, doing it again, putting down something on paper and then going back to it and perfecting it.

So innovation versus creativity, as you said at the very beginning, a lot of folks want to innovate and a lot of people have been very successful for innovation.

You know, Steve Jobs had a knack for taking existing technology and making it He was a-friendly and he understood what people wanted.

He had that gift, so it was not bringing something full blown out of nothing, but he was able to integrate elements that were already there and repackish them and put them out in another way.

You name people like Walt Disney, another great innovator, very creative. But he took the art form of film and used animation to create his own film, so using elements that were there.

I guess there's a correlation between creativity and innovation, creativity being in the individual to see things that might be out in the world, and then the innovation is something of using the elements in the world to bring that into fruition in business.

You know, the successful innovators are successful business people in many cases.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So, Terence, here's one of the many things that I respect about you. You pay attention. And you pay attention in a big, big way, because for you to have paid attention to that magnitude during this oil painting class, to really pull out that type of value is staggering.

And you also mentioned Steve Jobs. So, Steve Jobs also took a class that he attributes to fundamentally changing the way he viewed the world.

And that was a calligraphy class. In fact, it's well documented that he took a calligraphy class and he was so captivated by the beauty of that, that that was one of the things that he implemented in Apple.

He wanted his products to be beautiful. He wanted the user's experience to have such incredible design. And I really think that that set him apart.

So, I love what you said regarding your oil painting class. You said, fill the canvas. And then change what you don't like.

And the power of that is one of the biggest disadvantages that I see from a timing perspective when it comes to people writing speeches, creating stories, is they do it from start to finish, almost as if they're writing an email.

And that is one of the most agonizing ways to create a story. Instead, we need to view it like a puzzle, almost like an oil painting, where we just start and then that puzzle piece is we can start, you know, branching out and branching out and then focus on the opening and then focus on how are we going to close this.

So I really appreciate something as simplistic as taking a different class, getting you out of your normal state. Could have such a profound impact on your life.

So I appreciate just how much you pay attention. Would you have any suggestions for people that lack focus on how they can also pay more attention in life to kind of

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

To find more wisdom around them like you do? Well, I think the suggestion would be to get out of your normal day-to-day routine and do something differently creatively that captivates you, that draws your focus, something that you enjoy doing.

Some people are puzzlers. They love to do any kind of puzzle, whether it's Suduko or it's a word puzzle or it's any kind of hard to put the pieces together kind of puzzle.

And they lose themselves in that and that losing of yourself is really focusing on what you're doing. So find something outside of your normal mainstream of activities.

you're a business person, try something new. And usually people have something in the back of their mind where they...

Say, you know, I've always wanted to do this and probably people's biggest regret, you know, when they get to the end of their life, is that they didn't try what they really wanted to do.

Maybe it's in business. Maybe they wanted to be in business. Maybe they, you know, wanted to bake. Maybe they wanted to paint.

Maybe they wanted to write music. Get out of your normal pattern and do something that brings you joy and that will show you what real attention is.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

You know, it's interesting you say that because it's amazing how much, how much were creatures of habit? True. You know, we, it's funny if we do a normal commute, there are times where we will get, we will get from point A to point B and then we'll get there and think, how did I get here?

Because it's second nature. It's almost something as simple as picking a different root creates different pathways in our brain so we can creatively figure out.

How do we avoid traffic here? How do we go this back road? It's amazing that we don't need to do something outlandish to put ourselves in a mindset to embrace creativity.

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

And to do something different, some of the best businessmen not only started with one focus, like Jeff Bezos, started with online retailing of books.

And when he was first raising money for what became Amazon, he had to explain to some of these venture capitalists exactly what the internet was, how that was going to be used to sell these books.

But part of his creativity is always taking an additional route. It's not just books anymore. He sells products and he's got partners and he's done cloud computing now to entertainment.

So he's added different elements along the way, and adding these elements has really created the full power of Amazon.

He was successful with eBooks and e-commerce, but he's gone beyond that. Amazon Web Services is huge nowadays, and a lot of companies rely upon that.

It's going to be interesting to see his next venture. I think he's... He and Elon Musk are both racing to provide space travel as a business, for people who want to be space tourists.

he takes people up in his rockets. It's just amazing. Once you get the mindset of not settling for where you are now, then the next trip is just an adventure.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah, I appreciate you mention Jeff Bezos. one of the things I love saying is, are you willing to look foolish now to potentially look like a genius in the future?

And Jeff Bezos clearly was willing to look foolish at the moment. So many of had launched Amazon because like you had mentioned originally started with selling books online.

He had an incredible crush job on Wall Street making significant money. He literally left New York City drove to Washington State established Amazon in his house and Bellevue, Washington.

I've actually been to this house. I've been to the house that Amazon was launched in. Very humble beginnings. And everyone pegged him as an idiot.

He looked foolish. He was stupid. Who in the The world is going to buy books on the internet. And Barnes and Noble have been around for 121 years when Amazon was launched.

And yet he was able to completely dominate the competition embracing elements of creativity. Now I have a question for you, Terence, because I think this is very important because I, and it's not, it's not right or wrong.

think we both we a lot of people can go about this from from different angles. When it came to your music.

When it came Came to theater for you. Was there a musician, Terence, and then a public servant, Terence, or was that part of your life as a whole?

So were you concerned about maybe looking foolish as someone saw one of your shows musically thinking, hey, this is the commissioner that runs the county and he's up on state?

did you separate those two worlds and try to keep them separate?

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

Or did you blend those two worlds? And if so, why? Well, I never tried to keep them separate. And interestingly enough, one time as an accounting commissioner, it was sort of a bet, sort of a dare.

But I had a challenge from one of the department heads that she would do something, bring somebody to the county if I would play my guitar at a public meeting.

And you can go back and that. I'm meeting is recorded and I played my guitar at a public meeting with the department heads there and so on.

was a little bit tense. was a little nervous to do that in that format because no one was expecting it.

It wasn't announced. one point, I had the guitar back there so people were saying, was that? I got up and I played and it was one of the most watched videos of public meetings that we had.

So I really wasn't afraid to let people know. I wasn't at the same time ginging on the weekends at various bars or restaurants or other places.

But no, I wasn't afraid to let people know I played a guitar. I enjoyed playing guitar. would let people know if I was in a theatrical performance, although I did not perform on

Stage, I can't remember any time when I was a commissioner that I actually performed theatrically on stage. A lot of that energy was directed through my public speaking because I was theatrical on stage and one of the things that I learned was just the use of the hands and the use of the movement across the stage, the use of the full stage, the ability to raise your voice and then lower it softly, use different tones and different movements and different hand gestures and eye contact with the audience.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Sure. Wow, I got to go check out that guitar meeting for sure. I'm interested to check that out. thank you so much for your time with this conversation, Terence.

really appreciate it. I got a lot out of our conversation as I know individuals that listened did as well, but there's three in particular that are going to be my big takeaways.

I really appreciate you mentioning the patterns that you learned regarding music. You said the ability I believe to listen because of music.

Isn't it amazing that now we have a generation that speeds everything up? Whether it's YouTube videos, podcasts, like to speed everything up.

And then we wonder why we have generations now struggling with the ability to connect because of listening. It's incredible that skill set that you gained from music, that ability to listen.

And I've seen that in action because I've seen you in rooms full of several hundred people and that individual that you're talking with, you are intently listening.

not looking around the room of what other conversation can I go to? Like you're so focused on listening to that person.

That's an incredible skill. So that's my number one takeaway. The second thing is I appreciate you being a student of your craft.

You mentioned the theatrical techniques regarding public speaking that really tied into your stage performance. And then the third and final pieces, I really appreciate the story that you mentioned regarding

Real painting class. You said, fill the canvas, paint, and then change what you don't like. This is also a time saver for everyone listening, because if you've ever done something from start to finish, and you agonize on how to start, you might not be starting in the beginning.

You might start in the middle, build it out like a puzzle, and then go back and add the beginning, the ending, and tweak and change.

That is profound wisdom. So I appreciate you mentioning those three things. Now, if someone wants to get more information on your business, what you do, where's the best place that they can go to get that information?

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

Well, my business is named for real solutions to LLC. I'm on LinkedIn, and perhaps you can put the link in profile in your comments, and people can connect with me there.

That's a great place I'm on LinkedIn. Not as much as some people I know, but I'm on LinkedIn as often as I can be, and I do check it out, and I gain an extraordinary amount of wisdom there.

I will say this one thing about what you mentioned and listening. Sometimes it's a blessing, sometimes it's almost an obsession because when I listen to music on a speaker in the restaurant or even in my house, I pretty much try to tune out everything except the bass pattern.

I'm listening to the bass pattern. Well, maybe it enhances the experience because I've got something specifically to focus on to build everything else around.

So I appreciate you mentioning that. I appreciate you having me on your program again, Matt.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Thank you. Absolutely. I will include those links in the show notes for sure. People can just click and then connect with you on LinkedIn.

Thank you again, Terence.

 

Terence Farrell (Terence Farrell)

very much appreciate your time. Thank you, Matt.